Slashdot Mirror
The Electronic Police State
gerddie writes "Cryptohippie has published what may be called a first attempt to describe the 'electronic police state' (PDF). Based on information available from different organizations such as Electronic Privacy Information Center, Reporters Without Borders, and Freedom House, countries were rated on 17 criteria with regard to how close they are already to an electronic police state. The rankings are for 2008. Not too surprisingly, one finds China, North Korea, Belarus, and Russia at the top of the list. But the next slots are occupied by the UK (England and Wales), the US, Singapore, Israel, France, and Germany." This is a good start, but it would be good to see details of their methodology. They do provide the raw data (in XLS format), but no indication of the weightings they apply to the elements of "electronic police state" behavior they are scoring.
UK is particularly bad, the goverment want to have records of every single phone call, sms, email sent or web page read by every single person in the UK. Needless to say, this is a ridiculously expensive enterprise at a time when the UK's public borrowing is higher than every.
Being from the USA I can tell you I feel like we should be first on the list as far as government inspection of our online activities.
The government inspection is not nearly as bad as employer/school policing of your online activities.
So if our grand-fathers fought with hands, today we fight with data, tomorrow it's thoughts: Will we be prosecuting, arresting, and gagging neurons with specific DNA?
I am sorry, but if you are claiming something to be a report on "national rankings" of "The Electronic Police State", you should at a very least have a clue.
A few hints to the fact that this report is a bunch of crap (no offense to a good name of real crap) is clear lack of understanding of legal concepts, imprecise and not legally or scientifically accepted definitions and simply errors in basic terms and grammar.
It is spelled "habeAs corpus". You do not start a paper that you want to be taken seriously with cheap usenet flame references to "Nazi Germany or Stalin's USSR".
It is not a "criminal evidence" (what the hell is "criminal evidence" anyway?), unless it is admissible in court and no information as collected is admissible on its own merits. And how do you compare countries with completely different legal systems?
I could go on and on, but really it isn't worth the time. This report should not be on a first page of "idle", much less on /. Really, editors - get a clue.
Does freedom mean that you can do anything you want any time you want? Or is freedom the life you lead based upon rules set out by the government?
What does freedom require of you? Is responsibility a facet of freedom? Is societal responsibility actually slavery?
Maybe after we stopped throwing around loaded code words like Freedom and Police State, perhaps we can find that sometimes freedom isn't what we think it ought to be, but that the actual practice of freedom is more humane and invigorating than true freedom.
with no information on how it was compiled
good job
Next up, we'll publish a list of the top 50 mutual funds to invest in...with no mention of the criteria for generating the list.
If you have nothing to hide, government surveillance would not matter at all.
Just stop using the Internet, driving a car, visiting public places, using credit cards, signing up for lists at major US retailers, enrolling in any public organization or institution, talking on a cell phone, renting videos, or getting cable television. This should ensure your basic expectations of privacy are respected.
M
I don't know why I didn't see Hong Kong on the spreadsheet in the summary. Otherwise it could be un-ranked, as they use completely different legal system. If ranked, I bet Hong Kong would be out of top 100.
New Economic Perspectives
I downloaded the raw data. Some countries are missing, and the results are quite different from the PDF:
59-China
54-United Kingdom: England & Wales
53-Singapore
53-United States of America
52-France
52-Germany
51-Malaysia
50-Ireland
49-Netherlands
49-United Kingdom: Scotland
48-Israel
48-Russia
45-Australia
45-Belgium
45-Japan
44-Austria
44-New Zealand
43-Norway
41-Italy
40-Denmark
40-Taiwan
39-Canada
39-Greece
39-Hungary
39-Switzerland
38-Finland
38-Poland
38-Slovenia
38-Sweden
37-Cyprus
37-Estonia
37-Latvia
37-Lithuania
37-Malta
36-Czech Republic
36-Iceland
36-Luxembourg
36-Portugal
36-Spain
36-South Africa
34-Argentina
33-Romania
32-Thailand
31-Bulgaria
30-Brazil
28-Philippines
27-India
Virtual Betting on Facebook for non-geeks.
Go try web browsing in North Korea, let us know if you still feel that way.
The government inspection is not nearly as bad as employer/school policing of your online activities.
My apologies, but I am always shocked when people make the claim that potentially nefarious activities are somehow "more evil" when performed by private actors as opposed by government. What is the basis for your argument?
The government has an absolute monopoly on force. A corporation, no matter how evil, cannot lawfully detain you, lock you in a cage or kill you. The government can do all of those things and more. Your school cannot deprive you of your income, restrict your movements or require that your name be entered on a list of proscribed persons. The government does these things as a matter of course.
Perhaps you feel more in control of your government than you do your employer or school? Good luck with that. You can find another job. You can study elsewhere. Your government is inescapable.
So, if you download their XLS raw data, and add up their scores, the worst 6 nations are:
1. China, with a score of 3.47
2. UK (Englad/Wales), with a score of 3.18
3. US and Singapore (tied for 3rd place), with a score of 3.12
5. France and Germany (tied for 5th place), with a score of 3.06
And as for Israel and Russia -- they are tied for 11th place, with a score of 2.82
Quite different from the top offenders list in the PDF, eh? It gets worse: North Korea and Belarus (in the top 5 according to the PDF) are not even mentioned anywhere in the raw data XLS... So not only did these "experts" pull their data out of their asses, but they managed to fail at adding up their own funny numbers!
Rants like yours obviously based on evidence (I'm guesing you RTFA) have no place on slashdot. Enough said.
yeah that is harsh.
I mean its like they think you are borrowing their computers? They think they can do whatever they want with equipment they paid for and tell you how you can and cannot use their stuff.
You give into the hands of stupid politicians all the tools to create police state easily.
we are also borrowing lockers, toilets and a lot more. Be ready to be filmed if you take a dump at school.
One minor complaint, it's habeas (a 2nd person verb, "you (shall) have"), not habeus (which could be a 2nd declension noun in the nominative, or a 4th declension in several cases). Habeas corpus (corpus is a 4th declension noun, here in the accusative) means "you have the body." It should be pretty clear what it's about in that case -- it was traditionally used when someone felt they were being falsely imprisoned.
How dare you be so modest!! You conceited bastard!!
I for one welcome our new robocop overlords
...fails.
The one time I actually RTFA, the article is fail.
As other commenters have pointed out, the article is inaccurate, and the numbers and ranks they are basing they're crazy conclusions on do no even match they're own raw data.
Oh well, back to Nethack to find that amulet. (Actually, I should probably consider sleeping... nawww, that can wait. The Amulet of Yendor is much more important.)
And I've used data from many organizations to compile a ranking of countries which are the closest to being a strawberry ice cream:
1. Iceland
2. North Korea
3. Quebec
4. Central African Republic
5. Macedonia
Of these, Iceland is by far the closest to being at the right serving temperature. Mmm, Iceland.
Well, duh. Stop taking a dump in the lockers.
they don't have the internetz
I mean its like they think you are borrowing their computers?
Even when you aren't, I know, crazy!
You haven't heard of the no fly list it seems
After skimming that report, and comparing it with what's on the Cryptohippie website - it looks to me that the document is more of a marketing tool to promote their company. Am I the only one who thinks this?
Here's what the group claims to do: "Cryptohippie USA, Inc. exists to protect individuals and organizations against attacks on privacy by agents of industrial and competitive espionage, organized crime, oppressive governments and even hired hackers. We do this with the best of encryption technologies and a closed group of highly protected networks - for your peace of mind and safety."
Here's what the report posits:
* "In an Electronic Police State...[every electronic flotsam you produce is] criminal evidence, and they are held in searchable databases, for a long long time."
* "Whoever holds this evidence can make you look very, very bad"
* The State knows everything you do, a-la Big Brother
They are trying to frame this paranoia into a neat little package, which sets you in the right mood to accept what they have to sell - which is protection against attacks on your privacy.
Classic marketing technique? Sorry, it just looks like another insurance agent to me.
The Wknd Sessions - Malaysian and South East Asia independent music
You forgot to mention traveling on an airplane, traveling on a coach, traveling on Amtrak, holding a bank account, gambling at a casino (they have to take your details so they can tell the IRS if you win and need to pay income tax on that win IIRC) or owning a firearm.
This is a good start, but it would be good to see details of their methodology.
No, it would be good to see details of their method. Methodology is the study of methods. It is not a synonym for method.
Advice: on VPS providers
This technology is available to the next Pol Pot, or Idi Amin, or Saddam Hussein. As a dictator, cost is little if any problem - you just tell people to set up the surveillance, and report to you. Not to mention, the US comes awfully close locking up political prisoners sometimes. Remember McCarthy? Just think if HE had access to all this newfangled monitoring equipment. The next George W. Bush may whisk you off to Guantanamo, based on some comment you made online, or in an email. And, people who notice you gone will say, "Well, if he had nothing to hide, he wouldn't have gone missing!"
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
A quote from the articles' referenced PDF:
1. We really don't see how it is going to hurt us. Mass surveillance is
certainly a new, odd, and perhaps an ominous thing, but we just
don't see a complete picture or a smoking gun.
2. We are constantly surrounded with messages that say, Only crazy
people complain about the government.
As a person who has recently (over the past couple of months) done some review and a lot of reading into Nazi Germany, I can see the same types of Authoritarian trends and psychological tendencies to dismiss the worst case scenarios in "Democratic" countries (I scary-quote the word "Democratic" because there appears to be a cultural assumption that Democracy is necessarily equated with Freedom and justice, which, at the most is an accident. Democracy only assumes voting power (to an extant, for the majority of people), and not Freedom from oppression. I will emphasize that Democracy is generally a more utilitarian means towards Freedom than other forms of government. Benign and beneficent Autocracies would be great if they weren't "Utopian" [that is, mythical] in nature).
There also appears to be a tendency for people to appease authority in order to minimize worst case scenarios.
There also appears to be a tendency for governments to rationalize extremist and authoritarian practices. Hitler (and perhaps more tellingly Goebbels [who wasn't intellectually fanatical against Jews, but realized the value of Fear, Ignorance, and Hatred]) used the Jews as his main propaganda vehicle. The contemporary West uses the "pedophile" and the "terrorist" as the excuse. In both cases the regimes generally tend to have financial support from big businesses and the "conservative" voting class (I don't mean to slight well-meaning Conservatives here, but I am taking my language directly from the history books, some of which are contemporary to the history I am talking about). In both cases (Nazi pre-war Germany and the Authoritarian-leaning democracies of the West) share the same thing: the propagation (propaganda) of fear and nationalism. Think of the children is certainly a motto that Hitler used (I'm not going to bother to look up the references; they've been pointed out before on Slashdot). "Terrorism" too, was used as an excuse by Hitler; granted that much of his terrorism was contrived (like the Russian government bombings of residential buildings. Yes, I am aware that the Russians claim it was the Chechens. Western Intel AFAIK and have heard, seems to think differently).
Like the British and American public of 1930's, and much of Europe for that matter, people rationalized away their fears. The moderates in Germany at the time appeased the authoritarian measures as well. They kept thinking that a giving up a little freedom was politically expedient. Like the famous poem goes, people don't put much thought into things until it happens to them (ref: First they came. Considering the fact the US has the most amount of people in jail than any other country in the world, I would be concerned (A popular and fairly good reference: http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2494/does-the-united-states-lead-the-world-in-prison-population). Notice that I'm not talking about secret CIA prisons, MK-ULTRA type covert activities, etc., just the stuff that is well documented. Life is fine if you are "middle-class" and lucky enough not to piss off the wrong people. Don't hold your breath.
worth a few chuckles at least
1 in 31 people in the U.S. are in prison, on parole or on probation.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29469360/
The U.S. has more people in prison that the Peoples Republic of China.
It doesn't really matter if it is an electronic Police state or not.
I clicked on the link, expecting some half-baked vilification of modern society, but aside from the inane introduction, the ranking system appears clear, logical, fair, and relevant.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
The RIAA haven't undertaken raids on their own authority, nor have they used their own forces. In these cases, they are influencing government (police SWATs) to use its monopoly on force to "enforce the law". Maybe it's a fine line, but it is a line. This is not to say the government is any more justified in taking unjust actions, however.
Don't blame me -- I voted for Roslin.
The RIAA haven't undertaken raids on their own authority, nor have they used their own forces. In these cases, they are influencing government (police SWATs) to use its monopoly on force to "enforce the law". Maybe it's a fine line, but it is a line.
No, it's a blurred line. Corporations write the laws the government enforces, even if not directly.
If you have nothing to hide, government surveillance would not matter at all.
Everybody's got something to hide and it's none of the government's business.
England is a very curious case. In law its in a situation in which any authoritarian government, having got itself elected, would never need to call another election. There are a host of measures which have been passed in the last ten years which would permit the suspension of Parliament and rule by decree. The terrorism legislation would allow such a government to imprison anyone it liked for any or no reason. Then there is the surveillance, which is on a scale only previously found in science fiction. All travel, all communication (including this post) are logged. Henry Porter's articles in the Guardian and Vanity Fair detail the whole thing. Recently an opposition Member of Parliament was arrested, on Parliament premises, on suspicion of 'conspiring to encourage misconduct in public office'. Well.
Yet, it is obvious that England is a far pleasanter and freer place to live than the countries it is being compared to. Its also obviously, if you look at the recent deep embarrassment of its politicians over expenses, ruled by people who feel accountable to public opinion in a way that none of the true authoritarian states do. You will still find vigorous debate in the media. Only today, for example, Polly Toynbee in the Guardian runs up one side of the Prime Minister and down the other, and calls on the Party to get rid of him in the next three weeks. There will shortly be elections, relatively properly run, and the goverment will take a huge hit, and will accept it.
What has happened is that a genuinely democratic party, elected admittedly on a flawed and not particularly representative electoral system with a minority of the vote, one which consists of pleasant and well meaning people, has gradually without realizing what it is doing, passed legislation which would enable the British National Party, should it ever take power, to be as unrestrained by legislative limits on its powers as the Nazi Party in Germany 1933.
At the moment what stands between the English and either left or right authoritarianism is tradition, an independent judiciary, and the goodwill of the ruling party. We are effectively Weimar, with all the legal framework any future government will need to turn us at will either into Nazi Germany or the GDR.
We just have to hope that the wrong people don't get elected. If they do, its all over.
Why do I think this guy has an axe to grind? And any ranking that puts North Korea in the same bucket as the big western democracies has no crediblity.
This guy should try publishing his study there.
-1, Timecube.
surveillance cameras per capita
PLEASE KEEP ON and evaluate better!
I think in this discussion also some quantitative data has to enter.
Like minor crimes / tickets issued based on monitoring/surveillance
From this one can make a guess how many major crimes can potentially be discovered.
And then one can plot of how many capital crimes done by corporations or governements went unsued.
like speculation, tax avoidance by off-shoring
and of course torture ( on behalf of government )
drug-business ( on behalf of government )
I've checked raw data xml and was quite surprised. Take for example Israel, which I'm quite familiar with. While Israel could be very close to police state for obvious reasons it does not look like electronic police state to me.
Now raw data for Isreal form TFA (scale 1-5):
Daily documents - 3. Not quite reasonable, I would put 4 at least.
Border Issues - 3. Wrong. While border search is intrusive, electronic data are not inspected usually.
Financial tracking - 3.Plausible.
Gag order - 3.Questionable. Courts issue a lot of gag orders, but usually not related to searches.
Anti-crypto laws - 2. Wrong. What anti-crypto laws in Israel ?
Constitutional protection - 3. Absurd. There is no constitution in Israel.
Data storage ability - 3, Data Search Ability - 2, ISP Data Retention - 2, Telephone Data Retention - 3 Cell Phone Records 3 - How did they got those data ?. Sure there were admission of surveillance by police, but how it translated to numbers ? Why Data storage ability is 3 and Data Search Ability is 2? It seems they just estimated Israel tech level and added some random variation.
Medical record - 1. Dubious. There is no problem for law enforcement to get medical data. There is only four medical insurance companies in Israel, and data are centralized and easily obtainable. Should be 3 or 4.
The rest seems plausible.
Now, out of 17 points 4 or 5 are wrong, 1 is completely absurd and 5 is suspicious. Looks like however compiled this table just put some number into it out of the thin air.
Responders to this post are hereby informed they are on the NSA watchlist.
"Old bag" has more than one meaning.
Being from France I feel we should be first. This afternoon the national assembly will vote in favor of the HADOPI law. Non-elected people will be able to snoop on our p2p activities* to Protect The Artists (TM).
If someone cracks your wifi network and uses it to illegally download files, you will be held accountable. The only way to "prove" you haven't pirated anything is to install a windows-only, non-free (both as in speech and beer) software which will monitor your online activities.
They also recently announced that they will conduct "tests" to evaluate the feasibility of monitoring our online activities straight from the ISPs, again to Protect The Artists.
I've never been so happy to be French ~
*At one point they wanted to include emails too, luckily they backed down.
bear spray
You forgot 'walking down the street'.
"Good news, everyone!"
Its interesting that top four list: China, North Korea, Belarus, and Russia looks more like a John Birch Society hangover from the Korean War than anything else. Evil commie pinko Maoist spies with technosplat. My sense is that the story presumes that our foreign policy rivals are intrinsically fascist, rogue, authoritarian, cyber-nazis and therefore are evil in most ways imaginable. I suppose you could objectively evaluate police methods by how much time and money is spent at radio shack, but even that is meaningless. Lets get real: all law enforcement world wide will find crime and criminals with electronics. Thats really deep. So I guess we're really just making a list of contemporary political and social rivals to the old cliche of a 20th century US foreign policy, ideologies and cultural prejudice. Its like central casting wants to make a spy movie and we all know just what the bad guys look like. So take it from America, only our enemies are a menacing threat to civil liberties....after all, they are on the opposite side of the planet. So we should worry more about that then our own heavy handed treatment of ourselves. The NSA and CIA aren't police. They're special agents and everything they do with bugs and spyware is endorsed by God and AT&T. Every country should put themselves number one on their list since only local jurisdiction matters, in reality. After all, the evil commie spies like secret Russian Police aren't here to stop outlaws or wholesale crime that is born in the usa. Those beady little eyes give em away every time.....
Godwin!
Nutter. You miss the point. They aren't top on the list because we hate them. It is inaccurate to say that 'they use electronics to catch baddies and we do the same so it's really all equal in the end'. They top the list because they are oppressive, corrupt regimes who use technology to extend their repression.
Although your favorite tinfoil hat theory may posit that the west is just as repressive and ruthless as the good ol' commies in the east, the truth is starkly different. The extent to which those governments wield technology as a weapon against their own people is far, far greater than in western countries, despite the alarming reports of abuse of the system in the west.
If you really believe that NK is no worse than the US, please by all means go and live there. You will soon find out why they are in the top of the list. And before you start preaching about the US holding themselves blameless, please note that the US is on the list as well. This report does nothing to whitewash the sins of the western governments.
I prefer rogues to imbeciles because they sometimes take a rest.
I put a reference to your insightful comment on the "open manufacturing" mailing list:
"Forfeiting plumbing for self-determination?"
http://groups.google.com/group/openmanufacturing/browse_thread/thread/8462e40751be6966#
What I found interesting in the comment and reply is the perceived tension between relying on (centralized?) manufacturing and freedom.
Anyway, it seems to be the general feeling of slashdot that there is no land one can go to right now to escape these trends (other than perhaps the future. :-)
David Brin suggests in his transparent society that the only alternative to one-way surveillance is for everyone to be able to inspect all surveillance:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Transparent_Society
In the "utopia" at the end of Marshall Brain's Manna story, there was no anonymity and effectively probably no privacy:
http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
But that is sort-of like Brin's Transparent Society idea.
Another post in this Slashdot discussion makes the point that "Freedom" and "Justice" are not the same thing as "Democracy" (even if they often may go together). One can wonder if "Privacy" is orthogonal to those as well? Have so many things changed that privacy is indeed history? On the other hand, in the short story "The Skills of Xanadu", which is another open manufacturing utopia, people had total privacy even in plain sight when they wanted it, out of social conventions and a form of computer-mediated telepathy.
"RE:The Skills of Xanadu online at Google Books?"
http://groups.google.com/group/openmanufacturing/msg/13e85ebf99d0554f
In any case, another implication of your comment is that, for many people, the conceptual goal for open manufacturing in a free society may not need be as high as producing everything we have now (even indoor plumbing?). Just producing enough to support a reasonably free and sustainable society may be a good enough first goal? Anyway, there are bound to be a diversity of opinions on that; I'm just drawing together some themes.
I remain convinced, along the lines of Manuel de Landa, that there is *no* possibility of choice between hierarchy and meshwork, because all systems have both aspects. One can at best talk about balances between the
centralized hierarchies and grassroots meshworks in different situations.
"Meshworks, Hierarchies, and Interfaces"
http://www.t0.or.at/delanda/meshwork.htm
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
I'm beginning to wonder if there isn't in fact a group of smart men behind the scenes running the show. That the face put forward as stupid politicians is just that.
Any Google on "exponential growth human population" or "failure understand exponential growth" will help illustrate what we're looking forward to. It will be in our lifetime where the population will grow beyond the ability for the state to police it using just human manpower (police-person). Very soon maintaining civil order will require automation. It already does.
Whomever is running the show does seem to understand and are taking steps necessary building the infrastructure we're going to need in 25-50 years. And a 25-50 year build-out for infrastructure is about right. The ratio of citizen to state will easily rise to hundreds of thousands to one. Cameras are needed, the ability to mass collect people will be needed.
Anyone familure with the courts already know. If 100% of the population demanded jury trials the system would collapse. The only way they're able to hold it together is that +90% plea to "lessor" charges. The courts are already like the Airline industry as in hurdling cattle. When the population doubles even this stop gap measure won't be enough.
This automation of state control is evidence to me that either the politicians aren't as stupid as the face they put forward or there is a group behind the scenes running the show that do understand exponents.
-[d]-
Wow, I hate to see the day we will only be restricted to thoughts. Or worse, thought police would force the only freedom to be in jails.
"If you have nothing to hide, government surveillance would not matter at all."
If you have nothing to hide, encrypt everything anyways.
UK is the most insidious police state. CCTV cameras everywhere are bad enough, but when they frickin' TALK BACK (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talking_CCTV) you know there's REALLY a problem.
And become and real priate.
Arrgggghhh.
Actually they do provide the weightings. Each factor is weighted 1/17 (i.e. it is an average)
The technology used by the UK to gather the Internet/Phone data is commercially available. You don't have to sit at GCHQ to be able to get hold of the records that will be available.
All you need is a stonking great 48 TB data repository which will do a single telco a year, running off a pair of webservers... simple.
Your local plod will be able to get all the info he needs with a phone call to his local nick.
Trust me I've seen how loose the police are with the PNC records...
You do not need to be Einstein to work out what the "terrorist" target is... Its your torrent downloader/uploader.
Oh and a slight inaccuracy in the report The legislation covers the whole of Europe.
So all EU member states have to have this tracking in place almost immediately.
I thought the idea in France was the laws get passed and then everyone just ignores them?
Blueprint for Global Enslavement
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1070329053600562261
The DADVSI law, a similar one from a couple years ago, got passed but was never applied. This new one is supposed to "correct the flaws" of DADVSI, and was designed to streamline the process of finding pirates and cutting off their internet access (no judge is involved, it will be mostly automatic, kinda like automatic speeding radars). But thanks to our government's ignorance about IT and the interwebs lots of flaws remain, so I don't think it will have any effect. Still this huge waste of time and money to protect the entertainment majors is really pissing me off.
The law just got passed a couple minutes ago BTW.
In their "Raw Data" list Russia is ranked #13, but in the report it shows up as being #4.
This is not a serious research, rather a "geek-made" wikipedia-based crap.
Thats correct, I miss the point because there doesn't seem to be one. I suppose I could just move to NK if you think I'll find it there, but its your argument not theirs. You can pat yourself on the back all day for being better than other people because you cling to your ethnocentric cultural superiority of cold war America, McCarthy, Hoover, Hogans Hero's reruns, and best of all we're always the good guys. NK is a living hell, just like you know and love it - its the good ol days. Believe me, I'm not trying to convince you to move to NK, as you suggest, I'm just saying the list is arbitrary and seems to reflect US cold war prejudice more accurately than it even substantiates "Electronic Police State" criteria. The four countries on the top of the list are there because why exactly? What is the metric? Belarus and NK but not Estonia and Latvia and Ukraine and Bulgaria? WTF? Just make up any ol list for any old reason for all I care, but the only country that we need to fix is our own. So far, ideology is cheap when its all your own, but I'm convinced people are people everywhere and that North Koreans feel the same way about creepy electronic surveillance as any other people on planet earth. Since we seem to be the country where all forms of policing has been excessive, particularly electronic, then how is it that tiny Belarus is considered to be next to China and Russia, but Good ol USA never managed to get around to it? Because you say so? We have more police, more technology, more criminals, prisoners, and felons, more victims, car alarms, phone fraud, identity theft, zombie pcs, wire fraud, etc. etc. than most anywhere on earth so it seems really peculiar to contemplate a list of countries that has absolutely no clear basis of quantifiable fact worthy of mention, and yet it seems to insinuate that our shit don't stink and that we're better because Eurasia is a lousy place to live and we're golden. Whatever. Think what you like, but I bet you don't have the slightest idea what they think about it in China, NK, Belarus, and Russia. You don't even seem to care. So its pointless to use them as a basis for comparison when you are too ethnocentric to realize people are people. Even in electronic police states with no foil hats
A slave is one who waits for someone to come and free him.
Ezra Pound
I don't think a lot of people realize how little privacy we have. Black boxes in new cars, member cards for most grocery stores and pharmacies, internet access, going to the doctor...Just a few to add to your list. We have no privacy anymore and we've willingly let it go for convenience. We're all guilty of it and it's not just the US either.
You all forgot breathing.
A wise man once said, "Where is my other quotation mark?
Yes, as tetronimo says, after collecting up some states, the actual ratings are rather arbitrary. I would say North Korea is VERY much totalitarian and quite the police state, but certainly not an *electronic* police state -- from the few people I've heard of that have been there, they don't have these technologies to begin with, so gov't tracking and meddling in them is not an issue (which is, I'm sure, why there's not even data for them in the XLS file.)
You little minor worriers. When you have full blown paranoia, you live somewhere that the authorities have not got the capability to listen to much of anything. You only use communications, vehicles and housing in other people's names. You live somewhere that you can be over two separate foreign borders in two hours.
But if your government does something to you, _generally_ (as long as you're not a minority?) if you're in the USA, you have the protection of the Constitution when you're dealing with the government. Up here in Canada, we have a similar document called the Charter.
But constitutions, in the states that are lucky enough to have them, generally say very little about private contracts/interactions. For example, if your employer decides to put you under surveillance, as long as they're not breaking the law in the process, and they decide to turn that evidence (photos video whatever) over to law enforcement, then it's generally admissible with no pesky warrants.
The plural form of "anecdote" is "anecdotes", not "evidence".