The UK has been a leader in developing internet censorship for over 20 years; it's never been just one party or government.

When certain big network equipment companies (this was before Huawei cloned everything) responded to criticism for building the Great Firewall of China by saying they were only supplying off-the-shelf gear already in use in the West, they weren't lying.

Only the past 10, maybe 15 years - the worst damage has all been in the past 5 years - but you're right about it being both parties: under Labour we had RIPA and the wet-dreams of "Wacky Jacqui" Smith - which in turn enabled the the Tory gov's implementation of these regressive legislation.

The problem is how the UK cabinet is arranged and the politically powerful role of Home Secretary - where the job description is a license to dream up, campaign for, and implement the most effective means of "keeping the country safe". Quite unfortunate.

Long-term change would only be effected by having the role's description framed in the context of keeping the UK - and its freedoms - safe. It's a subtle change to the oath of office, but would hopefully prevent the recent abuses we've seen. Universal mass surveillance is fundamentally incompatible with our right to privacy.

No, more than 20. Sometimes, the slope actually is slippery.

http://www.liquisearch.com/internet_watch_foundation/history...

That is incredibly alarming. I follow UK news with great worries about internet freedom, freedom of speech and human rights in general. I don't understand how the population allows this??

Because no one cares. Or people who do are in minority. I've had discussions both in real life and online with people telling me they don't understand how I can be against surveillance, it's meant to fight pedophiles and terrorists, so of course it's good,right?

In general, in 7 years of living in the UK, it is definitely my observation that British people in general trust the government to do the right thing. They were not brought up with an ingrained distrust of authority like people from some other countries were - not everyone is happy with the government, but people in general belive that the law is the law and if something is illegal there is a good reason behind it and they don't need to get involved too much.

This level of political apathy and lack of interest in their own country is really shocking at times.

It's true that this seems to be the majority sentiment, in spite of things like a ban on completely harmless sex acts in porn (such as female ejaculation or spanking). This is clearly repressive government action against a sexual minority as we are talking about consenting adults here.

What surprises me more though is how people can be so confident that their data is safe with the government. There is a long list of failed IT projects and incompetent handling of computer security by public organisations.

Even if everything the government wants to do with our data was justified, there would still be a very valid concern about this data eventually ending up in the hands of organised criminals.

I wrote to my MP, switched ISPs to a (more expensive) one whose stance aligns with mine, and took up the other citizenship I have access to. I am deeply concerned about the views of some of my country's leaders. But ultimately, moving countries would be a big cost, and I don't think anywhere else is significantly better? The status quo here is: leaders talk an anti-free-speech game, propose outrageous unimplementable measures, what actually gets done is at most a trivial inconvenience. Where could I move that would have a firmer commitment to free speech, privacy and the like? US? Canada? I don't feel like I'd be a lot better off in any of those. Maybe Germany but I feel like they're drifting into the restriction-of-speech direction after their migrant issues.