It's a losing fight, really. Even my friends who are very technically minded don't seem to care at all.
However - for all of this nonsense, I feel like some people(your post included) have an exaggerated sense of how bad it really is here. No, "thought crime" isn't being prosecuted. The rare police intervention that happens because someone got offended is usually resolved without any criminal charges. Yes it still shouldn't happen at all, but it's more of an anomaly than a rule.
I say all of the above because where I'm from(Poland), ostensibly there is not as much surveilence as in the UK, yet the government and the police are far happier to prosecute the things you are worried about. Insulted the wrong politician online? Jail. Insulted the church? Jail. Went to the wrong protest? Jail. Made a comment online that could be seen as offensive to the church? Jail.
I think my point is - yes, there is a lot of unnecessary surveilance in the UK, and a lot of people don't care about it......but you guys still don't know how good you have it. Of course two wrongs don't make a right.....but you need to have perspective on this.
its fascinating how most people would be at least annoyed if they found someone looking in their windows every day. even if that person was someone official looking who didn't look like they were going to rob or murder them. even if they were standing across the street from their house taking notes on them and not causing any harm, people would still want to know what they were doing.
but when it comes to the same thing happening to them online the reaction is mostly just "so what?".
it probably didn't help that everything online and in 'the cloud' is so much more abstract and harder to understand
Would you have a source that people in Poland got jailed for "insulting" the church or politician? Or peaceful protest? Prosecutions I know are for something else; spraying on centuries old statues, throwing stones and so on.
"Thought crime" in UK is not criminal offense, so there are no criminal charges. You get knock on door, invitation to police station and a fine. "Hate crime" is another level. Some guy did stunt with pig fat. He died in prison, authorities put him into maximum security prison with radical islamists. "Insulting religion" in UK is serious offense punishable by death!
https://wiadomosci.wp.pl/wroclaw-obraza-uczuc-religijnych-w-...
https://oko.press/podlesna-zatrzymana-matka-teczowa/
Not to mention that a whole bunch of things just got criminalized online if they offend the church, like........mentioning that it's the leading source of pedophiles in this country:
https://aszdziennik.pl/138364,10-sposobow-na-obrazenie-kosci...
The number of police interventions for people being offended online due to religion has been going up steadily every year:
https://prawo.gazetaprawna.pl/artykuly/8053551,przestepstwo-...
>>"Insulting religion" in UK is serious offense punishable by death!
I am aware of that case, like I said, it shouldn't happen and two wrongs don't make a right. But I definitely feel like you are far more likely to get into trouble for this in Poland than in the UK, and it has nothing to do with the level of surveilance in society.
> mentioning that it's the leading source of pedophiles in this country
Ehm, Rotherham...?
> two wrongs don't make a right
You claim Poland is much worse. I want similar case from Poland...
> I definitely feel like you are far more likely to get into trouble for this in Poland than in the UK
Poland is a post communist country, there is a big aversion to totalitarian govs. Comparing LGBT activism in rural Poland and ultra liberal parts of London, is not valid. Go to Luton or Yorkshire and see what happens...
Oh, you mean like Pride in Luton (https://prideinluton.org/) or Yorkshire Pride? (https://www.yorkshire.com/inspiration/features/yorkshire-pri...)
But they are often recorded as a "non-crime hate incident," an innovation instigated by the police and not by legislators. Fortunately, there seems to be some pushback against this frankly dystopian practice.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jan/02/polici...
It literally hasn't been a century since the Europeans went full Nazi. We have no idea where the world will be in 25 years, but we do know there are a lot of plausible scenarios where this technology will get people killed.
The government keeping detailed records of who went where, when should be completely banned, totally off the table. This is just laying the groundwork for the next time the fickle voting public decides to try authoritarianism again.
I completely agree with you.
The "Europeans" didn't go full Nazi. Germany went full Nazi. Italy went full fascist. Their allies conformed to various degrees. But it was also Europeans who fought and died in their millions to overcome fascism. Most of the Jews and others who died in the Holocaust were Europeans.
I after ten years of police incompetence, failure, sheer ineptitude and negligence of the police to deal with abusive heroin/crack addicts did my own survaliance and with all the evidence, they still failed to do a thing. Even predicted drug dealer activities and events before they even happened and then with fair and sound warning, they still failed. Even with evedence they failed to even offer any up against the offenders in crown court and they walked. I could write a novel at the failures they have done, from passing witness satments onto drug dealers to bending over backwards for them. Even predicted and warned about danger of life to others and they were allowed to just die.
So yes, you can say and do what you like without being held to account as long as your a criminal who can play the system and get away with it.
Which is why I'm in the process of making it all public and shame all those failures in the open. Already have the Met Police on special measures. Already flagged and raised two major security flaws in their systems to entities higher and dare say I'm not even scratching the surface here.
Hence your comment about "litterally no one here cares" rings true too me of the police themselves who have for all effect enabled crime and victimhooded the real criminals at the expense of innocent lives and with that. I dare say they will find a way to charge and arrest me once I do it but damit, this can not carry on and the levels of failure are so deep and wide, it is the right thing to do.
Any suggestions about releasing such whistleblowing level of data to augment what I have inplay would be welcome though.
A friend of mine was hit by another car two weeks ago and was injured in the crash. The other driver drove off without stopping. Police didn't turn up for the accident. They handed 360 dash cams over to the police. The registration plate was clearly visible. It checks out on DVLA and MID as taxed, MOT'ed and insured. Police have managed to do nothing so far with any level of competence, have note even attempted to contact the vehicle owner and have managed to lose the video evidence and half of the case notes so far.
That and a few other cases over the years including an attempted stabbing, burglary and car theft has given me a really bad opinion of the police. They have not managed to actually help me once.
The stupid one was the car theft. The policeman who turned up said they know who did it and where the car was. Then 4 weeks of silence followed by an apology letter.
I know someone who had their car stolen in Manchester, basically the police said they don't even have the time nor the resources to come out, they gave him a case number and said to let his insurer handle it.
And the thing is, two days later he actually found his car sitting in a parking lot of a supermarket somewhere, rang the police, and they said "....ok? what do you want us to do?". He said that he would expect them to come out and look for prints or whatever - they said they don't have anyone available to do this, if he still has the keys he should take the car and be happy it was found.
I honestly think in UK unless it's an actual murder your chances of getting a successful intervention from Police are close to zero. They are just way too underfunded and understaffed, I do remember reading that some places like Manchester have like one policeman for 100k people. It's impossible to do effective policing with that kind of force.
There was the old joke about someone ringing the police to complain about someone burgling their garden shed.
Police say, we'll send someone tomorrow to have a look.
Homeowner replies, well I've got a kitchen knife and I'm going to stab this guy unless he leaves without taking any of my property.
Police immediately send round officers to deal with the incident.
And no, I'm not talking about purely hypothetical situation here - my sister was alone at home when two drunk guys were trying to break in, throwing rocks and bricks at the windows, shouting that they are going to come in and get her, she locked herself in her room and rang the police.........they arrived 45 minutes later. If one of the guys didn't cut himself badly on the glass and decided to give up(and the other one bailed then), it could have ended extremely badly, but an active break-in is apparently not enough to send the nearest PC to the scene right now.
One in which dealers with guns, packages of heroin and cooking up crack cocaine, police be like ok we will put on our intel system, begged to send somebody nowt. I mention egads I might as well just kill myself was joking but once said that the operator wasn't going to let it go without the police checking upon me. Who then wasted their time and they still ignored what was going on in flat below.
Another one was they with lanlord knock on their door, they had dealers in, and waitied 5 minutes - could hear them flusing the toilet 3 times as they flushed all the drugs and only once got rid did they enter and go nothing to see here, didn't even bother checking the system tank etc - pure joke.
Was saying that the local police were akin to the keystone cops, though honestly they made the keystone cops look like the SAS.
But those are just two examples and far bigger and wider than that with too many to go thru, but helps when you do your own intellegence gathering and with that about 4TB of stuff to get out and far far worse.
I noticed that this post appeared on Reddit the other day, suggesting people should start wearing woolly gimp masks to avoid facial recognition, which started in China. Have to wait and see if it catches on in the UK. https://www.reddit.com/r/AskUK/comments/umoflx/wearing_balac...
Though mindful the bigger issue would be prosecution just being so epicly fail and a whole raft of lawyers who know the law way better and the tricks that anybody who does go to court and gets sentence kinda needs to be so blantantly guilty to get past the most liberal minded of easily maniplated jurys by lawyers that even those get pithy sentences which get an automatic discount.
Real issue is prisons that are akin to social/networking clubs for criminals and absolutily no deterant at all.
Let alone failing that are more common than people realise like this example: https://www.businessinsider.com/desperate-letter-details-sui...
Another small example would be https://www.surreycomet.co.uk/news/18250633.shoplifter-jaile... in that instance he got let out after two weeks which he was able to still get paid benifits and the joy of being banned from wearing a face-mask in shops just prior to the whole COVID pandemic - what geniues. Heck - how many can get away with calling a judge a Witch and get such a pithy sentence of 6 weeks yet out in 2. Let alone the charges. Hardly a deterant, more holiday club.
So if anything - the whole prision and sentencing system as well as financially propping up the whole prosecution needs to be addressed first as they fail the police who inturn fail everybody else. After all, police hands so tied with things that they are so exposed to being sued for saying even a hurty word to a criminal who has lawyers with skills that sure I can accept some level of blame outside the police, but equally, very mindful of so much failure above and beyond that within their remit that the whole system a stumbling joke to many.
So austerity, not the issue when the ones you have fail so hard and with that, demoralise and push out any that are good. Needs serious overhaul and some serious questons and mistakes admitted to. Cuckooing, it's not all that it seems, far from it, but that's best covered when I get it all public.
But that's just one example.
Now if it was truely independant with investigations not pulling in and using the police for way to many instances, well - the word independant would carry some weight beyond name only.
As it stands, they are not as independant as people think and who do you esculate to after that? So yes, can see why many have nothing left open to them beyond what some would say winging but when you look at the whole structure. Is being unfairly treated winging or vocalising unjustice, well I'd say the later over jumping upon the former would be a far more fairer go to given all the facts.
OK, I know something about handling stuff like this. The first thing you do is escalate it to your MP. The next thing is to publicise it - organisations just hate being embarrassed in public so you push it to the papers. I know this first hand.
You are right, I don't know the nuances and when you start to look into some people's stories, stuff starts to fall apart often enough and the injustice isn't what it seemed, or may not be there at all, it becomes just grudge. But I do want a better sciety, and I really wish we had a more constructive discussion - HN's threads are sometimes the nearest we get to a perpetual motion machine, forever turning but nothing changes.
Thanks again.
But most Brits will say all of the above is fine, even necessary. It's eerie how similar these conversations are to ones I've had with people from countries generally considered authoritarian in the west.
The general conclusion I draw is that people will justify and put up with a fair amount of authoritarianism if they feel it targets the right people, or maintains the kind of society they want to live in. If you're a "good citizen" and it doesn't effect you it's hard to be principled if it's mainly targeting people you consider dregs.
EDIT: changed "State run media" to "Official state media" per conversation below..
https://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2015/oct/22/how...
I grew up watching BBC Northern Ireland and also the Irish equivalent of the BBC, RTE and witnessed at least two different versions of reality every evening. Many competing interests were involved and many on all sides were genuinely acting in good faith within their respective systems.
As a point of contrast, I feel like US mainstream news is even more beholden to special interests, including that of the government, than either the BBC or RTE ever were. So being nominally free of state control doesn’t mean a whole lot in reality it seems to me.
For a while as a minister Boris Johnson was paid more by the Times than his ministerial salary. Johnson gave Lebedev a peerage for using his papers, the Evening Standard and the Independent, to promote him. One of the few papers still defending him in his half-resigned state is the Daily Mail. The press have very much been calling the shots until now.
"Official state media" is more correct
Sadly, this ideal of the Westminster system has been under attack for the last decade or two. Secrecy has been broadly imposed on the public service and non-partisan department heads are sacked and replaced with political lackeys. The ideal isn't dead though. There are people in the public service who are trying to keep it non-partisan, and those efforts should be supported rather than it all being written off as a hopeless case.
[1] https://sef.psc.nsw.gov.au/nsw-government-context/the-westmi...
Westminster type systems are arguably hybrid oligarchies. Australia is a good example - look how it continues to function in largely the same way, on largely the same trajectory, despite having 5 prime ministers in the last 10 years.
Your original comment had truth to it but bundling the BBC in undermined that, however you define it here.
"Public Service" is plainly a positive term though. It lends an air of altruism. Not particularly interested in what nomenclature is standard (according to who? 7 etc etc).
I mention "foreign owned" twice because I don't think those that don't have a stake in our country should have so much influence on how it is run and definitely shouldn't be trying to stir up non-existent trouble with our allies.
Personally I'm OK with a public service broadcaster that's charged with being politically neutral.
If that's referring to the case I think it's referring to, I'm very ok with that. There's no such thing as ironic racism.
TV is a dying medium, is it not? I'd say this problem of sensationalist TV news solves itself within a decade.
For mis-selling entertainment, opinion and a poorly written soap opera as the "facts" or even "news".
Face tracking is being implemented throughout Europe: https://www.wired.com/story/europe-police-facial-recognition...
The rest of Europe has the same laws as the UK when it comes to 'offensive rap lyrics'.
This is a general issue, framing it as "Brits don't care" does nothing but make people believe it couldn't happen to them if they are outside the UK.
Some examples of people in the UK who do care: https://www.openrightsgroup.org/ https://bigbrotherwatch.org.uk/
Edit: Forgot to mention originally but lets not forget the general attitude towards E2E encryption in the UK and throughout Europe:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/03/eff-tells-eu-commissio...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investigatory_Powers_Act_2016
There is a general movement against privacy, this isn't a localised issue.
The UK does have a really nasty tradition of anti-democratic violence and literal political prisoners, but that's all in Northern Ireland and supposedly in the past. There's also a very long list of police abuses by the Met aimed at the black community as well as violent public order policing in general. And the infiltration of environmentalist groups (the "spycops" scandal).
I don't see too many other HN commentators picking up those examples for some reason.
Well, not just Brits, roughly whole world holds the same opinion. The difference I see is one group tries with using laws to ban wrong things other group uses hectoring and shaming social media companies to do "right thing" by banning wrong speech. And then partisan hacks jump in, claiming how one of this is obviously right thing to do.
> here I could be visited by the police to "check my thinking", or worse I could prosecuted.
Good luck getting the police to do or investigate anything in the UK, nevermind turning up proactively.
The reason the state is so keen on surveillance is belief it helps the chronically underfunded police service.
If you ever listen to drill music from the UK you'll see how bad it is, all the censored parts are not for radio suitability as they don't censor swear words they're from police orders..
Alternative is not to use the technology.
"Nadine Dorries ‘will have power to censor the internet’"
("Party of law and order" always means more surveillance and authoritarianism, whichever country you're in)
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-43478925
They want to be protected from people such as this, because they don't feel they can protect themselves from him. Not sure where Prince Harry dressing up as a Nazi falls on the spectrum, but I assume the ruling class is above the laws of the commoners either way.
I think all western countries including USA are going down the same road though. It's not a choice I would personally make, but I suppose I can understand why people think this way.
It's gotten so bad that if I were to write some offensive rap lyrics here I could be visited by the police to "check my thinking", or worse I could prosecuted. This applies regardless of whether I've actually offended anyone, if the state feel what I said could hypothetical be considered offensive then it's illegal. Similarly, if you are actually trying to be offensive, but your offense is directed to groups or individuals the state doesn't like, you'll be fine.
I'm sure a similar approach to enforcement will be applied here. If the state decides they don't like you, perhaps because your protesting the wrong things, they'll likely use this technology to keep you in line.
Literally no one here cares though. Brits tends to hold the opinion that if you just don't say or do the wrong things you'll be fine.