Although you're right that tech people would still be able to choose secure encrypted options, the fact is that the majority of criminals by pure numbers are not very sophisticated - so while this sort of backdoor obviously wouldn't be a guarantee that every criminal conversation could be snooped on, it would work on the 90-99% (I'd guess towards 99) who aren't both cautious enough to try to be secure and tech savvy enough to make the right choices.
(But it's still a terrible idea, both for the sake of general privacy principles, and for the risk that current or future governments or personnel will abuse the access, and for the risk that criminals outside government will be able to take advantage of the same backdoor.)
Secondly, I will also point out that criminals in general watch whats happening to other criminals. If people start going to jail because there mobile communications are being targeted, others will catch on and stop using mobile tech altogether for criminal activities.. People copy what works successfully, you don't need to be smart to do that. So yeah this argument is complete bullshit.
Once the government starts mining data from iPhones, criminals will quickly adapt while every law-abiding citizen gets caught in the crossfire. It opens the door for abuse: officials could easily spy on their partners, dig up dirt on rivals, or target those they dislike without breaking any laws. Meanwhile, cybercriminals will have an easy target since every phone comes with this built-in vulnerability.
This system is likely to snag small-time offenders, not the real masterminds behind organized crime. This isn’t a smart solution for crime. It just sacrifices our privacy for a few token arrests.
Incidentally, as a non US and non UKer, my data with the major tech firms has no protection anyway. Welcome to the club, US citizens :)
You don't need a "vast majority" of criminals to break down a system and exfiltrate data when just a single, possibly state-backed, criminal operation can break your system down and do the job.
However this “thought police” and “arrested for posting memes” comment that often gets pointed on here is itself a nonsense meme.
What actually happened was people were arrested for instigating riots. This is no different to what happened in the US regarding the Capital Hill riots — people who helped organise it online were arrested too.
The UK has a long history of shitty policies invented to “protect people” but we need to be clear on what’s actually fact and what’s fiction. Otherwise you end up wasting energy protesting against things that are imaginary.
Thankfully common sense prevailed and those people weren’t convicted. meanwhile in other “less Orwellian” counties people are getting charged for similar actions:
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/protester-int...
Where’s your freedom of speech there?
I’m not saying I agree with Met. But I also don’t agree it proves the UK are charging people for posting internet memes. Which was the original claim.
GP mentioned anti-royalist protester arrests and threats of arrest, you asked for a citation, I provided a link to a BBC article discussing those. How is it not "what's being discussed"? (At least in the context of this subthread.)
So while I don’t agree with the UK arrests, it doesn’t prove that the UK is any more Orwellian than any other country.
> https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/protester-int...
Jumping over a barricade and disrupting a speech doesn't seem remotely comparable to holding up a blank piece of paper.
Certainly you can find examples of the British police overpolicing protests, and that’s something that people rightly get angry about. It’s just that there’s a huge distance between that kind of thing (which happens pretty much everywhere from time to time - do US police forces have an exemplary record of policing protests?) and the kind of wild claims you can see in this discussion that the UK has become an Orwellian police state.
Arguments around citizenship. Problems with gun violence (which the UK and most of countries solved decades ago).
It’s not like you couldn’t draw a Mad Max parallel just by looking at the headlines in Swedish news.
It feels like it's always slowly getting closer to that. It certainly seems one of the least free developed or 'allied' countries.
I’m not happy about it but you can’t really single the UK out for it.
And some of the protestors at the coronation of Charles were pretty blatant.
And all the examples of police showing up because of a tweet, often not even hateful just not falling in line sufficiently with rightthink.
Unfortunately a lot of people are getting their news from Twitter, from accounts that are obsessed with painting a particular picture of the UK. Have you spent any time in the UK yourself? The impression of it that you’d get from reading HN is unrecognizable to anyone who lives here.
> Have you spent any time in the UK yourself? The impression of it that you’d get from reading HN is unrecognizable to anyone who lives here.
I lived in Scotland for a while and have been to London often enough. It's it's mostly just a normal country, but things can change slowly until all of a sudden it's unavoidable. The cops showing up to peoples houses for opinions tweets is certainly frequent and concerning.
So I don’t think the UK is any further along in that regard.
There are other areas where the UK is further along though. Such as CCTV surveillance in London. There are also areas where the UK is far less Orwellian, for example our open-mindedness about abortion and gender identity.
The UK’s legal system isn’t just defined by what Musk tweets about. ;)
You've shown some protestors getting arrested, but I don't believe you can show any equivalent of cops acting as thought police for tweets.
> for example our open-mindedness about abortion and gender identity.
Funny you say that, because there isn't so much open-mindedness as a forced viewpoint. I'm trans, FWIW, but I don't at all agree with sending cops to peoples houses because a ciswoman has doubts about accepting a transwoman completely as a woman.
I'd also say it's other western countries being compared to here, and I don't think the UK is particularly further ahead than other first world nations, aside from the US where it is very much a red/blue state issue.
I have elsewhere.
> Funny you say that, because there isn't so much open-mindedness as a forced viewpoint. I'm trans, FWIW, but I don't at all agree with sending cops to peoples houses because a ciswoman has doubts about accepting a transwoman completely as a woman.
I wouldn’t say it’s a forced viewpoint here either.
Quite the opposite in fact, there’s a lot of really vocal people in the UK who publicly denounce transgender people.
Could you relink them? I don't see anything, and I don't think you could show it is to the same extent as in the UK.
> I wouldn’t say it’s a forced viewpoint here either.
Then why do cops keep showing up for wrongthink?
No. I’ve said my piece and I’m done.
And it isn’t even happening to extent you keep claiming. There’s been lots of evidence posted to prove that point.
> Then why do cops keep showing up for wrongthink?
They don’t.
And I know you’ll follow up with some unverifiable linked to highly disreputable sources which are several years out of date.
So let’s just close this argument off by saying you think you know better than everyone else despite not living in the UK nor reading either up-to-date nor reputable sources.
And this is precisely why this meme of the UK policing thought persists: because people form an opinion based off silly headlines and then are too singleminded to listen to the full facts.
I honestly can’t be bothered any longer on this. I’ve been actively involved in politics around precisely these kinds of issues, but of course you know better than me because it fits your own narrative about how your own country can’t also be going down the shitter.
You said this, but then continued to go out of your way to reply to another unrelated comment. Copying and pasting some links would have been less effort.
> And it isn’t even happening to extent you keep claiming. There’s been lots of evidence posted to prove that point.
Actually my llast reply showed quite the opposite. The scale is much larger, about 2,500 incidents.
> They don’t.
They do, at least 2500 times. See a recent reply for sources.
> And I know you’ll follow up with some unverifiable linked to highly disreputable sources which are several years out of date. > So let’s just close this argument off by saying you think you know better than everyone else despite not living in the UK nor reading either up-to-date nor reputable sources.
It's a shame here to see you assuming bad faith. This reeks of tribalism, not objective argument.
The source I found was from the UK government, so I think that you preemptively dismiss that really shows who is being rational and objective and who is not.
> I honestly can’t be bothered any longer on this.
Maybe. You say and wrote this, yet you have a second reply you posted after this that I am about to respond to.
I won't be surprised if I end up responding yet again.
Because your comments are bad faith.
And I’ve addressed all your other nonsense already.
No, they are not. I thought you were done? Why are you still replying just to insult?
I'm sorry my view offends you, but unlike you I'm not trying to offend you, it's my honest view and I thin the evidence supports it.
If you think I'm an idiot, fine, but could you maybe just stop replying at this point instead of violating HN guidelines just to let me know? I'm down to have a civil discussion, but that clearly isn't happening at this point, and it isn't because of me.
> And I’ve addressed all your other nonsense already.
It's not nonsense, and you haven't addressed the desire not to handshake being reported, nor the 2500 or so incorrectly reported NCHIs.
---
You edited your comment to add a lot after I replied, so I'll address it here.
> What you’re not grasping is the cultural differences between our two police forces.
You forget I lived in the UK for a fairly long time. Also, while I live in the US, I'm not from the US.
> In America, the police go relatively unchecked. They buy ex-military hardware, lie in interrogations, literally kill their own innocent citizens because of their skin colour, and at no point face any repercussions. So laws in the US need to be water tight to prevent abuse — and even then, they still get flouted by those who should be upholding them.
You're generalizing a country far more than diverse than the UK here in terms of differences in smaller government reigons and their police forces. What you've said here is not universally true for the US by any means, just for certain states.
> So UK law often feels more ripe for abuse but that’s because we have stronger processes in place to protect against abuse.
In this case, clearly not. The problem is not police abuse, it's police showing up at all because someone didn't want to shake hands or expressed a non-hateful thought on Twitter.
> Coming back to your original point, you don’t know the seriousness of the comments shared.
We do, because the people that get harassed by the cops report them.
> We’ve already given examples about how online comments can have real and damaging physical consequences.
Yes, they can, but that tends to be mobs or cyber bulling, outright insults. The cases that have been reported are not anything like that. If anything, it's UK cops being used, manipulated and unwittingly used as weapons, which isn't a much better look than if they are being malicious.
> Such as organising riots. People in the US have been charged for doing just the same thing.
That doesn't come under hate speech, but some other laws. Plenty of riots have nothing to do with hate speech, and the issue isn't the same. There may be crossover sometimes, but not necessarily.
Therefore, people being arrested in the US for organizing riots is entirely irrelevant to what we are discussing.
> In the UK the law is called “hate speech” but that’s doesn’t mean that people are being investigated just for saying “I hate x”.
Yes, it does, and that's exactly the problem! There was literally an article in the Telegraph of that exact thing happening, twice!
How is this not blatant denial on your part?
> So when you claim “whataboutism” what’s actually happening is I’m demonstrating the cultural differences that you seem oblivious too.
How incredibly disingenuous.
You mention cops killing black people, which has nothing to do with cultural differences unless you consider racism and lack of training in rural areas in red states cultural differences.
No, cultural differences is in no way a justification for your blatant whataboutism. A cop killing an unarmed black man in the US has NOTHING to do with cops showing up at peoples doors in the UK for sharing non hate thoughts online, holding up a blank piece of paper or refusing to shake hands. Honestly it's a really crappy thing to try and reduce the killing of an innocent black man to any of those things just to try and save your crummy argument.
> When you claim “thought crimes” you’re completely missing the nuance in these cases.
No, what's happening here is you are giving the benefit of doubt to your government even when there are blatant examples that don't warrant it. What is the nuance for the examples in the Telegraph article that would defend against the notion they were thought crimes?
> And when you’re claiming the police are abusing their powers you’re being, at best, deeply ironic. At worst, deeply ignorant.
More insults. No, I'm being honest and objective, while you're bending over backwards to be tribalistic like the worst examples of Americans, and then because you can't actually support your point and I'm not conceding, resorting to insults and personal attacks.
You have no argument, and your attempts to defend your point trying to justify Orwellian actions in the UK by accusing me of cultural misunderstandings (which is funny since I bet I've spent more time in the UK than you've spent in the US) and and likening the UK incidents to the unarmed shooting of a black man are desperate and easily dismissed.
> In fact this whole argument and your single mindedness can be entirely summed up as “deeply ignorant”.
NO, you're simply being deeply arrogant and disingenuous. Your examples you've provided don't map to the UK incidents, and when pressed you outwardly make excused to not provide them when asked, despite writing an essay to make the ridiculous argument you did above.
You keep accusing me of being ignorant, yet I've lived in the UK for about 5 years, how long did you spend in the US? And except the evidence supports my claims, while you need to reply on interpretations, speculation and bs claims of cultural misunderstandings.
> So why do UK citizens defend this claim against “thought police”? Because it literally isn’t happening.
Some do, the patriots, others understand the issue and are out protesting against it fighting to keep or regain freedoms. That clearly isn't you though. Why fight for an issue when you can deny it and whatbaoutism any attempt to point it out?
You keep using that word but I don’t think you understand what it means.
In this conversation I’m making comparisons. Comparisons are important ways to gauge the effectiveness of policies.
What you’re doing is saying comparisons don’t matter because your argument only works if you look at it from a shallow view point.
And then you have the audacity to say everyone else is acting in bad faith apart from yourself.
> That doesn't come under hate speech, but some other laws. Plenty of riots have nothing to do with hate speech, and the issue isn't the same. There may be crossover sometimes, but not necessarily.
Exactly. US police has the same powers and arrests people for the same things but those laws are named differently.
So what you’re banging on about is a misconception based purely on the naming of things.
I understand exactly what it means. You might not given how strenuous and unsuccessfully you've been trying to defend yourself against the accusation.
From Wikipedia: "Whataboutism or whataboutery (as in "what about ...?") is a pejorative for the strategy of responding to an accusation with a counter-accusation instead of a defense against the original accusation. "
An example would be a British patriot attempting to defend the UK against claims of government overreach and potential thought crime policing by bringing up US cops shooting unarmed black men.
> What you’re doing is saying comparisons don’t matter because your argument only works if you look at it from a shallow view point.
No, I'm saying you should defend against the claims made instead of deflecting.
> And then you have the audacity to say everyone else is acting in bad faith apart from yourself.
Only the people I think are engaging in bad faith, although I don't really think that about the other user, and think that far more intensely of you at the moment.
> Exactly. US police has the same powers and arrests people for the same things but those laws are named differently.
This has to be a deliberation misinterpretation, no other explanation.
The laws are not named differently in the US, they are named differently in the UK as well. Laws about organizing riots are not hate speech laws in the UK or the US. Your comparison was nonsense.
> So what you’re banging on about is a misconception based purely on the naming of things.
Not at all. You've completely lost track of what you're talking about and don't appear to understand the differences between the US and UK whatsoever, you're reaching and thus your bizarre attempt to justify a whataboutism by claiming cultural differences to someone who has a better cultural overview of both countries than you do is failing in a rather embarrassing fashion.
I'll remind you you said you were done several posts ago and refused to provide sources when asked because you were 'done' and/or it was too much work, yet you continue to put in more effort in your replies. It brings the credibility of your position into question for any objective readers.
You said you were done. Just be done. Walk away. Get on with your day, go enjoy a nice cup of tea. Let's just agree to disagree, eh?
Just to be clear, even 20 times is significant here, I think the actual number is much higher, but even a low number as 20 is concerning when the tweets don't promote violence, terrorism, CSASM or anything illegal.
Police showed up to question them.
Many of the tweets in question were around gender identity, but were not directly hateful let alone offensive to the point cops need be involved.
Eh, I think it's been abundantly clear enough that a quick search would fill in the blanks, but here is one such example: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6636383/Twitter-use..., and it doesn't matter that it's from the DM in this case.
> But it sounds like these are cases of people being questioned by police and then…not getting arrested because they weren’t committing a crime.
The problem is cops showing up at all for people sharing an opinion. The tweets were visible at cop HQ. Sending cops out reads like intimidation which is something cops do in authoritarian societies.
Incidentally, the Daily Mail is not a news source.
It. Doesn't. matter. The article linked is but one incident. There's been plenty others, some involving public figures. Cops are literally acting like thought police and no, that isn't hyperbole.
The problem that this occurs in the UK far more widespread than it does. I get you want to defend your country but I think you're taking it a bit far here. Denying the issues out of a sense of patriotism is how they worsen.
> Incidentally, the Daily Mail is not a news source.
As I said, the fact that it was a DM article is irrelevant here.
You’ll have to remind me of the Chapter of 1984 in which the actions of the Thought Police are reined in by a system of legal checks and balances…
> Denying the issues out of a sense of patriotism is how they worsen.
You’re way off base here. Complaining about the UK is the UK’s national sport. I’m still bitter about Brexit and could write an essay about everything that’s wrong with this silly country. But it’s not a sinister Orwellian police state. If you want something genuinely sinister, look to the motivations of the people posting nonsense about the UK on Twitter.
It's a UK wide problem seemingly and has happened numerous times since the DM article incident, so clearly not. Maybe one little police dept did, but it's a systemic problem or seems to be.
> It’s because of this court decision that your Google search turned up a Daily Mail article from 2019 and not something more recent!
I pasted the first result I found. I'm not interested in finding every. single. incident so you can dispute it one by one to keep trying to defend the UK. You either acknowledge there is an issue or you don't, for me, the numerous incidents of this happening are a problem, not just isolated incidents being blown out of proportion. You clearly disagree.
> You’ll have to remind me of the Chapter of 1984 in which the actions of the Thought Police are reined in by a system of legal checks and balances…
Heh. There were building blocks before Big Brother was introduced, and it was no accident the story was set in the UK either.
> But it’s not a sinister Orwellian police state.
I never said it was. My claim was that it's closer to being so than any other first world country. Downplaying cops acting as literal thought police (in that they are literally policing thoughts) is a problem and despite your assertion that your willing to be critical of the UK (which I don't doubt but don't tae as absolute), reads to me like being patriotic to the point of denying the issues being discussed.
> I'm not interested in finding every. single. incident so you can dispute it one by one to keep trying to defend the UK
When I Google, pretty much every instance of the police interviewing people about transphobic tweets (that aren't actually hate speech) occurred before the court judgment I linked to. What you're saying in effect is that you want to go with the vibes about the UK you get from Twitter but don't want to look into the specifics and check their basis in fact.
If you think there are numerous instances of this happening following the court judgment, and that these instances are easy to find by Googling, then it should be easy to provide sources. I am willing to change my mind if you do that, but if you continue to just assert that this is happening frequently without providing evidence, then I won't respond further. I personally was able to find exactly one incident by Googling (which I would not entirely trust the Telegraph to report accurately): https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/11/15/police-drop-hate...
Not so much that it just happened to be where he was from but more that he saw issues in the government of the day, some of which still persist since they seem to be cultural.
> When I Google, pretty much every instance of the police interviewing people about transphobic tweets (that aren't actually hate speech) occurred before the court judgment I linked to. What you're saying in effect is that you want to go with the vibes about the UK you get from Twitter but don't want to look into the specifics and check their basis in fact.
I'm aware of several incidents happening after the DM article linked which was six years ago. I'm not particularly motivated to find incidents and link them here because I think you're in a mode to dismiss anything found to try and defend against the notion the UK is less free than it's peers. I apologize for not being able to take you at your word that that isn't the case.
> then I won't respond further.
I appreciate that, and think that's for the best for both of us. Cheers.
The other commenter has cited evidence that’s backed up their claims and you’re consistently responding with rhetoric.
This is a constant theme when people argue about freedom of speech being worse in the UK. They cherry pick a couple of headlines from hugely unreliable sources like Twitter (the land of vocal twits) and the Daily Mail (which most people here have nicknamed The Daily Fail because it’s so often wrong) and overlook what’s actually happening in their own countries too.
But if it makes you feel better that your own country isn’t also going to hell in a hand-basket because you’re too busy doomscrolling the UK news, then keep at it. ;)
Not the way I see it.
I'm not willing to cite every single instance of a trend so a commenter can pick apart each one to try and dismiss it, when the problem is the trend itself, and not specific instances.
That user also wants to try and pretend that the issue magically stopped after the local police were apparently counseled on the matter, and yet, hark!- another instance less than 4 months old![0]
> This is a constant theme when people argue about freedom of speech being worse in the UK.
I think the bigger issue is tribalism and feeling the need to defend country (and thus tribe) instead of acknowledging hey, maybe there really is a problem?
> They cherry pick a couple of headlines from hugely unreliable sources like Twitter (the land of vocal twits) and the Daily Mail (which most people here have nicknamed The Daily Fail because it’s so often wrong) and
I'm well aware of the reliability of the DM, but when they are just posting basically an interview with someone, it's sufficient as a source. Unless you want to dispute anything factual in the DM article that was linked?
> overlook what’s actually happening in their own countries too.
I think this is mostly a whataboutism.
> But if it makes you feel better that your own country isn’t also going to hell in a hand-basket because you’re too busy doomscrolling the UK news, then keep at it. ;)
I'm deeply concerned with what is happening in many countries, but that doesn't mean I can't be more concerned and critical of a country that is doing more wrong in some contexts than others.
[0]https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/11/16/tweets-free-spee...
This is why it’s important to show sources so that (understandable) mistakes like this can be pointed out. If you keep posting sources that have been misinterpreted or that lack important context (which again is understandable - I don’t expect people outside the UK to obsessively follow UK news) then we can’t really take your word for it that you’ve Googled and found lots of better examples.
That page isn't rendering at all for me in Firefox for some reason, but I can read the text and it appears the Bindel incident was in 2024, and the Pearson incident which is referenced was in 2019. So, no, the 2024 incident happened in 2024.
I'll also note that in the Telegraph article I linked, the prominent author also describes the experience as Orwellian, so the view is hardly as niche or exaggerated as you want it to be.
> then we can’t really take your word for it that you’ve Googled and found lots of better examples.
Maybe, but at this point it seems your looking to dismiss incidents without reading them properly yourself.
Have some more links to incidents that happened after 2019 though, feel free to put each one under a microscope and find reasons to dismiss them, while continuing to ignore a trend and not see the forest for the trees:
- https://unherd.com/newsroom/why-is-the-met-police-investigat...
- https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13233691/Scots-Tory...
- https://freespeechunion.org/police-log-hate-incident-for-ref...
And in case you want to continue to insist that the issue was resolved due to that one case in 2019, I'll leave you with this excerpt from an article on this very issue[0]:
----
Is the new Code better?
It sets a higher threshold, stating that NCHIs should only be recorded against individuals if there is "a real risk of significant harm" or crime. But problems remain: the police inspectorate HMICFRS found that 25% of recent NCHIs and hate crimes were wrongly recorded. Police reported being confused by attempts to train them in the Code; many still struggle to distinguish between a crime and an NCHI. This confusion is clear in the most famous recent case. The Daily Telegraph journalist Allison Pearson said that Essex Police visited her in November, wishing to record an NCHI against her (because on X/ Twitter she had mistakenly described two protesters as "Jew haters"). Essex Police denied it was an NCHI case, saying Pearson had been investigated for a public order offence. Either way, the case was dropped after an outcry.
[0]https://theweek.com/crime/nchis-the-controversy-over-non-cri...
One of your links is the incident that I myself already linked. I will look at the others.
Edit: Ok, the other specific incident is about a Conservative MSP who was not actually contacted by Police as part of their investigation. The Police just logged someone's report of one of his tweets under a specifically non-criminal category. They're required to do this because someone reported the tweet and they have to keep a record of that. The freespeechunion article similarly seems to be about cases where the police have correctly recorded someone's complaint and then correctly done nothing about it (as happens all the time with nuisance complaints about noisy neighbors, etc. etc.)
Fair enough, appreciate the clarification.
> The Pearson incident happened more recently but had nothing to do with trans issues
It's still what can be described as thought policing. As I keep saying this is part of a trend in your country. How many incidents would it take for you to concede that? These types of examples you are working to dismiss are flat out not happening in other western countries.
> The Police just logged someone's report of one of his tweets under a specifically non-criminal category. They're required to do this because someone reported the tweet and they have to keep a record of that.
That's still very much a problem. Now we have thought cataloging for use against people later on. His tweet was logged as a 'hate incident' - that's not nothing.
> The freespeechunion article similarly seems to be about cases where the police have correctly recorded someone's complaint and then correctly done nothing about it
They are logging incidents as 'hate incidents', again, that's not nothing.
And the fact the the police are involved at all and showing up to talk to people who shared their thoughts is the problem here. The fact that no action was taking is basically completely irrelevant to the problem of people being intimidated by cops for sharing thoughts, and yes, cops showing up is enough to count as intimidation.
"In Warwickshire, a suspect was recorded by the force for refusing to shake a person’s hand,"
That should be completely unacceptable and you should agree that that alone is Orwellian or uncomfortably close to it.
And it's not like there are not still more incidents. Gender critical feminists moved to their own platforms but still report such issues - not every issue gets a newspaper story (and I see a lot of these posts which is why I've said there were at least 20 incidents), but given 13,200 incidents were logged in the year from June 2023 to June 2024 and 25% of those were wrongly recorded, that seems like a lot of unnecessary intimidation and intrusion.
I know what I’d consider more worrying and it isn’t the police recording things (which literally just mean they’ve investigated a complaint) and deciding those frivolous complaints don’t deserve any action.
Yes, race issues in the US are a huge issue. That doesn't mean thought policing in the UK isn't also a huge issue.
The difference is I don't deny the issues you mention, nor do I try to deflect by referring to, say, the growing bladed weapons epidemic in the UK.
For someone that said they were done when asked to provide sources, you're participating in this discussion more than I would have expected. Is this what you consider 'being done', writing low-effort fallacious comments?
> (which literally just mean they’ve investigated a complaint)
It means they showed up to grill people over thoughts, and it's baffling how you don't see that as an issue.
And my point about your police force is saying perhaps you should spend more energy addressing your own country’s problems before making incorrect judgments about others.
> We’ve demonstrated how that doesn’t actually happen though. You’re the one refusing to accept the evidence.
The other user stated nothing had happened since 2019, and there was an incident in 2024. The examples you've provided are not equivalent to the examples in the UK you are trying t o map them to.
You showed no equivalent to people being arrested for white paper protests, the last examples in the US were in the 70s.
Additionally, 2500s NCHI were incorrectly reported, and you haven't addressed that as well.
That someone has to talk to cops at all for not wanting to shake hands is as scary as it is ridiculous, and its frankly bizarre you want to downplay and dismiss it.
Exactly what evidence is it you think I am refusing to accept? If you can be clear (and I expect you won't be able to because you've only been vague so far and frankly I doubt your claims have substance, which is why out of frustration your resorted to vulgarity and insults, and why when I asked you for links you claimed it was too much effort but here you still are replying...), then I can tell you exactly what issues I have with each item and there can be some productive discussion on the merits of my arguments.
> And my point about your police force is saying perhaps you should spend more energy addressing your own country’s problems
Yes, that's exactly what a whataboutism is. It's literally a perfect example.
> before making incorrect judgments about others.
So far, the evidence supports my claim, and the evidence from the both of you has the other user falsely claiming there were no incidents after 2019 and you equating unrelated non-equivalent incidents in other countries to incidents in the UK. Not at all convincing, and frankly seems rather desperate. If your searches are failing to turn up sufficient evidence, you should maybe consider that your point doesn't have the backing you assume it does.
And here lies the problem. You have formed an opinion and are unable to accept counter evidence.
> I think the bigger issue is tribalism and feeling the need to defend country (and thus tribe) instead of acknowledging hey, maybe there really is a problem?
That’s an idiotic comment given I’ve listed plenty of issues with the UK already. My opening comment even stated how I’m loathed to defend the uk government. I’ve also talked about how I’ve had literal arguments with MP over stupid policies regarding information technology.
The literal one point I’m defending is that the police don’t arrest you for thought crimes / posting memes online. And the reason I’m defending the government on that one point is because it’s flat out wrong and those who claim otherwise are spouting ignorant horseshit.
> I think this is mostly a whataboutism.
Bullshit. You’re the one making comparisons and claiming the UK is the worst offender. Then when evidence is shared about how the UK isn’t you ignore it.
Are you sure it’s not yourself who’s suffering from tribalism?
Pot, kettle. Upon discussing things further, the evidence I found completely supports my point.
> That’s an idiotic comment given I’ve listed plenty of issues with the UK already.
Wow, resorting to insults. Nice. I should probably point out that's against the HN guidelines.
The issues you listed are different types of issues. You're going out of your way to deny the issue we are discussing is an issue.
> The literal one point I’m defending is that the police don’t arrest you for thought crimes / posting memes online.
Not arrested, but they show up to intimidate which itself is the problem.
> And the reason I’m defending the government on that one point is because it’s flat out wrong and those who claim otherwise are spouting ignorant horseshit.
Seems your defending against a strawman and not the actual issue being discussed.
> Bullshit. You’re the one making comparisons and claiming the UK is the worst offender. Then when evidence is shared about how the UK isn’t you ignore it.
It's not bullshit, and subsequent discussion and investigation has only strengthened my point.
I don't ignore anything, it's just that the evidence presented doesn't support your position.
Thought crime policing is still going on as of 2024, and 25% of the roughly 13,000 "non hate crime incidents", many of which are thought crimes, were incorrectly reported. [0]
Jesus, they recorded an issue as a hate incident because someone didn't want to shake hands. Ignoring and excusing that is akin to burying your head in the sand IMO.
> Are you sure it’s not yourself who’s suffering from tribalism?
Reasonably, since I'm not resorting to insults and strawmen.
[0] https://theweek.com/crime/nchis-the-controversy-over-non-cri...
By the way, you seem to be using 'the government' in a very broad 90s internet libertarian sense. The police in the UK are operationally independent of the government of the day. As Wikipedia explains:
> Police officers [in the UK] hold office and are not employees. Each officer is an independent legal official and not an "agent of the police force, police authority or government". This allows the police their unique status and notionally provides the citizens of the UK a protection from any government that might wish unlawfully to use the police as an instrument against them.
In short, he wasn’t charged yet when similar protests happen in the US (for example) then people do get charged.
>What actually happened was people were arrested for instigating riots. This is no different to what happened in the US regarding the Capital Hill riots — people who helped organise it online were arrested too.
According to: https://news.sky.com/story/jordan-parlour-facebook-user-jail...
One of the "instigators" was sent to prison for tweeting "every man and his dog should smash [the] f** out of Britannia hotel (in Leeds)". While I agree such tweet might be illegal under US law (it plausibly meets the "imminent lawless action" standard), it's a stretch to equate that to "organise [the Capital Hill riots] online" (whatever that means). A tweet by a nobody who got 6 likes isn't "organising". It's shitposting.
What you’ve done is selectively quoted a small subset of portions from that article to misrepresent the full trial.
Which is exactly why I had to write my comment defending the UK government earlier. Believe me, I really don’t want to defend the government.
The UK government get a lot wrong when it comes to legislation regarding technology. In fact they get nearly everything wrong and I’ve frequently had to have words my MPs about it (not that that’s done any good). But they categorically do not lock people up just for shitposting. At best that’s just an exaggeration. At worst it’s an out right misrepresentation of the facts.
Are you talking about this?
"The initial post received six likes. However, it was sent to your 1,500 Facebook friends and, because of your lack of privacy settings, will have been forwarded to friends of your friends."
"shared" is doing a lot of the heavy lifting here, and likely used in a misleading way. Given how facebook uses algorithmic timelines, and the wording (the judge was seemingly unwilling to use a stronger word like "seen" or "read"), my guess is that was the upper bound of people who could have seen his post, not how many people actually seen it. It certainly doesn't mean 1,500 people actually clicked the shared button next to his post (or otherwise make a conscious effort to disseminate the post), as "his comments on Facebook had been shared with thousands" implies.
> and directly resulted criminal damage.
Is there any evidence that people who has committed crimes even seen his post? Or are you simply claiming that because he made such tweets, such tweets called for riots, and riots happened, that those tweets "directly resulted criminal damage"?
>Not only that, that his comments were intended to cause criminal damage and result in physical attacks against immigrants.
This doesn't contradict my prior comment, which specifically admits his behavior is illegal under even US law. My complaint was with the characterization that his tweets counts as "organising".
And let’s not forget that the Capital Hill riots were just a small few who took things out of hand - like with this guy. So it doesn’t need to be thousands to be a criminal offence.
There’s more about the wider debate here (the BBC is a lot more impartial than Sky News too) https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cr548zdmz3jo
And the notes of the arrest here: https://www.cps.gov.uk/cps/news/man-convicted-intending-stir...
The guy in question pled guilty too. So he clearly admits responsibility for the attack on the hotel. And that in itself should indicate that there’s more to this story than just “shitposting” on Facebook.
The problem here is folks like Elon Musk are focusing on the “freedom of speech” aspect (and if course he is, he’s got a vested self interest to) and given Elons media reach, this story gets skewed into a different debate.
The ironic thing is the biggest voices arguing that the UK is Orwellian don’t even realise that arrests have been happening in their own county for the same things and for much longer than in the UK.
For example in America, 2 years ago: https://teslatelegraph.com/2023/11/14/a-man-has-been-sentenc...
Or how about 10 years ago: https://www.mic.com/articles/54961/8-social-media-users-arre...
And that’s my biggest complaint about this discussion on HN: The UK is singled out when this is happening in every country. And the cases people refer to in the UK are being distorted to sound like it’s harmless memes when the actual comments are far from what any sane person would call “shitposting”.
1. source?
2. Given the issues I outlined above with the word "shared", can you clarify what exactly is meant by that? Are we talking about the act of him posting to a group chat, or that other people made an conscious effort to disseminate his post?
>And the notes of the arrest here: https://www.cps.gov.uk/cps/news/man-convicted-intending-stir...
This doesn't provide any information to refute the points I presented in my prior comment.
>The guy in question pled guilty too. So he clearly admits responsibility for the attack on the hotel.
Don't confuse pleading with guilt. He faced years/decades in prison, along with any fines/legal bills. Pleading out could be a rational choice even if he was innocent.
>And that in itself should indicate that there’s more to this story than just “shitposting” on Facebook.
This is circular reasoning. If the thing being discussed was whether prosecutors were overzealous in prosecuting such tweets, you can't use the fact that he was prosecuted in arguing that arguing prosecutors weren't overzealous.
>The ironic thing is the biggest voices arguing that the UK is Orwellian don’t even realise that arrests have been happening in their own county for the same things and for much longer than in the UK.
>For example in America, 2 years ago: https://teslatelegraph.com/2023/11/14/a-man-has-been-sentenc...
>Or how about 10 years ago: https://www.mic.com/articles/54961/8-social-media-users-arre...
I'm not sure why you're still trying to argue such acts are criminal, when a few comments ago I specifically agreed with the possibility that such acts are criminal.
>[...] I agree such tweet might be illegal under US law (it plausibly meets the "imminent lawless action" standard) [...]
Are you for real? These accusations are not merely memes.
While I don't endorse terrible people, it is note worth sometimes awful people are the target of even more awful laws. For example, you can do research into a person named "Adam Smith-Connor" who was literally convicted for standing in public while introspectively praying silently. The conduct of standing while appearing to pray was deemed as a form of illegal protest too near an abortion clinic. The same exact thing happened to another person "Isabel Vaughan-Spruce" who was not convicted.
There are also well documented incidents in the UK involving the prosecution of people making remarks online, which could arguably cross into thought-crime territory. I'll leave it to you to actually research these incidence, Google is your friend.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loitering#/media/File:Gilbert_...
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Or in fact a specific crime of hanging around abortion clinics.
As usual in these HN threads on the UK, there’s a reasonable point that could be made about whether or not this restriction correctly balances the right to free speech against women’s right to access healthcare. But instead we see a lot of wildly exaggerated talk about “thought crimes”, etc. etc.
The concept of restricting the time and place of protests is not exactly unknown in the US either: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_speech_zone
Those people are not trying to genuinely prey, but to intimidate women considering or wanting to get an abortion.
> There are also well documented incidents in the UK involving the prosecution of people making remarks online, which could arguably cross into thought-crime territory.
On this I agree.
Because that would NEVER happen in the US, certainly no government agency would fire its own people for having following legally enacted government policy just because that policy was no longer in fashion (though still legal government policy, because Congress hadn't yet changed the law).
It's a country that raids people over "illegal" anime artwork on anime artwork websites.
So, how would anybody know that a foreign government was spying on them? Nothing would stop them installing Pegasus on your phone and exfiltrating even your 'secure' data.
The stupid thing is that these laws always find a way to say that people in government are exempt from the provisions, and everybody except them is allowed to be spied on, but they are obviously going to be the first people to be targeted. Not some randomer hoarding CSAM.
It applies to content stored using ADP, Apple's E2EE tech. A backdoor into that would mean applying a backdoor into iOS on the phone itself, which is a much larger attack surface than anything centralised.
All of which highlights the clownish nature of these regulations. They are so easy for bad actors to circumvent (eg using their own E2EE), resulting in the ridiculous situation where the innocent get their data stolen and the very people you're targeting being completely unaffected.