Online freedom falls in 36 of 65 countries polled

Washington

INTERNET freedom suffered this year as a growing number of countries stepped up efforts to spy on users and censor online postings, a global survey showed on Thursday. The report by the watchdog group Freedom House said online freedom declined in 36 of 65 countries surveyed.

In some cases, governments use revelations about surveillance by the US National Security Agency (NSA) to justify efforts to boost their own monitoring of Internet users and to crack d…