2003 Privacy and Human Rights Survey Released

Privacy Digest writes "Out-Law.com, UK - Global privacy report is the most comprehensive ever . The Electronic Privacy Information Center and Privacy International on Friday released their sixth annual Privacy and Human Rights survey which claims to be the most comprehensive survey on privacy and data protection ever published. The report reviews the state of privacy in over fifty-five countries around the world. Key topics include Total Information Awareness, the public response to the U.S.A.-Patriot Act, traveller profiling, biometric identification, and other new technologies of surveillance. Privacy and Human Rights 2003: An International Survey of Privacy Laws and Developments is available free online or it can be purchased from the EPIC Bookstore."

Comments

Does it make any mention of ...

[Anonymous Coward]

... the fact that the left-leaning pro-privacy folks at slashdot still need to refer to anonymous posters as "cowards"?

YOU INSENSITIVE CLODS!

Stop it

[Doesn't_Comment_Code]

I know this puts me in danger of being modded down.
But...

Privacy is not a basic human right. Not like freedom to not be murdered, beaten, or starved. There are a lot of human rights violations going on right now, but certain levels of tracking don't even show up on the human-rights-violations radar.

Sure, denial of privacy can reach extreme levels, to the point where it becomes a concern. But I think this report is a little knitpicky.

Re:Stop it

[Kierthos]

"Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness"

I don't know about you, but if every book I buy, every movie I watch, every phone call I make, every e-mail I send is being watched, catalogued, and analyzed, it infringes on my liberties, and doesn't make me very damned happy.

The government does not have the right or the duty to effectively stalk its' citizens because it's "afraid".

Ben Franklin still said it best: "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."

Kierthos

Re:Stop it

[IthnkImParanoid]

I consider myself a privacy advocate because I consider a high degree of privacy necessary for a free society. The reasons are too complex for me to convey clearly, especially in a slashdot post, but consider that people behave differently when they know they are observed. Would I be posting to /. if I had a camera behind me?

All "basic human rights" fall under the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. So while privacy may not be itself such a right, I don't feel I can act freely when my actions are monitored.

Re:Stop it

[Dutchmaan]

Sure, denial of privacy can reach extreme levels, to the point where it becomes a concern. But I think this report is a little knitpicky.

You do realize that when the extreme levels happen, and becomes a concern, it is more often than not too late to make effective change.

..an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure seems to ring pretty clearly here.

Re:Stop it

[Trurl's Machine]

Privacy is not a basic human right. Not like freedom to not be murdered, beaten, or starved. There are a lot of human rights violations going on right now, but certain levels of tracking don't even show up on the human-rights-violations radar.

The guys who wrote the Universal Declaration Of Human Rights almost half century ago seemed to have different opinion than yours ;-)

Article 12
No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.

Re:Stop it

[bs_02_06_02]

Then you won't mind your medical records becoming public information? It's being done right now.
Minnesota (and elsewhere) wants to make all medical information available in a statewide database. Who has access to it? Some say that the state will only allow access to statistics without any identification of the "patient". How long will that last?
The gov't isn't very secure. We all know that. Do you trust them? I barely trust the hospital. Who else gets this info? Insurance companies? Hospitals? Prescription drug companies? How about your employer?
What if the gov't sells the info? Did you ever get a sexually-transmitted disease in college? Did you ever imagine every blood test you ever took will be a matter of public record? Did they keep a DNA sample?
It'll be part of your state record. It'll follow you around for the rest of your life. Did you ever take a test for HIV?
How about a family predisposition for cancer? What are your chances of getting that next bank loan when the underwriter starts perusing your medical history.
Do you trust politicians? They just voted themselves a 4% payraise by hiding it in a Transportation bill.

Re:Stop it

[pmz]

The government does not have the right or the duty to effectively stalk its' citizens because it's "afraid".

The government is afraid of its citizens. The citizens are afraid of their government. All Osama needs to do, now, is just to sit on the sidelines and cheer for both teams. The "war on terrorism" is really a red herring for more fundamental issues, where personal liberties are being stripped away in some futile attempt to protect us from ourselves.

Why is it that in some small towns, people are content to not even have locks on their doors out of no fear of neighbors? It seems they may soon want to install locks, but this time out of fear of government.

Hoping for a positive outcome

[coolmacdude]

I seriously have to wonder how many more years it will be before this report will be merely a commemoration of lost history.

The average American consumer is still oblivious to the erosion of privacy that has occured over the last decade. Only radical action and broad support will stop this continuing trend.

Re:Of Course,

[Scrameustache]

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

RTFA!!!

Individual rights and Government

[ianfs]

It seems there's a chicken and egg senario concerning most government's and the rights given to citizens. Here in the United States the govenment is made up of elected citizens who are supposed to, ideally, work for us and pass the laws WE ask for. However, the relationship between the government and the people tends to get distorted through campaign contributions, the media, large corporations and wealthy individuals, etc... I'm not sure we've reached the level of security we want but I'm not sure it's worth our privacy. To paraphrase Benjamin Franklin: "Those who substitute Liberty for Security deserve neither."

Re:Individual rights and Government

[Brahmastra]

The relationship between the government and the people seems to be more like the relationship between a shareholder and a company. You technically have a say if you are a shareholder, but if you own only 1 share, no one gives a shit. In the case of government, it's money instead of shares.

Re:Of Course,

[Anonymous Coward]

The First Lady has said the best byproduct of ousting the Taliban from Afghanistan was the liberation of Afghan women. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said the same thing when asked what the U.S. achieved in its war in Afghanistan.

If the liberation of Arab women is so important to the current administration, then does that mean we'll be invading Saudi Arabia next?!!!

European Convention on Human Rights

[kmarius]

Just to get a more official view:

Quoted from European Convention on Human Rights (available in several languages)

Article 8 - Right to respect for private and family life

1. Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence.
2. There shall be no interference by a public authority with the exercise of this right except such as is in accordance with the law and is necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security, public safety or the economic well-being of the country, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.

Ironic for us in the UK...

[advocate_one]

That this article and report comes out just as "tone" launches the idea of an e-file for every child in the UK...

www.theinquirer.net

>THE UK GOVERNMENT has announced plans to keep an electronic file on every child in England in a range of new child protection measures announced by prime minister Tony Bliar.

>The children's files together with their unique e-number will be managed by local authorities in a "local information hub". The file will contain the name, address and date of birth of each child, together with the name of the school attended and whether the child is known to such agencies as the police, social services or educational welfare. Where multiple agencies are involved the file will denote which one profesional will have overall reponsibilty

Yet again... launched to "protect" the children... and yet another place where incorrect information can have devastating consequences for the parents of a child if a mistake is made during data entry...

Teacher notices bruises on child's torso... entry in database... social services could now be investigating for child abuse when it could have been a simple injury from a fall... but the reason might not have been entered later after investigation by the teacher however that entry will be there forever... Same child misses school several days in a row for a perfectly valid reason some months later... yet again social services could put 2 and 2 together later on and make 5...

What's the bet's they'll try and fly this kite by saying "the innocent have nothing to fear"??? If there's anything to go by from previous cases... the innocent have everything to fear when social services get it in their minds that there could be abuse when there isn't...

Re:What's wrong with biometrics?

[arth1]

Can some one please explain to me what is evil about biometric identification? If having a retina or finger print on my ID prevents people from pretending to be me, isn't that a good thing?

If your credit card number or password gets stolen, you can stop it and have a new one issued. If you fingerprint gets lifted and misused, what are you to do? Amputate your finger?

--
*Art

Re:Traveller Profiling?

[stratjakt]

Of course you're right, and it's absolutely idiotic. Whoever modded you as flamebait is one of those PC douchebags.

The problem with airport security is that we're giving so much power to some of the stupidest people alive. This isn't an insult, but a fact. Conventional airport security guards are no brighter or better paid than mall security guards.

I hear about an episode where some 65 year old woman who'd had a mastectamy is taken into the back and strip searched for setting off the metal detector. Another one had airport security guards making a woman drink her own breast milk (it was in a bottle, they wanted her to prove it wasnt some kind of flammable liquid). Women are groped by these jackasses all the time, and now they want a machine that would "see through" your clothes.

I have no problem with security measures at airports, but you have to ditch the untrained morons in charge of them first.

OT - Patriot Act

[FreeLinux]

One of the primary "selling" points of the Patriot Act was that it would be used against "foreign" suspects. However, to my knowledge, the Patriot Act has thus far been used primarily against US citizens (big surprise). Is anyone aware if the Patriot Act has in fact been used against a foreigner yet? And, if so, what the ratio of Patiot Act vs. Citizens and foreigners is?

Bot, I hope I don't make The List with this post. I'm sorry John, I didn't mean anything by it.

Patriot Act

[Experiment 626]

A lot of people assume because Ashcroft is a conservative and the most vocal opponent of the Patriot Act in the mainstream press, the ACLU, is liberal, that the Patriot Act controversy falls along typical liberal vs. conservative lines. Actually it is much more a question of libertarian vs. authoritarian than liberal vs. conservative.

The real reaction to this act from conservatives is more interesting and diverse. Some share the views of Attorney General Ashcroft. Others oppose it just as strongly as the geek community -- many of the articles about the act on the conservative National Review site describe it with terms like the "so-called", "wrongly-termed" or "misnamed" Patriot Act. A director of the Cato Institute raised many interesting questions about the act, to which the Justice Department wrote up a reply.

Also worth looking at is the Justice Department's own Patriot Act Web site. From here you can view the text of the act itself as well as all the arguments for it and rhetoric used to justify it. A valuable resource for any of us trying to formulate counterarguments about why this act needs to go away.

Re:Of Course,

[zpok]

OK, you've read National Geographics ;-)

That doesn't mean this report was written to throw eggs at the USA. Read the article instead of the \. comments. I know, less amusing in many ways, but still.

The USA scores badly on *some* points, better on others. It's still a pretty good country to live in compared to a lot of places in the world.

The real issue is, finding your government is messing with your privacy is like being underground and having your canary dying on you. It's a worrying sign, or it should be.

Instead of thinking "Hey, them's throwing eggs at our beloved nation, that can't be right", you might want to look at other countries and see where that kind of tinkering with basic rights brought them. And remember, it's mostly fellow Americans doing the "throwing", and my guess is they're just as proud of being a US citizen as you obviously are.

Apart from that, I agree, a lot of people have more pressing problems.

Re:Left-leaning?

[Phantasmo]

As a Canadian, I consider the Democrats to also be right-wing. I mean, it was the Democrats who wanted to drill for oil in Alaska (34 Republicans voted against the party line, but it's okay because 36 Democrats did the same thing!)