The Electronic Police State 206
gerddie writes "Cryptohippie has published what may be called a first attempt to describe the 'electronic police state' (PDF). Based on information available from different organizations such as Electronic Privacy Information Center, Reporters Without Borders, and Freedom House, countries were rated on 17 criteria with regard to how close they are already to an electronic police state. The rankings are for 2008. Not too surprisingly, one finds China, North Korea, Belarus, and Russia at the top of the list. But the next slots are occupied by the UK (England and Wales), the US, Singapore, Israel, France, and Germany." This is a good start, but it would be good to see details of their methodology. They do provide the raw data (in XLS format), but no indication of the weightings they apply to the elements of "electronic police state" behavior they are scoring.
What is freedom? (Score:2, Interesting)
Does freedom mean that you can do anything you want any time you want? Or is freedom the life you lead based upon rules set out by the government?
What does freedom require of you? Is responsibility a facet of freedom? Is societal responsibility actually slavery?
Maybe after we stopped throwing around loaded code words like Freedom and Police State, perhaps we can find that sometimes freedom isn't what we think it ought to be, but that the actual practice of freedom is more humane and invigorating than true freedom.
Are you serious? (Score:1, Interesting)
You haven't heard of the no fly list it seems
Drumming up hysteria (Score:5, Interesting)
After skimming that report, and comparing it with what's on the Cryptohippie website - it looks to me that the document is more of a marketing tool to promote their company. Am I the only one who thinks this?
Here's what the group claims to do: "Cryptohippie USA, Inc. exists to protect individuals and organizations against attacks on privacy by agents of industrial and competitive espionage, organized crime, oppressive governments and even hired hackers. We do this with the best of encryption technologies and a closed group of highly protected networks - for your peace of mind and safety."
Here's what the report posits:
* "In an Electronic Police State...[every electronic flotsam you produce is] 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"
* The State knows everything you do, a-la Big Brother
They are trying to frame this paranoia into a neat little package, which sets you in the right mood to accept what they have to sell - which is protection against attacks on your privacy.
Classic marketing technique? Sorry, it just looks like another insurance agent to me.
Democracy does not equal Freedom (Score:5, Interesting)
A quote from the articles' referenced PDF:
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.
As a person who has recently (over the past couple of months) done some review and a lot of reading into Nazi Germany, I can see the same types of Authoritarian trends and psychological tendencies to dismiss the worst case scenarios in "Democratic" countries (I scary-quote the word "Democratic" because there appears to be a cultural assumption that Democracy is necessarily equated with Freedom and justice, which, at the most is an accident. Democracy only assumes voting power (to an extant, for the majority of people), and not Freedom from oppression. I will emphasize that Democracy is generally a more utilitarian means towards Freedom than other forms of government. Benign and beneficent Autocracies would be great if they weren't "Utopian" [that is, mythical] in nature).
There also appears to be a tendency for people to appease authority in order to minimize worst case scenarios.
There also appears to be a tendency for governments to rationalize extremist and authoritarian practices. Hitler (and perhaps more tellingly Goebbels [who wasn't intellectually fanatical against Jews, but realized the value of Fear, Ignorance, and Hatred]) used the Jews as his main propaganda vehicle. The contemporary West uses the "pedophile" and the "terrorist" as the excuse. In both cases the regimes generally tend to have financial support from big businesses and the "conservative" voting class (I don't mean to slight well-meaning Conservatives here, but I am taking my language directly from the history books, some of which are contemporary to the history I am talking about). In both cases (Nazi pre-war Germany and the Authoritarian-leaning democracies of the West) share the same thing: the propagation (propaganda) of fear and nationalism. Think of the children is certainly a motto that Hitler used (I'm not going to bother to look up the references; they've been pointed out before on Slashdot). "Terrorism" too, was used as an excuse by Hitler; granted that much of his terrorism was contrived (like the Russian government bombings of residential buildings. Yes, I am aware that the Russians claim it was the Chechens. Western Intel AFAIK and have heard, seems to think differently).
Like the British and American public of 1930's, and much of Europe for that matter, people rationalized away their fears. The moderates in Germany at the time appeased the authoritarian measures as well. They kept thinking that a giving up a little freedom was politically expedient. Like the famous poem goes, people don't put much thought into things until it happens to them (ref: First they came [wikipedia.org]. Considering the fact the US has the most amount of people in jail than any other country in the world, I would be concerned (A popular and fairly good reference: http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2494/does-the-united-states-lead-the-world-in-prison-population). Notice that I'm not talking about secret CIA prisons, MK-ULTRA type covert activities, etc., just the stuff that is well documented. Life is fine if you are "middle-class" and lucky enough not to piss off the wrong people. Don't hold your breath.
Re:Are you serious? (Score:4, Interesting)
"A corporation, no matter how evil, cannot lawfully detain you, lock you in a cage or kill you."
Actually the can and they do, we just don't hear about it. Corporations BUY the laws and commit many crimes, did you not know that corporations were killing their workers up into th 1930's? How about third world sweatshops? Corporations pay others to do their dirty work for them, while their PR machines give the impression that "private" corporations are better then government... my ass. History shows that private men who have much commercial power are just violent as any government not to mention they fund armies and rebellions, they are intertwined (corps and government).
This idea that the world "government" is somehow different from "private corporation" is a bunch of bullshit, most corporations LOVE government in fact many couldn't exist and get away with the shit they do if not FOR buying off people in government.
Private men of commerce have been amongst the most evil since they fund governments of the world let's not forget, buy and lobby laws in their favor.
They are JUST as bad as government, because you see the word "government" and "corporation" hide the TRUE meaning most elites would not want you to see: They own both, and their is a revolving door from one to the other, while the average public man rails against "government" nad supports "pro privitization" little does he know people in power know the score, is that their is no difference in people that run these insitutions and their influence is peddles via both means, it's the people themselves that cause stuff we should be after.
"Government" is a ghost that ignorant people rail against, when it is PEOPLE that cause things to happen.
Open manufacturing as part of the answer? (Score:3, Interesting)
I put a reference to your insightful comment on the "open manufacturing" mailing list:
"Forfeiting plumbing for self-determination?"
http://groups.google.com/group/openmanufacturing/browse_thread/thread/8462e40751be6966# [google.com]
What I found interesting in the comment and reply is the perceived tension between relying on (centralized?) manufacturing and freedom.
Anyway, it seems to be the general feeling of slashdot that there is no land one can go to right now to escape these trends (other than perhaps the future. :-)
David Brin suggests in his transparent society that the only alternative to one-way surveillance is for everyone to be able to inspect all surveillance:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Transparent_Society [wikipedia.org]
In the "utopia" at the end of Marshall Brain's Manna story, there was no anonymity and effectively probably no privacy:
http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm [marshallbrain.com]
But that is sort-of like Brin's Transparent Society idea.
Another post in this Slashdot discussion makes the point that "Freedom" and "Justice" are not the same thing as "Democracy" (even if they often may go together). One can wonder if "Privacy" is orthogonal to those as well? Have so many things changed that privacy is indeed history? On the other hand, in the short story "The Skills of Xanadu", which is another open manufacturing utopia, people had total privacy even in plain sight when they wanted it, out of social conventions and a form of computer-mediated telepathy.
"RE:The Skills of Xanadu online at Google Books?"
http://groups.google.com/group/openmanufacturing/msg/13e85ebf99d0554f [google.com]
In any case, another implication of your comment is that, for many people, the conceptual goal for open manufacturing in a free society may not need be as high as producing everything we have now (even indoor plumbing?). Just producing enough to support a reasonably free and sustainable society may be a good enough first goal? Anyway, there are bound to be a diversity of opinions on that; I'm just drawing together some themes.
I remain convinced, along the lines of Manuel de Landa, that there is *no* possibility of choice between hierarchy and meshwork, because all systems have both aspects. One can at best talk about balances between the
centralized hierarchies and grassroots meshworks in different situations.
"Meshworks, Hierarchies, and Interfaces"
http://www.t0.or.at/delanda/meshwork.htm [t0.or.at]
Maybe They're Not All Stupid (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm beginning to wonder if there isn't in fact a group of smart men behind the scenes running the show. That the face put forward as stupid politicians is just that.
Any Google on "exponential growth human population" or "failure understand exponential growth" will help illustrate what we're looking forward to. It will be in our lifetime where the population will grow beyond the ability for the state to police it using just human manpower (police-person). Very soon maintaining civil order will require automation. It already does.
Whomever is running the show does seem to understand and are taking steps necessary building the infrastructure we're going to need in 25-50 years. And a 25-50 year build-out for infrastructure is about right. The ratio of citizen to state will easily rise to hundreds of thousands to one. Cameras are needed, the ability to mass collect people will be needed.
Anyone familure with the courts already know. If 100% of the population demanded jury trials the system would collapse. The only way they're able to hold it together is that +90% plea to "lessor" charges. The courts are already like the Airline industry as in hurdling cattle. When the population doubles even this stop gap measure won't be enough.
This automation of state control is evidence to me that either the politicians aren't as stupid as the face they put forward or there is a group behind the scenes running the show that do understand exponents.
-[d]-
Re:Are you serious? (Score:2, Interesting)
The main reason for this is that though there can be laws, no one is interested in implementing "high blown" stuff and the police more or less only stick to the basics like real crime fighting. Politicians fight so much that there's no consensus on anything really, and in light of what I see happening in other countries, that's a good thing!
And perhaps best of all, it's highly consumer friendly - corporations don't dictate diddly squat.
Another point is that with a population of over a billion, India has simply too many people to control or survey - and it's a democracy unlike China which has some of the same features