Surveillance society

I have blogged often about the way the UK is being turned into a surveillance society (sorry about the cliche, I normally avoid them like the plague) and Devils Kitchen has a nice article on this today, reporting on the 2007 Privacy International Report.


It is true that it is shameful that the UK comes into the worst category, that of "Endemic surveillance societies". However what is also interesting, and not commented upon, is that only 70 countries are reported upon. Take a look at what countries are not included in the survey and can you imagine what their status would be?

No countries in Africa other than South Africa and no countries in the Middle East other than Israel are reported upon - both of these countries fall into the "Systematic failure to uphold safeguards" category (two better than the UK). I wonder how Zimbabwe or Sudan or Nigeria would fare in Africa and how Syria or Saudi Arabia or Egypt would fare in the Middle East. Only India appears in the Indian sub-continent, I wonder how Pakistan or Bangladesh would fare. Much of the countries in the far east are included but I wonder how Indonesia would fare. Only Argentina and Brazil are included in South America. No countries in Central America and the Caribbean are included, I wonder how Cuba would fare...

So by all means berate the UL for its appalling record, in a category along with the US, Thailand, Taiwan, Singapore, Russia, China and Malaysia but do also wonder who would be in our group as well if more countries were graded.

Interestingly Greece comes out as the best ranked country, the only one to make the category "Adequate safeguards against abuse".

The UK is criticised for:

World leading surveillance schemes

Lack of accountability and data breach disclosure law

Commissioner has few powers

Interception of communications is authorised by politician, evidence not used in court, and oversight is by commissioner who reports only once a year upon reviewing a subset of applications

Hundreds of thousands of requests from government agencies to telecommunications providers for traffic data

Data retention scheme took a significant step forward with the quiet changes based on EU law

Plans are emerging regarding surveillance of communications networks for the protection of copyrighted content

Despite data breaches, 'joined-up government' initiatives continue

Identity scheme still planned to be the most invasive in the world, highly centralised and biometrics-driven; plan to issue all foreigners with cards in 2008 are continuing

E-borders plans include increased data collection on travellers


England & Wales alone for:

Inherited constitutional and statutory protections from UK Government and many of the policies

National policies are not judged, e.g. Communications surveillance, border and trans-border issues

Councils continue to spread surveillance policies, including RFID, CCTV, ID and data sharing, road user tracking

Few democratic safeguards at local government level, even though local government may be more accountable to electorate because of smaller numbers, decisions do not appear to be informed by research, prototyping


Scotland alone for:

Inherited constitutional and statutory protections from UK Government and only some of the policies

National policies are not judged, e.g. Communications surveillance, border and trans-border issues

Stronger protections on civil liberties

DNA database is not as open to abuse as policy in England and Wales

Identity policy is showing possibility of avoiding mistakes of UK Government

Scottish government appears more responsive and open to informed debate than local governments in England



I see that the EU is included this year, I wonder when all the EU countries appear under the heading of EU with just their small remaining variances from the EU norm listed?


Here are some extracts from the "Summary of key findings"

The 2007 rankings indicate an overall worsening of privacy protection across the world, reflecting an increase in surveillance and a declining performance of privacy safeguards.

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.

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.

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.


All very interesting but as I say the absence of the countries not ranked is almost as intriguing.


Thanks to Devils Kitchen for reporting on the article on Samizdata that referred to the article on Andrew Sullivan that looked to the article on wired.com etc. etc. etc.