Report: Israel ranks eighth among 'electronic police states'

Israel ranks eighth on the list of 52 so-called "electronic police states," according to a report prepared by the United States-based company Cryptohippie, which develops data security products.

The list of "electronic police states" is led by China, followed by North Korea, Belarus, Russia, and then England, Wales, the United States and Singapore.

"Although the idea of the government monitoring our activities though the Internet strikes most of us as slightly troubling, very few of us say or do much about it," the report says.

One reason is that the usual image of a "police state" involves woefully outdated concepts, the organization explains.

The report defines an electronic police state as a country that uses technology to record, organize, search and distribute evidence against its citizens.

The company used 17 parameters to create its ranking, including requiring Internet, cellular and telephony companies to maintain information on client usage, and laws that limit or prohibit encoding.