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Time Warner To Comply With Wiretap Law
rekkanoryo writes "Time Warner Cable is taking steps to comply with the Communications Assistance For Law Enforcement Act, which requires telecommunications providers 'to help police conduct electronic surveilance.' Note that broadband providers are not yet required to comply with the law, but the FBI has stated its desire to force broadband providers under the law's jurisdiction. Invasion of privacy anyone?"
Corruption in Nigeria: A Review
A country's single strongest determinant of corruption perception is its per capita income. Nigerians' incomes rank among the poorest 6% of the world population. Nigeria's rock-bottom corruption perception rating by the international community masks a cohort of 17 nations, with one-seventh of the world's population, who are statistically just as corrupt. Unfortunately, this willful prejudice isolates the nation from receiving the direct foreign investment and development cooperation it deserves.
Overview
This CHRRD Research Review, the first in a series of literature and statistical reviews, places emphasis on the collection of primary source materials from a variety of perspectives from the global to the local. It examines and excerpts historical and current surveys, data and analyses concerning Nigeria's corruption and related business and governance rankings among nations. Empirically-determined correlates and consequences of corruption are reviewed and analysed within the Nigerian context. Reasons, mainly Western trade interests, behind the current drive towards global value (or behavioural) convergence are surveyed. Finally, the broad spectrum of recommendations for improving Nigeria's corruption reputation are examined. Formatting of quoted excerpts (highlighting, emboldened fonts, etc.) are the work of the compilers of this review, except where noted otherwise.
Summary Points
u Nigeria's corruption-prone image is significantly worse internationally than domestically. Only four percent of two thousand Nigerians polled by Afrobarometer in 2001 considered corruption to be "Nigeria's leading problem". More pressing in their minds were unemployment (39%), poverty (14%), food shortages (9%), and economic management (7%). Forty-two percent regard democratic rule as "less corrupt" than military rule, 29% "more corrupt" while a perhaps cynical 27% believed the incidence of corruption to be "the same" under either regime (Lewis, 2002).
u In a July 2002 "Global Corruption Barometer Survey" done for Transparency International, Nigerians viewed their police force as the most corrupt institution in the country. When asked which, among eleven public and private institutions, they would most like corruption eliminated from, 32.1% answered "Police", followed by 27.0% for "Political parties" and 26.0% for the "Education system". Nearly equal numbers of Nigerians expect corruption levels to increase in the next three years (44.5%) as those who expect a decrease (38.6%).
u The country is saddled with two distinct sets of corruption-related pathologies. The global anti-corruption regime specifically focuses on restraining senior public officialdom from the temptation of accepting bribes from rich nations' firms ("facilitation payments" to minor officials are exempt). This regime severely ostracizes Nigeria. But Nigeria also faces debilitating and vertically co-extensive levels of domestic corruption, deeply embedded in a culture of patronage politics that goes hand in hand with its natural resource "curse", oil-dependency. Transecting and conflating the domestic and international reputations in a sort of feedback loop are Nigeria's fabled practitioners of transnational business fraud and illicit trafficking.
u Transparency International (TI) has persistently set Nigeria among the bottom five nations in its annual Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) since 1995. This "poll of polls" captures perceptions of corrupt tendencies in broad terms. In 2002, Nigeria's index value was 4.7% of the entire country range. Its penultimate ordinal rank persists even when 54 countries' CPI not on the official list are included. Statistically, however, this placement is both meaningless to potential foreign investors and reputationally damaging to low-ranking nations. By virtue of the 90% confidence limits established in TI's sampling, Nigeria's "true" corruption perception is indistinguishable from any of the bottom seven