Brazil´s military police have long equated law enforcement with warfare. But there are signs that the status quo is changing, and worldwide.
European courts have interpreted privacy in a holistic manner, addressing not only the challenges of mass surveillance to data protection and the right to a private life, but also defending privacy as vital to the relationship of trust between the individual and the state in any democracy.
There is a public realm, and it nurtures a society of free citizens. The painful, complex evolution of this idea in the People's Republic of China is one of the great struggles of the modern world.
New findings published by Kaspersky Lab, concerning the widespread state deployment of digital surveillance tools used in some countries to spy on political dissidents, journalists and human rights advocates, place a further question mark over the western liberal agenda.
In 2009 a UK construction industry blacklist, administered by a private company holding files on thousands of people, was busted. Evidence is now emerging of police involvement, bringing yet another layer to the scandal of police spies and state surveillance.
Following last year's revelations, Edward Snowden seems to be trapped in a role ironically reminiscent of another famous character – George Orwell's Big Brother. From our 'Joining the dots on state surveillance in Europe' series.
