The country's Internet freedom ranking has not improved since 2009 and is categorised as being partly free.
According to its latest findings, the US-based Freedom House said that Malaysia was listed with 17 other countries in the “partly free” category.
The study, titled “Freedom on the Net 2011: A Global Assessment of Internet and Digital Media”, was published today. The report is available at Freedom House’s website.
The report had listed 37 countries in three categories – “Free” (eight countries), “partly free” (18) and “not free” (11).
Estonia topped the list for the greatest degree of Internet freedom, followed by US and Germany. Whereas the bottom four countries categorised as “not free” were China, Cuba, Myanmar and Iran which received the lowest score.
Scoring 41 points out of 100, Malaysia was ranked between India and Jordan.
The score was an accumulation of three categories: (A) obstacles to access, (B) limits on content points and (C) violation of user rights.
Obstacles to access included studying barriers to access and governmental efforts to block specific applications.
Limits on content included looking into filtering and blocking of websites and other forms of censorship while violations of user rights centred around studying surveillance, privacy and repercussions for online activities such as legal prosecution and other kinds of harassment.
The report also stated that the use of the Internet in Malaysia for “political mobilisation” and “news dissemination” had widely contributed to the opposition’s electoral gains in 2008.
It added that in the run up to and the aftermath of the 2008 election, many observers sensed that the government had recognised the potential of the political impact of the Internet and “grew more determined to control” it.
Freedom House noted that a number of Malaysian bloggers in 2009 and 2010 faced legal harassment, intimidation, fines and brief periods of detention although none were imprisoned.
Globally, the report said, there had been an increase in government regimes attempting to control Internet freedom.
“Cyber attacks, politically motivated censorship, and government control over Internet infrastructure are among the diverse and growing threats to Internet freedom.
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