ELECTRONIC POLICE STORY

ITEM: Internet security consultancy Cryptohippie releases its first report on the “Electronic Police State” – which is to say, "State use of electronic technologies to record, organize, search and distribute forensic evidence against its citizens".

The audit focuses on 17 factors, ranging from requirement to produce documents on demand, through to the extent to which states force ISPs and phone companies to retain data, the blurring of boundaries between police and intelligence work and ultimately the breakdown of the principles of habeas corpus.

The study rates 52 countries. Here are the top ten.

TOP TEN ELECTRONIC POLICE STATES

1. China
2. North Korea
3. Belarus
4. Russia
5. United Kingdom: England & Wales
6. United States of America
7. Singapore
8. Israel
9. France
10.Germany

Source: Cryptohippie

See anyone you recognize?

Here’s why this matters (from the report [PDF]):

In an Electronic Police State, every surveillance camera recording, every  email you send, every Internet site you surf, every post you make, every check you write, every credit card swipe, every cell phone ping… are all 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 whenever they care enough to do so. You can be prosecuted whenever they feel like it – the evidence is already in their database.

Perhaps you trust that your ruler will only use his evidence archives to hurt bad people. Will you also trust his successor? Do you also trust all of his subordinates, every government worker and every policeman?

That’s probably a little paranoid for some tastes. But it’s also true. People like Bruce Schneier (who I quote regularly) has been saying this for some time. But he’s also said that it’s not too late to do something about it – yet.

“We must, all of us together, start discussing this major societal change and what it means. And we must work out a way to create a future that our grandchildren will be proud of.”

Watch this space,

This is dF

MAY I COME IN?

Avenge me,

This is dF

THE PAST IS HISTORY

It was 20 years ago today ...



Which is why the Chinese govt has blocked all access to web sites like Twitter, Flickr, Hotmail, YouTube, MSN Spaces and pretty much any site that allows you to share an opinion. Also Bing is off the air. And if you know anyone on LJ in China and they’re not posting, now you know why.

Also, says Threat Level:

BBC viewers in China also saw their screens black out when the news service broadcast stories about the anniversary, and foreign news crews have been barred from filming in the square. Readers of the Financial Times and Economist magazine found stories about Tiananmen ripped from their pages.

Business as usual, then.

But let this stand as a master class in how to rewrite history. It’s been just 20 years since the Tiananmen protests and subsequent crackdown, and yet China is full of college-age kids attending universities who have no idea that June 4 has any significance in Chinese history.

Imagine that.

And you thought it was impossible to rewrite history in real time.

Granted, many of them could one day leave the country and find out what happened through other means. But put yrself in that position. Here's one for the Americans: let’s say you travel overseas for some reason and found out that, according to history books there, the death toll at Kent State in 1970 wasn’t four, but 804. Or let’s say you didn’t even know anyone ever died at Kent State because yr history classes never once mentioned the incident and all media are forbidden by the govt to even mention it.

Would you believe it? Or would you write it off as foreigners making up stuff about yr country?

George Santayana was more right than even he knew.

Dunno much about history,

This is dF

THE REAL REASON NEW HAMPSHIRE WILL BURN IN HELL

Now that New Hampshire has legalized gay marriage (unlike those Hollywood liberals in California) – which basically means that Teh Gayz now have a quorum to take over the world or something – I thought I’d bring balance to the Force by giving some time to The Other Side.

By which I mean the fundamentalist Christians who don’t want Teh Gayz to ruin Traditional Marriage, by which they mean “marriage the way God intended”.

So here’s Betty Bowers (America’s Best Christian®) explaining what Traditional Marriage is according to the Holy Bible – and why it’s moral and gay marriage isn’t.

WARNING: Involves incest, rape and hookers. And yet I couldn't stop laughing.

Sorry about that.

God bless Betty Bowers.

Putting the “fun” in fundamentalism,

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