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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.
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."
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?
Only of the 37 compared. Countries like North Korea were not considered. I guess that makes sense... why bother ranking countries about privacy if you still have a power-mongering all-controlling government? No... wait... that sounds too much like where I live (US).
Beer is proof that God loves us, and wants us to be happy.
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
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.
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
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.
If that's the case, why are only 5-10% Libertarian?
You'd think people would get the idea and stop voting for Democrats and Republicans, but that hasn't happened. The only logical conclusion is that people want fascism. People no longer really want freedom. Freedom brings too many responsibilities.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
People no longer really want freedom.
Sure they do. They're just deluded enough to think that's what they're getting. When people accept that the government is spying on them to help keep them free, they don't go along because they want to be spied on. They do it because they're too dumb to see past the doubletalk.
Don't blame me; I'm never given mod points.
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 know that they say they want freedom. But when any question of policy comes up, are their actions consistent with their professed desire?
To my eye, we still have the vestiges of our 18th-century freedom memes, enough to make us talk about freedom and feel guilty when we fail to fight for it... but it's just vestiges. As the grandparent comment said, freedom is mentally and emotionally taxing. Games and black bread require less CPU power.
FATMOUSE + YOU = FATMOUSE
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?
The people want the good guys to be more powerful than the bad guys. They figure that the good guys will only use that power against the bad guys. As long as they think the rogues in government are rare and under control, a powerful government seems very desirable. Most people seem to think that abuse of power, or even, bad guys masquerading as good guys until they have the power as higly unlikely. So called intelligent people find conspiracy theories to be laughable. But, people in power can keep secrets quite well.
If you must moderate, please moderate as irrelevent, not something bad, because I'm sure someone will find this interest
All of PEI is very rural. Try visiting one of the major cities such as Toronto, Montreal, or Vancouver sometime and you'll find they have densities very similar to that of the major cities in the USA.
"Since no one has blown up anything Canadian recently, you don't have to worry about that".
Perhaps what might be more instructive would be to examine why no one is blowing anything up in Canada.
"...fewer people seem to think seriously about the way lack of privacy is just a natural consequence of civilized life."
Errr, no. Fewer people seem to think seriously that a less safe environment is just a natural consequence of a fucked up foreign policy that pisses over other countries and expects zero consequences.
-- Trinity in high heels carrying a whip: The donimatrix - there is no spoonerism
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
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
Because the way the political system is setup, 3rd parties have no realistic chance of gaining power, and even more important, a failed attempt ends up splitting the vote for the closest of the two 'proper' parties, resulting in a win for the worst preferred party. See Nader etc.
It is a strategic mistake to vote for the Libertarians, not until they have a realistic chance of getting 50% of the vote.
Besides, can anyone explain to me properly, what exactly is the difference between libertarianism and outright anarchy?
For the first time, I am not voting the issues on Tuesday. I'm voting for a return to government gridlock, because we are living the consequences of too much concentration of power, and hundreds of billions of dollars are being wasted, and tens of thousands of people (including thousands of Americans) are dying.
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.
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 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