As I understand it, most UK public are in favour of this bill almost Pavlovianly. There is a clear disconnect between us, the tech know-how, and the general public.
You much overestimate how politically involved the UK public is. Most people don’t know what this bill is.
In the UK there’s a concept of the “Westminster bubble”. Politicians believe that people care deeply about “online safety”, which is all that matters really.
Politicians don't believe that. But they know that the newspapers will vilify them at election time if they don't play along with the security & safety lobby, and the news media shapes voter preferences.
The public have been sold a lie. Just like the “Patriot Act” was just to keep everybody free and protect people from terrorists. It happens everywhere, and has been happening for a long time - it’s more about the narrative made up by the people pushing a law than what the law actually does. It would take a particularly free, particularly good media to inform the public that just doesn’t exist in most of the world.
The complacency of researchers knowledgeable in these topics should be noted as well. With great power comes great responsibility, as Spiderman states correctly.
This letter is a "nice try", but pretty late and lacking media-awareness. People certainly won't read a 4-page PDF. They should have led with:
> There is no technological solution to the contradiction inherent in both keeping information confidential from third parties and sharing that same information with third parties.
> The public have been sold a lie. Just like the “Patriot Act” was just to keep everybody free and protect people from terrorists.
The public tend to believe what they've been informed and the press tend to be inept when it comes to Gov surveillance.
The history of editors and journalists is 1) they reprint Gov Natsec claims w/o analysis or a single thought about Gov's history and 2) will only report surveillance wrongdoing when their nose has been dragged to it and they've been booted from behind.
And to clarify here, NatSec and Child Safety are just different food colors in the same poisonous water.
> The public have been sold a lie. Just like the “Patriot Act” was just to keep everybody free and protect people from terrorists.
The public have largely been sold nothing and are completely, blissfully, ignorant of this legislation. The legislation is being pushed through by politicians who have been sold two lies:
1. The legislation, and
2. the idea that the public care.
People rarely pay attention to bills before they are passed. This just seems like another case of people answering polling with higher confidence than they should.
The people are always sold a lie. But in a democracy, it is the responsibility of the voter to identify when they are being lied to and to search for the truth.
As much as you claim that media isn’t free and isn’t good, I look around and see the opposite. Now is the best time in the history of the world to get amazing journalism. You are just too focused on the media you dislike to admit that with selection comes lots of terrible choices.
> People rarely pay attention to bills before they are passed.
The fact that people don't pay attention means that they're vulnerable to accepting the framing that they get the first time they're forced to hear about it.
In this case it will be from slightly rewritten press releases sent from the people pushing the bill to the kind of UK papers and TV stations that can't find a single journalist who objects to censorship or surveillance.
> As I understand it, most UK public are in favour of this bill
Do you understand this from polling? Can't trust UK media outlets on public opinion, they push, they don't pull. If the public doesn't agree with them, they all will run variations of the same story, aimed at the same targets, for years until they do.
Honestly It is more an impression than understanding. Maybe the lack of attention in various petitions, e.g. https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/601932
Maybe the lack of mentioning of "caveats" of the bill from major news outlet
Unfortunately, I think the only way for that situation to change is for enough members of the general public to be caught up in some kind of accidental suspicion or publication of their personal data.
And I think those who are proposing these kinds of bills know this, and are protected by how unlikely it would be to reach any kind of critical mass organically.
I'm sure there are laws against the encouragement of others to commit a crime, but ... wink wink.
The UK conservative party suddenly realising they can no longer communicate privately with each other over the internet should cause them to understand the consequences of their bill.
Should — but based on what else this particular group have demonstrated about understanding cause and effect, won't.
The UK had some pop celebs get mocked as far as I understand it and they advertised online control. I think this is a case of well-meant idiocy that disregarded the cost of being public.
You can discuss how high that cost should be, but there is a cost to state surveillance as well.
The UK public are extremely conservative, and extremely misinformed by conservative news sources. That's at the root of a lot of the demand for authoritarianism.
Yeah. "Small-c conservative". Starmer seems to have decided that the path to victory is to copy Tory policy and attitude as closely as possible, hoping that this will get him favourable press coverage or support from the particular set of "floating" voters in marginal constituencies that he needs.
But the Labour party have never been especially liberal. They're just as likely to enact controlling social policy. And, again, the press are extremely illiberal, they're likely to campaign for more surveillance.
(Don't try to jam the American two-party lens onto UK four-plus party politics, it will not help you make sense of the actual situation).
> (Don't try to jam the American two-party lens onto UK four-plus party politics, it will not help you make sense of the actual situation).
Because the UK has FPTP elections, in practice it's a two party system but which two parties varies by locale, resulting in some weird interactions that aren't really seen in the US.
You aren't going to get elaborate rainbow coalitions under that model, as you might in say Germany.
Long way off topic, but: I've always wondered why the US, fifty states not all of which are even contiguous, separated by huge distances, has not evolved regional parties?
Labour are the party who passed that very nasty "Tell us your password or go to prison" law under "If you've done nothing wrong, you've got nothing to hide from law enforcement or the government." mentality.
Red Tories are still Tories.
This leaves the Lib Dems, who sadly have zero interest in repealing the Online Safety Bill if it passes.
I don’t think they were talking about tories specifically just Britain as a whole being very conservative. Indeed as you’ve pointed out even the Labour Party in the UK is quite conservative. I would say the same is true of America, that much of the Democratic Party is actually quite conservative.
It sort of depends I guess. I’m not a political historian but it depends on what that “authoritarianism” looks like. In general though, wouldnt authoritarianism exist to maintain a strict status quote? In that sense yes I would call it conservative.
But like I said, I’m not a political historian just an idiot with a half baked opinion.
I think the common theme that unites supporters of the surveillance state is control, which is not the same thing as preserving the status quo. You also need control in order to make effective changes to the status quo.
All political movements and all politicians are convinced that their power is 100% legitimate and they should therefore be able to have 100% control of and visibility into everything that's going on.
The idea is compatible with most peoples' definition of democracy. You don't need to support other aspects of authoritarianism usually associated with right or left wing dictatorships.
What's the purpose of this exercise? What's the value of equating one emotionally-charged label with a different emotionally-charged label?
As to your question: yes, most authoritarians are conservative in nature, given that the world has mostly been moving away from authoritarianism over the past few decades.
My point is very simple: Attitudes (among politicians) toward the surveillance state do not seem to split along political lines between left and right. I wish they did.
Also, I completely disagree that the world has mostly been moving away from authoritarianism. On the contrary. There was a time when at least the direction of travel seemed assured. Now I'm no longer so sure.
[Edit] Just so you know where I'm coming from. As someone who would never remotely associate himself with anything "conservative", I wish I could just blame conservatism or right wing authoritarians for this surveillance drive. But I can't honestly do that, and I have to accept that it is not just a right wing idea historically.
Let me elucidate my point further then, as well: I think that any attempt to map a political decision or opinion on a binary scale serves no purpose (other than satisfy our tribalistic vestiges). It doesn't matter if it's left vs right, Tory vs Labour or republican vs democrat. The world just isn't that black and white, no matter how much you wish for it.
So please, debate policies on their content, not on their label. Reducing everything to a binary decision only serves authoritarian agendas.
I think it's used as a reference to the UK incarnation of a political philosophy [1], which by no means has a monopoly on promoting the serveillance state.
I believe you're conflating "big-C" Conservative with "little-c" conservative.
The Conservatives (aka Tories) are conservatives. The Labour party are also conservatives as much of the voting public in the uk is small-c conservative and also authoritarian.
> The UK public are extremely conservative, and extremely misinformed by conservative news sources.
While conservative news sources historically act in bad faith here, non-conservative news sources lose all reasoning ability, when it comes to Gov surveillance. They rarely hold Gov accountable unless they have little choice.
The latter probably happens because the public endlessly gives news orgs a pass about it.
Most of the populations around the world were in favor of locking people down because the governments, media and tech companies told them to. They were ok with debate being censored because "It was too important and risky".
Same thing happened in many countries with terrorism and loss of rights/super authoritarian/inconstitucional powers for govs, and it was fine... Because the risk is too great and "are you a <insert label here, such as terrorist sympathdizer, grandma killer, etc>
Let's not pretend the UK is particularly bad. Many countries are pushing the same old "destroy encryption" because I need to "tap the bad guys" and people are always fine when given the flimsiest of excuses/narrative.
That's such a poor response to everything i said but it's par for the course.
A telling thing is that you said people who have diseases and here it was prevent movement from everyone. Prevent the movement of the non sick. Remove human rights and civil rights. Implement inconsistent security theater and censor debate, and a long etc you don't care for because you just answered in the laziest of ways.
> Most of the populations around the world were in favor of locking people down
These were common sense measures known by people in the 500s
From the article about what happened centuries ago:
> He imposed isolation for both travelers and food coming to Constantinople from North Africa, hit by the terrible plague outbreak (541-542 A.D).
> Freedom of movement was only granted to those who obtained "a sanitary certification" from the authorities. In Venice, foreigners and passengers coming on ships needed to show a "certificate", to prove that they came from contagion-free places. In times of plague or cholera those who entered the cities were obliged to present a "health certificate" ("Patente di sanità")
But the same people were arguing right here on HN about studies showing that preschoolers in day care spread Covid even though every parent knows that preschoolers in day care have always been walking Petri dishes that spread diseases like a hooker on a crack.
Heck, since many of the people who were complaining about masks are self proclaimed “Christians”, even the Bible had “mask mandates”
>The person with such an infectious disease must wear torn clothes, let his hair be unkempt, [4] cover the lower part of his face and cry out, `Unclean! Unclean!' As long as he has the infection he remains unclean. He must live alone; he must live outside the camp.
