What's up everybody? Welcome to Freedom Tech Wrap. I'm your host, Marks, and this is a weekly source
for news and project updates in the freedom and independent technology space. We live in a highly
connected world. Freedom Tech lets you decide how you want to connect and where you want your data
to live. Freedom Tech Wrap is an independent show. If you want to support what we are doing,
you can send us value through your podcasting 2.0 app. Your support and feedback are greatly
appreciated. Now, I spent some time this week working in a room with many other founders and
co-founders in the freedom technology space.
I just have to say there's a lot of really cool work going on, a lot of really passionate people,
and I'm extremely excited for some of the tools that are being built and deployed.
There's a whole ecosystem and a whole foundation upon which more great tools are going to be built
in the future. So we are at a very exciting time right now in this kind of technology,
something that started decades ago and is just continuing to accelerate.
So super stoked, really excited about the future of freedom technology and just the quality and
caliber of people that are working to solve some of these problems. Okay, let's get into the news.
First up this week, we have a report out from an organization called Freedom House. So Freedom
House every year publishes a report that they call Freedom on the Net. And this is actually
the 14th edition. So they've been doing this for 14 years. And what they do is they do a lot of
research. And what they do is they look at countries around the world. And they have a rating system
where they rate how free the citizens are to speak online. And they have all sorts of different
criteria. In fact, let me pull up some of the criteria here that they rank it on. Let's see,
they look at obstacles to access. So like infrastructure, economic, political barriers
for citizens to get access to the internet. Then they have limits on content,
they look at the legal regulations on the content and some of the filtering and blocking
that can happen on websites. And lastly, they look at violations of user rights.
So they actually look at legal protections and restrictions on freedom of expression,
surveillance, and privacy, which privacy is very important. So they bundle these all up,
and they have a score of zero to 100. So if a country falls between 100 to 70, they're considered
free. If it's 69 to 40, they're partly free, and then 39 down the line, they're considered free.
And then they have this whole long questionnaire that they do. So some key findings from here,
they have found that for the 14th consecutive year, basically every year this report has been done,
that internet freedom globally is on a decline. They say protections for human rights online
diminished in 27 of 72 countries covered by freedom on the net, with 18 earning improvements.
And then they talk about free expression online was imperiled by
civil rights and the United States. So they have a score of 70 to 40, and then they have a score of
70 to 40, and then they have a score of 70 to 40, and then they have a score of 70 to 40, and then they
have a score of 70 to 40, and then they have a score of 70 to 40, and then they have a score of 70 to 40.
So they have a score of 70 to 40, and then they have a score of 70 to 40.
So they have a score of 70 to 40.
you