Leading surveillance societies in the EU and the World 2007

[ElsewheresDaughter]

The 2007 International Privacy Ranking

State of Privacy Map







Each year since 1997, the US-based Electronic Privacy Information Center and the UK-based Privacy International have undertaken what has now become the most comprehensive survey of global privacy ever published. The Privacy & Human Rights Report surveys developments in 70 countries, assessing the state of surveillance and privacy protection.

The most recent report published in 2007, available at http://www.privacyinternational.org/index.shtml?cmd, is probably the most comprehensive single volume report published in the human rights field. The report runs over 1,100 pages and includes 6,000 footnotes. More than 200 experts from around the world have provided materials and commentary. The participants range from eminent privacy scholars to high-level officials charged with safeguarding constitutional freedoms in their countries. Academics, human rights advocates, journalists and researchers provided reports, insight, documents and advice. In 2006 Privacy International took the decision to use this annual report as the basis for a ranking assessment of the state of privacy in all EU countries together with eleven non-EU benchmark countries. Funding for the project was provided by the Open Society Institute (OSI) and the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust. Follow this link for more details of last year's results.

The new 2007 global rankings extend the survey to 47 countries (from the original 37) and, for the first time, provide an opportunity to assess trends.

The intention behind this project is two-fold. First, we hope to recognize countries in which privacy protection and respect for privacy is nurtured. This is done in the hope that others can learn from their example. Second we intend to identify countries in which governments and privacy regulators have failed to create a healthy privacy environment. The aim is not to humiliate the worst ranking nations, but to demonstrate that it is possible to maintain a healthy respect for privacy within a secure and fully functional democracy.

Important note

This study and the accompanying ranking chart measure the extent of surveillance and privacy. They do not intend to comprehensively reflect the state of democracy or the full extent of legal or parliamentary health or dysfunction in these countries (though the two conditions are frequently linked). The aim of this study is to present an assessment of the extent of information disclosure, surveillance, data exploitation and the general state of information privacy.
Summary of key findings

(Please note that "worst ranking" and "lowest ranking" denotes countries that exhibit poor privacy performance and high levels of surveillance.

* The 2007 rankings indicate an overall worsening of privacy protection across the world, reflecting an increase in surveillance and a declining performance o privacy safeguards.
* Concern over immigration and border control dominated the world agenda in 2007. Countries have moved swiftly to implement database, identity and fingerprinting systems, often without regard to the privacy implications for their own citizens
* The 2007 rankings show an increasing trend amongst governments to archive data on the geographic, communications and financial records of all their citizens and residents. This trend leads to the conclusion that all citizens, regardless of legal status, are under suspicion.
* The privacy trends have been fueled by the emergence of a profitable surveillance industry dominated by global IT companies and the creation of numerous international treaties that frequently operate outside judicial or democratic processes.
* Despite political shifts in the US Congress, surveillance initiatives in the US continue to expand, affecting visitors and citizens alike.
* Surveillance initiatives initiated by Brussels have caused a substantial decline in privacy across Europe, eroding protections even in those countries that have shown a traditionally high regard for privacy.
* The privacy performance of older democracies in Europe is generally failing, while the performance of newer democracies is becoming generally stronger.
* The lowest ranking countries in the survey continue to be Malaysia, Russia and China. The highest-ranking countries in 2007 are Greece, Romania and Canada.
* The 2006 leader, Germany, slipped significantly in the 2007 rankings, dropping from 1st to 7th place behind Portugal and Slovenia.
* In terms of statutory protections and privacy enforcement, the US is the worst ranking country in the democratic world. In terms of overall privacy protection the United States has performed very poorly, being out-ranked by both India and the Philippines and falling into the "black" category, denoting endemic surveillance.
* The worst ranking EU country is the United Kingdom, which again fell into the "black" category along with Russia and Singapore. However for the first time Scotland has been given its own ranking score and performed significantly better than England & Wales.
* Argentina scored higher than 18 of the 27 EU countries.
* Australia ranks higher than Slovakia but lower than South Africa and New Zealand.

Background

In recent years, Parliaments throughout the world have enacted legislation intended to comprehensively increase government's reach into the private life of nearly all citizens and residents. Competing "public interest" claims on the grounds of security, law enforcement, the fight against terrorism and illegal immigration, administrative efficiency and welfare fraud have rendered the fundamental right of privacy fragile and exposed. The extent of surveillance over the lives of many people has ow reached an unprecedented level. Conversely, laws that ostensibly protect privacy and freedoms are frequently flawed – riddled with exceptions and exceptions that can allow government a free hand to intrude on private life.

At the same time, technological advances, technology standards, interoperability between information systems and the globalisation of information have placed extraordinary pressure on the few remaining privacy safeguards. The effect of these developments has been to create surveillance societies that nurture hostile environments for privacy.

Governments have created hundreds of key policy initiatives that, combined, may fundamentally destabilize core elements of personal privacy. Among these are proposals for the creation across society of "perfect" identity using fingerprint and iris scanning biometrics the linkage of public sector computer systems, the development of real-time tracking and monitoring throughout the communications spectrum, the development of real-time geographic vehicle and mobile phone tracing, national DNA databases, the creation of global information sharing agreements and the elimination of anonymity in cyberspace.

The potential for engagement of these developments is currently limited to a marginal response. The problem for civil society – or indeed anyone wishing to challenge surveillance - is not simply the sheer magnitude of the threat, but also its complexity and diversity.

It is important for each country to decide rationally and openly which element of personal privacy should be lost, but it is also important for each country to understand how far down the path of mass surveillance it has travelled. It is for this reason that we have undertaken the rankings project.

The ranking assess the key areas of surveillance and control, and will identify mechanisms of protection that have failed to operate according to the letter and spirit of the national and international privacy protections. It will concentrate on policy development issues, inadequacies in the consultation process, legal protections (or lack of them), the impact of surveillance on democratic institutions, changes to the nature of society and the implications for individual freedoms and autonomy.
Methodology
Changes from 2006

* The EU has been included, along with a further ten non-EU countries
* England and Wales have been separated from Scotland
* A new category "Border and trans-border issues" has been added to the criteria

Weightings

* Constitutional protections, statutory protections, and privacy enforcement reflected real and actual protections. Together with democratic safeguards they have he capacity to create a weighting that could easily counter-balance any surveillance intransigences
* Direct comparisons in the scores from 2006 to this year are less relevant than the rankings and categorisation.

Methodology

* Based on Privacy & Human Rights 2006 research, a 1100+ pages report compiled with the assistance of researchers around the world
* Over the past six months we have conducted further research, preparing for the 2007 report
* Consulted broadly with experts, regulators, and policy-makers around the world
* Based on substantive national changes and trends over the past twelve to eighteen months
* The survey requires substantive information on national developments resulting in the exclusion of numerous countries from this year's survey.

much more at site: http://www.privacyinternational.org/article.shtml?cmd%5B347%5D=x-347-559597

[gateley]

1. Proud to be an American.

:sarcasm:

[Pooka Fey]

2. K&R

[tom_paine]

3. What this means is that there is nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. As I predicted in 2001

the rise of Evil BushPutinist Totalitarianism within the former Republic of America would spread throughout the world and cause the Free Nations of the world to edge closer to totalitarian evil.

I predicted, and it has come to pass, that the shadow of totalitarianism, particularly in it's new BushPutinist form, would o'erspread the world and embolden bad people and totalitarian everywhere to seize their nations as the Bushies have America.

And it is happening. Quite clearly, and all laid out in a nice, colorful map, it is happening.

Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. Might as well stand and be true here in the country of our birth.

[The2ndWheel]

6. It would be nice if it were that easy

It's a process thousands of years in the making. Bush and their whole clique are doing their part, no question about it. However, it didn't start with them, and it won't end with them.

[tom_paine]

8. I never said it would be easy, and Bushies have always been with us.

Sometimes they have called themselves Nazis, sometimes Communists, sometimes the Praetorian Guard or the Feudal Aristocracy.

Now, for the first time since DubyaDubyaTwo, the shadow of totalitarianism threatens to engulf the entire world.

The reason the Founding Fathers, for all their faults and flaws, sat down and thought up this Constitution and Bill of Rights was to secure us from the threat that never dies, the threat that scourged the Medeval Europe the Founding Fathers had so fresh in their recent historical memories.

The idea that we can ever get rid of the High Social Dominators is absurd. They are a part of humankind as are the rest of us.

It is not easy, not even close. It is a neverending battle of humanity against the Bushies who would put us in their harness like animals. It is creating systems of governance that will prevent them from reaching out and gathering their Stormtroopers of High Right Wing Authoritarian Followers to subvert and destroy freedom, liberty, and human decency like locusts in a field.

I apologize if I made it sound like it was easy. Far from it, at this place in time, it is closer to a hopeless battle against overwhelming odds.

Like the Colonials when they declared indepenence in 1776. Long odds. Not impossible.

[snot]

4. K&R'd. nt

[Joanne98]

5. The police states are in black!

[cutlassmama]

7. What part of the world is that little green part?

Sorry, I am old and cannot see well.

[ElsewheresDaughter]

10. Greece

[windoe]

9. May all their computers collectively crash

due to data overload, and may they drown in paperwork. Funny the one thing I remember from reading The Puzzle Palace, James Bamford, 1983 about the NSA at the time (miles of underground computers, ect....) was that they had a huge machine hooked up to conveyer belts picking up paper from all over the complex to be burned, and the thing kept getting clogged. They had to give top secret clearance to the people unclogging the works because they might see some sensitive material....I had to laugh. Imagine the sheer volume of data that must be slogged through compared to the actual useful information gleaned.
I am sure things have evolved beyond recognition to those days, but somehow I can't get past the fact that all of this information must eventually reach human beings that have to sift through it all. What total drudgery.