Global Privacy Rankings Released 215
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.
Go Team Canada! (Score:2)
Congrats to Deutschland also.
Never thought we'd rank so high on the list.
-b
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Single-minded advocates (Score:2)
The salient measure of these things is "where do people rank this issue's importance and urgency within the context their total list of socio-political concerns," not "how m
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"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 co
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How does it feel to just walk into something that obvious? The only more depressing than the fact that I knew someone would make that senseless point was that I also knew it would get modded up.
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.
Please show me
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The argument in the U.S. case is that what it has done is not in its own interests, and has nothing to do with whe
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For the casual internet polemic, "f****d up" may substitute for actually policy analysis, but if we're going to ask serious questions about American foreign policy then the question of why you can't avoid having enemies is directly relevant to foreign policy. I'd say the fundamental explanation for why any significant nation has enemies is that we live in a competiti
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Perhaps what might be more instructive would be to examine why no one is blowing anything up in Canada.
Perhaps for the same reason no one is blowing anything up in New Zealand, or Bhutan, or Slovakia - because they're small, relatively powerless, relatively out-of-the-way places that don't have much impact on the world scene. Now, there's nothing wrong with that, and it can have its advantages, but it also doesn't constitute a reason to go bragging on the US.
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2nd within the EU, 3rd among the 37.
Here is an idea (Score:4, Funny)
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Quebec is the only jurisdiction in North America that issues a digital driver's license but doesn't retain the photographs (that might have changed since 2004, but at the time, the provincial assembly would not allow that to occur for privacy reasons.)
Apparently the head* of the Alberta licensing system yelled out that Alberta would be happy to keep the digital photographs of Quebecois since Quebec could
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also, the official theories appear to be sooo far-fetched for someone with common sense, considering the verifiable facts, that the conspiracy theorists may not be the ones that most people would expect.
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that the conspiracy theorists may not be the ones that most people would expect.
So... what you're saying is that it's the conspiracy theorists who did it? Of course, it's so clear now!
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I do not think it is smart to dismiss conspiracy theorists out of hand as crazies. Many of mankinds biggest accomplishments are the result of complex plans that were kept secret from the general population. This includes corporate strategy, military strategy, political campaigns, and acts of terrorism. We are told repeatedly that OK explosion, JFK assassination, etc, must be due to a single man simply because
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Don't forget the cheese curds!!!!
Britain *is* a surveillance society (Score:2, Insightful)
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."
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Except for the Phantom Pooer [excite.co.uk]! He did give a shit (all over train seats) and was caught on CCTV doing it!
So, in a way, people do give a shit. Some are just a bit more physical in their opinion...
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Privacy Activism (Score:2)
You must remember that any information that uniquely identifies you can and will be used against you. You must never drop your guard. For example, since the government started putting RFID tags inside banknotes, I pay for items using only £1 and £2 coins. I keep them sealed in a lead container for ob
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It's not for want of trying. Multiple face recognition efforts are underway in the UK. See the EPIC page on face recognition [epic.org]. I wouldn't be too sure that they won't get some measure of success in future, particularly since face recognition is going to advance without requiring the U
The Canadians are at the top? (Score:2)
Hello, America! Talk about Britain sleep walking into a surveillance society, the U.S. seems to have already done it.
Time to get on the ball now that the elections are up. Vote out the incuments!
"They that would trade essential liberty for a little temporary safety deserve neither." -- Benjamin Franklin
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That is my absolute favorite quote that Franklin never said [wikiquote.org]. OTOH, my sig is his :-)
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So what I
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Don't you watch the news? Don't you read the blogs? Didn't you see the movie by that fat guy in the ballcap? Come 2008, Bush will be out of office and the U.S. will become a utopia just like it was when Clinton was President.
Enough sarcasm - you are asbolutely correct. Congress writes the laws. Congress passes the laws. The President just gets a photo-op when he signs them. If we want change in the U.S. we must focus on Con
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Something shocking has to happen before we're going to get any real change. Something much bigger than 9/11.
Re:The Canadians are at the top? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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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.
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It is your civic duty to place a camera in Every House! Each citizen must carry a USID!
We CAN NOT have a Surveillance Gap!
Your privacy is safe with us. (Score:2, Funny)
Christmas is coming in the US (Score:3, Insightful)
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..."
Missing Countries (Score:3, Interesting)
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"This year Privacy International took the decision to use the report as the basis for a ranking assessment of the state of privacy in all EU countries together with eleven benchmark countries."
many people WANT this (Score:2)
To suggest Britain is sleep-walking into a surveillance society fails to address a key factor: Many people welcome or even demand the increased surveillance and lack of privacy.
I don't know whether it's due to perceived reductions in crime associated with invasive surveillance, the results of Government spinning to sell the idea of perpetual monitoring or the FUD coming from the print media.
There is a significant minority in the UK that greatly dislikes the direction we're going in, that is aware of the ste
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For instance, I want to hide my online banking password from anybody who wants to steal my money. Let's say that the government passes a law that says it must have the decryption keys for all secure connections in case it needs to snoop on terrorists then my online banking password is no longer secret from the government. The government may not be interested in my online banking password, but the corrupt underpaid civil servant who does the
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Privacy doesn't exist in a vacuum (Score:2)
Canad
Something fishy in Rankings. (Score:3, Interesting)
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 [slashdot.org]
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.
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Re:Something fishy in Rankings. (Score:4, Insightful)
Human rights are usually a matter of how the executive functions, particularly in law enforcement. Privacy has more to do with legislation and the private sector: privacy regulations restrict what information about you public and private institutions (insurers, credit agencies, etc.) can distribute, and how it is distributed. It also is a question of how those institutions protect your data, such as your credit card and banking information.
All pretty much completely unrelated to questions of freedom of speech (unless you think there is a free-speech aspect to restricting whether a business can give away your private information.)
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It measures privacy. Not openness of discourse, or human rights, or other questions. The US has weak privacy protections: this is pretty well known.
Meanwhile, the US is pretty good when it comes to openness, to access to and freedom of information. Could it be that these two values oppose each other to some degree? If you want an open society, you put privacy at risk. But if you value privacy more, you sacrifice a degree of openness?
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Malaysia has very poor privacy controls, and I would be reluctant to describe it as
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Remember, to be a threat to privacy, the government actually has to be a credible threat.
The Greeks can barely get their shit together enough to host an event where the entire world is going to be watching (the Olympics) -- granted, they had to do a lot of work to get the infrastructure in place, but they did most of it in the 11th hour.
They're my people, and I love them, but run an effective government? Not since Pericles...
C
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There are lies, damn lies -- and statistics
What scares me (Score:2)
A message to Americans who believe that Canada... (Score:2, Insightful)
- 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 w
Well (Score:2, Funny)
A message to Canadians who believe that Canada... (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
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I thought you could tell by their beady little black eyes and the way their heads flop around when they talk.
The UK is what? (Score:2)
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Privacy, where? (Score:2)
Why is everyone so ignorant of China? (Score:5, Interesting)
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
The US cares little about protection from Corps... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The US cares little about protection from Corps (Score:2)
i)ave wrote:Particularly in Germany, there is a sense that the Government is there to protect people from invasion of people's rights by the Corporations
Interesting: in the years leading up to the 2nd World War, both German and Italy were experimenting with giving the corporations more say in government, with representatives from, for example, the oil and gas industry, elected by their companies to committees officially advising on the creation of legislation. This was formally called "corporatism". In It
Re:The US cares little about protection from Corps (Score:2)
One or two look like an "oops."
But hundreds? Either there is a disregard for public records, or perhaps the Government WANTS the data released -- so that a private sector company can do what they can't with the data, and there is plausible deny ability about the source.
http://attrition.org/dataloss/ [attrition.org]
http://www.gcn.com/online/vol1_no1/40840-1.html [gcn.com]
but when you look at the civil sector, it'
unless you want to call out... (Score:3, Interesting)
I have seen several of these contracts my coworkers signed and brought back.
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Number 1 (Score:2, Insightful)
Another one? (Score:2)
The same kind of list that people bring up every time some debate about how evil the US has become gets going?
Oh Look the US came in 38th on the Puppies list!! Haa haa, stupid America, even Chile has more puppies!
I'm going to come up with my own list, it will be called the "Green Grass list" and will rank countries based on where people would most like to move to. Speaking as som
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No, it is generally quite clear in these conversations that they viewed America as a better place to live.
Just the numbers, please (Score:3, Informative)
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
Britain to leapfrog China in mass-surveillance (Score:3, Informative)
Tony Blair has called for all innocent citizens to be forcibly DNA swabbed [telegraph.co.uk]. Since the Govt stated they would link the police databases to the National Identity Register [identitycards.gov.uk] (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. [guardian.co.uk]"
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. [independent.co.uk]"
More details of how the National Identity Register will be the hub of Britain's Surveillance State [bristol-no2id.org.uk]
Fortunately ... (Score:2)
Canada and USA: same internet (Score:2)
Doing this, the US government is also able to learn an unbelievable amount of info about Canadian citizens, and the government. Many Canadians have their physical servers located in the USA (myself included).
Sad @ US (Score:2)
I was reading an article today on Foxnews (link [foxnews.com] as of 11.02.06 4:45 pm). On the surface it just sounds like cops doing their jobs. Until I read this line:
Those totals represent a fraction of doors knocked on, liquor store drive-bys, construction site surveillances and tips chased down by agents during the weeklong sweep.
To me, sounds very gestapo. Can't even go get a beer now without risk of being stopped by a cop. Bad news imo....
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It's funny because the US gov't has been consolidating power and has become more controlling over the years.
I'd say it isn't too late to avoid becoming a fascist police state, but we're far enough down that road that jokes about it are half funny and half scary.
I don't think many in the US can seriously say that the government doesn't have enough power and doesn't meddle in people's lives enough.
Re:Wot? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Wot? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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
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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 exa
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Well, I wasn't discussing libertarianism per se, but only how the two-party system in the USA effectively makes it impossible for them to succeed.
But my question still stands, what, exactly, distinguishes libertarianism from anarchy?
Trains on time (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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Ya know, this is a classic example of why more people don't vote Libertarian.
There are *lots* of other logical conclusions.
*Most people don't know about Libertarian goals.
*Many people think that voting for a small party is throwing their vote away.
*Some people wouldn't vote Libertarian if you pointed a gun at them because they think Libertarians would do more harm than good.
Every one of those points is a logical conclusion based on the premises.
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Five to ten percent? The liberterians would be happy with that. My guess is that they haven't cracked 3% yet.
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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
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Who are "they", and what constitutes a "spy"? Certainly information flows from local government to fedral governmetns in every nation on Earth. Typically, this is a good thing (land records and other data are very useful when running a country). In what specific cases that you can cite, are you saying there is a problem?
Can you cite any specific
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I'm going to come up with my own list, it will be called the "Green Grass list" and will rank countries based on where people would most like to move to. Speaking as someone who has lived in Europe for several years, and have faced the "why did you leave America?!" question a thousand times, I have a sneaking suspicion that the US of A would top that list.
So, then... why'd you leave, if America's such a great place to live? (Which I happen to think it is, myself, BTW.)
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I wanted to see if the grass is greener. It isn't, it's just different. I'd be happy to move back if that's where my career takes me.