International Business Times

US Internet speeds have actually increased from 2013 to 2014. Virginia had the fastest service, with 13.7 megabits per second, and Alaska the slowest (7.0 mbps), though both fall far behind South Korea, which at 23.6 mbps has the fastest Internet speed in the world.

Nearly every state has seen an improvement, with the average Internet speed clocking in at 10.5 average mbps. These numbers are part of a report by Akami, a cloud-services firm.

As states move to hide details of government deals with Wall Street and as politicians come up with new arguments to defend secrecy, it was revealed that many government information officers block specific journalists they don't like from accessing information.

The data about public information officers, compiled since 2012 by Kennesaw State University professor Carolyn Carlson, confirms that 4 in 10 public information officers say "there are specific reporters they will not allow their staff to talk to due to problems with their stories in the past."

Four out of five reported that "their interviews must be approved" by government information officers, and "more than half of the reporters said they had actually been prohibited from interviewing [government] employees at least some of the time by public information officers."

Three-quarters of journalists surveyed now agree with the statement that "the public is not getting the information it needs because of barriers agencies are imposing on journalists’ reporting practices."