A major international report to be released tomorrow has found that Britain has one of the worst track records in the developed world in protecting the privacy of its citizens.

The fifth annual Privacy and Human Rights survey, published by Privacy International & the US based Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) warns that surveillance across the world has increased significantly in the past twelve months. The 400 page report reviews the state of privacy in over fifty countries. (pdf version available at http://www.privacyinternational.org/survey/phr2002/ )

The report paints a bleak picture of the erosion of the right to privacy, particularly since the September 11th attacks in the United States. It singled out Britain amongst developing countries because of an anti-privacy "pathology" within government. The report observed: "crime and public order laws passed in recent years have placed substantial limitations on numerous rights, including freedom of assembly, privacy, freedom of movement, the right of silence, and freedom of speech."

The report identified a trend in Britain toward mass surveillance of the general population, and cited a catalogue of illegal spying and surveillance activities by UK agencies.

The Report will be launched tomorrow (Friday) at the "Terrorising Rights" conference at the London School of Economics http://www.privacyinternational.org/conference/london2002/

Privacy International's Director, Simon Davies, said the report highlighted "a systematic attack on the right to privacy by all levels of the British government".

"The UK demonstrates a pathology of antagonism toward privacy", he said. "The rate of growth of video surveillance, communications surveillance and information collection has exceeded the growth rate in such countries as Singapore and Israel."

Mr Davies warned that legal protections over privacy had been "weakened at a fundamental level" by government. "The UK Data Protection Act is almost useless in limiting the growth of surveillance", he added.

The report expressed concern over the number of countries enacting laws requiring Internet Service Providers, and other telecommunications operators, to retain the traffic and location data of all people using mobile phones, text messaging, land-line telephones, faxes, e-mails, chat rooms, the Internet, or any other electronic communication devices, to communicate.

Such data retention provisions are already in place in Belgium, France, Spain and the United Kingdom and have been proposed in the Netherlands. In response to the events of September 11th, specific anti-terrorism measures have been introduced in Australia, Austria, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, India, Singapore, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States.

The report observed "Among all of these measures, it is possible to identify a number of trends including: increased communications surveillance and search and seizure powers; weakening of data protection regimes; increased data sharing; and increased profiling and identification".


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NOTES TO EDITORS

- Privacy International (PI) is a human rights group formed in 1990 as a watchdog on surveillance by governments and corporations. PI is based in London, and has an office in Washington, D.C.  Together with members in 40 countries, PI has conducted campaigns throughout the world on issues ranging from wiretapping and national security activities, to ID cards, video surveillance, data matching, police information systems, and medical privacy, and works with a wide range of parliamentary and inter-governmental organisations such as the European Parliament, the House of Lords and UNESCO.

- PI's website is www.privacyinternational.org It contains an extensive resource on surveillance in the UK at http://www.privacyinternational.org/countries/uk/

- The Report will be launched during a conference on Friday 6th September, hosted by the Department of Information Systems at the London School of Economics. "Terrorising Rights: Privacy, open society & the challenge of September 11th will assess the impact on rights of legislation since that date. http://www.privacyinternational.org/conference/london2002/