Tunnel Vision: Anti-censorship Tools, End-to-End Encryption and the Fight for a Free and Open Internet

Anti-censorship and encrypted tools are lifelines for resistance to and resilience over digital repression. These technologies create a zone of privacy for their users, enabling people to form and express opinions, communicate safely and securely, access independent reporting, and mobilize for government and corporate accountability. These services also enhance cybersecurity, national security, and economic growth, protecting government systems against foreign adversaries and companies against fraud.

This report, Tunnel Vision: Anti-Censorship Tools, End-to-End Encryption, and the Fight for a Free and Open Internet, examines increasing government restrictions on anti-censorship technology and end-to-end encryption, placing this trend within the broader deterioration of a free, open, and interoperable internet. It also explores how democratic governments, civil society, and the private sector have taken innovative action to support anti-censorship and end-to-end encrypted tools—an acknowledgement of how necessary this technology is for a free and open internet.

Key Takeaways

• Anti-censorship and end-to-end encryption technology power the free and open internet. Anti-censorship tools, like virtual private networks (VPNs), encrypt and obfuscate internet traffic, enabling their users to access restricted political, social and religious content. End-to-end encryption protocols offer the highest degree of security for online communications. These technologies empower people to express themselves safely and securely online, strengthen national security and fuel the digital economy.
• Restricting access to anti-censorship tools is a core authoritarian tactic of information control. People’s ability to use this technology to sidestep repressive censorship has driven autocrats to reduce access to these tools. Over the past five years, anti-censorship technologies were blocked in at least 21 of the 72 countries covered by the 2024 edition of Freedom House’s Freedom on the Net (FOTN) report, all of which were ranked Not Free or Partly Free. Governments have also criminalized people’s use of anti-censorship technology, placed onerous legal restrictions on VPNs’ ability to operate in markets and forced app store providers to remove the tools from their marketplaces.
• Governments’ efforts to restrict end-to-end encryption technology are both blunt and subtle. In at least 17 of the 72 countries covered by FOTN 2024, end-to-end encrypted services were blocked in the past five years. These blunt restrictions occurred in countries ranked Not Free or Partly Free, as part of states’ efforts to increase access to personal data or prevent people from securely communicating. A broader set of governments, including in democracies, have obliged providers to decrypt communications, requested exceptional access to encrypted communications or sought to impose measures that do not overtly limit end-to-end encryption but would be impossible to implement without fundamentally breaking the cryptographic standards that enable it.
• Investment and innovation are needed to strengthen digital resilience and defend the free and open internet. Civil society, the private sector and several democracies have taken creative action to support access to anti-censorship and end-to-end encryption services. The private sector has increasingly integrated anti-censorship technology into widely used web protocols, while civil society organizations have aligned with policymakers to pass laws that protect end-to-end encryption. These efforts offer models for future action. Partnerships between policymakers, civil society, technical experts and the private sector can also help identify and implement proven and rights-based solutions to crime carried out over the internet, which has prompted disproportionate restrictions on anti-censorship and end-to-end encryption services in many countries.

Full Report