Internet censorship in the United States is the suppression of information published or viewed on the Internet in the United States. The protection of freedom of speech and expression against federal, state, and local government censorship are rooted in the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. These protections extend to the Internet and as a result very little government mandated technical filtering occurs in the US.
However, in 2014, the United States was added to Reporters Without Borders's (RWB's) list of "Enemies of the Internet", a category of countries with the highest level of Internet censorship and surveillance. RWB stated that the US "… has undermined confidence in the Internet and its own standards of security" and that "U.S. surveillance practices and decryption activities are a direct threat to investigative journalists, especially those who work with sensitive sources for whom confidentiality is paramount and who are already under pressure.