Monday, 8 March 2010

 The Electronic Police State

2010 National Rankings 

The USA closes - only 2/100ths of a point behind Russia.

Americans have the same online freedom as Putin’s subjects.


When we produced our first Electronic Police State report, the top ten nations were of two types:

1.      Those that had the will to spy on every citizen, but lacked ability.

2.      Those who had the ability, but were restrained in will.

This is changing: The able have become willing and their traditional restraints have failed.

The United States, with the UK and France close behind, have now caught up with Russia and are gaining on China, North Korea and Belarus. The key developments driving this are the following:

  • The USA has negated their Constitution’s fourth amendment in the name of protection and in the name of “wars” against terror, drugs and cyber attacks. 

  • The UK is aggressively building the world of 1984 in the name of stopping “anti-social” activities. Their populace seems unable or unwilling to restrain the government.

  • France and the EU have given themselves over to central bureaucratic control.

DEFINITIONS

For those who are new to the Electronic Police State Report, we will re-state our definitions:

An electronic police state is characterized by this:

State use of electronic technologies to record, organize, search and distribute forensic evidence against its citizens.

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 (“preventively”) and only later organized for use in prosecutions.

In an Electronic Police State, every surveillance camera recording, every email sent, every Internet site surfed, every post made, every check written, every credit card swipe, every cell phone ping… are all criminal evidence, and all are held in searchable databases. The individual can be prosecuted whenever the government wishes.

Long-term, the Electronic Police State destroys free speech, the right to petition the government for redress of grievances, and other liberties. Worse, it does so in a way that is difficult to identify. (See our report, The Taking Of The Internet, linked below.)

METHODOLOGY

We moved to a more elaborate ranking system this year. The categories remained the same, but we have now weighted each one according to its importance. (The weighting factors are shown in parenthesis for each category itemized below.) Within each category we used a comparative method of assigning value.

We have not taken into account how many people, or what percentage of people, are affected by each characteristic. So, even though very few people in North Korea have Internet access, those who do are subjected to very serious surveillance. The low number of users has no effect on the national ranking.

In addition, it is significant to note that we are not measuring government censorship of Internet traffic or police abuses, as legitimate as these issues may be. Nor are we including government corruption.

Note also that none of our categories apply to evidence-gathering by traditional, honest police work. (Searches only with warrants issued by an independent judge, after sufficient examination of evidence.)

The seventeen factors we included in these rankings are:

Daily Documents (2)
Requirement of state-issued identity documents and registration.


Border Issues (2)
Inspections at borders, searching computers, demanding decryption of data.


Financial Tracking (3)
State’s ability to search and record all financial transactions: Checks, credit card use, wires, etc.


Gag Orders (2)
Criminal penalties if you tell someone the state is searching their records.


Anti-Crypto Laws (2)
Outlawing or restricting cryptography.


Constitutional Protection (2)
A lack of constitutional protections for the individual, or the overriding of such protections.


Data Storage Ability (3)
The ability of the state to store the data they gather.


Data Search Ability (3)
The ability to search the data they gather.


ISP Data Retention (3)
States forcing Internet Service Providers to save detailed records of all their customers’ Internet usage.


Telephone Data Retention (2)
States forcing telephone companies to record and save records of all their customers’ telephone usage.


Cell Phone Records (3)
States forcing cellular telephone companies to record and save records of all their customers’ usage, including location.


Medical records (1)
States demanding records from all medical service providers and retaining the same.


Enforcement Ability (2)
The state’s ability to use overwhelming force (exemplified by SWAT Teams) to seize anyone they want, whenever they want.


Habeus Corpus (2)
Lack of habeus corpus, which is the right not to be held in jail without prompt due process. Or, the overriding of such protections.


Police-Intel Barrier (3)
The lack of a barrier between police organizations and intelligence organizations. Or, the overriding of such barriers.


Covert Hacking (3)
State operatives copying digital evidence from private computers covertly. Covert hacking can make anyone appear as any kind of criminal desired, if combined with the removing and/or adding of digital evidence.


 Loose Warrants (2)
Warrants issued without careful examination of police statements and other justifications by a truly independent judge.

For each of these, we assigned a value of between 1 and 5. A value of 1 indicates minimal development of electronic police state abilities in that area. 5 indicates a full operation.


THIS YEAR’S RESULTS


We ranked 51 major states. The map below displays their rankings:


For the first time, we are using a top ranking color of black, for any nation achieving a score of 4.0 or greater. 


Nations depicted in Red are advanced electronic police states, with an average rank of 3.0 to 3.99 


Nations depicted in Orange are strongly developing electronic police states, with an average rank of 2.5 to 2.99


Nations depicted in Yellow are lagging (but still developing) electronic police states, with an average rank of 2.0 to 2.49


Nations depicted in green are states that seem to be going toward the electronic police state model, but not as quickly.


Here are the 51 states and their rankings, with last year’s ranking is shown in parenthesis.


1. North Korea (2)

2. China (1)

3. Belarus (3)

4. Russia (4)

5. United States of America (6)

6. United Kingdom (5)

7. France (9)

8.  Israel  (8)

9.  Singapore (7)

10.  Germany (10)

11.  Ireland (12)

12.  Malaysia (11)

13.  Netherlands (14)

14.  Italy  (24)

15.  South Korea (15)

16.  Australia (18)

17.  Belgium (17)

18.  Spain (43)

19.  Austria  (21)

20.  Ukraine (16)

21.  Greece (28)

22.  Switzerland (30)

23.  Japan (19)

24.  Norway (22)

25.  Canada (29)

26.  India (23)

27.  New Zealand (20)

28.  Portugal (44)

29.  Denmark (26)

30.  Hungary (27)

31.  Poland (32)

32.  Sweden (34)

33.  Bulgaria (49)

34.  Taiwan  (25)

35.  Czech Republic (40)

36.  Cyprus (37)

37.  Finland (33)

38.  Lithuania (36)

39.  Estonia (39)

40.  Luxembourg (45)

41.  Slovenia (31)

42.  Malta  (38)

43.  Iceland  (41)

44.  Latvia (35)

45.  South Africa (42)

46.  Argentina (46)

47.  Mexico (51)

48.  Thailand  (48)

49.  Romania (47)

50.  Brazil  (50)

51.  Philippines (52)

We will issue our next report toward the end of Q1, 2011. We welcome input and assistance from reliable sources.

We may be reached at: info@cryptohippie.com


Report Data

Supplement: The Taking Of The Internet

 

Posted by Britannia Radio at 16:18