International Law

Black America

By Karl-Friedrich Lenz

The United States has received a grade of “endemic surveillance society” (the worst possible) in the 2007 International Privacy Ranking. A map of the world shows America in black, the same as China, Russia and the United Kingdom.

The section of the report giving the reasons for that grade discusses a lot of American laws and Supreme Court opinions. That is fundamentally flawed. As anyone paying attention knows, there is no rule of law in the United States. The government does whatever it wants. If someone complains about privacy-related law-breaking, the law in question is changed, granting immunity to all involved.

Germany’s rating was the world’s best last year; it has dropped to a middle-level “some safeguards but weakened protection”, largely because of the useless and harmful data retention law.

Full post as published by Lenz Blog on January 01, 2008 (boomark / email).