Is there a way that I can browse privately or just not at all any more?
Britain passed the “most extreme surveillance law ever passed in a democracy”
291–300 of 302 posts
Re: Britain passed the “most extreme surveillance law ever passed in a democracy”
#292Protect your privacy with a VPN, either run your own or use one of the available providers. It's a shame you need to do this, but that's just the state of things. Run your own with OpenVPN: https://openvpn.net VPN providers(not affiliated, just ones myself or colleagues use): https://www.expressvpn.com https://www.goldenfrog.com/vyprvpn https://nordvpn.com
I personally recommend;
Re: Britain passed the “most extreme surveillance law ever passed in a democracy”
#293As a UK resident, this irks me beyond belief. It's a sickening invasion of human rights[1]. To echo u/rubberstamps sentiments, it's such that there's been little to no coverage of this in the media. But it's the same everywhere, introduce an encroaching bill, have uproar from those with the heads screwed on (the minority). Let it grow a little stale in the publics eye and keep reintroducing with slight alterations it…
Does something like this make a strong case for UK having a formal constitution to check the power of Parliament to make laws like this?
Not really. The UK is a signatory to the European Convention on Human Rights and the law can be challenged under that. See for instance here: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/01/20/human_rights_court_r...
Re: Britain passed the “most extreme surveillance law ever passed in a democracy”
#294Soo... What is the UK government so scared of that they need to do this?
The British people.
Re: Britain passed the “most extreme surveillance law ever passed in a democracy”
#295Earlier quoted context omitted.
> how would they stop someone running a 'recipe' that creates a VPN on something like AWS/Digital Ocean They don't need to. Even if 10% of citizens were able to do that, controlling and censoring information for the 90% is way more than enough to manipulate people perceptions and ideas, and thus, democracy. Not even Stasi or the "great firewall" of China aimed at 100% success rate - they simply don't need to.
>controlling and censoring information for the 90% // What you appear to be alleging is that by being able to access the threads I saw on Al-Jazeera or Reddit or what-have-you that the government can somehow control the information I'm receiving enough to manipulate me to serve their political ideals. Freedom of the press may not be perfect in the UK but it seems close enough that a government can't manipulate democr…
> Seems entirely bonkers
Throughout the last 100 years there has been examples across many dictatorships and engineered democracies where incredible amount of efforts has been spent on achieving information control. Dragnet surveillance proved many times to be effective at chilling free speech and intimidating dissenters.
Re: Britain passed the “most extreme surveillance law ever passed in a democracy”
#296Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Terrorism is merely the justification. // You've lost sight of any balance when you start claiming that terrorism is just an idea used to justify state oversight and not an actual problem of organised harm/killing of peaceful civilians. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7_July_2005_London_bombings - presumably you think that's just a huge fiction created so the government can get hold of your holiday snaps.
52 people killed in those bombings, eleven years ago. More people than that died in 1 week of road accident deaths in the same year, and in 2 weeks of road accident deaths in 2013 [1] Talking about numbers and causes of deaths in the UK, for comparison: The UK Office of National Statistics (ONS) published that death registrations increased from 2014 to 2015, saying " There were 24,065 more deaths registered in the fi…
OK and the highest rate of murders in large countries around the world is something like 30 per 100,000 .. so we should just let people commit [other] murders because they're low incidence compared to cancer say?
How do you think that murder rate will change if you don't seek to address it at all?
Re: Britain passed the “most extreme surveillance law ever passed in a democracy”
#297Earlier quoted context omitted.
52 people killed in those bombings, eleven years ago. More people than that died in 1 week of road accident deaths in the same year, and in 2 weeks of road accident deaths in 2013 [1] Talking about numbers and causes of deaths in the UK, for comparison: The UK Office of National Statistics (ONS) published that death registrations increased from 2014 to 2015, saying " There were 24,065 more deaths registered in the fi…
OK and the highest rate of murders in large countries around the world is something like 30 per 100,000 .. so we should just let people commit [other] murders because they're low incidence compared to cancer say? How do you think that murder rate will change if you don't seek to address it at all?
We were talking specifically about terrorism in the UK, not murders in the USA.
USA should ban private gun ownership, obviously. This would do a lot for their murder rate, it would do a lot for their "people killed by toddlers" rate, and it would be a lot cheaper and less invasive than ISPs logging 300M internet access records for a year.
Prioritize things which have high impact, are easy to address, and have specific good outcomes. Not "anti terror" metrics which are vague, difficult and expensive to address, and have extremely low impact.
TSA isn't a good system. And it doesn't become a good system just because 'we have to do something about some crimes'. Sure. Do something better, and do it about more important problems.
Re: Britain passed the “most extreme surveillance law ever passed in a democracy”
#298Earlier quoted context omitted.
>controlling and censoring information for the 90% // What you appear to be alleging is that by being able to access the threads I saw on Al-Jazeera or Reddit or what-have-you that the government can somehow control the information I'm receiving enough to manipulate me to serve their political ideals. Freedom of the press may not be perfect in the UK but it seems close enough that a government can't manipulate democr…
> Seems entirely bonkers Throughout the last 100 years there has been examples across many dictatorships and engineered democracies where incredible amount of efforts has been spent on achieving information control. Dragnet surveillance proved many times to be effective at chilling free speech and intimidating dissenters.
Did those places have a strong rule of law, free press, legislation giving human rights freedoms, very open government. We're not really talking about information control either, it's data gathering. I hear you on the chilling effect but can't really believe that anything i say in my lifetime will be sufficient to prompt a judge to allow a warrant against me.
Sure, with a huge regime change this sort of law could later prove troublesome but we'd have to have changed our entire way of life first it seems.
Your reaction seems reasonable if you're in a malevolent dictatorship, despite its problems I don't find the UK being anywhere close to that politically.
Re: Britain passed the “most extreme surveillance law ever passed in a democracy”
#299Re: Britain passed the “most extreme surveillance law ever passed in a democracy”
#300Earlier quoted context omitted.
That is interesting. Living in Sweden, and having lived in the UK for 15 years, I feel the Brits trust their government much less than the Swedes do. In the UK there is strong resistance against a national ID card, as an example. Whereas in Sweden you can hardly live without one. I got the feeling that the Brits didn't trust their government with that info and control it implies. In Sweden we have the opposite: ID ca…
Resistance to the national ID card idea mostly came down to two things 1) cost to government, and 2) cost to citizens. There's also the fact that ~87% of the population already hold a passport, and some of those that don't likely have a drivers license.
The funny thing is that the cost to the individual is negligible and the cost to government (and business) is low compared to the benefits. Less fraud, efficient identification processes etc.