UK citizens monitored more than rest of Europe

Story link: UK citizens monitored more than rest of Europe by Jan Harris

Privacy International’s 2007 ‘International Privacy Ranking’ places the UK as the worst surveillance society in the European Union, and one of the worst in the world.

The UK’s citizens are the most monitored in the whole of Europe, according to the report by the civil liberties group.

Privacy International used data on how 47 countries monitored their citizens to produce the report. It describes the UK as having an endemic surveillance society, finding greater surveillance levels only in China, Russia and Malaysia.

The UK’s CCTV network, the proposed national identity card scheme, and lack of Government accountability contributed to the findings.

The report also highlights the increasing use of surveillance by UK councils, including RFID (Radio-frequency identification), CCTV, ID, data sharing, and road user tracking, while the Information Commissioner’s Office has only limited powers to safeguard citizens’ privacy.

The study assessed each country on a number of factors, including the data protection offered to citizens, methods use to store data and prevalence of eavesdropping.

According to Privacy International, the report shows that governments are archiving more and more data on the geographic, communications and financial records of all their citizens.