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.

Comments

Drumming up hysteria

[el_flynn]

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.

Democracy does not equal Freedom

[unlametheweak]

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.