Since I am divesting myself of the occasional political whine, here's another.
The US-based Electronic Privacy Information Center and the UK-based Privacy International have assessed over 70 countries for their protection of privacy, both online and generally. The worst nations are Russia, China, the United Kingdom and the United States. Yes, that's right, the least private nations include the two supposedly most democratic nations. They have a map:
While I was less surprised to find France as a poor performer, I was unpleasantly surprised to find my own country as rating poorly and getting worse. I can only hope that the new government reverses this trend.
The assessment is based on many criteria, including constitutional protection, the use of identity cards, data sharing between government agencies, and visual surveillance.
In my opinion, this is further evidence of government encroachment on personal freedoms in the past decade or so. The "war on terror" is only the latest example and excuse of this deliberalisation, and it is something we need to nip in the bud right now.
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I'm not sure why the UK scores lower than Germany on ID cards.
The map means nothing to me though -- most of the colours on the map don't resemble any of the colours on the key.
Aww Jeez John,
And there I was, happily reading your column. You've just ruined my day. Did you notice that NONE of these nations do a consistently good job at protecting privacy? Even my dream of emigrating to Finland to escape little Johnny has now died!
[Cracks another Coopers. Puts head in nice warm sand.]
Hi John,
as i was reading in a (sic !) german Computer magazine the other day,Australia under Rudd is going to introduce mandatory Internet Content filtering,to ban people from accessing websites deemed inappropriate(by who? -> the "Australian Communications and Media Authority") for containing dangerous content,and ISPs will be forced to implement these filters(http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/101164/from/atom10),btw the previous liberal Govt(that i despise) voted against this,as it was put forward by the then Labor opposition a while ago.
Go figure....
M.
I wonder if this data was collected before the UK government admitted to loosing 25m computer records.
I'm also curious to know how much of this surveillance data is the sort of stuff that's needed for things like epidemiological studies. Does the UK, for example, score poorly because it's trying to keep track of which doctors are failing to keep their patients alive?
Bob
I'm not suprised at the UK doing so badly.
I suspect that it is the taxman, amazingly enough they can demand to know what bank accounts you have, how much is in them and if the bank lets you know they've asked it is upto 2 years in jail.
They can also do the same thing with your employer and it is a criminal offence for your employer to tell you.
Oh yes, they can also do the same thing if your Visa/Mastercard/Switch is with a UK bank. So everytime you use your card the taxman knows.
Big Brother in fact and deed.
The Gasman can break into your home at anytime, this is a safety thing but has been abused by the police in the past. Ask the nice gasman to claim he smelt gas, the police then help breal into your house, sans warrant, and have a good snoop around, all nice and legal.
The suss laws, abused every day.
No the UK became a de-facto anti-freedom state some time ago. It is just getting worse.
Luckilly for us, the UK goverment and the civil servants are piss poor at using these new fangled electronic typewriters/calculators, if they ever become efficient we are buggered.
Now they still intend trying to foist ID cards on us, all voluntary of course but no passport without one and probably no job either as your employer has to vet that you are legally entitled to work in the UK; what is proposed as acceptable checking? Why the ID card, quel suprise.
Seconding #1: The map colors do not match the legend, except for black. But then, I'm not sure that black on the map corresponds to black in the legend, since nothing else matches up. Grey, I assume, means "no data," but then again, maybe not.
I get the vague impression from the map, however, that surveillance seems to map to economic factors as much as anything else -- a state which can afford to spy on its citizens, does.
the least private nations include the two supposedly most democratic nations.
Alternatively, the four least private are the two most powerful former communist countries and the two most powerful capitalist countries, and very nearly the four biggest military spenders (France just barely exceeds Britain's military spending, pushing it into fifth place).
George Orwell wrote, in 1984, of the world divided up into blocs that justified intrusion of privacy and massive war spending by constant war against external enemies. Occasionally they made peace with a former enemy, but never without picking a new enemy to be at war with. They could never be without an enemy or without a war, for then how could they keep the war spending and the surveillance state justified?
So who would've predicted the Greeks are least likely to be peeking through the curtains?
Those wily Hellenes must be plotting something, and the rest of the Civilized World(tm) needs to know what it is! Imagine the consequences if the founders of Democracy and Rational Thought have switched sides...
Let's blanket their nation with eyes and ears dedicated to scoping out every move. As soon as the standard CIA four-star expense account is set up, I volunteer to monitor the beaches of southern Crete.