RANKING [PART-2] SNOOPERS

GENEVA : How much does your government spy on you? UN may rank the snoopers.

A UN human rights expert has published a draft list of questions to measure country's privacy safeguards, the first step towards ranking the governments that are potentially doing the most snooping on their societies.

The first part of the report was published by Sam Daily Times on March 3.

Under the first version of  Cannactaci's scoring system, a systematic monitoring of private communications could subtract 55 points, as could intensive policing of the Internet and monitoring of chatrooms.

Other questions focused on subjects ranging from parliamentary and judicial oversight of surveillance and intelligence activities, profiling of civilians, and the use ''bulk powers'', such as downloading an entire set of phone records rather than getting a judge's permission to listen into one call.

The last question asks : ''Does your country have a police and/or intelligence service which systematically profiles and maintains surveillance on large segments of the population in a manner compatible to that of the STASI in the 1955-1990 GDR [East Germany]?''

Any country answering ''yes'' to that would forfeit 1,000 points and should abolish its system and start again, he wrote.

Cannataci stressed that the questionnaire was incomplete and ''very much a work in the progress'', and more questions might be added on open data, health data and privacy and gender.

''The intention would be to use such metrics as a standard investigation tool during country visits, both official and non-official,'' Cannataci wrote in his report. He will report to the Council on Friday. [Agencies]