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The UK is shaping a future of precrime and dissent management (2025)

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Re: The UK is shaping a future of precrime and dissent management (2025)

#231

Post by foldr »

fidotron wrote: post #229
cameronh90 wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are we supposed to do to “clean up our city”? I live in one of the worst areas, statistically, for crime and haven’t experienced anything beyond porch piracy and someone trying my car door. My girlfriend walks to/from the train station daily in the early morning and late night without any trouble and personal safety isn’t even something we spend any time thinking about. Obviously crime happens, but against other…

> My girlfriend walks to/from the train station daily in the early morning and late night without any trouble and personal safety isn’t even something we spend any time thinking about. You understand this is the kind of thing those of us that lived there have heard a million times? It's exactly what people say before the thing that happens that makes them leave. > US cities are much worse. This also is not the case,…

Ok, so we can either listen to

(i) people who live in London, or

(ii) people who left London because they were victims of a crime.

I'm genuinely sorry that you were the victim of a crime, but people in group (ii) are obviously likely to have a negative perception of London regardless of how much or how little crime London actually has.

By way of analogy, consider that there are people who experienced a traumatic air accident and who have never flown again. I don't blame them. But their experiences don't countervail the statistics showing that flying is safe.

>> US cities are much worse.

> This also is not the case, and it's amazing how propagandized the UK has to be to think it. If you lot were aware of the true standard of life in most of the US you'd riot.

I've lived in London and DC, and DC (at the time at least, 2007-2011) was uncontroversially much more dangerous than London. And of course it's only 6 months ago that the President of the USA declared a public safety emergency in DC ;) You're not wrong about the overall standard or living, but you are wrong about crime and safety.

Re: The UK is shaping a future of precrime and dissent management (2025)

#232

Post by theappsecguy »

reedf1 wrote: post #174
Aurornis wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anecdote is not data. This is a situation where the data may not be capturing the reality, though. An increasingly common tactic for decreasing crime statistics is to reduce reporting of crimes. The more difficult you make it to report a crime, the better the crime numbers look. In one city I’m familiar with, it became so well known that reporting small crimes was a futile endeavor that people just gave up. It was…

pretty hard to underreport homicide

Not sure homicide fits into “small crime” category.

Re: The UK is shaping a future of precrime and dissent management (2025)

#233

Post by room271 »

robtherobber wrote: post #164
room271 wrote: post #137

As a Brit, I find it very hard to believe that the majority of comments in this thread are not either written out of ignorance or are bots. The article is from an anarchist organisation and sensationalist. 'Precrime' in the sense described is performed routinely by all intelligence agencies and police networks in the West. Criticisms from across the pond reflect a spectacular lack of perspective. The UK is far more f…

As a Brit, I find it very hard to believe that you're a Brit and that your method of drawing superficial conclusions about the other participants is sound. Perhaps we are both bots here. Instead of attacking the other participants for not being as enlightened as you may be and the source of the information, a more appreciated approach would've been to address the substance of the article. For example, what are some "…

Thanks for your considered reply, and I do appreciate my initial post was somewhat exaggerated and done in frustration.

Your own evidence, however -- albeit expressed less polemically -- seems indeed to support my conclusion, namely that on a range of measures the UK is indeed more 'free' than the US. Moreover, it is somewhat a large sleight of hand for you to say 'Trump and his oligarchs aside' when Trump is the President and Congress does not seem interested in curtailing his executive power.

Re inequality, I completely agree that the UK does poorly on inequality measures but the data is somewhat ambiguous here. E.g. the OECD picture is closer to what you describe, but the World Bank (which uses the Luxembourg Income Study) paints a different picture:

France: 31.8 Germany: 32.4 UK: 32.4 USA: 41.4

(https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SI.POV.GINI)

By this measure, the UK is not at all an outlier among the largest EU economies, while the USA is. Moreover, inequality is falling in the UK but rising in the USA so the trend further excacerbates the difference. You can explore many other inequality measures across the USA/UK at https://pip.worldbank.org/# and the picture is very consistent: the USA is less 'equal' across all measures.

I would have to dive into things more to attempt to explain the discrepancy in the two data sources. The Parliamentary report you cite does hint at a partial explanation; the family survey they use doesn't correct for many benefits, which results in an overstatement of inequality. It may also be that the World Bank is total income rather than disposable income but it's not easy to determine their precise methodology (though see https://datanalytics.worldbank.org/PIP-Methodology/surveyest...).

Re so-called pre-crime. All police organisations monitor high risk individuals through increased patrols in hotspots, targeted surveillance, etc. My point I guess is that there is not some binary scale between Minority-Report style precrime units and an hypothesised modern police form that is indifferent to risk factors. It is a scale. The 'precrime' project referred to in the article does not facilitate pre-emptive arrest but appears to provide additional risk data when allocating police resources (and probably helps with parole and rehabilitation strategies too). A touch of suspicion towards the rhetoric of the article is warranted too given the source. In any case, the UK has a long tradition of policing by consent and while there have been some regressions on policing of protest (which I deeply oppose) in general policing in the UK is good and crime is falling.

Re: The UK is shaping a future of precrime and dissent management (2025)

#234

Post by cameronh90 »

fidotron wrote: post #229
cameronh90 wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are we supposed to do to “clean up our city”? I live in one of the worst areas, statistically, for crime and haven’t experienced anything beyond porch piracy and someone trying my car door. My girlfriend walks to/from the train station daily in the early morning and late night without any trouble and personal safety isn’t even something we spend any time thinking about. Obviously crime happens, but against other…

> My girlfriend walks to/from the train station daily in the early morning and late night without any trouble and personal safety isn’t even something we spend any time thinking about. You understand this is the kind of thing those of us that lived there have heard a million times? It's exactly what people say before the thing that happens that makes them leave. > US cities are much worse. This also is not the case,…

Bad things can happen anywhere. A one-off incident wouldn’t make me leave.

I visit the US often and have been a victim of crime there more often than anywhere in Europe. That’s not to say I don’t love the US. San Diego is probably my favourite city in the world. But apart from one or two exceptions, large US cities suffer from far worse crime than anywhere in the UK. I got mugged at gunpoint by a crackhead in Philly. Quality of life can be fantastic of course. My aunt lives in a gated community in LA and drives to work so she never has to interact with the real world, so to speak, and her QoL is amazing. But large parts of the city are absolutely dystopian.

Try walking from Fashion District to Chinatown and tell me where you’d find something like that anywhere in London, let alone Z1. I don't even know if I've seen anything that bad in actual third world cities.

Re: The UK is shaping a future of precrime and dissent management (2025)

#236

Post by JCattheATM »

foldr wrote: post #216
JCattheATM wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On the contrary, it’s no different whatsoever from corralling away protest until it’s out of sight in an approved zone, and arresting anyone who expresses dissent in sight. You are not being genuine here IMO, and this seems to be a case of the very tribalism I spoke of. The two are not remotely the same. One is restricting a protest to a zone. The other is punishing people for what they are saying, even when what t…

As another poster has already pointed out to you, the person holding the blank piece of paper was not arrested. A number of the arrests of anti-monarchy protestors were subsequently ruled unlawful (e.g. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cwyenzdz66wo ). All of this was widely reported in the British media and generally agreed to be a bad thing, so it doesn't really fit with your narrative of Brits being in denial ab…

> As another poster has already pointed out to you, the person holding the blank piece of paper was not arrested.

I was under the impression it was not a single incident, but that's great that it wasn't.

The bigger problem, though, was people being arrested for holding up "not my king" or similar signs. According to one site[0], there were 64 arrests that day. I don't think it matters that no charges were filed or whatever, what matters is they were taken at the time for expressing an opinion.

> All of this was widely reported in the British media and generally agreed to be a bad thing, so it doesn't really fit with your narrative of Brits being in denial about these problems.

That's also good to know. I should have been clearer, but I meant within the context of my experience online. I also don't know that they are truly in denial, it just seems they are overly defensive about it and want to point out the US is worse in various ways.

> That's what people actually object to, but you misinterpret these objections as a defense of police overreach.

I'm misinterpreting anything, and certainly not in this discussion. In past discussions, closer to the coronation, there were Brits being very active in downplaying the arrests, that to me would seem to be denying there was an issue. If it was widely reported in British media as a bad thing, it would seem these particular people being in denial were outliers.

[0] https://hnksolicitors.com/news/met-police-regrets-coronation...

Re: The UK is shaping a future of precrime and dissent management (2025)

#237

Post by iamflimflam1 »

9JollyOtter wrote: post #210
iamflimflam1 wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say “could not possibly be implemented” rather than “bold”. Anyone can propose a brave or bold course of action. It’s very rare these people have any idea how to actually execute their plans.

> It’s very rare these people have any idea how to actually execute their plans. Regarding Cummins, Why exactly? Dominic Cummins is articulate, seems to be quite intelligent and seems to be very fact/data orientated. I've also heard him describe how he would action particular policy. Therefore I find it hard to believe he had didn't have any idea on how to execute his plans.

You are Dominic Cummins and I claim my 5 pounds :)

Re: The UK is shaping a future of precrime and dissent management (2025)

#238

Post by JCattheATM »

tdeck wrote: post #178
JCattheATM wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is most Brits, at least on HN, seem to deny what is happening and/or support it. People being arrested for holding up blank signs at Charles' coronation was ridiculous and nothing like it has happened in the US, but anytime that's brought up they pivot to mass shootings in the US or some other whataboutism.

I was curious about the "blank sign" story because it's slightly different from what I remembered reading. As far as I can tell, this is the incident you're referring to: On 12 September, Charles addressed parliament as king for the first time. The Metropolitan police called in reinforcements in case of protests. Powlesland, who works nearby, walked from Parliament Square to Downing Street and back with his blank pie…

I'm glad that was only a single instance, I had misremebered it as being multiple. I think the bigger isser then is people arrested for holding up signs saying "not my king" or similar, of which there were at least 64[0].

[0] https://hnksolicitors.com/news/met-police-regrets-coronation...

Re: The UK is shaping a future of precrime and dissent management (2025)

#239

Post by graemep »

JCattheATM wrote: post #157
iamnothere wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am convinced that a good bit of this is paid astroturfing and another segment is people who work in government or government contracting. Brits generally seem more open to government intrusion, it’s true, but in my experience they don’t go out of their way to defend things like this. It’s more of a passive acceptance.

I think tribalism is the simpler explanation. One of the worst offenders I saw was a guy on here who wrote one of the new generation shells written in go...went out of his way to say the US had the same behavior as the UK, arresting people holding a blank sign, except his evidence was the disproportionate shooting of black people by police. An entirely unrelated issue. The point was though he was flailing due to feel…

> his evidence was the disproportionate shooting of black people by police

In the UK? The police shoot very few people of any colour! Two in 2025: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_killings_by_police_in_...

Is there even a bit enough sample to draw such conclusions (let alone that correlation does not imply causation)

Re: The UK is shaping a future of precrime and dissent management (2025)

#240

Post by JCattheATM »

tdeck wrote: post #183
JCattheATM wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a current example look at the other guy replying to my comments, earnestly trying to equate 'free speech zones' in the US which have not been a thing in years, maybe more than a decade, with people in the UK being arrested for holding up blank signs. I can't imagine it's paid work because what would be the point? It's not like he is influencing anyone's opinions.

> free speech zones' in the US which have not been a thing in years, maybe more than a decade This is from 2024 https://www.thefire.org/news/how-milwaukee-and-chicago-circu...

OK. SO, one city decided to do that, around a convention where there was very likely reasonable security concerns. Not sure I agree with it, but it's hardly a national issue. Look at all the no kings and anti-ice protests nation wide not confined in any way as evidence.
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