(Click on the thumbnail to see the whole world!)
Privacy International performs an annual survey to rank 36 countries - including 25 members of EU states, grading them for their ability to protect the privacy of their citizens.
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland were abysmally low down the list.
Points were awarded across a range of 13 national practices, such as statutory and constitutional protections, the use of ID cards and CCTV cameras and democratic safeguards.
Five points denoted no invasive policies and one point exstensive surveillance.The highest scores were achieved by Germany and Canada.
Britain was in the bottom five in the “black” category of countries demonstrating ‘endemic surveillance’.Despite having no comprehensive national privacy law, The United States scored higher than the UK. Thailand and the Phillippines also scored higher than the UK.
Argentina scored higher than 20 of the 25 EU countries.
I wonder sometimes about the complacency of the people who inhabit this country, and how we have allowed such repressive, meddlesome, busy-body, control freak politicians to intrude into so many facets of our lives.
The current nanny state government are planning still more invasions of our privacy, and at vast expense, too. Click here for the Kabel Report on Identity Management as reported in The Register.
Every time I read about more spending on (usually disastrous) government IT projects, £5.2 billion in this case on`identity measures´, I’m reminded of the old saying that “Branding is always in the interest of the farmer, never the cow”.
What is so galling is that we cows end up paying for our own branding.
