There’s been a lot of commentary over the USSA’s fall into blackness in the 2007 International Privacy Ranking, and rightly so. But when I look at their map, I see something far worse.
Here are the map for 2007’s rankings and its legend:
Pretty grim picture, eh? Even at this size, it’s hard to tell which countries scored best. Going back to the report, the highest scoring country is Greece. In fact, it’s the only country among those surveyed—and there are a large number of countries not included—that reached the “adequate safeguards” level. And that’s the lowest of the good levels!
I haven’t yet read the entire report, but skimming the summary of key points, two stick out ominously:
- The 2007 rankings show an increasing trend amongst governments to archive data on the geographic, communications and financial records of all their citizens and residents. This trend leads to the conclusion that all citizens, regardless of legal status, are under suspicion.
- The privacy trends have been fueled by the emergence of a profitable surveillance industry dominated by global IT companies and the creation of numerous international treaties that frequently operate outside judicial or democratic processes.
Because there are many individuals worldwide who still value privacy, I’m reluctant to conclude it is entirely dead, but looking at these data, there appears to be nowhere a privacy-minded person can go and be reasonably assured he or she won’t be surveilled, fingerprinted, or tracked in some way. Very sad.
We're going to Greece . . .
In a falsetto voice "And swim the English Channel" ... Oops, sorry, slipped into "Nick Danger mode" there for a second or two.
Well, maybe I won't be going to Greece . . . Although many of the countries surrounding Greece also have non-black colorings, though gray probably doesn't mean anything other than "no rating." I doubt many Greeks would welcome an older American expatriate. I suppose I could be wrong.
I think it might get "blackest before the dawn" in the USSA. Plus, it didn't take that long (relatively speaking) for Germany to "get better" after its sink into the swamp of Fascism. Hard to know when to say that clock started ticking here, although the 2000 election might be a tempting milestone to map to 1932's German election.
Events happen faster in today's world due to the speed of communication. Of course, I might merely have too much optimism, but that really hasn't been my general reputation. Canada's (better rating, at least at present and) closeness to the upper tier of states in the USSA argues in favor of those states. Brrrrr....
I don't have much hope that any significant lasting positive change will come from the political system (it didn't in Germany either), but events can happen very fast now and in directions that "talking heads" do not predict. Who was buzzing about Soviet collapse in 1985?