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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.
Where are countries like Japan, Singapore, South Korea? Where are countries like Iran? Were a lot of these countries left off because adding them in will skew results, showing data that the organisers don't want us to see?
Greece ranks way above US across the board???
Come on, wasn't Greek just trashed as barely being above China in this regard just last Tuesday by everyone on Slashdot?
Greek Blog Aggregator Arrested
This survey is a joke. I just don't know exactly what the agenda is, but it is far from accurate or fair.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying US should be number one (or even close), just that the E.U. rates too high given the spotty track record of many of its members.
Letter To Iran
Is that really surprising?! Maybe because people in China aren't allowed to know how much worse it is... Their information is scrubbed before public dissemination in OR out of the country.
Reality is nothing but a collective hunch.
Human rights, eh, I don't know. But privacy? It's not a big issue here in Beijing, where I've happened to live for the last year and a half. First and foremost, there are almost no contracts that you must agree to. You anonymously buy prepaid cards for your anonymously purchased SIM card that you put in your anonymously purchased phone. Online purchases are done using phone credits that you purchased anonymously. Most rental agreements are done directly with the landlord to avoid paying taxes. A good portion of the vehicles on the road are unregistered. Many of the citizens are not even registered as existing. Gas and electricity are purchased anonymously through smart cards and recharged in the home. You pay for water anonymously to a lady that comes to your door to collect. International credit cards are accepted almost no where, and the one national credit card is not used very much. Everything is in cash. The country is too busy building up it's economy and bringing the poor into the fold to mess around putting surveilance everywhere. Airport security is less strict that PRE-9/11 US airports.
In retrospect, it looks like most of the stuff I just mentioned is in regards to corporations and their respect of privacy. People in the US (I'm a US citizen) seem to think it's OK for corporations to keep all this data on you, because you supposedly agreed to it. But is there any other way to not live like a caveman other than to give up your privacy? And who believes that the government and the public corporations aren't already one entity anyway? How many senators and congressmen take money from corps? How many of them are actually investors and on the board of directors for these corps?
It's ironic that you have a far greater level of privacy in China than in the US.
At the government level privacy in China a different story, but even then it's not so bad. Internet and other communication are monitored, but that is easily circumvented with the use of SSL. They are monitored in every other country in the world as well. In fact, China may be more honest here for at least admitting it publicly.
LS
There is a fine line between being a cultivated citizen and being someone else's crop. - A. J. Patrick Liszkie
Most people just want to live their lives, not fight for some political ideal. Things have to get pretty bad before the average person is willing to make any direct sacrifices in order to try to correct a problem in the political environment. The appearance that "People want fascism" is an emergent property of behaviors and tradeoffs made in a much smaller context.
The old claim about Mussolini making the trains run on time captures this point. A basic requirement for most people is that the basic services they rely on should be dependable and affordable. That requires government to have a certain minimal level of administrative efficacy. One reason people don't vote Libertarian, or Green, etc. is that they have something of a comfort factor that the major parties have a "machine" which "knows" how to run things. Run them badly, perhaps, but the "better the devil you know" effect is at work here, too.
Look at the situation in Iraq: they've been freed of a dictator who did indeed metaphorically "make the trains run on time". Many Iraqis now complain because the quality of their lives has deteriorated in so many visible ways. Even Iraqis who strongly support the removal of Saddam recognize that the country is probably ruined for at least a generation, while they recover and rebuild. There are many people in that sacrificed generation who understandably don't like that tradeoff. They would have preferred to live a more comfortable life under a dictator, where the risks are well-known and avoidable (i.e. don't piss off those in power), as opposed to an uncomfortable life in an environment with unpredictable risks (roadside bombs). That doesn't mean they "want fascism", although it might appear that way.
I can second this claim. My father is an engineer who works for an insurance company that focuses exclusively on on commercial and industrial property (lots of factories and office buildings). Because they are the only company that focuses solely on this type of insureance, they were begged by the owner of the WTC to insure them. They were the only company with enough capital to insure everything on their own. After heading up an engineering analysis on the buildings my father was adament about NOT insuring the buildings. While many wanted the client because of the high profile, the fact remained that the buildings were an engineering and fire-prevention/protection nightmare. As stated in the parent, the overall structural design was poor. Also, when the buildings were first erected (he he, i said erected) a sprinkler system was not installed. To meet fire codes later implemented, the ended up punching holes in the firewalls between the floors in order to install the sprinklers. This meant that the fire-prevention method that came stock with the building was now rendered useless and fires could jump between floors. Since the company would not insure the buildings, the owners had to split the policy among multiple companies. While my father's company never forsaw something on the scale of 911, in retrospect it was a pretty smart decision. Most of the insurance companies that were splitting the WTC policy went bankrupt because they could not afford the payout. Even still, my father's company lost some employees who were at a meeting that fatefull day at the towers (because of inter-company politics, my father did not attend that meeting).
"It's not whether you win or lose, it's how drunk you get." -- H. J. Simpson
I think you nailed it.
Things weren't better with Clinton in office beacuse Clinton was in office... things were better when one party controlled the Presidency, and the other controlled Congress.
When it comes to politicians, the more we can keep them fighting each other the less harm they can do to the rest of us.
A Human Right
If you want a SIM that lets you call outside China (even to Hong Kong), you have to sign an agreement that is a long way from anonymous.
I have seen several of these contracts my coworkers signed and brought back.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95