Report: 12 countries named 'enemies of the Internet'

Burma, China, Cuba, Egypt and Iran number among the list of 12 countries regarded as serious "enemies of the Internet," according to a new Reporters Without Borders study.

But the 2010 list, released Monday, also tags two democracies -- Australia and South Korea -- as states "under surveillance" for their growing Web restrictions.

Together, Reporters Without Boarders stressed this week that their new report highlights that "a growing number of countries are attempting to tighten their control of the Net..."

While Reporters Without Borders found a number of Web activists across the globe working to skirt those restrictions, with mixed success, they nonetheless lambasted countries for their increasingly tight Internet censorship rules.

Many of the states on the list are authoritarian in structure, meaning free expression restrictions pervade all media. But Reporters Without Borders expressed special concern about the fact it had to include Australia and South Korea in its report -- two states with democratically elected lawmakers.

Both states have recently ramped up their Web censorship regimes. In particular, Australia has examined ways to put in place an online content filtering system, which would block access to sites with "offensive material." While some local lawmakers support the legislation's aims, the proposed regulation would give the Australian government vast, ambiguous leverage to define what, exactly, qualifies as "offensive."

Ultimately, the RWB report arrives at a time when Internet freedom has become something of a buzz word on Capitol Hill.  The concern seems mostly to follow the high-profile dispute between Google and China this year over a massive, January cyberattack -- a breach that has prompted Google to announce it will no longer censor its Chinese users' search results, even if that requires the company to cease its search business there.

The standoff has piqued some congressional lawmakers, including Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), to question how U.S. companies abiding by free expression rules domestically should handle censored systems abroad. Consequently, both members have promised to pursue legislation that would address those concerns.

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