The corona crisis is accelerating the trend towards online censorship and surveillance – this is the central thesis of the US organization Freedom House in its new report on the status of “Internet freedom”. Governments around the world used the pandemic as a pretext to restrict and disregard rights, the authors criticize.

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History shows that techniques and laws introduced in times of crisis are often permanent, said Adrian Shahbaz, co-author of am Study published Wednesday. “In retrospect we will be Covid – 19 just like the 11. See September 2000 as a time for governments to adopt new, intrusive means to control their citizens. ”

Freedom House focuses in its study on three main themes: surveillance, censorship and the disintegration of Internet in national subnetworks under the heading of “cyber sovereignty”. Overall, the degree of internet freedom determined by Freedom House decreased for the tenth year in a row.

Mass surveillance with apps and cell phone data In the chapter on surveillance, the authors criticize the fact that a high proportion of corona apps worldwide can be misused for surveillance. Most developers disregarded data protection requirements, the source texts of most applications are not accessible.

The authors cite numerous examples such as the one in India around 50 “Aarogya Setu” app installed millions of times, which sends Bluetooth and GPS data to government servers. Another app called “Jio” was used in India to collect symptom data from millions of citizens and then put them on servers without access protection. In Moscow, citizens would have to send selfies to authorities to prove that they are complying with the quarantine. Singapore has obliged migrants to use contact tracing apps.

Other negative examples mentioned include apps from Bahrain and Turkey. However, China has taken the most comprehensive and draconian measures. The authors refer to the Estonian app “Hoia” as a positive example of a corona warning system with open source code and a decentralized structure. The German Corona warning app is not mentioned.

However, the apps are only one of many means of monitoring: At least 30 Governments – including those of Pakistan, Sri Lanka and South Korea – monitor their populations in cooperation with mobile phone providers, according to Freedom House.

Corona censorship with over 2000 keywords In at least 28 of the total 65 the countries examined had the governments blocked or censored online content in order to report critical reports on Covid – 19 to suppress, it says in the chapter on censorship.

The censors proceeded particularly systematically in China: They would have more than 2000 Keywords defined to filter content related to the pandemic from the web. Even harmless questions or observations were suppressed. The media were given strict instructions on how to report the virus. But also Bangladesh, Egypt, Venezuela, Belarus and other countries would have censored or blocked Corona content.

In 45 of the 65 journalists or ordinary citizens were arrested or charged, according to Freedom House, for soliciting Covid- 19 had expressed. The pretext was often that they spread false information that could endanger public order.

Internet continues to fragment Freedom House also sees the trend towards “Splinternet” from national sub-networks as worrying. Named as a pioneer