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Can anyone point to countries which are not going down this same route? In my head Europe is doing better with protecting privacy, but maybe that's just an imp

by dm319 9y ago

Can anyone point to countries which are not going down this same route? In my head Europe is doing better with protecting privacy, but maybe that's just an impression. Canada? Not Australia. Japan?

skrause 9y ago
Here is a good overview: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_and_surveillance_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_and_survei...
- etiam 9y ago
  In principle that's a nice start. I call male bovine excrement on the assessment of Sweden though. Full take collection, installed by and heavily integrated with FVEY, is the gist of it. Describing it as "Little or none" seems like a cynical joke.
  - Nition 9y ago
    It says there was no collection as of 2009. Has it started since then? The page probably just needs someone to update it.
- ninkendo 9y ago
  I took one look at that article and the fact that the U.S. is literally painted the same color as China as having an equal amount of internet censorship would be hilarious if it weren’t so egregiously misleading. There’s internet censorship and there’s China. Nobody else is in the same league. The only explanation I can think of is if censorship and surveillance are just being casually lumped together, but people understand that they’re not synonyms, right? Right?
  - Cthulhu_ 9y ago
    They are closely related though. Mass surveillance, and/or the loss of privacy online, has a chilling effect - effectively censorship. Either your government blocks / censors your er, controversial statements, or you're afraid to post your controversial statements because the government is watching you. Same effect.
    - ninkendo 9y ago
      Stop creating a false equivalency. China blocks access to anything on the internet that disagrees with their ruling party. They block any VPN or SSH. Like, not just for avoiding filters, just at all. They degrade any encrypted traffic by just doing compression analysis and dropping packets if your traffic looks encrypted. This is not the same thing as the NSA’s dragnet surveillance or anything the UK is doing. China is already at the endgame you are hypothesizing, and you’re creating a false equivalency through a slippery slope. A slope where the bottom is where China is today.
  - Sean1708 9y ago
    > The only explanation I can think of is if censorship and surveillance are just being casually lumped together The chart is literally titled "Internet censorship and surveillance by country (2014)" with categories that don't differentiate between censorship and surveillance, so I'm relatively certain that the two have been lumped together.
    - ninkendo 9y ago
      Sure, but that doesn’t imply that there’s an equivalency between the two, or that the grading scale should be course-grained enough to show no difference between the U.S. and China. If I made an article called “human rights violations and numbers of reality tv shows by country” and painted Saudi Arabia and Germany the same color, it should rightly raise some eyebrows.
      - Sean1708 9y ago
        All I was saying was that you didn't need to speculate, not that it was the right way to present the data.
  - jlgaddis 9y ago
    > There’s internet censorship and there’s China. Nobody else is in the same league. Give the U.S. time. We're trying to catch up to China as quickly as we can.
mrtksn 9y ago
If I remember correctly, Europe relies on US to spy on it's people so technically they are not spying on their own people. Personally, I find it unrealistic to expect that such huge opportunity(almost by the second log of citizens activities and opinions as well as precise control of who sees and hears what) will arise and the people in power will not exploit it. China is taking a more direct route but in general it looks like the political elite's dreams are about to come true on global scale. edit: HN really hated that idea :) I could not find the source of the claim but it makes sense to me.
- olavk 9y ago
  > Europe relies on US to spy on it's people so technically they are not spying on their own people. Where on earth did you get this idea? Are you suggesting European countries does not have police or intelligence agencies performing surveillance?
  - mrtksn 9y ago
    I'm not suggesting that. The idea is that if a country can't do mass surveillance on it's own people due to political reasons, still can just let an ally do it and get that information from that ally as a part of information sharing agreement.
    - simias 9y ago
      I can believe that it happens in some cases but I doubt it would make a lot of sense to do it for the mass surveillance of the population, if only because it would also make it extremely easy to do large scale industrial espionage. I'm pretty sure Germany wouldn't want the USA to have access to all of its trade and industrial secrets for instance. At least I would require a better source than "if I remember correctly" in order to be convinced.
      - mrtksn 9y ago
        It doesn't have to be binary. Sure they wouldn't want to let USA complete access, so they can spend their time keeping the US espionage on the desired domain and everyone happy and politicians elected.

by dm319 9y ago

Can anyone point to countries which are not going down this same route? In my head Europe is doing better with protecting privacy, but maybe that's just an impression. Canada? Not Australia. Japan?

skrause 9y ago

Here is a good overview: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_and_surveillance_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_and_survei...

etiam 9y ago
In principle that's a nice start. I call male bovine excrement on the assessment of Sweden though. Full take collection, installed by and heavily integrated with FVEY, is the gist of it. Describing it as "Little or none" seems like a cynical joke.
- Nition 9y ago
  It says there was no collection as of 2009. Has it started since then? The page probably just needs someone to update it.
ninkendo 9y ago
I took one look at that article and the fact that the U.S. is literally painted the same color as China as having an equal amount of internet censorship would be hilarious if it weren’t so egregiously misleading. There’s internet censorship and there’s China. Nobody else is in the same league. The only explanation I can think of is if censorship and surveillance are just being casually lumped together, but people understand that they’re not synonyms, right? Right?
- Cthulhu_ 9y ago
  They are closely related though. Mass surveillance, and/or the loss of privacy online, has a chilling effect - effectively censorship. Either your government blocks / censors your er, controversial statements, or you're afraid to post your controversial statements because the government is watching you. Same effect.
  - ninkendo 9y ago
    Stop creating a false equivalency. China blocks access to anything on the internet that disagrees with their ruling party. They block any VPN or SSH. Like, not just for avoiding filters, just at all. They degrade any encrypted traffic by just doing compression analysis and dropping packets if your traffic looks encrypted. This is not the same thing as the NSA’s dragnet surveillance or anything the UK is doing. China is already at the endgame you are hypothesizing, and you’re creating a false equivalency through a slippery slope. A slope where the bottom is where China is today.
- Sean1708 9y ago
  > The only explanation I can think of is if censorship and surveillance are just being casually lumped together The chart is literally titled "Internet censorship and surveillance by country (2014)" with categories that don't differentiate between censorship and surveillance, so I'm relatively certain that the two have been lumped together.
  - ninkendo 9y ago
    Sure, but that doesn’t imply that there’s an equivalency between the two, or that the grading scale should be course-grained enough to show no difference between the U.S. and China. If I made an article called “human rights violations and numbers of reality tv shows by country” and painted Saudi Arabia and Germany the same color, it should rightly raise some eyebrows.
    - Sean1708 9y ago
      All I was saying was that you didn't need to speculate, not that it was the right way to present the data.
- jlgaddis 9y ago
  > There’s internet censorship and there’s China. Nobody else is in the same league. Give the U.S. time. We're trying to catch up to China as quickly as we can.

mrtksn 9y ago

If I remember correctly, Europe relies on US to spy on it's people so technically they are not spying on their own people. Personally, I find it unrealistic to expect that such huge opportunity(almost by the second log of citizens activities and opinions as well as precise control of who sees and hears what) will arise and the people in power will not exploit it. China is taking a more direct route but in general it looks like the political elite's dreams are about to come true on global scale. edit: HN really hated that idea :) I could not find the source of the claim but it makes sense to me.

olavk 9y ago
> Europe relies on US to spy on it's people so technically they are not spying on their own people. Where on earth did you get this idea? Are you suggesting European countries does not have police or intelligence agencies performing surveillance?
- mrtksn 9y ago
  I'm not suggesting that. The idea is that if a country can't do mass surveillance on it's own people due to political reasons, still can just let an ally do it and get that information from that ally as a part of information sharing agreement.
  - simias 9y ago
    I can believe that it happens in some cases but I doubt it would make a lot of sense to do it for the mass surveillance of the population, if only because it would also make it extremely easy to do large scale industrial espionage. I'm pretty sure Germany wouldn't want the USA to have access to all of its trade and industrial secrets for instance. At least I would require a better source than "if I remember correctly" in order to be convinced.
    - mrtksn 9y ago
      It doesn't have to be binary. Sure they wouldn't want to let USA complete access, so they can spend their time keeping the US espionage on the desired domain and everyone happy and politicians elected.