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Mapping state intrusiveness Via Andrew Sullivan’s blog, I came across this rather nifty map showing how different countries around the world vary in their treatment of privacy. Both Britain and America get a black. Some parts of the world are a sort of grey, like Africa (I guess the thugs that run parts of that continent have other things to worry about besides snooping on everyone). It looks as if Germany is less intrusive than France, and less than Britain. Canada is less intrusive than the USA, etc. The link takes you to the methodology that Privacy International, a civil lberties group, uses to calculate its rankings.
Here’s hoping that British lovers of liberty have rather more reason to feel less ashamed of what has happened in this nation in 12 months’ time.
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Canada that wants to ban Mark Steyn’s book and punish him for writing it ?
Is that some joke ?
And Europe with it’s long time ID cards is less intrusive than the US and UK ? Another joke ?
Nice to see that they ranked Scotland separately – and that we come higher (OK, only little higher) than England.
There are still some advantages in our legal system.
Much as I dislike the surveilance society that does exist in the UK (and yes, it is much worse than Germany), I’d give the report more credance if the’s bothered to rank North Korea or Cuba….
I rather think that gray represents areas that were not surveyed – Israel seems to be one of them: I don’t think that we are much better than Europe – maybe a little.
Jacob: banning books does not have to do with privacy, but with free speech.
Also, interestingly Greece got the best rating – I’d like to hear more.
One needs to know what THEY mean by privacy. Do they strictly mean information about one kept in government records or in government and businesses? Do they mean how many public places have video cams? Do they mean court-approved phone taps, no phone taps at all, only phone taps on incoming calls from other countries? How well thought out is this survey? How objective?
If you wish to see an example of extreme suveillance, just saw the movie Lives of Other People. But there’s also the inevitable (ie. natural) increase in surveillance as a function of technology. As the riddle Why do dogs lick their ____? … so it is with this argument … Because they can. And any variations amongst similar-level nations would likely be from time lags in a gov’s getting cutting edge know-how, or also more complex variables such as population density, geographical arrangements, political/legal system hurdles. But I would contend that it’s only a matter of time before a catch-up occurs between nations of similar advancement.
Er, no…what’s happened (IS happening) has *still* happened, *still* needs changing. Feeling less ashamed about it because, hey, it happens everywhere, leads to the complacency that engenders even more infringements on personal liberty, no?
Fun though it is to see our snooping-obsessed government given a kicking, I have to agree with Fred. It’s hard to argue with its findings when we don’t know everything about the methodology used, but something about this survey looks fishy.
For one thing, Britain’s score on ID cards and biometrics appears to be based on future plans rather than current reality. However set in stone you believe those plans to be, the fact remains that we are not yet all on a central database, and we are not yet required to carry biometric ID cards with us at all times. Belgium, according to this report, is the “Leading country for smart ID cards, issued from age 6, that may contain such data as medical files, for use in public and private sectors”. Britain isn’t, yet. In Bulgaria, “Identity cards are required to access cybercafés, and internet service providers have to register the ID numbers of users”. They aren’t here, yet. Cyprus too has “Plans for e-ID smart cards”, yet scores 2 to the UK’s 1.
I’m not dismissing the gravity of the situation. Things are bad, and they’re getting worse. But I find it hard to take seriously a survey that marks Thailand, where “Wiretapping is prevalent”, “Id cards are now smartcards, and will be mandatory from birth”, “Politicians and human rights activists accused a political party of wiretapping political opponents and journalists” and “ID is required to buy SIM cards”, or Taiwan, where there is “Widespread illegal wiretapping by government” and “Fingerprints are submitted for paper-based national ID card”, marginally higher than the UK. There is certainly a real danger that Britain will be as bad as those countries before long, and this survey is useful in highlighting that, but exaggeration never helps your case.
The headline said: “Mapping state intrusiveness”.
It matters more what the state actually does with the records it keeps: does it restrict movements, free associacion, free speech, does it harass regime opponents ?
Many countries do all these, though they lack sophisticated and exact records, and would rank high on this review.
I’m sorry, I’m simply not buying the assessement of the US as an ‘endemic surveillance society’. This simply does not match my own experiences.
Looking at some of the ‘grades’ that form this assessment, I am hard-pressed to even recognize what this outfit might be driving at. The US gets a ‘1’ – the worst grade – in the category of ‘identity cards and biometrics’? For what? These is no US identity card, and the proxies for such are not biometric. What does this mean?
And a ‘1’ for ‘communication interception? Sez who?
And another ‘1’ for ‘visual surveillance’? It is to laugh. If there ever was a place where you can be completely and utterly free of surveillance cameras, it is the US – thousands and thousands of square miles of it.
I suspect a fix – and even more so when we see that so many totalitarian societies are convenienently missing from the map.
llater,
llamas
Canada also regulates foreign content in publications, screens written material entering the country and has human rights tribunals that have dramatically limited the private speech of individuals, as Steyn is finding out.
So call me skeptical.
Israel is in fact the only country in the Middle East to be included in this report coming out alongside most of Europe and Australia. In fact I think that almost as interesting as the relative standings of the countries included in the report is the list of countries not included. I wonder how Syria, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Cuba, Zimbabwe, North Korea etc. etc. would fare.
I also wonder if the survey considered the exclusionary rule in the US legal system, which I believe does not exist in most of the other nations that were ranked in the survey.
Not very well to put it mildly but then that notion is not very controversial amongst the non-moonbat classes.
The good thing about this sort of survey is it reminds people in the ‘Free World’ that all is not well and just how tenuous the liberties we thankfully still have and take for granted are.
“endemic surveillance”?
Not sure what that means. Outside airports, banks, some department stores and Las Vegas casinos (most of which are private property anyway), I don’t see many surveillance cameras Over Here. Even traffic cameras are “triggered”.
Our phones are not tapped except without court order or in extremis (terrorist orgs and the mafia excepted).
Does the state (note: small s) keep tabs on you? Only to the point where you have to have a current address on your various licenses (carry permit, driver’s license etc).
As for the FedGov… don’t make me laugh.
This study reeks of the usual anti-U.S. agitprop. We’re never ranked anywhere near the top in surveys which purport to examine financial freedom, surveillance, personal safety, political freedom etc.
Yet given the choice, half the world’s population would rather live here than in, say, Greece.
Shome mishtake, surely?
So I went to the site and read their stuff on the US. It was just an laundry list of cases and legislation, little or no discussion of the implications or context, no definition of what privacy should encompass, “Patriot Act” in scare quotes, 9/11 scattered about like pepper on a steak. In other words, just another lefty political site. Is anyone surprised that the US is in black? As is Russia –moral equivalence, anyone. Just the sort of crap a nutcase like Sullivan would showcase.
Privacy is worthy of serious discussion, but comparing it across countries is going to be tricky for even the most serious scholars, let alone political hacks. Sorry, Jonathan, but the map is worthless. I don’t know why you bothered.
Financial surveillance in the USA is completely pervasive. To all intents the US banking system and credit card companies are an adjunct of the various US law enforcement and taxation agencies.
And our biggest problem is that like in England, we are so fucking convinced we are better off that the rest of the world, no one will do jackshit to stop every telephone call and transaction you make being monitored “because its not like we are in Saudi Arabia, dude”.
I agree with Kim. This seems to be more measuring of the “EU definition of privacy”, not the word as we know it in spoken English. When they state that the US has “No right to privacy in constitution, though search and seizure protections exist in 4th Amendment”, as if the 4th was anything but a privacy clause, and then ignore the fifth and ninth amendments even when your methodology is supposed to include protection “within the shadows of other rights”, it makes it difficult for me to find them credible.
OK, I now see Israel is colored (Is it red? Too lazy to look for my glasses). Anyway, just today a spokesmen for the MOI has enthusiastically announced the planned introduction of a new biometric passport in a year’s time. It is all you Brits’ fault: our idiots have a habit of aping your idiots, ever since the end of the Mandate.
Yet strangely that doesn’t seem to apply in reality to the single most powerful arm of the US government. The IRS. And are you really going to claim the 4th Amendment isn’t a dead letter when RICO and all sorts of tax lien and asset forfeiture laws/regulations are on the books? Jesus. Americans: we’re the most self deluded nation on the fucking planet.
What a serious waste of time. I live in Canada where my auto insurance and health insurance are run by the state. So they have my health insurance records and my insurance records on hand… something that when I lived in the USA the government did not have.
-jc
Good point, Phelps. If the Fifth isn’t about privacy, then I don’t know what is. And you’re probably right about “the EU definition” when one of their “leadership” criteria is signing up to international conventions. To hell with implementing them…
Sure, just like the US ‘implementing’ the 4th Amendment with forfeiture-before-conviction and RICO, right? Thank God for our Bill of Rights!
Anyone else notice that (at least as far as I could see by hunting around their map) there are no countries listed that are even remotely private? Maybe Vanuatu was top ranked but too small to see… I really have to ask what value there is at all this chart, when it appears you either have to live in Greece or on the moon if you want privacy. Not that I’d mind the later, but its not very helpful of a suggestion.
Good point about national health care. If we are to measure state intrusiveness, surely the fact that Canadians are prevented from seeking treatment outside of government channels pretty well takes the cake. Forcing people to wait over a year for serious surgery, with no private options except for that across the border, is about as intrusive as it gets.
I agree with llamas. In addition I would point out that while the gov’t can use surveilance on people who are in public, private citizens can do the same to the gov’t. They watch us, sure, we watch them, and there are a hell of a lot more cameras and video recorders in private hands.
I know for a fact that, while I record every traffic stop or arrest that I make and most of the interviews and interrogations, I’ve been taped too. No law in my state against a driver running a concealed tape recorder when a cop pulls him over. And everything that my department does (other than personnel records) eventually becomes public record anyway.
I think what John Brown is missing is that fifty states have fifty different ways of doing stuff. I don’t know what forfeiture laws are like in the other 49. I do know that in Colorado they’re substantially more involved than “We want it.”
Actually, the existence of our Federal system doesn’t show up in the original article either, even though it’s one hell of a complicating factor in these discussions. (Public CCTV? Where? Chicago doesn’t count.)
Question: how much weight was given to judicial oversight? And was there any accounting for the degree to which police and courts were independent or interdependent?
And our biggest problem is that like in England, we are so fucking convinced we are better off that the rest of the world, no one will do jackshit to stop every telephone call and transaction you make being monitored “because its not like we are in Saudi Arabia, dude”.
Hear, hear. The point about the map is it represents the actuality of surveillance, not what’s done with it. We may be as much watched in Britain as China, but we have a reasonably fair judicial system still, and very few political prisoners. But on this score Britons tend to be as complacent as they are about the NHS – that “envy of the world”, copied… nowhere at all. (I’m inclined to think that, if you are a US citizen, the US isn’t nearly as bad as Britain, but that may just be a grass-is-greener feeling.)
The gaps in the map represent places where PI doesn’t have a branch or affiliate, as far as I know.
I think they do tend to be just a bit too hung up on the conventions of “data protection”. But then, I’m a well-known DP-skeptic, being unwilling to hand over my protection against one bureaucrat (or 100), to another bureaucrat.
You’re probably right. Our situation is not bad, comparatively speaking.
On the other hand, I feel the same about the US situation that you feel about the UK: there’s no excuse for even a minor uncorrected breach. I don’t have a problem with all the wiretaps and searches and sneak-and-peeks in the world, WITH A WARRANT ISSUED ON PROBABLE CAUSE, AND PROPER JUDICIAL OVERSIGHT.[1]
I don’t give a rat’s rectum about compulsory ID in Belgium or firearms licensing in Australia or government keeping medical records in Canada: it’s fucked up but that’s no excuse for the USA getting it wrong too. We’re supposed to be better than that.
[1] Which we generally have at the state level, and which the Federals usually had up until the current administration, and usually still do as long as nobody mentions the eeevil skeeery terrorists who will destroy our freedoms if we don’t consent to being molested at the airport.
Some points:
1) my work is actually in the heart of the US banking and credit-card system, and the suggestion that these systems are any sort of an ‘adjunct’ to the government is pure fantasy. Sure, there are some reporting provisions – but (having been a LEO as well), try going to AnyBank USA and asking for John Q. Public’s banking or credit-card history without a warrant.
I don’t mind that my bank has to report interest income to the IRS. You’re supposed to pay taxes on that – remember? Suggesting that this amounts to Uncle Sam snooping around in your bank account is just nonsense.
2) Bear in mind that this map purports to show the extent of ‘surveillance’. No question but that the US has some laws and practices that are corrosive of the liberties of the individual – asset forfeiture has been mentioned, as well as some of the wilder ‘anti-terrorist’ provisions – but these do not necessarily reflect ‘surveillance’.
llater,
llamas
Guy,
I tended to think we were to. But there may be a least one notable exception. I have been lead to believe that unlike the US, in the UK you are free from having government inspectors force entrance to your home and place a value on everything that they have decided to charge you rent (aka property tax) on. If you do not permit them to inspect your home, they are perfectly free to use their imagination and charge you for what they imagine is in your house. Your only recourse is to let them search for it.
Llamas,
I detect a pattern here. In the US, we tax something and then the government is free to search until they find it. (Sunfish, is that still how they ‘regulate’ marijuana? By requiring a tax stamp? Or did they finally stop that fiction?)
Midwesterner:
1) I’m not aware of anywhere in the US where property tax assessors – the ‘government inspectors’ to whom you refer – have the right to force entry in order to do their assessments. On the contrary, I’m aware of many situations where a homeowner has denied the assessors entry to their premises. You can even buy pre-printed signs to this effect, to place assessors on notice that they have no implied right of access to your premises – to then enter makes them criminal trespassers.
Property taxes are voted in – or out – by the voters. Some places have them – some don’t. Every frickin’ election we have, it seems like we’re being asked to approve the renewal of a half-a-hundred millages for every p*ss-ant thing in the township/county budget. You want property taxes ad valorem? That’s how it’s done. The assessment can be made in various ways, but none of them involve force.
An assessment made based on ‘imagination’ is so easily challenged – comparable-value data is the bread-and-butter of the real-estate business, after all – that no assessor in his/her right mind would resort to it. These sorts of stories are the hallmark of a certain subset of the tax-resistance/property-rights/justice-pro-se movement, but have little basis in reality.
2) ‘I detect a pattern here. In the US, we tax something and then the government is free to search until they find it.’
No, you have it exactly backwards. In the US, we tax something – let us say that it is income. The government is not ‘free to search until they find it’. It is reported to them, by us the taxpayer, and/or by the entity that paid it to us. And the tax is assessed, based on the amount reported – after the fact. If the Gummint believes that you are hiding income, they are not ‘free to search until they find it’ – they must use due process to do so, including the usual legal paraphernalia of warrants and orders and so forth. If the IRS walks into your bank and says “We want to see Midwesterner’s bank records, we thing he’s hiding income’, then the bank will say ‘come back when you have a warrant’ – just as it will with any other law-enforcement agency.
llater,
llamas
I’ve heard that’s how Federal law works, but I don’t know. I don’t deal with it very much.
Most if not all states, the legislature simply passes a law that “no person shall knowingly possess marijuana, marijuana concentrate, or the seeds, leaves, or whatever.”
Last year, we had a ballot question about whether to legalize adult possession of under one ounce (without legalizing cultivation or distribution) but it failed. Among other things, DEA made a statement that they’d have to do too much enforcement of federal laws that would keep them from their vitally-important role in the War on Terror. (Do we have a ‘roll-eyes’ smiley?)
Llamas,
I stated exactly what happens if you deny ttax assessors access. If you ‘choose’ to not allow them to inspect your property, they are instructed (not just permitted, instructed) to imagine what could be on your property and then to tax you on their imagination. Most law abiding citizens would say that meets the definition of extortion, which last I checked is illegal unless you are the government.
If you don’t call that ‘force’, you need a reality check.
And assessments based on imagination are not easily challenged. In fact, the only way to defeat them is to permit an inspection. Which kinda brings us back to the forcible inspections part.
I see. And there is no force compelling us to ‘report’ it?
Llamas. Usually you are quite sensible. But sometimes you are friggin nuts.
May I remind you of the topic of the thread. It is not about whether the state is engaged in illegal intrusiveness. It is about whether the state is engaged in legal intrusiveness. That fact that you rightly point out that there is force of law (and with it criminal convictions for non-compliance) for myriad ‘the government has a right to know’ cases proves, not disproves the point of the original article.
There is no NO asset and income information that the government is not ‘entitled’ to know about you. Getting it by force of law (democracy!) instead of extralegal spies does not make it any less intrusive. In fact, it makes it more intrusive.
Oh, dear. Nuts again. Oh, well. . . .
Midwesterner, your original post said:
‘ . . . .government inspectors force entrance to your home and place a value on everything that they have decided to charge you rent (aka property tax) on. If you do not permit them to inspect your home, they are perfectly free to use their imagination and charge you for what they imagine is in your house.’
Now, the reality –
1) They can’t force entry to your house or your premises, and must leave if told to do so. This is pretty-universally true, in every state.
2) They didn’t decide what to charge you property taxes on. Property taxes are ad-valorem – on value, not on nature.
3) They are not permitted to use ‘their imagination’. Read the rules and you’ll see that assessments that are made without a physical inspection must be in some form of a ‘reasonable estimate’. Their task is to assign a value to your property, and their assessment must be reasonable and supportable by comparable values. In reality, that means how many bedrooms, how many bathrooms, how many acres and how does that stack up with the neighborhood. Imagination doesn’t come into it.
Now, back in the world of reality – it’s obvious that you don’t like ad-valorem property taxes. That’s fine. But, given that they are generally the rule – how else would you apply them, in practice? You don’t want to let the assessors in, because you don’t want them to raise your assessed value. But they have to assign an assessed value, and you won’t let them see what they need to see to be accurate. So when they make an estimate, and you don’t like it – how do you propose that the conflict be resolved?
Your complaint is typical of what bothers me about a lot of the ‘libertarians’ here, which is to say ‘libertarian-when-it-suits-us’. It’s libertarianism, but on the cafeteria plan. The voters decided that their communities would be financed by ad-valorem property taxes, but then when the inspector comes to assess the values on which those taxes will be levied, everyone goes all Fourth Amendment and starts yelling about how the JBTs are forcing their way across the sacred threshold.
The second part of your post – the part where I turned nuts – I’m sorry, I just don’t follow you at all. It appears – at least, to a nut like me – that you are suggesting that any reporting of anything to do with the government that is not entirely voluntary and unenforceable amounts to an intolerable intrusion. I’d be fascinated to hear your alternative approach to eg tax collection.
No – I take it back. I would not be fascinated at all. Because that’s the second time in as many weeks that I’ve been called ‘nuts’ here. This leads me to the conclusion that I’m out of step with the brand of politics being offered here, and I’m wasting my time. No problem is more-easily solved than that.
llamas
But only sometimes. And anybody who keeps humpless camels for pets must really be a good person at heart.
re 1): Taking my money (taxes on non-existent property) if I don’t let them inspect constitutes ‘force’ in my book if not your’s.
2): I’m not sure I get the point you are making here but I’ll use it to make a point of my own. They are taxing what they think the property is worth in the use they decide it should be valued at. For example, you own an empty lot where you like to grow a garden, they will value it for tax purposes not according to the garden use, but according to what you would get if instead you chose to sell it. If that tax rate is too high for you to continue to have a garden there, tough fertilizer, the collective knows best. Sell it. (and then jump through financial hoops trying not to give most of the money from the sale to the government as well) But that is all OT to this thread.
3): Yeah. Right. I have been through any number of these inspections and in actually reality, you have to prove what they say is there is not there. It doesn’t matter how preposterous their claim is. If they decide in their imagination that you have a dishwasher and a garbage disposal and even a hot tub, then you do. Unless you can prove otherwise. I’m not talking about them imagining a value, I’m talking about them imagining actual non-existent things that they can charge you tax on.
You are assuming a pecuniary motive here. No. I address that differently and in different threads. I am upset that a total stranger can compel me to let him search my house, going into my cellar, attic looking under sinks, checking closets, and if I don’t let them (they travel in packs now days) they in effect fine me with a high assessment. This thread is about privacy.
Finding your rhythm?
Seriously, the thread is not about “is there a better way”, it is about government intrusiveness. And I will resist the urge to discuss better ways in this thread.
You said
No. I am saying that force is force. I believe force is necessary sometimes to maintain a civil society. But we must never delude ourselves into thinking it is voluntary. No, it is not. Justifiable force is justifiable force. We can and have debated what constitutes ‘justifiable’. But to pretend that we can pass or enforce laws and the intrusions that come with those laws are voluntary is a sure way to get into a lot of trouble.
We must always call force and compulsion by their real names. The place debate should be occurring is on whether it is justified, not whether because it is unavoidable it is not really ‘force’.
All statism (by which I mean any form of philosophy which sees civil society as essentially subordinate to the state) is by definition a form of collectivism.
I have to agree with that – Perry – especially given that it’s axiomatic (a state being any group greater than one individual, thus forming some type of social (ie. collective) contract)
Llamas:
By ‘proxies,’ do you mean driver’s licenses and the state ID cards from state motor vehicles departments?
If so, I don’t know what definition we should use for ‘biometric.’ However, Colorado (and I believe most other states as well) collect fingerprints as part of the issuance process. Specifically, an electronic scan of the right index.
As for electronic surveillance: USA PATRIOT purportedly[1] grants the FBI the authority to demand activity histories from internet service providers[2] without an actual warrant or subpoena from an actual court. I believe that they may also be thinking of the President’s claim that, as CINC, he gets to listen to international phone calls involving US citizens (physically located in the US) without court authorization.
There’s a possible additional intrusion, depending on whether you believe the internet folklore about Echelon.
And to think, ten years ago FISA was considered an outrageous intrusion and now we call it the saving grace.
[1] This provision is being challenged, I believe in one of the NY Federal district courts, on the obvious 4th Amendment grounds. Like I said elsewhere: I got no problem with wiretapping people, conducting non-exigency searches, etc. I have a huge problem with removing oversight by an independent judiciary.
[2] Said history being virtually impossible to distinguish from the actual content of such activity enough to have the agents see the one but not the other. Even if they delete it, they’ve seen it.