WRITTEN ON January 17th, 2008 BY William Heath AND STORED IN Foundation of Trust, What do we want?

Here’s Privacy International‘s world map of respect for the human right to privacy, from blue (consistently upheld) to black (endemic surveillance state). Nothing to cheer those of us in UK or US&A, but our spammers from Romania should be pleased.

The workaholic little NGO slipped this and a full report out on 28 Dec; I missed it at the time. In a just society they will be awarded knighthoods, gongs, and public pensions followed by the mother of all booze-ups.

For the parochial among us, the UK summary is below…

UNITED KINGDOM

* World leading surveillance schemes
* Lack of accountability and data breach disclosure law
* Commissioner has few powers
* Interception of communications is authorised by politician, evidence not used in court, and oversight is by commissioner who reports only once a year upon reviewing a subset of applications
* Hundreds of thousands of requests from government agencies to telecommunications providers for traffic data
* Data retention scheme took a significant step forward with the quiet changes based on EU law
* Plans are emerging regarding surveillance of communications networks for the protection of copyrighted content
* Despite data breaches, ‘joined-up government’ initiatives continue
* Identity scheme still planned to be the most invasive in the world, highly centralised and biometrics-driven; plan to issue all foreigners with cards in 2008 are continuing
* E-borders plans include increased data collection on travellers

England & Wales

* Inherited constitutional and statutory protections from UK Government and many of the policies
* National policies are not judged, e.g. Communications surveillance, border and trans-border issues
* Councils continue to spread surveillance policies, including RFID, CCTV, ID and data sharing, road user tracking
* Few democratic safeguards at local government level, even though local government may be more accountable to electorate because of smaller numbers, decisions do not appear to be informed by research, prototyping

Scotland

* Inherited constitutional and statutory protections from UK Government and only some of the policies
* National policies are not judged, e.g. Communications surveillance, border and trans-border issues
* Stronger protections on civil liberties
* DNA database is not as open to abuse as policy in England and Wales
* Identity policy is showing possibility of avoiding mistakes of UK Government
* Scottish government appears more responsive and open to informed debate than local governments in England

Gus, Simon: you’re legends. This is all far from ideal. Wibbi we had the UK at the top of this table within 10 years.