[jacquesm]

I don't think this is the right way to frame the discussion. It's not US versus EU or EU countries against each other.

It's simply people versus their various over-reaching governments.

No country is substantially better than any other, a couple of exceptions exist but those are very small countries that have little or no impact on the world as it is today.

So there's work to do. Everywhere.

The interesting discussion that we could have is what we're going to do about it, not which country currently is marginally better on some front because it will most likely be marginally worse on some other.

There isn't a major country in the western world that isn't guilty of wholesale privacy violations and it isn't a situation that is improving either.

Technology won't fix this.

Poland and Finland are a little bit better than the rest, but only a little bit and they're wide open to their bigger and nastier neighbors.

[rayiner]

> It's simply people versus their various over-reaching governments.

If pretty much every liberal democracy of any significant size is doing it, maybe we should stop and think about why. Blaming "over-reaching governments" is too simplistic in my opinion. I have a hard time believing that the legislative process is so broken in every liberal democracy that such surveillance is happening contrary to the public will.

[jacquesm]

> maybe we should stop and think about why

They tell us why!

- to keep us safe

- to protect our way of life

- to protect the children

- insert your own favorite fear mongering here

And all that without a shred of proof.

'if everybody is doing it' wasn't a very good reason to jump on the bandwagon in high-school, I see absolutely no reason to come to the conclusion that 'if every liberal democracy of any significant size is doing it' is any stronger as a reason to give out free passes.

This is all about fear and using that fear to push through legislation that appears to benefit nobody (except maybe some technology vendors) and that has the potential to negatively affect the lives of 100's of millions.

Given the stakes I think it is the other side that should do the explaining without us having to 'think about why' because if we're just going to sit and make stuff up there is no end to this, ever.

Giving up all these privileges should come with a substantial change in quality of life or some other tangible benefit and from where I'm sitting I have not seen anything at all that was not better on those fronts when I was a kid.

[rtpg]

Instead of some strawmen, you could pull real reasons:

- industrial espionage

- government espionage

- wiretaps and other active investigations

- supporting military ops (like "counter-terrorism" stuff)

Throwing out those strawmen won't convince anyone of anything. The discussion of whether it's worth it is important enough to introduce nuance to what you're saying (are you against the NSA tapping, say, Kim Jong-Un's phone?)

[jacquesm]

Those strawman aren't mine, they are the reasons stated by the people that push these things on us.

[jessaustin]

A statement that "public will" had anything to do with any of this would be an extraordinary claim. The public can't decide not to have traffic jams. How would they decide what information gets collected by whom? I doubt they could decide what information gets collected by devices they own.

[saint_fiasco]

> in every liberal democracy

Could this be the reason? Maybe it's an arms race and each government is afraid of being spied by the others so they invest in surveillance too.

[toyg]

> Technology won't fix this.

Yup. This is entirely a political problem. If somebody invented a fundamentally-decentralized, fully-encrypted, totally-anonymous network, it would just be banned outright and we'd be exactly as screwed as before.

[tptacek]

I think you misunderstand me. I'm not trying to establish a ranking, so much as I'm interested in comparing notes, if only to see which policy approaches work and which don't.

[jacquesm]

Poland does relatively well because the Poles have a very good memory for the times when the communists still ruled and have managed to hold back quite a bit of legislation that would have made privacy intrusions a lot easier.

Something similar was thought to be the case in Germany but it turned out to be mostly a load of nonsense.

NL has a good name but in fact is one of the worst offenders.

Finland is trying really hard but has Russia and Sweden as neighbours and those are running roughshod over the rights of the Finnish citizens.

And so on... it's a sad state of affairs. The biggest sign your country has good privacy is because you're economically not a player, so being 'too small to matter' is one way in which you can differentiate to the point where you can give your citizens some privacy.

But as soon as you're an economically significant entity the fear factor starts to outweigh common sense and privacy goes right out the window, though there will definitely be an attempt to put some lipstick on the pig and make it look like we're all so much safer.