The 9 most opaque and mysterious countries on earth

LONDON - In an open democracy, it is easy to take the freedom of the press and access to information for granted.

But a report from the Risk Advisory Group shows that these aspects of government are a relative rarity in the world.

The consultancy ranked countries based on the opacity of their governments, scoring them on factors such as the availability of public information, the quality of that data and how easy it is to access "human sources" for new information.

Here's how the world's most impenetrable places stack up according to the study: