The cameras tracking everything everywhere in UK would say that it's long been an authoritarian country.

Authoritarianism is a sliding scale. From what I can gather, lots of humans that have any political pull at all tend to be authoritarian (against the kinds of people they don't like, of course).

Most cameras in the UK (I think around 95% even) are private.

Not sure why you think the UK is an authoritarian regime. Check any ranking and it is one of the freest countries out there (Heritage Ranking, for example: https://www.heritage.org/index/ranking)

Yet the UK has the Snooper's Charter, GCHQ and mass content policing. This is new bill is an extension of their control apparatus, not an exceptionally unique case.

They will become increasingly networked via services like Amazon Ring and it may as well be a government surveillance network.

He is referring to the camera network in London.

The government's camera network in London is very small, only 23708 cameras (15516 of which are from Transport of London across the tube network)[0].

It's a fairly small network for an authoritarian government.

[0]https://www.cctv.co.uk/how-many-cctv-cameras-are-there-in-lo....

In what way is that a "very small" network?

In fact, given how small London is that's a huge network.

Small London?

London's population: 8.982 million

Area: 8,382 km2.

How is that small?

Oh this is going to be fun.

I see you're referring to the "Metro area of London". when referring to that size. The size of London proper is 1,572 km2 (Wikipedia, as well)

So now, the fun question is "what area is the camera count referring to?"

Further, the quantity of cameras matters less than the areas the cameras can see that is covered.

Even further-further is how easy it is for the government to acquire the footage off those cameras.

> lots of humans that have any political pull at all tend to be authoritarian

I think it's probably more like a survivorship bias than an innate quality. The only people who are capable of surviving in politics long enough to the point where they have any meaningful influence are the ones who know how to use the systems under their control to protect themselves while tearing down their opponents. Usually this means attempting to consolidate power in themselves, ie. authoritarianism.

Oh, I also mean regular people. The loudest voice sing songs and get articles written ... about new laws we need to add (when the old laws already cover the illegal misdeeds) to stop a new threat from coming upon us, perceived or otherwise.

edit: or making laws that are more about making it illegal to do something some people find icky or culturally unusual.

If your definition of authoritarianism is ubiquitous video surveillance you'll have to come to terms with the fact that not only every politician is authoritarian but just about every citizen, because there's pretty strong support for these security measures.

The word authoritarianism appears to have lost all meaning in internet circles. What authoritarianism actually is, is a people being governed without their consent by a government they did not elect. If British citizens, or their representatives decide they put significant value on public safety rather than privacy that's a choice.

I'm speaking of Authoritarianism in the way that the Political Compass refers to it: https://www.politicalcompass.org/

The UK has never not been eager to censor to a sometimes comical extent. Just look at the "Video Nasty" moral panic, or the hilarious dubbing of Northern Irish people on television.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_nasty

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1988%E2%80%931994_British_broa...

Now that you mention Ireland, it occurs to me the UK plays second fiddle compared to its former colony. After achieving independence, the Irish Free State and its successor, the Republic of Ireland were dominated by right-wing, conservative, Papist and authoritarian nationalists.

Modern art and music – particularly “evil” jazz – were all banned. Our best writers had to leave the country. The writers that didn’t leave had to apply to the Department of Justice for permission to possess a copy of their own book. The video nasties of the eighties didn’t even have a chance to become a problem in Ireland.

The UK’s censorship of the Irish Republican movement paled in comparison to that of Ireland. Enforcement of Section 31 of the Broadcasting act began in the early seventies and lasted until the mid-nineties. And it was often interpreted to prevent Sinn Féin members from speaking about non-political issues. We didn’t even get to have Stephen Rae’s voice standing in for Gerry Adams.

As a young adult in the mid-nineties, censorship was still an issue: I only ever saw Oliver Stone’s “Natural Born Killers” on a very crap video in a student centre. I remember watching Robert Rodriguez’ “From Dusk Till Dawn” in a cinema in the Netherlands knowing that it was banned back at home and around the same time, I remember it being a big deal when the ban was lifted on Playboy magazine.

I have a tendency to focus on the good things in life and try not dwell on the negative. As a result, I have nostalgic memories of the nineties (formative era for music) but forget how bad things actually were in the “good old days”. A more important example I forgot to mention in my comment above was the censorship of information relating to contraception (“family planning”), abortion and anything else relating to reproductive rights.

Until the late nineties, it was illegal to provide any information about abortion services – regardless of circumstances or if the services were in other countries. Newspapers and periodicals from the UK that contained listings or advertisings for abortion services had the relevant pages removed before they could be sold by Irish newsagents. The Society for the Protection of Unborn Children successfully won cases against family planning agencies (that went all the way up to the European Court of Human Rights) and the Union of Students of Ireland for providing information about clinics in the UK that provided abortion services.

The censorship you refer to happend 30-40 years ago under Thatcher [1]. Sense prevailed and these were promptly overturned.

I'm not sure what mentioning such old events brings to the conversation, any more than a discussion of modern US censorship would benefit from discussing the Satanic Panic under Reagan.

Perhaps you would care to elaborate?

[1] Many quipd that the reason she was cremated was that a burial grave would have needed a ballroom to be built above it.

Haven't they been that for a long time? Wasn't Britain the country that pushed for that EU directive that required all ISPs to save all the traffic of their users? They were also the ones that tried doing website blacklists and are trying to censor social media (google: "girl punished for hate crime for posting rap lyrics").

What does the UK have to do so that people will accept that the UK is lying when it calls itself a free country? Start arresting people for speech? For activism? Kill protesters?

The UK was already heading down that route with the public surveillance cameras, IMHO.

And the land-grab law changes over the last 12 months.

Most cameras in the UK are private (around 95% if I recall correctly). Businesses, home cctv, doorbell cameras, etc.

> Sad to see UK becoming one of the apologists of internet censorship

Almost as if, (at this point in time), the benefits of this to the people of the country(not just you) outweigh the negatives...

Not really. This legislation is not something the electorate knew about, let alone discussed, when they were voting in the current government.

It's just one of those things a government with a large majority keeps quiet about until it's got plenty of time between elections to bring it up and push it through before the next one.