Britain, the country with the world's biggest network of surveillance cameras, has the worst record in Europe for the protection of privacy, according to a report from a London-based international watchdog.

The UK is billed as "an endemic surveillance society" alongside Russia, the US, Singapore and China in the survey of 47 countries by Privacy International (PI).

Britain is bottom in Europe because of its cameras, ID card plans and lack of government accountability. Rankings are given for the UK as a whole as well as for its individual nations. "For the first time, Scotland has been given its own ranking score and performed significantly better than England and Wales," says the report. Simon Davies, director of PI, said the loss this year of computer discs containing personal and bank details of 25 million UK families claiming child benefit highlighted the risks of storing information on huge government databases.

The report concludes that the 2007 rankings "show an increasing trend among governments to archive data on the geographic, communications and financial records of all their citizens and residents. This trend leads to the conclusion that all citizens, regardless of legal status, are under suspicion.

"The impact was worst in the US and across the EU as governments boosted surveillance and information gathering in the name of security and protecting borders."

The US performed worst among democratic countries in terms of "statutory protections and privacy enforcement".

In the European league table Germany fell from first to seventh, replaced at the top by Greece with its green ranking, indicating "significant protections and safeguards" for privacy.

Romania, Hungary and Slovenia take the next three places.

Surveillance measures initiated by Brussels have caused a substantial decline in privacy across the EU, says the report.

Canada heads the international table, with Argentina, Iceland and Switzerland close behind. Malaysia is bottom, with a score marginally lower than Britain's.

The PI report says immigration and border control concerns in 2007 have prompted countries to "implement database, identity and fingerprinting systems, often without regard to the privacy implications for their own citizens".