The internet broke barriers. Some countries are fighting to reverse this trend and erect digital barriers on the internet. Most of those countries are authoritarian regimes who insist on controlling information flows to their people. Some are governments trying to protect their people from the dangerous world outside their borders. In all cases, these barriers hurt U.S. businesses.
Erecting barriers on the internet is called data localization. The movement to localize some or all of internet data has grown over the past five years as countries introduce new laws restricting data flows, and others try to boost local businesses by placing burdens on international competition. Freedom on the Net surveys from Freedom House shows fifty countries in the categories of ‘not free’ or ‘partly free’ by 2018, with only 15 countries listed in the category of…
