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Global Privacy Rankings Released
djmurdoch writes to alert us to the release of Privacy International's privacy ranking of 37 nations. This came out of PI and EPIC's annual Privacy and Human Rights global study, which this year runs to 1,200 pages. From a Globe and Mail article on the rankings: "Germany and Canada are the best defenders of privacy, and Malaysia and China the worst, an international rights group said in a report released Wednesday. Britain was rated as an endemic surveillance society, at No. 33, just above Russia and Singapore... The United States did only slightly better, at No. 30, ranked between Israel and Thailand, with few safeguards and widespread surveillance." PI's study coincided with a report from Britain's information commissioner warning that the UK could "sleep-walk into a surveillance society". The nation now has one CCTV camera for every 14 people.
Net results from the study, for all you who don't want to RTF[PDF]A.
GERMANY 3.9
CANADA 3.6
BELGIUM 3.2
AUSTRIA 3.2
GREECE 3.1
HUNGARY 3
ARGENTINA 3
FRANCE 2.9
POLAND 2.9
PORTUGAL 2.9
CYPRUS 2.9
FINLAND 2.7
ITALY 2.6
LUXEMBOURG 2.6
LATVIA 2.6
ESTONIA 2.6
MALTA 2.6
DENMARK 2.5
CZECH REP. 2.5
IRELAND 2.5
SLOVAKIA 2.5
LITHUANIA 2.5
NEWZEALAND 2.5
SPAIN 2.4
AUSTRALIA 2.4
SLOVENIA 2.3
NETHERLANDS 2.3
SWEDEN 2.2
ISRAEL 2.2
US 2
THAILAND 1.9
PHILIPPINES 1.9
UK 1.5
SINGAPORE 1.4
RUSSIA 1.4
MALAYSIA 1.3
CHINA 1.3
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Tony Blair has called for all innocent citizens to be forcibly DNA swabbed. Since the Govt stated they would link the police databases to the National Identity Register (pg 5), this would mean our DNA, our tax/benefits records and detailed tracking of our car movements via ANPR will be cross-indexed into a single surveillance dossier.
Furthermore, you will be denied a new passport unless you give up this information, according to the ID Cards Act.
This comes two months after Gordon Brown was reported to be "planning a massive expansion of the ID cards project that would widen surveillance of everyday life by allowing high-street businesses to share confidential information with police databases."
He described how "police could be alerted as soon as a wanted person used a biometric-enabled cash card or even entered a building via an iris-scan door."
More details of how the National Identity Register will be the hub of Britain's Surveillance State
You do monitor our citizens, because the RCMP and US government collaborate to "catch evil terrorists". See again the recent case of Maher Arar, and the facts exposed in a government investigation. The RCMP acts as the Canadian arm of US government spy agencies, and even handed over one of their own citizens to the USA. The man was detained and tortured. All documented by government reports