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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.
more funniest hidden videos. Right?
China's the worst? Really?
have you read the Moderation Guidelines Addendum?
Woot!
Congrats to Deutschland also.
Never thought we'd rank so high on the list.
-b
Since the United States is pretty good at surveillance we should monitor Canada's citizens for them because they can't seem too, I bet we would get bonus points for that. Maybe even the high score.
In a world of acronyms, the words are the real victims.
And no-one gives a shit.
Privacy activist: "Hey! I don't like the look of these CCTV cameras/ID cards/vehicle tracking/databases of everything that you do."
Everyone else: "Meh. Doesn't affect me."
...and the US is near the bottom?
Hello, America! Talk about Britain sleep walking into a surveillance society, the U.S. seems to have already done it.
Time to get on the ball now that the elections are up. Vote out the incuments!
"They that would trade essential liberty for a little temporary safety deserve neither." -- Benjamin Franklin
My blog
Really. You should have no concerns about the safeguarding of your most intimate secrets. What you SHOULD be concerned about is your unhealthy attraction to midgets in furry costumes. Sicko.
"He's sees you when you're sleeping
He knows if you're awake
He knows if you've been bad or good
So be good for goodness' sake
Oh, you better watch out..."
Where were you when the voynix came?
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?
To suggest Britain is sleep-walking into a surveillance society fails to address a key factor: Many people welcome or even demand the increased surveillance and lack of privacy.
I don't know whether it's due to perceived reductions in crime associated with invasive surveillance, the results of Government spinning to sell the idea of perpetual monitoring or the FUD coming from the print media.
There is a significant minority in the UK that greatly dislikes the direction we're going in, that is aware of the steady decrease in privacy, and that is getting ignored by the bulk of the population who feel that if you have nothing to hide then you have nothing to fear.
I'm struggling to comprehend how the current direction can be reversed, given a Government bent on introducing new totalitarian measures and constantly pushing the boundaries of the Human Rights Act with the tacit support of the majority of the voting public.
as the days go by and technology advances, we get closer and closer to waking up in 1984. Lets just hope we know how to check the calendar and change the day huh?
Invexi - a Phoenix, AZ based web design and web development company.
Canada & Germany both have evolved strong privacy laws because they have strong, competant governmental and business entities which might use the information prejudicially. The US has far more checks-and-balances with weaker (but larger), less competant (but more likely malicious) governmental and business entities. Privacy appears less valued in the US due to increased mobility/competition.
Societies differ. Or do you actually want homogeneity -- One World Government?
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
What scares me is not really the lack of privacy (hey, if your looking to go blind, go ahead and spy on some of my activities!) but rather what gets done with the information. So long as we work to maintain a firm grasp on the kind of people who are in charge of the info, I'm alright. Sadly, I am not alright right now. Our grip over those who watch us is slippery if even existant; we need better congressional oversight and that'll require better citizen oversight. I'm very meticulous when I choose my votes; I look into just about everything, especially the Library of Congress' records on ledgislation (and who voted for them) but I know plenty of people who don't either because they have a them-or-us attitude or they simply don't have the time. And that's what gets the wrong people watching us; that's what scares me.
Demented But Determined.
To Americans who believe that Canada is just like you guys except colder.
- we know we're doing better than many countries when it comes to human rights but we are not happy and most likely never will be.
- we don't have a ton of people chanting patriot nonsense on national television. Most of the time we make fun of politicians regardless of affiliation.
- one of the biggest reasons why we are doing so good is because we have you guys just south of us. We look at what you are doing and point out why it isn't right, then model something different to use as our policies.
Thank you for being so obviously wrong.
televisions watch you!
One swallow does not a fellatrix make
Yeah but they're Canadians.
*ducks*
Big deal, its endemic, I say there still isn't enough cameras and all the camera's are in public places anyway. I'm being watched every day by somebody as it is and I think its fear mongering by this study group. It isn't 1984 yet nor are they being used to the detriment of our society. As long as they are not in our homes and there are no secret police who pick you off the street KGB style (that work with relation to the public cameras) I'm okay with it. In fact thinking about it while writing this paragraph, I want the secret police as well. It'll put fear back into the delinquent children running amok in this country. If we take away some basic freedoms and restrict the public, they might realise and appreciate what freedoms they had and they won't be as apathetic as they already are. If we stop thinking about how poorly other countries have it and stop pretending to be smug about our own state of affairs, once we KNOW they're gone, this country will be a better place.
Jonathanjk.com
It seems to me that most of the local ISP's have clauses stating that they may covertly monitor and log your internet activity. There was a bit of a discussion on /. about that at some time, I believe, as several ISP's had sneaky policy changes implemented
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
Reminds me of a recent clip I saw of Bill Maher saying it's time for a America to stop bragging about being #1 and start acting like it.
No sig.
Is this any less stupid than the "Freedom of Speech" list in which they pick various arcane criteria with which to rate countries?
The same kind of list that people bring up every time some debate about how evil the US has become gets going?
Oh Look the US came in 38th on the Puppies list!! Haa haa, stupid America, even Chile has more puppies!
I'm going to come up with my own list, it will be called the "Green Grass list" and will rank countries based on where people would most like to move to. Speaking as someone who has lived in Europe for several years, and have faced the "why did you leave America?!" question a thousand times, I have a sneaking suspicion that the US of A would top that list.
Trying again without the extraneous text at the bottom, oops
If you prefer pictures and charts
Sent from my desktop computer
I live in Canada and I am kind of bored with it. I've always wanted to live somewhere else. I guess it's that whole, "the grass is always greener" thing. But everytime I look at another country to move to there is always something glaringly wrong.
I have a friend whose father had to flee Argentina in the middle of the night - twice.
Once upon a time when my friend complained to his father about being bored, he responded:
"You should be greatful for your bordom."
KFG
Years of keen observation have shown that Americans prefer the aggressively jingoistic Arial 12 point, so admirably, he's made his adjustments.
I hate to be the one to explain this to you but there are broadly two reasons why people asked "why did you leave America?". The first is polite conversation making / showing an interest. The second is to hint that you're not welcome where you are. Hopefully you get more of the former than the latter.
No, it is generally quite clear in these conversations that they viewed America as a better place to live.
Who are "they", and what constitutes a "spy"? Certainly information flows from local government to fedral governmetns in every nation on Earth. Typically, this is a good thing (land records and other data are very useful when running a country). In what specific cases that you can cite, are you saying there is a problem?
Can you cite any specific cases, and if so, can you point to any evidence that this is widespread? I've not run into such evidence myself, outside of Internet-based forums where people rarely cite any specifics, and if they do, make overly broad generalizations on them. Really, give me a solid example that we can legitimately generalize from, and we can talk. I'm certainly not of the opinion that large, international conglomerates are run by the cream of society, out to do good for me. On the other hand, I'm unwilling to buy that there's a financial win in "managing" the population in the way that you describe (focus groups and mass marketing are a much more viable return on investment).
Your initial assertion is correct. Programs like USA/UK and others have been widely known about for decades now. Your assertion of intent is shaky at best. You would be better off saying that these programs are not subject to sufficient international oversight, and thus laws and oversight in one country can be subverted by using partner nations in ways that can be readily abused. Australia had someone go public, claiming that USA/UK was doing just this about 4-5 years ago. If pressed, I'm sure I can find a link on the Net, but go look for "australia echelon" and I think you'll find it.
Random rants based on paranoia are rarely as effective as a cogent analysis of the risks presented by a specific program.
This is widely true, but you're implying some intent that I don't think is there. Largely this is a result of the immature state of Internet businesses, and the fact that regulations are difficult to interpret (much less enforce) in a rapidly changing industry). Having dome some things for such businesses in previous jobs that I considered to be ethically dubious at the time in terms of data-gathering, I can say that the POTENTIAL for abuse is rarely matched with the COORDINATION and PLANNING that would be required to execute that abuse in a meaningful way. That said, I never accept cookies from CNN or any CNN-related site, and there are reasons for that....
Of course, they're not. You expected otherwise?
I post information "anonymously" when I want to say something that I don't want to affect my reputation, or don't want to be associated with my company by the public. Making any further assumptions is invalid.
Now, you're just being silly. No one in their right minds goes about data mining non-public information this way. There are much easier ways, especially if you are a government. For example, in China, they simply use routers that scan the traffic for useful
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
Can anyone tell me how to set my sig on Slashdot?
Farnsworth : Now, that evil robot Santa can't get to us here, unless any of us are stupid enough to leave this house. In a related matter, you'll all be delivering a sack of children's letters directly to Santa at his death fortress on Neptune.
They're there affecting their effect.
And don't get him started on the orbital mind-control lasers!
Only Americans think that the rest of the world wants to live in America. Most people, like most Americans are quite happy right were they are. The ones that are not don't all want to shift to America. Infact I would wager that America would a long way down that list too.
If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
I'm going to come up with my own list, it will be called the "Green Grass list" and will rank countries based on where people would most like to move to. Speaking as someone who has lived in Europe for several years, and have faced the "why did you leave America?!" question a thousand times, I have a sneaking suspicion that the US of A would top that list.
So, then... why'd you leave, if America's such a great place to live? (Which I happen to think it is, myself, BTW.)
Downmodding is the refuge of the weak. Don't downmod, make a better argument!
Good point. I'd love to see some kind of foundation create a framework for describing comprehensive agendas with priority-balanced interests and strategies for change. Ideally it wouldn't be restricted to a single political camp or philosophy, but could accommodate multiple self-selected groups (or "parties," for lack of a better term).
The salient measure of these things is "where do people rank this issue's importance and urgency within the context their total list of socio-political concerns," not "how many people are buzzing about this issue right this minute?".
What people think should be *done* about the issue is just another dimension on things.
Pi Ran Out
International survey Published!
US Sucks!
Film at 11:00!
next!
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
here it is.
P.S.
When I have the money, I promise to buy The Complete Calvin and Hobbes. Arr.
So, then..... why'd you leave, if America's such a great place to live? (Which I happen to think it is, myself, BTW.)
I wanted to see if the grass is greener. It isn't, it's just different. I'd be happy to move back if that's where my career takes me.
On the sidewalk, some guy asks me for 50 cents while I'm bicycling past. Hassles me for ignoring him.
Etiquitte favors norm deviants over norm enforcers. As long as this "politically correct" inversion of the past is true, then UK will slap cameras and gov't Anti-Social Behavior Orders everywhere. A "study by the Institute for Public Policy Research suggests Britain's youth are among the most badly behaved in Europe." bbc.
Ultimately I blame the Prussian education model unlike the summation in the BBC article. Counter-culture has won against the sheeple model! I say let it go, let school vouchers allow schools that aren't constantly sued safety labelled politically correct rebel factories.
If you need text styles to communicate then you don't have a message.
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
Germany and Canada were not mentioned in the investigation of the 9-11 attacks ... oh wait
The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
I really doubt there is as much digital privacy in Canada. The lines between these two countries gets blurred as internet traffic travels between routers north and south of the border. We know the US Government actively monitors all internet traffic with a huge data mining effort on the part of the NSA.
Doing this, the US government is also able to learn an unbelievable amount of info about Canadian citizens, and the government. Many Canadians have their physical servers located in the USA (myself included). There are firms in the USA who are even contracted to do jobs for the Canadian government. There is no doubt that lots of private Canadian citizens data is made available to US authorities by virtue of the fact that it is processed by service industries located in the USA.
Hell, if I did a traceroute to most of my friends' destination MX hosts I would find traffic going through the USA. There is virtually no digital privacy in Canada
Very true. I remember one line in an American travel guide that went like this: It is humbling to travel abroad and meet people that would not like to exchange their passports for American ones.
Apparently there really are Americans who think that everybody in the world would like to live there. Very strange. (And yes, I know the US quite well and would not like to live there if I can help it.)
I am also a privacy activist. While it is true that you seem to take more care than others in preserving your privacy, your methods are inadequate for protect yourself against the British government.
You must remember that any information that uniquely identifies you can and will be used against you. You must never drop your guard. For example, since the government started putting RFID tags inside banknotes, I pay for items using only £1 and £2 coins. I keep them sealed in a lead container for obvious reasons. Also, I do not use a bank. Instead, I keep my savings in my basement in gold bullion. This also means my savings can still be accessed after bank closing hours.
Our address is registered as abandoned and several hundred meters below sea level. Our mailing address is actually a post office box several towns away maintained under a fake identity.
Our employers hold no correct information about us and pay us only in precious metals and stones.
Paying for items with cash (coins only) only is a wise step toward protecting yourself, but I also remove all book covers and replace them with blank cardboard sheets so that no one can see what I'm reading (and to shed any tracking/monitoring equipment embedded in the cover).
I do not own a telephone (land line or cellular) and use only public (street) telephones to call others. We keep a list of public telephone boxes in our area and cycle through them randomly for each phone call we need to make. When speaking on the phone, we use special callsigns to identify one another and only speak in pig latin.
When leaving the house, my wife always wears a burka and we both wear flat soled shoes (with no grips or other markings) at least 3 sizes to large, but stuffed with filling to make up the difference. To remain inconspicuous and unidentifiable, I wear a suit, bowler hat, and face-sized Granny Smith apple mask at all times. Behind the eye sockets, I wear heavily tinted sunglasses and colored contact lenses.
We both shave all hair from our bodies, wear tissues over our fingertips, and ensure none of our skin is exposed. In case we cut ourselves and accidentally leave a bloodstain, we carry a bag containing blood from several other people, which we then use to cover the stain.
Lastly, we never use computers or the internet.
Oh, crap.
Mentioned without comment: Echelon and UKUSA.
I'm here EdgeKeep Inc.
Your question got straight to the heart of the matter and its something I've noticed. In the US, our society seems to demand very little in the way of protections from Corporate snooping into our lives, but we get very angry when we learn of Government's monitoring of our lives. This contrasts with much of the rest of the world, where governments are not automatically assumed to be evil, but corporations are. Particularly in Germany, there is a sense that the Government is there to protect people from invasion of people's rights by the Corporations. They have very good laws to keep corporations out of everyone's private life. The question needs to be raised, "Which is worse, corporate or government monitoring of civiliians?" I feel the answer is that neither is worse, they are both subject to abuse. Take the US for example, where the government has simply sidestepped the provisions we have against it monitoring our lives and started using private corporations, data-miners, to gather the exact same information they could have had they been allowed to carry out the task themselves. It really doesn't matter if the government or a corporation is collecting records of every financial transaction, every home address, every phone call, or every television program one watches. The end result, in the US, is that the government gets the information anyway by contracting the services of the data-miners. --Dave
-- I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous
"...something completely unimaginable in USA."
Unless you're a law-abiding permanent resident. If you're in the country illegally you have the most privacy.
The pursuit of absolute tolerance leads to the most rigorous and ludicrous intolerance. - REX MURPHY
Or the sharks with lasers ....
--
"Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner."
"If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear." - Every fascist, ever
No, we have the Internet for that, as you have so helpfully demonstrated.
Seriously, the U.S. scares me these days. But Canada's smaller and less powerful, so we have less scope to screw things up. Give us half a chance and I doubt we'd be so superior.
Wow, great post. I'm curious though, I had heard that Europeans, especially dutch, were very wary of surveillence, exactly for that reason: if the government knows everything about you, then they know already who needs to be sent to the camps and who doesn't. Is it just that 70 years is too long to remember all this?
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.
Wow, you link to the Arar web site but I don't think you have even read it.
First, he was never arrested by the RCMP, nor did the RCMP hand him over to any US authorities.
The RCMP made a very big mistake and misidentified him as a person of interest (ie. a person with apparent ties to terrorists) to the US authorities. It was the US authorities that arrested him.
The RCMP did not institute a smear campaign against Arar. In fact when Canadian government officials were able to get Arar returned to Canada from Syria, an investigation was eventually launched into what happened. The RCMP formally apologized for misidentifying Arar.
i)ave wrote:Particularly in Germany, there is a sense that the Government is there to protect people from invasion of people's rights by the Corporations
Interesting: in the years leading up to the 2nd World War, both German and Italy were experimenting with giving the corporations more say in government, with representatives from, for example, the oil and gas industry, elected by their companies to committees officially advising on the creation of legislation. This was formally called "corporatism". In Italy, corporatism was conventionally called "fascism", the name of the main corporatist party.
These same corporation were later castigated for their gleeful support of going to war, in both the first and second world wars, and for the governments with which they associated.
You might imagine the Italians and especially the Germans would distrust anything and anyone who contributed to their hell-ride into WWII.
--dave
davecb@spamcop.net
It is sad that the US is not closer to the top of defending privacy.
I was reading an article today on Foxnews (link as of 11.02.06 4:45 pm). On the surface it just sounds like cops doing their jobs. Until I read this line:
Those totals represent a fraction of doors knocked on, liquor store drive-bys, construction site surveillances and tips chased down by agents during the weeklong sweep.
To me, sounds very gestapo. Can't even go get a beer now without risk of being stopped by a cop. Bad news imo....
I thought you could tell by their beady little black eyes and the way their heads flop around when they talk.
Downmodding is the refuge of the weak. Don't downmod, make a better argument!
Thanks for answering! But I thought libertarianism was much more than that? Like being able to opt out of most (all?) taxes, for example, in exchange for also not receiving services in exchange. And who decides what infringes on the 'equal freedom of others' ? Granted, in most cases it is pretty clear, but there are a whole lot of cases where it is not so clear. What about the tragedy of the commons?
A case in point. Look at all the data thefts that have occured over the past few years of unprotected government databases.
. htm
One or two look like an "oops."
But hundreds? Either there is a disregard for public records, or perhaps the Government WANTS the data released -- so that a private sector company can do what they can't with the data, and there is plausible deny ability about the source.
http://attrition.org/dataloss/
http://www.gcn.com/online/vol1_no1/40840-1.html
but when you look at the civil sector, it's not much better;
http://www.privacyrights.org/ar/ChronDataBreaches
Of course, ChoicePoint is a part of the BushCo government. They helped rig elections in Florida and more recently in Mexico.
>>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
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
I can't remember who said it, but I thought it summed up the major difference between Canada and the U.S. rather well...
"Americans hate government but love politicians. Canadians hate politicians but love government."
---
Congrats to Deutschland also.
Never thought we'd rank so high on the list.
---
Yeah, you guys are über alles.
L