https://secure.cryptohippie.com/pubs/EPS-2008.pdf
Cryptohippie.com
Most of us are aware that our governments monitor nearly every form
of electronic communication. We are also aware of private companies
doing the same. This strikes most of us as slightly troubling, but
very few of us say or do much about it. There are two primary
reasons for this:
1. We really don’t see how it is going to hurt us. Mass
surveillance is certainly a new, odd, and perhaps an ominous thing,
but we just don’t see a complete picture or a smoking gun.
2. We are constantly surrounded with messages that say, “Only crazy
people complain about the government.”
However, the biggest obstacle to our understanding is this:
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horribly outdated.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.
An electronic police state is characterized by this:
The two crucial facts about the information gathered under an
electronic
police state are these:
1. It is criminal evidence, ready for use in a trial.
2. It is gathered universally and silently, and only later
organized for
use in prosecutions.
In an Electronic Police State,
every surveillance camera recording, every email you send, every
Internet site you surf, every post you make, every check you write,
every credit card swipe, every cell phone ping… are all criminal
evidence, and they are held in searchable databases, for a long,
long time. Whoever holds this evidence can make you look very, very
bad whenever they care enough to do so. You can be prosecuted
whenever they feel like it – the evidence is already in their
database.
Perhaps you trust that your
ruler will only use his evidence archives to hurt bad people. Will
you also trust his successor? Do you also trust all of his
subordinates, every government worker and every
policeman?
And, if some leader behaves
badly, will you really stand up to oppose him or her? Would you
still do it if he had all the emails you sent when you were
depressed? Or if she has records of every porn site you’ve ever
surfed? Or if he knows every phone call you’ve ever made? Or if she
knows everyone you’ve ever sent money to? Such a person would have
all of this and more – in the form of court-ready evidence –
sitting in a database, waiting to be organized at the touch of a
button.
This system hasn’t yet reached its full shape, but all of the
basics are in place and it is not far from complete in some places.
It is too late to prevent this – it is here. Our purpose in
producing this report is to let people know that their liberty is
in jeopardy and to help them understand how it is being
undermined.
OUR RANKINGS
Firstly, we are not measuring
government censorship of Internet traffic or police abuses, as
legitimate as these issues may be. And, we are not
including evidence gathering by traditional, honest police work in
any of the categories below. (That is, searches pursuant to
honestly obtained warrants – issued by an independent judge, and
only after the careful examination of evidence.)
THIS YEAR’S RESULTS
Our rankings for the year of 2008 show China and North Korea
occupying the top spots as the most complete Electronic Police
States in the world, followed by Belarus and Russia. Next, however,
we leave communist and recently-communist states, with the UK
(England/Wales), the United States and Singapore
following closely on their heels.
Here are the 52 states and their rankings:
1. China
2. North Korea
3. Belarus
4. Russia
5. United Kingdom: England & Wales
6. United States of America
7.
Singapore
8. Israel
9. France
10.Germany
11.Malaysia
12.Ireland
13.United Kingdom: Scotland
14.Netherlands
15.South Korea
16.Ukraine
17.Belgium
18.Australia
19.Japan
20.New Zealand
21.Austria
22.Norway
23.India
24.Italy
25.Taiwan
26.Denmark
27.Hungary
28.Greece
29.Canada
30.Switzerland
31.Slovenia
32.Poland
33.Finland
34.Sweden
35.Latvia
36.Lithuania
37.Cyprus
38.Malta
39.Estonia
40.Czech Republic
41.Iceland
42.South Africa
43.Spain
44.Portugal
45.Luxembourg
46.Argentina
47.Romania
48.Thailand
49.Bulgaria
50.Brazil
51.Mexico
52.Philippines
THE 2009 REPORT
We will issue next year’s report toward the end of Q1. We welcome
input from any and all reliable sources. (The information required
to prepare such a report is not easy to obtain, and we’ll take
whatever help we can get.)
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