I came across a very interesting article published by Cryptohippie and basically it’s an attempt to describe the “electronic police state”, because this would be the logical conclusion that arises from the latest information provided by Electronic Privacy Information Center, Reporters Without Borders and Freedom House.
With more and more countries obsessively developing the monitoring of every aspect from the people’s life, a natural question occurred, and that is “how close are we from an electronic police state?”. Many of us are aware of all the means of surveillance, but don’t do much about it, because people already have in their minds the connection between a police state and the horrors committed by the secret services and therefore today’s happening cannot be associated with a precedent. But it is all around us and is even more dangerous because we can’t even see it. The electronic attempt on something that might resemble total control is very subtle, it’s quiet and constantly working against the regular citizens.

Cryptohippie published a list of countries ordered by its degree of transforming into an electronic police state. The scoring of every country is based on 17 factors, and this is without even taking into account the government censorship of Internet or police abuses (!!!). The ranking stands for 2008 and we find China, North Korea, Belarus and Russia in top, state policeas many probably have expected, but the, let’s say, more surprising presence at the top (although it’s no surprise for people who constantly follow the course of events) is the one of the US, the UK, Singapore, Israel, France and Germany.
Sadly, the police state has its entire ground basis set up. It is not a question if this would happen anymore, but a question if we can still do something regarding the rescue of our fundamental rights and freedoms.
I am sure this is a side of monitoring and electronic tracking you haven’t thought too much into. The 2009 reports and rankings are going to be really interesting, and the end of Q1 can already give us a clue.