In 2008, the Committee to Protect Journalists CPJ found that bloggers and other online journalists were the largest professional group being jailed. Earlier, that honor went to print and broadcast journalists.

Here’s a quick summary of their evaluation of the worst countries in the world for bloggers:

1. Burma

Monitoring, regulation of cybercafes, blocking. At least two bloggers in prison.

2. Iran

Monitoring, harassment, detention, pending legislation advocating death penalty for promoting corruption, prostitution and apostasy. One blogger died in jail in unclear circumstances

3. Syria

Filtering, blocking, harassment, self-censorship, monitoring, detention.

4. Cuba

Blocking, harassment. 21 bloggers jailed

5. Saudi Arabia

Widespread blocking, self-censorship

6. Vietnam

Monitoring, harassment.

7. Tunisia

Electronic surveillance including email monitoring, electronic sabotage, content filtering, IP submission, imprisonment of at least 2 journalists

8. China

Blocking, monitoring of email, filtering of searches, deletion of objectionable material. Has a vibrant bloggin culture but maintains world’s most comprehensive online censorship program.  At least 24 bloggers in prison.

9. Turkmenistan

Blocking access to opposition sites. Monitoring of email accounts.

10. Egypt

Monitoring of sites, open-ended detention, sometimes imprisonment and even torture. But only a few sites are blocked. More than 100 journalists detained (usually for short periods).

All this seems very bad compared to what we have in the US.

Or, is it? Let’s see.

• Email monitoring Check.   And note this program, ADVISE, in the works, supposedly scrapped in 2007, but status unknown is a better description. And if that’s been thought up for the citizenry at large, bloggers should expect quite a bit more attention.

• Telephone monitoring Check.    Again,  the general public is being monitored, not just political bloggers.

• Censorship Depends on what you define as censorship.  Wiki demonstrably manipulates  information in subtle and not so subtle ways. Sometimes there’s outright deletion of articles for no good reason besides content censorship. Google not only censors some material overtly, it’s been accused of manipulating the visibility of material. Facebook is reported to be impossible to leave. Finally, there’s probably far more disinformation in the US than in any other country, and it’s certainly the most sophisticated.

• Snooping The government can force ISP’s to provide information. The NSA has been engaged in massive illegal surveillance of domestic emails and communications records of ordinary citizens, not just bloggers.

• Website harassment/sabotage Check

• Controlled mainstream media Check

• Bloggers jailed Not for years. But several have been questioned, arrested, detained for short periods, or forced out of the country in order to blog more freely. One was arrested for posting financial predictions.

Bloggers killed None that I know of, but I can think of at least two journalists (Gary Webb is the most famous) who died in mysterious circumstances.  And dozens of foreign journalists (and some foreign-born US journalists) were killed outside the country by the US military during the coverage of the Iraq war, as I noted in this piece in 2006.

• Professional Sabotage Widespread

• Ruinous litigation Widespread

• Self-censorship Widespread
• Verbal and physical threats  Check

Note: I’m not sure why countries like Malaysia and Morocco didn’t make this list.

Could it have something to do with encouraging foreign investments there? I notice that Malaysia has recently been taken off the list of foreign tax havens (Labuan, a small island off the Malatsian coast, is well-known as an off-shore haven).  But only last year,  an antigovernment blogger was jailed on sedition charges .

As for Morocco, when I was there in 2008, I was told repeatedly not to write about anything controversial (such as, Moroccan jails or torture) because it would land me in serious trouble (i.e. jail).  In September 2008, Just a month before I was there, a blogger was sentenced to two years in prison for failure to show respect to the king. The Tangier-Tetuan region in the north of Morocco is the target of  government investment and vast amounts of foreign real estate development and speculation.  I was told by knowledgeable people that a lot of the money pouring into the luxury apartments in Tangiers was drug money….