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In reading the actual findings, I'm a little confused. They fault one company for using "web beacons" and another for using "pixel tags" -- but those are the same thing, so why not be consistent in terminology? They fault Apple because it "kept quiet on the potential watermarking of DRM-free iTunes songs" when this topic only broke out within the last week, and there is zero evidence of actual watermarking (versus plain text additions of your name and email address -- yes, there is a difference). They fault AOL for preventing Mac users from viewing videos, but that's hardly a privacy concern (hello, competing video formats!). For Google, "Privacy mandate is not embedded throughout the company," whatever THAT means. Finally, a majority of the listed sites have no information listed in the categories of "responsiveness", "ethical compass", and "corporate leadership" -- so how can you adequately compare them to the bigger sites who have such information?

Their 'about us' on their website is also interesting http://www.privacyinternational.org/article.shtml? cmd%5B347%5D=x-347-65428. It is full of statements relating to diversity of various sorts such as the international diversity of board members, the professional diversity of members, diversity of funding sources.... yet almost nothing about competence or credentials with respect to technology or the internet. In fact, their list of expert members http://www.privacyinternational.org/article.shtml? cmd%5B347%5D=x-347-145834 consists almost exclusively of government bureaucrats, lawyers, non-tech academics (e.g. law, business).

Their 'about us' on their website is also interesting http://www.privacyinternational.org/article.shtml? cmd%5B347%5D=x-347-65428. It is full of statements relating to diversity of various sorts such as the international diversity of board members, the professional diversity of members, diversity of funding sources.... yet almost nothing about competence or credentials with respect to technology or the internet. In fact, their list of expert members http://www.privacyinternational.org/article.shtml? cmd%5B347%5D=x-347-145834 consists almost exclusively of government bureaucrats, lawyers, non-tech academics (e.g. law, business).

Google seem to be taking it seriously enough to accuse Privacy International of being in bed with Microsoft, which is a laughable accusation.

Privacy International responded via an open letter here.

Their report (interim rankings only)

Final rankings won't be available until September. Wonder what they'll be dicking around for three months for....

Their report (interim rankings only)

Final rankings won't be available until September. Wonder what they'll be dicking around for three months for....

Don't generalize. The country where I was born, Portugal, has much more privacy than any of the countries you've mentioned in your post (including the US). Germany has an even larger degree of privacy. And, according to a study by Privacy International, USA is worse all the European countries except UK.

You should research a bit before posting your opinions!

Breaking news today, Britons will be denied a passport if they don't submit to the world's most intrusive mass-surveillance system

People who refuse to give up their bank records, tax records & details of any benefits they've claimed and the records of their car movements for the last year, or refuse to submit to an interrogation on whether they are the same person that this mountain of data belongs to will be denied passports from March 26th.

The Blair Govt has already admitted that this and other data will be cross-linked so that the Home Office and other officials can spy on the everyday lives of innocent Britons.

Britons were already the most spied upon nation in Western Europe. Data-mining through this unprecedented level of mass-surveillance allows any future British govt to leapfrog even countries like China and North Korea.

The US currently has the "highest technology"??? Soooooo do you mean robotics? genetics? medical breakthroughs? Alternative energy sources? Last I checked, Japan (robotics), the UK (genetics), and Canada (potential cures for mutliple types of cancer) are all contributing to something more productive than fighting "terrorism". The Patriot Act and Homeland Sercurity are some of the biggest insults the the constitution/bill of rights that Americans seem to love to quote to defend ridiculously out-dated traditions, while still passing judgment on the rest of the world like they should be looking towards the US as some sort of positive example.....

With all due respect to the real victims of Sept 11, the War on Terror/Afghanistan/Iraq and soon to be Iran is going to be looked on VERY differently from impartial sources in the future.....The propaganda and pure lies spewing out from the Bush Adminstration and Friends (you're blind if you can't connect the dots to the Oil Industry and major "news" outlets) is disgusting. ...oh and let's not forget about the supposed "Terrorists" in South American countries (which also happens to be one of the world's largest deposits of fresh water....and we all know that it may not be in our lifetimes, but one day clean water will be more valuable than oil ever could be.....)

Now onto "most detailed surveillance". A good read:

http://www.privacyinternational.org/survey/phr2005 /aboutphrtable.pdf

a few quick points: The UK, Russia, and Singapore are the worst offenders to personal privacy while having the highest surveillance...

The "best" ranked countries in respects to personal privacy and lack of surveillance are Germany and Canada.

I'm not even going to get into the US's "Money". The country is in trillions dollars of debt, but somehow the rich keep getting richer... (hello oil companies) and there are SERIOUS social issues that need to be resolved internally before anyone could call what's going on in that screwed up nation "World Leadership" of any kind..

Anything that's ever been used to refer to supposed "protection from terroism" (here or abroad in a country that they invaded) is a joke. If the US really and truly cared about wanting to reform that Axis of Evil they'd look at helping out the victims of the innumerable genecides that are happening in countries that DON'T have giant oil reserves...
  "The Road to Guantanamo" should be mandatory watching for all Americans before they try to pretend like they're some sort of global heroes for going out there and protecting "Your Freedoms"...The unwarranted racism towards people of Muslim Faith (or of any kind of middle eastern dissent for that matter) will have long lasting negative effects on society (gee...I thought we learned our racism lesson already....)

" We have fallen into history and history is a state of benighted ignorance concerning the real facts of how the world works"

Quote from Terrence Mckenna.

You can be proud of a different thing: Canada has a higher rating than the U.S. (or my country, Australia, the U.S.'s "Airstrip One") on privacy generally. We rate "systemic failure to uphold safeguards" while Canada rates "Significant protections and safeguards." http://www.privacyinternational.org/survey/phr2005 /phrtable.pdf

Wow there is a lot of anti-China rhetoric out here. Sure I hate the great firewall as much as the next /.ter but...

How is this any different than local efforts to purify the internet like segregating the dirty pics into .xxx domains, Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA), DOPA, banning online gambling...

You can find out all about international efforts to purify the net here. And its already outdated.

Every politician will talk about purifying the internet, making it safe for you and your children because most people have a knee jerk reaction, and it distracts from real issues.

You didn't get it did you? The police will NOT be notified if germans have been paying for music on allofmp3 since its the creditcard companies that do the searches and not the police. Germany is actually one of the worlds best countries when it comes to privacy. http://www.privacyinternational.org/article.shtml? cmd%5B347%5D=x-347-545223 [privacyinternational.org]

You didn't get it did you? The police will NOT be notified if germans have been paying for music on allofmp3 since its the creditcard companies that do the searches and not the police. Germany is actually one of the worlds best countries when it comes to privacy. http://www.privacyinternational.org/article.shtml? cmd%5B347%5D=x-347-545223

...that would be horrible ? No, that would be England: http://www.privacyinternational.org/article.shtml? cmd%5B347%5D=x-347-61925&als%5Btheme%5D=Video%20Su rveillance&headline=CCTV%20Frequently%20Asked%20Qu estions.

Oh, wait ....

Posting anonymously because I have mod points at the moment.

The list is from the Privacy International site and features the "Leading surveillance societies in the EU and the World".
http://www.privacyinternational.org/article.shtml? cmd%5B347%5D=x-347-545269
The original article from the Reg provides some background.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/11/06/privacy_us _china/
If you value your privacy, it looks like Canada and Germany are the places to be.
Depressing that there are so few places.

The "privacy rating" list of the 36 countries mentionted in the article can be found here: http://www.privacyinternational.org/survey/phr2005 /phrtable.pdf

As it seems, the quite bureaucratic Germany has learned from its history (three police states in a century: the Second Empire with the Prussian secret police, Nazi Germany with the GESTAPO/SD/SS and socialist Eastern Germany with the STASI), however privacy is eroding there nearly as quickly as anywhere else.

Where will this (cultural?) trend in the western world lead to and where will it end? I think the older Germans know and perhaps some already prepare for the next autocracy/surveillance society.

If you prefer pictures and charts

I hope your comment was of the straight latter meaning, not a sarcastic reference to the former.

Actually, I question the methodology they use for the polls in the first place. The vast majority of those I've seen cited in the media are government-funded, and carried out by the kind of organisation one hires when one already knows the result required.

Having seen the full list of questions they asked in a couple of cases, it usually goes something like this:

1. Do you believe terrorism is a threat to UK security?
2. Do you believe fraudulent benefit claims represent a significant drain on the UK economy?
3. Do you believe immigrants working illegally take jobs away from unemployed British citizens?
4. Do you believe identity theft is increasing at a rate of 500% per year?
5. Do you believe the UK government should introduce identity cards?

What they fail to mention is that:

1. most of the terrorists in recent high profile attacks have used 100% legitimate identity documents [PDF];
2. no arguments have yet been presented by the government to show how the number of fraudulent benefit claims would actually be reduced in practice;
3. the existing mechanisms to track visitors on visas and illegal immigrants don't work well, so there's little reason to believe any similar but newer system will do any better;
4. the proposed National Identity Register represents a database of the total life history of each individual, and as such will be the single biggest target for identity thieves ever created;
5. the cost of all of this is likely to run to billions of pounds (and until a couple of weeks ago the government consistently refused to give any quantitative estimate of the total cost of the system to all parties, and even the 5.4 billion pound figure in that article was immediately challenged by other parties who put the likely cost several times higher);
6. pretty much no major government IT project in recent British history has come in even close to on-time or on-budget, and there have been very expensive failures when projects were scrapped after years of development to cut losses
7. the civil liberties implications of the measures proposed are pretty horrendous.

You show me a study that presents both the questions at the top of this post and the verifiable facts afterwards in a balanced way and then tells me the majority of the population wants ID cards, and I'll believe my failure to encounter a single person who speaks favourably of them is just a matter of moving in different circles. Until then, it's just lying with statistics, and you can conduct as many polls as you like but still you have no meaningful information about how the population as a whole would feel on the issue if it had a balanced knowledge of the potential advantages and potential risks.

The police in England and Wales have more DNA samples than in any other country - 5% of the population. Scotland don't allow the retention of DNA for those not convicted.

"Since April 2004, the police in England and Wales have been able to take DNA samples without consent from anyone arrested on suspicion of any recordable offence. Recordable offences include begging, being drunk and disorderly and taking part in an illegal demonstration." (It also includes many driving offences) "Both DNA profiles (the string of numbers used for identification purposes) and DNA samples (which contain unlimited genetic information), are kept permanently, even if the person arrested is never charged or is acquitted. A massive expansion in the number of individuals on the Database has not led to any noticable increase in the likelihood of identifying a suspect."

When the national database was orginally setup, DNA profiles were removed if the person was not convicted, and after a while for non-serious offences. Now they keep not only the database profile (the number representing 'unique' ID) but the original full DNA sample as well. Permanently.

The government also insists on the right to DNA profile juveniles.

We have number-plate recognition cameras going up everywhere to record everywhere we drive, possibly to be followed by satellite tracking for the road tax. We have more CCTV cameras than anywhere else. Oh, and our passports are going to have biometric data, i.e. fingerprints and iris records initially, and likely DNA later. All this info will be stored in the central government database. National ID cards are pretty much dead, but only because of costs. After a few years of the passport office building up biometric data on much of the population, having to carry a national ID card will come back, piggybacked off the passport system.
Don't forget the email and internet records being kept, and the credit card databases, and access to the phone records.

Welcome to total surveillence in the UK. All applauded by the general population, as it will 'keep us safe from crime'. I'm just wondering when mandatory CCTV cameras will be installed in homes, to allow the police to spot terrorists and pedophiles.

The UK has exactly the same issues in regards to DNA accumulation and misuse.

http://www.privacyinternational.org/article.shtml? cmd%5B347%5D=x-347-508147

I wonder how U.S. will rank in the Worldwide Press Freedom Index after this.. We already rank in the bottom of developed countries, at 44th.

Contrary to what some supporters claim, there are only several places where such degree of Internet survaillance is enforced, most notably China. And interestingly, China is relatively transparent - their employees speak rather openly about their jobs and Chinese government definitely doesn't lie to their citizens - again, a scary, stark contrast to how things are handled here "we don't spy" --> "ok, we spy but not so much" --> "ok, all your information belongs to us, but it's for your best!" --> "hey, we were finally thinking to work on our budget deficit, could we outsource our $3 billion survaillance backups to ISPs?". In U.S., we pour who knows how many billions of dollars in NSA and other entities that are heavily protected from any scrunity and can be above any laws without white house or press ever hearing anything (just how long they have succesfully operated black sites in Egypt and elsewhere before anyone heard about their existence? and what the white house did when we heard? "i guess they are not big problems, uh?"). In European Union, UK succesfully lobbed for legislation that requires companies to store dialed numbers, etc. That has been done in U.S. for the past 30 years or so, and not merely just dialed numbers, but the content as well. For comparison, except for perhaps UK, there is not a single country in European Union which engages in any kind of content survaillence (in France, courts can intervene in Nazi movements if someone blames, but they have never considered survaillance). And no, they don't have big problems with "terrorism" or "child predators". Are we Americans so much more evil that we need all this "protection"?

And no, their economies don't suffer because they lack a national industrial policy integrated with goverment intelligence. Do we really need to protect Halliburton and other 'nice companies' from free markets?

This new bill is just a precautionary development in case mainstream companies such as Google would introduce heavily encrypted versions. They know that the public will yell if encryption weakening or data mining software is implemented on user side (i.e. a deal with microsoft), but hardly anyone yells if anything is done on server side (as it seems, a mandatory data access/transfer to survaillance officials). If you want to provide encrypted freedom to your users, locate your servers in countries like Netherlands.

I'm all for preventing child access to porn. But if google hands over (voluntarily or otherwise) even a portion of their logs for a specific purpose it makes it just that little bit easier for Bush (or whoever) to get their grubby mitts on log data the next time round. Where does it end?

Also, how would this play from an international viewpoint? Would the data (potentially) handed over include google.co.uk or google.de logs?

The EU is busy being lobbied (can you be busy being lobbied?) about communications data retention (e.g. pi report). Without serious safeguards in place and with all those logs sloshing around it's only a matter of time before log subpoenas become routine.

Thing is, if an evil government did get into power at some time in the future, the fact that ANPR wasn't introduced now wouldn't stop them. They'd implement ANPR themselves.

At least that would give us some warning before the boots started stamping on your face, forever.

And what makes you think our current Government isn't evil?

I wrote about this yesterday.

Oh, did you also know this Government passed an identical law to Hitler's Enablement Act? This law enabled Hitler to assume absolute power after he burned down the Reichstag and blamed it on communists.

My Grandfather fought Hitler across two continents to protect Britain from this kind of totalitarianism. The least we can do is help the resistance campaigns at Privacy International and No2ID.

I wrote about this
    yesterday.

Oh, did you also know this Government passed an identical
    law to Hitler's Enablement Act? This law enabled Hitler to assume
    absolute power after he burned down the Reichstag and blamed it on communists.

My Grandfather fought Hitler across two continents to protect Britain from
    this kind of totalitarianism. The least we can do is help the resistance
    campaigns at Privacy International
    and No2ID.

The BBC also reported this. Apparently the UK was primary in proposing and promoting the changes.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4527840.st m

Privacy International wrote an open letter to the EP encouraging them to vote down the measure. They attempt to assess the impact.

http://www.privacyinternational.org/article.shtml? cmd%5B347%5D=x-347-478392&als%5Btheme%5D=Data%20Re tention

FYI, the European Parliament (EP) cannot initiate legislation, but they can amend it. It appears their current actions are an amendment to a 2002 law. Once the EP votes to amend a law and the EP and the Council of Ministers approve it (which already occurred), it becomes law. However, according to the BBC article, said changes must still be approved by member states.

The European Parliament
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_parliament

        Randy

I disagree most vigorously. The phrase "A man's home is his castle" originated in feudal Europe when most people were not free but some semblance of privacy was respected. Privacy is -not- of modern origin but has been the bulwark of freedom and the last bastion of freedom througout history. Just because it's possible to invade privacy more easily now does not mean it has always been so. Just look at the fact that you can kill a man for entering your home (in the US anyway), with no questions asked. Your house is your castle and you can expect privacy. That has always been the law of the land. To say that it is a luxery and not equated with freedom is disengenuous. It's even written into the constitution fo the United States. Read the fourth amendment.

http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data/constitution/am endments.html

Here's another article that exposes older privacy laws of England, France, Norway, and Sweden. Those countries are arguably as free, or nowdays more free than the United States.

http://www.privacyinternational.org/survey/phr2003 /overview.htm

No, the right to privacy is not a modern luxery. To the contrary, the lack of privacy is a modern invention and not practiced to anywhere near the modern extent in previous eras. The parent post should be modded down as ill-informed malarky.

Our major telecoms providers have been doing this for years (and the required legislation was passed last February).

*If police fear there might be serious violence in a particular area they can stop and search anyone in that area for up to 24 hours. In these circumstances the police do not need co have a reasonable suspicion that you are carrying a weapon or committing a crime. This very wide power can be used at raves, demonstrations etc.*

UK police have extensive stop-and-search powers, and don't even need a reasonable suspicion that an offence has been or is being committed. They have to fill out a dozen forms afterwards, but that's the only thing holding them back.

BBC news ran a couple of stories on this topic last weekend that may be of interest: here and here

The Home Office's stop-and-search guidance notes are here (PDF)

Hey, not fair, I saw them first...

Anyway, there is also statewatch, privacy international and liberty.. Also plenty of ideas (dmca, biometric rfid passports, airline passenger data selling/sharing, listening in to internet traffic with warrants and listening in to radio traffic without (UKusa)) have roots in the USA, so the EFF and ACLU should be doing their part already. Not that the brits need help thinking up stuff like this, but still.

UK police and criminal intelligence people have wanted to ask for this for a very very long time. In fact this wish predates the madrid bombing and even 911!

Some time ago they wrote a position paper stating that it would be smart to force telecommunication providers (telephone & ISP`s) to store who telephones who, who e-mail`s who, who visites which sites and then some. They didn`t go into the details. The central point of these plans is that the internet is just like the phone system and therefore they should be able to request logs. The only dabate is for how long these log should be retained and how to keep within the european human right treaty which says every privacy invasion should be "proportional". But guess what, it wasn`t just the oppinion of some crazy bobbies (uk cops), it was a real plan

ignored are still

• The fact that telecommunications providers don`t have a clue who communicates with with who, they only know what phone or computer talks with which other phone or computer network and where the bill for all this goes. No biometric passport is required to make a phone call and the first thing many Europeans do when answering the phone is... say their name. Do you know who clicked the "send" button on that penis enhancement e-mail? Notice how your e-mail asks for " Radius or other IP address to user resolution logs" not for "ip addres to *acount* resolution logs"? How much do you wanna bet this person doesn`t know the slight difference? How much do you bet that a defense lawyer does know the difference once your logs end up in court as evidence? A terrorist might walk (can`t prove he was the one behind the computer) and you just invested a million in terabytes of storage space and sniffing/logging equipment....
• The fact that the cases where the billing details arent the personal details of whoever is communicating may quite heapon to be the very cases they claim to want to investigate, namely terrorism and serious crime. (Although "serious" has been stripped from recent proposals). Who is the last guy you saw use a public pay-phone on TV? I will give you a hint he was called Anthony and the show is called the Sopranos....
• the fact that on the Internet everyone is free to encode their application traffic anyway they want. Want to build an e-mail system that uses hyrogliphics for e-mail adresses? go ahead. Want to run you web traffic on port 666? Why not, dont forget to give your tcp packet a protocol type of 66 to ;-)

Telephone companies can expect normal and "lawfull interception" equipment ready to handle any new standardized signaling system for sending phone numbers around. Isp`s will have to hack their collection systems with every new way of evading capture and every new new Internet application protocol. Also isp`s will be collecting many gigabytes every minute, (and many times that on peek hours), which is tough. But what is really tough is that Internet traffic grows so much faster than telephone traffic. Isp`s will en up having to buy extra storrage every month. And what should a application level traffic data collection system do when it reaches storage or processing capacity limits? Signal core routers to throttle Internet traffic routing?

But wait, won`t the UK politicians dislike this plan even more than the ID card plan? Yes they very well might! If only there was some sort of commision of european justice a interior affairs ministers that could make laws without input from any pairlements.... Thank god we don`t yet have one of those, but there is the justice and home office comity of the European council. They answer only to the national pairlements but as the software patents showed, what national pairlement actually cares about what goes on ins Brussels? I mean, what hea

UK Parliamentary Committee Releases Report Damning ID System http://www.privacyinternational.org/article.shtml? cmd%5B347%5D=x-347-63601

Spain has ID cards, but that didn't prevent the Madrid train bomb: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3500452.stm

The British Parliament has abandoned their new ID cards for the Houses of Parliament despite the recent security breaches, as some hundreds have 'gone missing'.

Reasons against ID cards: http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/ican/A2319176

------------

ID cards might well:

* Worsen harassment of ethnic minorities: They'll provide another pretext for stop-and-search, often directed at ethnic minorities

* Have little impact on counter-terrorism: Sophisticated terror networks would soon be able to produce counterfeit cards or papers enabling people to get legitimate cards

* Have little effect on illegal working: Employers who are already willing to break the law won't be put off by identity cards

* Lead to 'function creep': The functions of the card will grow over time as it stores more personal information. More people could demand to see it, effectively making it compulsory to carry one

* Lead to loss of privacy: There will be a massive database containing an unprecedented amount of personal information on people

* Be costly and impractical: There is scepticism about the cost and operability of the scheme, as well as the government's ability to manage the technology

----------------

Doubts over ID card scheme http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/2688697.stm

• Studies have shown that camera operators differentially target people who "look like misfits" (predominantly youth and minorities) and tend to ignore others so the cameras are themselves biased and like all biased searches can be fooled by those who appear "normal."
• The data compiled by these cameras is typically retained indefinitely with little or no control on how it is used. Britain has recently faced several court cases surrounding the use of such survaillence data by "its owners" (the people who put up the cameras) for commercial purposes.
• Worse yet a great deal of this data can be and is retained for "fishing expeditions." Not being a Brit I will not comment on UK laws but in the U.S. the FBI has recently recinded a long-standing (self imposed) ban on non-criminal investigations, that is, investigating groups and individuals who have not committed and are not expected to commit crimes. This ban was imposed in the wake of the COINTELPRO wherin the FBI conducted undercover survaillence on and, in some cases sought to disrupt groups such as the Students For a Democratic Society, Martin Luther King's SCLC.
  
  The Survaillence included sending forged letters from Dr King asserting that he was under investigation by the IRS in order to cut off SCLC funding. It also included attempts (sometimes successful) to prompt the firing of teachers (at the University and High-School level), attempts to prevent the distribution of legal books and phamplets, and attempts to distrupt anti-war marches.
  
  One choice quote from the committee is: "One technique used in COINTELPRO involved sending anonymous letters to spouses intended, in the words of one proposal, to 'produce ill-feeling and possibly a lasting distrust' "
  
  In short the FBI used its powers to destroy and discredit groups whose only crime was opposing the current state of affairs and advocating nonviolent means to change it.
  
  I know what you are going to say in response to this so let me anticipate it. Yes, the FBI's COINTEL programs relied on a great deal of legal violations. In carrying out many of these attacks the FBI simply violated the law in order to do what it did.
  
  But, the key point is that the entire operation rested on a massive survaillence effort. The kind of large-scale trawling operations that CCTV and increased electronic survaillence (the FBI used a great deal of warrentless electronic Survaillence for COINTELPRO see here) makes possible. So before you go and say that you trust the government to make us safer keep in mind that the government is a large body of people who have their own agendas and frequently (hell typically) misuse said data.
  
  Consider also the WWII internment of peaceful Japanese-American Citizens by the U.S. Most of these people had committed no crimes, particularly the children, it was the Census that made rounding them up possible (see here).
• As you yourself stated the cameras can only record what has happened. They do not prevent crimes unless one is afraid of them. Smart Criminal

• Studies have shown that camera operators differentially target people who "look like misfits" (predominantly youth and minorities) and tend to ignore others so the cameras are themselves biased and like all biased searches can be fooled by those who appear "normal."
• The data compiled by these cameras is typically retained indefinitely with little or no control on how it is used. Britain has recently faced several court cases surrounding the use of such survaillence data by "its owners" (the people who put up the cameras) for commercial purposes.
• Worse yet a great deal of this data can be and is retained for "fishing expeditions." Not being a Brit I will not comment on UK laws but in the U.S. the FBI has recently recinded a long-standing (self imposed) ban on non-criminal investigations, that is, investigating groups and individuals who have not committed and are not expected to commit crimes. This ban was imposed in the wake of the COINTELPRO wherin the FBI conducted undercover survaillence on and, in some cases sought to disrupt groups such as the Students For a Democratic Society, Martin Luther King's SCLC.
  
  The Survaillence included sending forged letters from Dr King asserting that he was under investigation by the IRS in order to cut off SCLC funding. It also included attempts (sometimes successful) to prompt the firing of teachers (at the University and High-School level), attempts to prevent the distribution of legal books and phamplets, and attempts to distrupt anti-war marches.
  
  One choice quote from the committee is: "One technique used in COINTELPRO involved sending anonymous letters to spouses intended, in the words of one proposal, to 'produce ill-feeling and possibly a lasting distrust' "
  
  In short the FBI used its powers to destroy and discredit groups whose only crime was opposing the current state of affairs and advocating nonviolent means to change it.
  
  I know what you are going to say in response to this so let me anticipate it. Yes, the FBI's COINTEL programs relied on a great deal of legal violations. In carrying out many of these attacks the FBI simply violated the law in order to do what it did.
  
  But, the key point is that the entire operation rested on a massive survaillence effort. The kind of large-scale trawling operations that CCTV and increased electronic survaillence (the FBI used a great deal of warrentless electronic Survaillence for COINTELPRO see here) makes possible. So before you go and say that you trust the government to make us safer keep in mind that the government is a large body of people who have their own agendas and frequently (hell typically) misuse said data.
  
  Consider also the WWII internment of peaceful Japanese-American Citizens by the U.S. Most of these people had committed no crimes, particularly the children, it was the Census that made rounding them up possible (see here).
• As you yourself stated the cameras can only record what has happened. They do not prevent crimes unless one is afraid of them. Smart Criminal

"How did this happen?"

Read any slashdot thread about ID cards, biometrics and the new passports they are trying to issue. Some of the people who post here, who really should know better because they can READ, are aplolgists for all of these techniques and technologies.

The number of times that I have read "i dont have a problem with it as long as"...that is how we have arrived at this juncture; people who should know better are apathetic, compliant or simply asleep. Then you have the morons who whip out the "Tin Hat" jibe whenever someone posts that a Totalitarian state is being built right in front of your eyes; they are also a part of the reason why these measures can be introduced without even a fight.

That question is really quite astonishing; "how we got here" is right in front of you, and has been for three years. It isnt too late to turn it all around; the "joined up government" isnt joined up yet. If you are not willing to use this place to solve the problem (and by the tone of this question, I am presuming that you DO think its a bad thing) then don't even ask; its completely infuriating.

By "use this place" I mean consistently promote the FIPR, Privacy International, No2ID and the other organizations that are trying to orgainze resistance to these measures both in USUK.

If you are not willing to do this, then accept what is being done to you and your country quietly. This should be one of the loudest places screaming against these measures, not somewhere where once in a while, we get a single stunned question.

Each year the judges consider a nomination that is so odious and contemptible that they are reluctant to agree to spending scarce money on an expensive gold award for the villain. These occasions deserve an appropriate award, and so this year we give the first "Dog Poo On A Stick" prize. It goes to David Blunkett.

The link in the description is only an article at the register.com. The actual website for the US awards can be found here and links for big brother awards for other nations can be found here.

Bigbrother USA 2004

Here is the website for The 2004 UK Big Brother Awards, for those of you who want to skip over that puny Register article. My thoughts on this subject is that it's a great idea to shine a huge spotlight on those who would infringe upon privacy, to give them a taste of their own medicine. Of course I don't condone tapping their phones, blackmailing the execs or sending boxes of poo to their doors (like on Six Feet Under's recent arc). This award show will do just fine, in an almost biblical manner of sinning the sinner.

To what extent will the citizens feel safer, and how much safer will they actually be?

Here in the UK where there is a great deal of surveillance, the jury is still out. (Links will follow). The general impression I have as someone who is interested in this subject, is that, yes, they are reducing crime at present. Some research shows that the effect wears off though, so a large part of this may just be shock of the new.

Note that one of the main uses of CCTV is not crime prevention, but aiding in conviction rates.

Particular concerns about CCTV are that it doesn't so much prevent crime as it does displace it elsewhere. As the CCTV cameras are being placed firstly in more affluent areas, this has an even more negative effect on nearby deprived areas.

Sadly, rather fewer people are objecting on the grounds of how much power this gives authorities over people. This might be a grave error in the longer term (my opinion).

My own feeling is that although it seems (to me) to reduce crime a little and increase convictions, it's doing nothing to solve the problems that lead to crime. In my experience, most criminals, whatever their bravado, are driven to be criminals. Tightening the lid on the boiler may hide the problem for a while but it is not the solution.

A few links are:
An 'official' report.
A government response and
a more cautious opinion.

There was some poor sod after 9/11 (I think thie was in England). He had a package of Gunpowder Tea, and they wouldn't let him take it on the airplane for fear that it might be explosive. They did, however, finally relent, and let him take it on but without the package. It was one of the candidates for stupidest security measures.

Here's the text of the treaty.

Please cite the section that makes it criminal to posess a "hacking device".

This really doesn't sound like that bad of a bad thing...

- If you're selling Nazi-era items on eBay, you might as well just put "Offer void in Germany and where prohibited by law, bids from such places will be disqualified." in your description. You just can't sell that kind of stuff to Germany, so don't even try.
- The encryption keys issue sounds fair to me. If you have the keys to an encrypted file and you refuse to decode it and a judge issues a warrant for that data, you have to turn it over or pay the penality for obstructing an investigation.
- The NMAP issue seems like one of FUD to me. The word "hacking" is nowhere in the actual text of the document. Of course, Slashdot would run a story that debates a treaty with a link to the treaty language itself because we reject all government actions without even needing to read what they're proposing. :)

Bull.. it doesn't sound odd at all to my Dutch ears.

We didn't have to show any ID nor have any on our person until about ten years back here in the Netherlands. Since then, the powers that be have slowly eroded those freedoms and they are pushing for an obligation to carry and show an ID everywhere. (See the press release and open letter from Privacy International to the Dutch government.)

Just about all of the reasons for obligatory ID are unfounded or shown misguided yet they are still pushing for it and the majority of the government supports it.

The mind wonders :-(

The American government is using the 911 pretext to bring in a national ID card with your fingerprint and eyecan embedded in it. They are trying to make this happen by forcing all passport holders who come to America to either have fingerprints and eyescans in their passports or face being fingerprinted and eyescanned at an American Airport.

Since all of the the people in the world are having to have fingerprints and eyescans to enter the USA, other countries will use the same biometric technology to control who comes into their countries. If you do not have a biometric passport, you will eventually be scanned say, when you enter Canada or the United Kingdom or any other country.

This means that Americans will either have to have biometric passports issued by their own government (meaning that the government routinely fingerprints and eyescans innocent citizens) or, Americans will be fingerprinted and eyescanned when they travel to other peoples countries.

Paper based passports are going to become a thing of the past; all passports will be reduced to a machine readable card. Once this happens, your drivers licence can be your passport AND your drivers licence at the same time. This means that your fingerprints, taken by the governemt so that you can travel, will be available to the police when they ask you for your drivers licence.

This case is crucially important to the rights of American citizens. If Mr. Hiibel loses this case in the Supreme Court, it means that any policeman can ask for your ID, which will eventually mean that he can demand that you put your thumb into a portable fingerprint reader - on a whim. If he wins the case, the police will not be able to ask to see your ID, and the deployment of the national biometric ID system will be at the very least, delayed at best it will be destroyed completely before it starts.

If you want to read the reasons why ID cards are a non starter, try this.

And read this about the man who single handedly brought down the British ID Card system.

I hope he wins, because this will be a win for the entire Amercan public, and it will also be a clear sign to all other countries in the world that claim they are free democracies; ID cards violate your rights. They are bad for democracy, and should be shunned.

Most city centres in the UK are covered by CCTV. As you live in London, you certainly can't have failed to notice them, particularly in the City. These cameras are capable of panning and zooming (watch them when a group of young people, particularly young black people, are walking past), are constantly monitored and recorded (and the recordings kept for a month, or longer if the police request it).

Sure, in residential areas, there's little CCTV (although still a certain amount, particularly mounted on private property, but observing public areas). However, the rising observation of public space is extremely problematic. Check out Privacy International's FAQ on the subject.

You can read about them here, at the Privacy International Web Site.

What I found more interesting at the end of the article was the link to the Stupid Security Contest winners. My favorite winner is the Gunpowder Tea one because you think you know the outcome, but then it becomes even more baffling.

Mention the PATRIOT Act, not a word on the oppresive regimes of the Communist Chinese

RTFA!!!