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Privacy International Releases 2007 Report
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Privacy International has released their report on privacy for 2007, which includes a color-coded world map that highlights the countries with the best privacy laws, the privacy-hostile countries being in black. While many of the overall rankings may come as no surprise, it does highlight some of the more obscure abuses. For example, Venezuela requires your fingerprints just to get a phone and South Korea requires a government registration number linked to your identity before you can post on message boards. Makes you wonder who is Number One?"
What's with the "Prisoner" reference? The ceaseless spying on the occupants of the Village was an aspect of the series, not the overarching theme.
I know I'm quibbling because the Prisoner reference could have been worked into the summary quite easily but asking "Who is Number One?" isn't relevant to the referenced article. This question will also set off flame wars in some circles.
This is an observation, not a criticism, and a plea for more succinct summnary writing. The reference to the Prisoner is apt but could have been better phrased.
Note that the European Union seems to have protected its citizens (from terrorism) without abridging basic civil rights.
I cannot believe that this report does not include Japan's treatment legal "foreigners", including visitors, long term & permanent residents. Since late November, all of the these "foreigners" in Japan are now forced to be fingerprinted. Even worse, the corrupt Japanese government awarded the contract to collect the "foreigner" biometric data to the corrupt criminal organization Accenture (renamed Arthur Andersen) which did the falsified books for Enron and Worldcom. Accenture won the bid to collect the data for only (JPY)$100,000, approximately (USD)$900. You can bet that the Accenture paid the Japanese government a lot of money under the table in order to resell the biometric data to interested parties.
Maybe other countries should start fingerprinting Japanese visitors and residents, and then sell the biometric data to those Nigerian scammers.
This fingering of "foreigners" is even worse considering that Japan is the only first world nation not to have any anti-discrimination legislation, and legal "foreigners" in Japan are not even afforded even the mere basic of protection under the law. (Foreigners in Japan do have any Habeas Corpus and can be tortured in prison for up to 21 days. Testimony by foreigners in Japan has been ruled inadmissible in court, since there are not considered to be human by the Japanese ministry of Justice.)
Yeah, right: Greece leads the EU on privacy, in a year that saw the board of the independent Privacy Authority resigning over rampant and unconstitutional CCTV use by the Justice Department. Incidentally, that happened just before the Greek PA was to investigate the 2005 wiretapping scandal that made international headlines. What kind of kool-aid are they taking over there in Privacy Int'l? The sad truth is that privacy took a nose dive this year across the whole of the EU, with the Prum, VIS, PNR and Swift data accords being ratified and there weren't any silver linings.
"We don't stop playing games because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing games.."
Freedom is the right of others to make choices you think are wrong and supporting freedom means supporting the right of others to make those wrong choices
I'd add something like 'as long as no harm is done' to that. You know, just to avoid giving people the 'freedom' to kill others for example. The big question is where to draw the line. Does a same sex marriage harm anyone? Does the right to carry arms harm anyone? Does it harm anyone if the government isn't allowed to eavesdrop on your communications?
This is why it's vital to have a good constitution in any form of democracy, to ensure that a line is drawn that cannot be crossed by regular laws. Unfortunately, either a lot of constitutions aren't good enough, or a lot of governments are working around them.
You are right though about the value of freedom being dead. I'm from The Netherlands, and I remember that we used to be seen as a tolerant, freedom loving nation full of strange people. I feel we have a decent constitution, yet our governments have managed to put us firmly in the red category. Sure, we can still smoke weed, have abortions and euthanize ourselves, but that's only a part of freedom. Unfortunately, not many people seem to realize that. Give the people bread and games, and they'll be happy.
In Finland, being very much of European descent, but having the misfortune of carrying a passport from a North American country, I have to call it like it is: having to repeat the whole story of how I moved to Finland, at every fucking border crossing in or out, over a 10-year period and yet having a permanent resident permit in my passport - and a very Karelian accent thank you - is a situation that smells of idiocy, paranoia and Spanish inquisition. So yes, when border surveillance and immigration practices are that 'tard, it becomes: 1) discrimination 2) invasion of privacy (you wouldn't believe the questions border guards ask) and 3) irritates perfectly legal immigrants to the point of testing their patience beyond reasonable limits, which THEN becomes a national security issue. Sitä saa, mitä tilaa, joten älä tilaa ikävyyksiä ärsyttämällä maahanmuuttajia raja-asemalla koko ajan, kiitos.
Software is not supposed to be about how to work around a useability issue. - Ken Barber