USA-Worst in Surveillance and Privacy?

How do you like this folks? In this years international privacy report the good old US of A has attained an absolute bottom of the barrel rating for privacy and surveillance of it’s citizens. Looking at this report would make you think that posters of George Orwell’s “Big Brother” are being put up on sides of buildings as we sit here and read the news. Check out this map and legend from the report:

Source: Privacy International

Well doesn’t that just make ya’ proud though? Funny, taking a look outside just now I don’t see any police armed with assault rifles standing on every corner with shifty looks in their eyes. Don’t see any camera’s hanging off the trees either. I don’t have any chips hidden in my driver’s license so that my whereabouts is always known to the authorities (yet). My television doesn’t have two-way monitoring capabilities at all and I can even turn it off if I wish. We don’t even have a cable or satellite hookups and I certainly don’t own any sort of webcam (and never will by God!). I don’t work for the good of the “State”, I’m not followed around when I run my errands (that I know of) and I don’t have the authorities suddenly throwing me into a vehicle and interrogating me in some dark room with the light from a single lamp shining in my face because they saw me talking with an “undesirable”.

I can’t say that I like the looks of the map at all though. Especially in light of the fact that I ruined my health defending the US and the rest of the world for that matter from that very country that’s colored as black as we as we are!

Well, I tell you what. I have eyes that still see okay and a brain that still functions mostly or at least that’s what the the VA tells me so I am aware of all the surveillance camera’s that surround the outside of and plastered on the inside walls of just about every business, bank, school, State and federal building that I encounter in my travels these days. In fact I’ve grown quite used to watching my gorgeous self displayed on flat screen monitors every time I turn down another aisle in my local supermarket and all those funky purple and mirrored domes hanging from the ceiling like some sort of monstrous ceiling pimple with cameras pointed at me stuck inside of them. I also know very well that I can’t go anywhere in just about any good sized town and most certainly any city without knowing that somewhere on some building or utility pole a camera is feeding a signal to some monitor and/or video recorder inside some booth in some building where someone is taking notice of the color shirt I’m wearing or will at one time or another.

Does this report upset anyone? Does it make you want to look over your shoulder to see if the cat is staring at you or anybody else for that matter? Well, if it does then there’s only one thing to say and that’s we the people let it happen so don’t complain about it. Can’t blame the current President either since we put him there as well. The only ones who can control this problem is us. But do we really have to?

I have a gun at home, an old rifle. This rifle is aligned and bore sighted to two hundred yards at which point the bullet drops exactly one inch. I know how to use this rifle and I always hit what I aim at. So what keeps me from using this rifle for hunting down the troublemakers, drug dealers, child abusers or some asinine troublemaking neighbor myself? It’s called a strong sense of personal responsibility that’s what and that same type of thing applies to all of this surveillance and the other abilities the various authorities might have to pry into our lives just because they can. As far as I’m concerned, the “Black” rating for China for instance is simply not the same thing as the “Black” rating for the US, not in the least. If you don’t believe me, go live on Beijing for a year or so and let me know how you liked it when and if you come back.

It’s not the fact that we have the ability to do something, like nuke the entire globe when we had the chance, it’s the fact that we chose not to that really matters and the the same applies to this report and the USA’s current rating which really ain’t that much better than last year’s rating (the pink one–second from the bottom). As long as we use this for the protection of our people instead of for control, we’ll be alright. In the meantime, keeping a sharp eye on the authorities and their doings is always prudent.