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The UK's war on anonymity has come to America

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Re: The UK's war on anonymity has come to America

#601

Post by pydry »

andrepd wrote: post #586
mancerayder wrote: post #581

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are people in the replies below going back and forth about whether the US or the UK started the surveillance state first. I think as undemocratic as the US can behave in practice, it's hard not to argue that the UK won the CCTV surveillance race. London is heavily surveilled. And it doesn't help that someone just posted this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49255496

Hard not to argue in what metric? The US has Flock cameras spreading like the plague, if we're going purely based on vibes. And the Snowden disclosures about how they spy on their own citizens on a massive scale is over a decade old at this point. Plus, a city covered in CCTV could theoretically be freer than one with much less coverage, if those cameras are recording to encrypted storage and accessible only with a j…

It's not really worth arguing over who is worse at violating privacy. Crucially theyre both awful, both getting worse and both treating Russia and China as an aspirational model.

Re: The UK's war on anonymity has come to America

#602

Post by ericmay »

andrepd wrote: post #586
mancerayder wrote: post #581

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are people in the replies below going back and forth about whether the US or the UK started the surveillance state first. I think as undemocratic as the US can behave in practice, it's hard not to argue that the UK won the CCTV surveillance race. London is heavily surveilled. And it doesn't help that someone just posted this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49255496

Hard not to argue in what metric? The US has Flock cameras spreading like the plague, if we're going purely based on vibes. And the Snowden disclosures about how they spy on their own citizens on a massive scale is over a decade old at this point. Plus, a city covered in CCTV could theoretically be freer than one with much less coverage, if those cameras are recording to encrypted storage and accessible only with a j…

This doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.

First, maybe we can just eventually require Flock cameras to also record only to encrypted storage accessible by a judicial warrant. Presumably you are perfectly OK with that?

Second, privacy advocates have much to say about being surveilled at all, regardless of whether the data is encrypted or not. They’re opposed to recording at all, not recording and then the judge gets to randomly decide when to release recordings.

Finally, the UK is part of Five Eyes.

Re: The UK's war on anonymity has come to America

#603

Post by happymellon »

cs02rm0 wrote: post #600
happymellon wrote: post #433

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding, but the war on anonymity was first (just) passed in the US at a state level as porn laws before it passed in the UK. Are we pretending that the porn id laws weren't a first attempt at getting forums like Reddit that might "accidentally" have naked pictures liable and therefore profile everyone? Because this is leaning on blaming to UK for everything the US is doing to itself an awful lot…

I think it's appeared everywhere all at once. It's not the UK alone, or the US.

I was referencing the title of the article.

Re: The UK's war on anonymity has come to America

#604

Post by stemlord »

We need marketing for working class laypeople, esp on the right, to understand what's happening on our web, our devices and on our streets and why they should care. I don't think I've seen this type of marketing for this demographic land in any meaningful way yet

Re: The UK's war on anonymity has come to America

#605

Post by fn-mote »

inigyou wrote: post #591
like_any_other wrote: post #552

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I.e. they establish the framework for censorship and deanonymization by making everyone else responsible for child-safety, except the person that should be setting up the parental controls - all they get to do is select a "child" or "not child" option. The law doesn't require they be given any control besides that - no default whitelist of apps and websites that they could edit, no blacklist, no screen time limits, n…

Why would you make John Smith responsible for what Mark Zuckerberg displays to Jimmy Smith?

Stop the disingenuous comments please.

1. John Smith is the parent. Giving them power to control what the child visits allows them to do their parenting job.

2. What proposal makes Facebook responsible for anything? Surely none of these. They will just say they are appropriate for ages 13+ and what will parents do?

Re: The UK's war on anonymity has come to America

#606

Post by selimthegrim »

like_any_other wrote: post #596
inigyou wrote: post #589

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ok good. Except for the viewing thing. That one is crazy. Most of what you described is just disinformation though and I'm fine with the UK taking a different approach than the US.

> Most of what you described is just disinformation though “We will be a minority in our homeland by 2066” is accurate: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/white-briton... Burning the Koran is not a statement of fact, so it cannot be disinformation. "young white girls are being raped by these grooming gangs" is also accurate (though the precise number is contentious, mostly because the police turned a bli…

Why is it we never hear about the Muslim prosecutor who put them away?

Re: The UK's war on anonymity has come to America

#607

Post by Tangurena2 »

cobbzilla wrote: post #117
dionidium wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Whatever argument they make should be simply ignored and dismissed. This makes very little sense. People sometimes appeal to the safety of children cynically, but it's very often sincere, since parents genuinely do worry a lot about their kids . You can tell people to ignore these appeals, but it won't work, and you'll be leaving better arguments on the table.

Yes it’s normal to worry about your kids. It’s normal for family and friends to worry about your kids. When a politician is worried about your kids, you should be worried about your rights and freedoms. Not only for your own sake but for your kids too!

> When a politician is worried about your kids, you should be worried about your rights and freedoms. Not only for your own sake but for your kids too!

I work with those politicians. They have kids too and they are just as susceptible to media/propaganda/fearmongering as you are. However, unlike you and I, they can do something (usually wrong) about it.

Re: The UK's war on anonymity has come to America

#608

Post by phatfish »

foldr wrote: post #493
xienze wrote: post #488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because this is leaning on blaming to UK for everything the US is doing to itself an awful lot. Hasn't the UK had a culture of surveillance (the famous CCTV cameras) and arresting people over online wrongthink for quite some time though? Who inspired who?

No, not really. This is a narrative that is pushed by certain segments of the American right (and some of their UK allies). It easily dominates online discussion in an environment where the majority of people posting have no direct experience of life in the UK. Actual life in the UK is very unlike what you would imagine on the basis of reading HN threads, or Elon Musk’s twitter feed. I suspect that most people with f…

Yup, apparently people that live their lives in the UK are the indoctrinated ones. Not the majority of the HN crowd that consume whatever the algorithm feeds them and think they are enlightened.

Re: The UK's war on anonymity has come to America

#609

Post by happymellon »

mancerayder wrote: post #581
happymellon wrote: post #433

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding, but the war on anonymity was first (just) passed in the US at a state level as porn laws before it passed in the UK. Are we pretending that the porn id laws weren't a first attempt at getting forums like Reddit that might "accidentally" have naked pictures liable and therefore profile everyone? Because this is leaning on blaming to UK for everything the US is doing to itself an awful lot…

There are people in the replies below going back and forth about whether the US or the UK started the surveillance state first. I think as undemocratic as the US can behave in practice, it's hard not to argue that the UK won the CCTV surveillance race. London is heavily surveilled. And it doesn't help that someone just posted this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49255496

I'm referring to the title of the article blaming the UK for the actions of the US and US based companies.

Re: The UK's war on anonymity has come to America

#610

Post by like_any_other »

inigyou wrote: post #591
like_any_other wrote: post #552

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I.e. they establish the framework for censorship and deanonymization by making everyone else responsible for child-safety, except the person that should be setting up the parental controls - all they get to do is select a "child" or "not child" option. The law doesn't require they be given any control besides that - no default whitelist of apps and websites that they could edit, no blacklist, no screen time limits, n…

Why would you make John Smith responsible for what Mark Zuckerberg displays to Jimmy Smith?

Because I would rather parents make the minimal effort [1] to restrict which pages their children visit and how often, than legally require every website and game to deanonymize, surveil, and censor their users. Which includes not just Facebook, but every forum (HN, reddit, small bicycling pages [2]), game, and chatroom. Because the latter would mean anyone hosting public discussions would be doing so only at the government's will. If they don't like the direction those discussions take, they will use the vague laws against "harm" to force a change. Like the UK government admitted [3]:

First, we are told, the relevant secretary of state (Michelle Donelan) expressed “concern” that the legislation might whack sites such as Amazon instead of Pornhub. In response, officials explained that the regulation in question was “not primarily aimed at … the protection of children”, but was about regulating “services that have a significant influence over public discourse”, a phrase that rather gives away the political thinking behind the act.

[1] It's not minimal now, but that's the point of government funding and requiring better parental controls.

[2] https://www.techdirt.com/2024/12/20/death-of-a-forum-how-the...

[3] https://archive.md/2025.08.13-190800/https://www.thetimes.co...

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