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You Are Being Watched
What better way to start the year than news that both Britain and the USA have been named endemic surveillance societies by rights watchdog Privacy International.
Britain came bottom of Privacy International's list of EU nations. Greece came top, thanks to constitutional right to data protection and right to privacy and its removal of CCTV cameras which were set up to protect against terrorist attacks during the Athens Olympics.
Romania, Hungary and Slovenia also scored well.
Britain, however, has a miserable record. Privacy International scores on Constitutional and Statutory protections, privacy enforcement, ID cards and biometrics, data sharing, visual surveillance, communications interception and retention, govt access to data, workplace monitoring and other issues: The UK comes consistently at the bottom, or near the bottom of the pile.
Like the US, there are clearly terrorist issues facing Britain which pose a lesser threat for nations which receive higher scores: But the widespread use of these measures for offences unrelated to terrorism make some commentators nervous about the future direction of the British state.
"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", the survey's compilers write,
"This study (measures) 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)".
France came just above Britain in the survey. You can read more details on Privacy International's website.
