A research team "looked into differences in internet infrastructures in democratic and authoritarian states." "The characteristic pattern: In authoritarian states, more influential internet service providers are predominantly state-owned, whereas in democracies they are largely privatized. Moreover, when autocratic countries have foreign internet service providers, these are usually owned by other authoritarian states."
"A major contribution of the study is its examination of 'transit networks', the networks that forward data traffic onwards.""Since transit networks are invisible to ordinary users, states can use these networks to surveil and censor content without being held accountable for this action."
"In authoritarian states, a significantly higher proportion of data traffic is routed through state-owned transit networks. The opposite is true in democratic countries, where the most influential transit networks are mainly owned by private providers."
"The researchers speak of recognizable clusters of technological cooperation between authoritarian states."
