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Independent review of UK national security law warns of overreach

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141–150 of 299 posts

Re: Independent review of UK national security law warns of overreach

#141
post #9

I wonder how the public in the UK feels about their country quickly devolving into an oversurveilled state.

The public, or at least the section that buys newspapers and gets onto the Question Time audience, seem to be in favor of this. Like a lot of people, they will vote in favor of repression so long as they think it's being done to someone else. Especially immigrants. You can even see it in the comments here.

"Tough on crime" and "tough on terrorism" are magic bullets for winning authoritarian support. That's how people are being persuaded that ECHR is a bad thing.

Re: Independent review of UK national security law warns of overreach

#142
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember, remember, the fifth of November…

You should mention the year. That incident was four hundred and twenty years ago. There was no Great Britain, no United Kingdom. Scotland was an independent country. The UK today is not the same place, not in the slightest.

420? Perhaps it’s time to blaze it..

Re: Independent review of UK national security law warns of overreach

#143
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Governments always focus on the tools and not the people. Troubleshooting and resolving the root cause requires work. They do not get paid to work or care meaning they could sit on their hands and still get paid.

> they could sit on their hands and still get paid Could? I know of government employees who literally cannot do their job, yet somehow they've been employed for over twenty years. When I say they can't do their job, I mean they have to ask coworkers how to do something that is and always has been a job requirement, and they have to "ask for help" every time. People are actually enabling massive amounts of waste and…

You seem to think this is somehow specific to government. It is not. And, no, the market does not eventually destroy the organizations where it happens.

Re: Independent review of UK national security law warns of overreach

#144
post #50

This is a terrible headline, despite being the original. The "watchdog" is a KC (senior barrister) officially appointed to review the legislation. He's warning that this could be considered hostile activity under the act, which would be a bad thing . In other words, he's criticising the act for being overly broad, a view that most on HN agree with, and his criticisms of it presumably carry some weight, given his offi…

Once again, the transparency we do have in the UK is weaponised against it. You see this with "OMG knife-crime is out of control in London" type stories that the US love to run. It's because we were : 1. a decade or more ahead of the rest of the world in actually collecting knife-crime stats 2. Include in those stats people who were simply carrying the kind of knife that wouldn't even get you noticed elsewhere, let a…

> Back to this story, here we have legislators doing their job of scrutinising, and their open scrutiny is held up against the country.

> We could instead have a system where people vote on bills without knowing their contents like the US does.

UK MPs are quite capable of voting on things they haven't read, and indeed their individual opinions are irrelevant due to the whip system. Voting against the party is a rare, major event and can be punished by expulsion. The US traditionally had less party discipline, as can be seen from certain non-party-line Democrats.

Re: Independent review of UK national security law warns of overreach

#145

The authorities here (UK resident) are already pushing hard for as much authoritarianism as they can get. They are also increasing prison capacity and the two tier system is a genuine thing with public services collapsing. Police militarization, drones, army unit investigating private civilians, digital powers widening... I am more scared of the government than I am of local paramilitary forces at this point. It may…

>> They are also increasing prison capacity and the two tier system is a genuine thing with public services collapsing.

What utter nonsense. The prison system was so full that when the current party got into power they had to start releasing people years early to free up space for newer offenders. That is why they're trying to improve capacity and that's not expected to happen for several years.

Re: Independent review of UK national security law warns of overreach

#146
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once again, the transparency we do have in the UK is weaponised against it. You see this with "OMG knife-crime is out of control in London" type stories that the US love to run. It's because we were : 1. a decade or more ahead of the rest of the world in actually collecting knife-crime stats 2. Include in those stats people who were simply carrying the kind of knife that wouldn't even get you noticed elsewhere, let a…

Per capita is a pretty useless stat. I'm much more interested in why there are particular cities where being stabbed is much more likely than in my rural village, per capita.

Cities are generally worse because that's where the organized crime is, and a nasty spiral of people carrying weapons because other people are carrying them.

Scotland used to have the worst reputation for stabbing until the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violence_Reduction_Unit incredible success. You won't hear about it in England because it reflects well on the SNP.

Re: Independent review of UK national security law warns of overreach

#147
post #94

We are just one step from banning HTTPS in UK, aren't we?

No need really, your ISP are not going to go to bat for your privacy.

Do you understand what transit encryption is? The point of TLS is the ISP can't inspect the traffic.

They can of course refuse to carry all encrypted traffic, but 1) stenography exists, so have fun writing DPI filters to detect suspicious noise in the note velocities of MIDI data; 2) turns out the free market didn't adopt HTTPS just to hide drug dealers -- I don't know if you heard, but there's this itty bitty thing called e-commerce, and unless you want people's credit card numbers flying in cleartext left right and center, it is better the padlook stays on.

Now what they can do is mandate their own root CA be installed on all the devices in the country, a tactic actually adopted by real regimes like Russia and Kazakhstan. Unfortunately, so far all they could do is beg and plead over SMS and refuse connections to the online government portal without the CA, while Mozilla and even Google blacklisted their certs.

If certificate transparency becomes universal, now the browser won't even connect until the feds politely check their little spy op into an immutable ledger. So the only remaining point of failure is the browser itself, but by that point it might as well send a clear copy on its own.

Re: Independent review of UK national security law warns of overreach

#148
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No need really, your ISP are not going to go to bat for your privacy.

UK government departments already have direct access to ISP logs (Investigatory Powers Act 2016).

Exactly my point. They don't need to 'ban' https

Re: Independent review of UK national security law warns of overreach

#149
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For people too lazy to click, the second post was: > I think it’s time for the British to gang together, hit the streets and start the slaughter. > Violence and murder is the only way now. Start off burning every migrant hotel then head off to MPs’ houses and Parliament, we need to take over by FORCE. I'm not sure what the punishment for such a clear but ineffective incitement to violence should be, but it shouldn't…

The US has a three part test[1] for what constitutes incitement: - intent - imminence - likelihood If the UK had speech protections like the US (which I wish they would) then it would fail the imminence and probably the likelihood tests (you rightly note that it is ineffective). [1] https://uslawexplained.com/incitement

These tweets had 33 views. At least before being made a charge.

I think that puts the likelihood-factor at zero.

Re: Independent review of UK national security law warns of overreach

#150
post #9

I wonder how the public in the UK feels about their country quickly devolving into an oversurveilled state.

One of the original motivations for the First Amendment was the UK's surveillance and censorship of American mail; the UK has been a surveillance state for a very long time.

Free speech but a president that can deploy the military anywhere in American for no reason. Free speech but an unthinkable number of children murdered in schools on a regular basis for decades. Free speech but bankruptcy if you get cancer. I think I'm alright with the surveillance.
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