Peeping Sam

Great Britain is forever taking hits from privacy advocates for its Peeping Tom approach to law enforcement and counterterrorism. But in Privacy and Human Rights 2000, a report released September 19 by watchdog organizations Privacy International and the Electronic Privacy Information Center, the Brits get off easy compared with the Americans. Sure, the United Kingdom ...

Great Britain is forever taking hits from privacy advocates for its Peeping Tom approach to law enforcement and counterterrorism. But in Privacy and Human Rights 2000, a report released September 19 by watchdog organizations Privacy International and the Electronic Privacy Information Center, the Brits get off easy compared with the Americans.

Great Britain is forever taking hits from privacy advocates for its Peeping Tom approach to law enforcement and counterterrorism. But in Privacy and Human Rights 2000, a report released September 19 by watchdog organizations Privacy International and the Electronic Privacy Information Center, the Brits get off easy compared with the Americans.

Sure, the United Kingdom has 200,000 surveillance cameras in place. And research just published by scholars at the University of Hull (cited in the report) suggests that authorities may be monitoring inappropriately: 40 percent of people under surveillance were recorded for "no obvious reason," and youth, particularly black youth, were disproportionately targeted.

But according to the report, the United States has "led a worldwide effort to limit individual privacy." The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) launched Carnivore, a program that allows agents to read any personal e-mail that passes through U.S. Internet service-provider servers. Russia’s Federal Security Service, widely believed to practice illegal surveillance, claims the United States advised it on how to implement its own Carnivore-like system. Washington also pressured foreign governments to adopt laws that would weaken telecommunications security and limit the manufacture and sale of strong encryption technology. And FBI Director Louis Freeh "traveled extensively around the world, promoting the use of wiretapping in recently free countries such as Hungary and the Czech Republic."

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