What do freedom house scores mean

If the State Department is to continue supporting this work, it should ensure the report is focused on true violations of Internet freedom, such as governments blocking websites based on political factors and prosecuting people for exercising free speech online, not reasonable rules governing online behavior, such as limiting Internet piracy or tracking terrorists online.

To be sure, Internet freedom, properly defined as the ability to do things online that are legal in most democracies, is critical. And to be sure, too many nations, most notably China, severely limit Internet freedom. Yet, Freedom House often fails to make a distinction between legitimate societal norms and laws and jackbooted online authoritarianism. For example, its report states:. Although the [U.

For example, concerns over copyright violations, child pornography, protection of minors from harmful content, gambling, and financial crime have presented a strong impetus for aggressive legislative and executive action.

In other words, while Americans in the offline world have both civil liberties and legal boundaries e. The report conflates past infringements with current practices, as when it penalizes the United States for questionable prosecutions under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, even though the abuses the report cites are from or earlier. Moreover, while there have been individual cases of federal and state law enforcement abusing Internet rights in America, how many cases count as a lot versus a little?

And how does that compare with other nations? There appears to be little effort to provide this kind of analysis. This ideological framework that fails to differentiate between legitimate freedom and free license is why the report ranks the United States 7th out of 65 nations, and why its score has declined three years in a row.

For its recent report, Laura Reed, an independent researcher, wrote the U. Reed was an Internet policy analyst for New America, a think tank with a particular ideological point of view blending support for Internet social engineering and cyber-libertarianism.

And that orientation completely colors this supposedly objective analysis. But most cases where the United States receives a less-than-perfect score reflect the ideology of Freedom House rather than any objective failure of the United States not to ensure Internet users have adequate rights. But this practice is not by definition anti-Internet freedom.

In fact, one can argue that these plans expand Internet freedom as they provide low-income individuals more Internet access. Freedom House, the US think tank, assesses every country with the help of about analysts and more than 40 consultants.

Who funds the assessment? No funding comes without strings attached. On a day when the President of America talks about the dominance of Indians in the administration do we need to take a think tank seriously as if the Sun is shining from the rear end. PRINT should use the American analysts for the results of information from credible, unbiased sources. Does not matter who decides, it is the criteria. Ayyub is a good writer, an accredited journalist, her articles are available, she has democratic credential.

Rithambara is a rioter, only known for hate speeches; she is an anti-democrat.. It is a no brainer who is going to be selected. Such a juxtaposition says volumes about you. C Countries at the Crossroads, discontinued. Countries at the Crossroads is an annual analysis of government performance in 70 strategically important countries worldwide that are at a critical crossroads in determining their political future.

The in-depth comparative assessments and quantitative ratings — examining government accountability, civil liberties, rule of law, and anticorruption and transparency efforts — are intended to help international policymakers identify areas of progress, as well as to highlight areas of concern that could be addressed in diplomatic efforts and reform assistance. The Crossroads project has generated far-reaching interest since its inception in Increased attention to the relationship between competent governance and respect for civil and political rights means that scholars and policymakers require sophisticated tools to help place the performance of various governments in perspective.

Crossroads helps ground this analysis by providing indispensable quantitative assessment that allows for comparison over time, as well as detailed narrative reports that provide real-world context. A new edition of Crossroads is published each year, with half the set of countries analyzed in odd years and the other half in even years.

Crossroads reports are written and evaluated by some of the most prominent independent experts available for each country. Electoral Process subcategory The score for the B. It evaluates 21 of the countries last examined in the edition, providing an opportunity for time series analysis and assessment of the extent to which this group of countries is backsliding, stalling, or improving in terms of democratic governance.

The time frame for events covered by the country scores is December 1, through May 31, In addition, 11 countries are included in the analysis for the first time. In cooperation with a team of methodology experts, Freedom House designed a methodology that includes a questionnaire used both to prepare analytical narratives and for numerical ratings for each government.

The methodology provides authors with a transparent and consistent guide to scoring and analyzing the countries under review, and uses identical benchmarks for both narratives and ratings, rendering the two indicators mutually reinforcing. In preparing the written analyses with accompanying comparative ratings, Freedom House undertook a systematic gathering of data. Each country narrative report is approximately 7, words long.

Expert regional advisers reviewed the draft reports, providing written comments and requests for revisions, additions, or clarifications.