Britain leads world in police state survey
Gold medals for snooping, spying and surveilling
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A recent survey from internet security consultancy, Cryptohippie, suggests that the UK is setting the pace in at least one area - though being classified as the West’s most repressive regime when it comes to electronic surveillance might not be a title that this government is entirely happy to wear.
This result emerges from Cryptohippie’s recently published Electronic Police State 2008 (pdf). This is the first in what are intended to be a series of annual reports that will audit the "State use of electronic technologies to record, organize, search and distribute forensic evidence against its citizens".
The audit focusses on 17 factors, ranging from requirement to produce documents on demand, through to the extent to which states force ISP’s and phone companies to retain data, the blurring of boundaries between police and intelligence work and ultimately the breakdown of the principles of habeas corpus.
A simple five-point scoring system is used for each factor, with results totalled to produce an overall score. Some 52 major states are looked at, with final ranking apparently influenced by two quite different factors. On the one hand, states that are simply repressive are likely to score highly – and they do. The top four places in the survey are occupied by China, North Korea, Belarus and Russia.
However, electronic policing also requires some degree of technological sophistication – so it is not surprising to find the UK dropping in at no. 5 and the US at no. 6. France and Germany arrive a few places below that.
This result echoes warnings issued repeatedly by Lords and the Information Commissioner – most recently in an official report last month – that Britain is slowly sleepwalking toward becoming a surveillance society. Equally predictable was the government response that it takes all such criticisms seriously and needs to strike a balance.
However, as both Cryptohippie and other government critics have argued, the government response is disingenuous, relying on a rejection of straw men, rather than engaging with genuine fears.
The report expands on its subject thus: "The usual image of a "police state" includes secret police dragging people out of their homes at night, with scenes out of Nazi Germany or Stalin’s USSR. The problem with these images is that they are horribly outdated. That’s how things worked during your grandfather’s war – that is not how things work now.
"An electronic police state is quiet, even unseen. All of its legal actions are supported by abundant evidence. It looks pristine." ®
COMMENTS
A Police State is for their gain not to help all of us ... as always. :(
@Eddie Edwards: “The only question “ your comments “raises is who the fuck” is Eddie Edwards “and why should I care what their obviously biased report says?” ... to use your own words against you. ;)
Joking aside, if you Eddie Edwards, bothered to follow the news of the relentless political power grabs over everyone in the UK and the resulting slide into a Police State run by them, then if anything this group isn't going far enough to highlight the full dangers of a government that seeks such total power over its people.
Its people like you Eddie who fail to see governments manipulate people all the time. Its simply part of the game of getting into power and holding on to power. Knowledge is power and so more knowledge is more power. People who seek power therefore seek more knowledge. There's also so many examples throughout history and around the world of how governments try and tried to create police states to manipulate and even silence opposition. They don't want our views, they want to be in power over us all. That's why they seek positions of political power and continue to seek power throughout their lives. Often they are very driven people to see power. If they are not driven, then others more driven will gain power over them. So the most extreme tend to fight to the top.
These kind of people would tell everyone anything to cover up their real goal of self interested Narcissistic greed and seeking ever more power over people for their own gain. Many of them show clear signs of Narcissistic Personality Disorder. They would tell people anything to avoid people seeing them for what they really are. But now since the expenses leak they have finally shown just what so many of them are really like. (Remember as well they tried for years to stop the expenses from leaking out ... that even shows their real two faced manipulative deceitful behaviour).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissistic_personality_disorder
But then judging from Eddie Edwards attitude to Big Brother and hostile phrasing in his post, I suspect he already knows all this and just considers it acceptable behaviour to create a Police State of control.
What's also interesting is how often NPD's do see control as the answer because they fear lack of control. Ultimately fear is behind their behaviour. So any attempt by me or anyone else to reason with NPD's usually fails as their kind don't want to see and hear about logic, because their behaviour is driven by deep personality insecurities. Logic and fairness has no interest to them. They want control.
... and yet these people think we should just trust them with gaining ever more power over everyone as they try to monitor everyone in the UK to create their Police State ... like hell ... these people need help not positions of ever more power over everyone. History has shown so many times just how arrogant this kind of person can be when they gain such extreme power that no one can dare speak out against them.
(Eddie if you can't be bothered to read history books, then just watch this DVD and see how police state power games are played).
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0346293/ (Hitler: The Rise of Evil)
Sounds like
>In Nazi Germany, it was simply the simple freedom of the German people to be German<
Sounds like the peoples front of Judea - splitters!
Entropy will be our saviour. Any system eventually falls apart. Nero fiddled whilst Rome burned. Disconnect. which gets you the longest jail sentence, being caught taking drugs, with a kid in the basement and bomb making facilities in the attic, or, robbing a bank?
It's ok, the nice men in white coats are here for my medication.
Not anon, cause fsck 'em if they can't take a joke.
"Sleepwalking into a surveillance society"
Why does everyone keep on saying that when it's quite clearly already arrived ?
And it will keep on getting worse.
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