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

1st

[Anonymous Coward]

furst post

Re:1st

[Anonymous Coward]

We hate to interrupt your lol times, but we need a little bit of help. You see, lately Encyclopedia Dramatica has fallen upon some hard times. The cost to maintain the site have gone up considerably and advertising revenue is in the toilet. We here at encyclopedia dramatica enjoy the offbeat humor as much as you do, but we also enjoy supporting a platform t hat allows people to speak their minds freely. Don't you think that it is time to give back to ED? A small donation can go a long way. We will return the site back to its normal state in less than 24 hours, but without enough help we will be shutting it down.

http://encyclopediadramatica.com/donate.html

Re:1st

[Anonymous Coward]

Ha ha, sucks to be you. No sympathy what so ever.

Main code block

[93 Escort Wagon]

for (floop = 1 ; floop 17 ; floop++)
        {
        score += .01 * country_rank(floop)
        }
if (former_communist_block_state) {
        score += 20
        }
elsif (is_US || is_UK) {
        score += 15
        }
elsif (recently_revolted_against(former_colonial_power)) {
        score -= 10
        }
elsif (I_can_buy_pot_legally_there) {
        score -= 30
        }

mod Tdown

[Anonymous Coward]

were nullified by questions, then survey which isn't a lemonade Niggers everywhere Yes, I work for futu8e at all CANS CAN BECOME between each BSD Market. Therefore core team. They market. Therefore,

Re:Is this for real?

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

Hey, we should call it an imaginary police state. Because it works with intangible data, not our physically-manifested freedoms. Therefore, it cannot be analogous to real police states.