[contingencies]

I agree about Malaysia: it is extremely corrupt and abuses of power are the norm rather than the exception. That said, US and UK government interventionism and surveillance is really not that different to China. The UK is actually worse in many ways. For example, the UK is reported to record all internet traffic and have the most concurrent media gag orders in operation of any nation.

[walrus01]

The UK is at this point far worse than the US. At least in the US you can publish very nearly anything on your own servers, fully self hosted, and not get it taken down unless it is explicitly making terroristic threats or hosting child porn. There's a huge amount of first amendment precedent set for parody, satire and generally offensive things (Hustler Magazine parodying Jerry Falwell, for example) that meets the criteria for being protected by the first amendment.

The UK at least pays lip service to being a secular society. Where it gets scary to me is politicians in religious countries actively implementing sharia law in relations to internet/telecom to appease a fundamentalist base.

I agree that the UK is going a very worrying direction, forcing retail ISPs to operate a "porn filter" and have it enabled by default, and so forth.