"Opinion: Cambodia’s crackdown on the free Internet is a threat to the whole world", 26 February 2021

Cambodia has descended into dictatorship in much the same manner that Ernest Hemingway described going bankrupt: gradually, and then suddenly. Now, a new rule establishing a national gateway for Internet traffic strikes at one of the nation’s last vestiges of democratic life.

… The Internet, however, has been more difficult to pin down. Stifling dissent within a country only goes so far when dissent from outside is still in reach — and right now, thanks to services such as Google and Facebook, as well as myriad news and other sites, it is. The sub-decree signed …, which requires all traffic to be routed through a regulatory body, seeks to solve this “problem” by funneling beyond-borders content through a hub where the government controls the switches. That makes it easier to kill all international access at once in a moment of unrest. It also makes it easier to cut off certain sites, or to use cutoffs as a cudgel to force those sites into doing the regime’s bidding. Facebook, for instance, may be urged to crack down on expression or to host data locally. The regulatory body in question is also tasked with monitoring online activity, in a blow against privacy…