
Britain Moves to Criminalize Reading Extremist Material on the Internet - jackgavigan
https://jonathanturley.org/2017/10/05/britain-moves-to-criminalize-reading-extremist-material-on-the-internet/amp/
======
mosselman
Sometimes it seems to me that the British government is intent on making V for
Vendetta or 1984 happen in real life. The things they are doing are so scary
and openly oppressive that I can only hope that they are trying to be a parody
of themselves.

~~~
flotillo
The real oppression is terrorist attacks that leave people in fear of their
safety.

Not oppression: arresting some radicalised extremist for preparing themselves
with terrorist training manuals and suchlike.

~~~
seanlinmt
I find it a little strange that people don't look into the reasons why
terrorism exist. Wouldn't it be more efficient in trying to stamp out the root
causes of terrorism?

People don't just wake up one morning and go, "Ah. Such a beautiful morning. I
think I'll start terrorising people today."

Do they?

~~~
mmjaa
Its far harder for western societies to contend with the fact that they are
creating the terrorist threat by their own actions, than it is to just "blame
religion" for the problem.

But the truth of the matter is, we are creating the conditions for terrorists,
every single day - by delivering our own form of terror: the (Imperial)
Coalition forces currently demolishing Syria/Iraq/Afghanistan/Yemen are,
indeed, terrorising entire populations in the rush to be the most efficient
war-fighting machines on the planet.

If you want to stop terrorism, its quite simple: stop letting your governments
get away with murder. The way they do it, is couch everything in secrecy,
while we the citizens decide that ignorance of the war our societies are
waging is worth the luxury and decadence those wars provide.

POP QUIZ: do you know how many people the state killed, in your name, today?
Yesterday? Last week? Until you start paying attention to this statistic,
citizen, you cannot cry when the terror comes home to roost.

------
akerro
I hope this will efficiently solve the problem the same way problem of hard
drugs has been solved for decades!

~~~
Angostura
I've been involved peripherally in working with anti-radicalisation programmes
in UK schools. I imagine that the issue that authorities are bumping up
against are the situations, where you _know_ someone has been radicalised, but
there is nothing effectively you can do because no law has been broken until
there's evidence that they start assembling the components for the bomb or
whatever.

This is a hard problem and leads to all those 'the bomber was described as
being on the intelligence services radar' lines in news stories.

The benevolent reading of these kinds of moves is that it at least gives the
authorities to intervene, though I recognise the risks to liberty.

~~~
vt100
Then they should create a program where specific individuals can placed on a
deradicalization program and be banned from extremist material. And then make
it a crime to view the material while you are on that program.

~~~
icebraining
In a democratic society, you generally can't put adults in "programs" without
their consent, _unless_ they already committed a crime.

~~~
zimpenfish
> you generally can't put adults in "programs" without their consent, unless
> they already committed a crime.

Sure you can - there's plenty of precedent for e.g. sectioning people into
mental hospitals for their own safety or removing people's driving licenses
when they might be a danger (without committing a crime - bad eyesight, bad
motor control, drug regimen, etc.)

~~~
icebraining
A driving license is a privilege that comes with rules, taking it away is not
the same as imposing unilateral restrictions.

Sending people to mental hospitals is a fair example, but that's why I wrote
"generally", acknowledging the existence of exceptions. In that case, it's
accepted that consent is an oxymoron, which doesn't really apply here.

------
villaaston1
This is the same minister who was talking about the "necessary hashtags" a few
months ago. She's certainly not a _digital native_, or indeed even competent.

> Speaking about preventing the upload of objectionable content, Home
> Secretary Amber Rudd said the government needs to get people who "understand
> the necessary hashtags" talking.

> That was of course in addition to Rudd's widely criticised remarks that
> encryption has no place in citizens' hands, in the wake of revelations that
> Westminster attacker Khalid Masood was using WhatsApp shortly before
> murdering pedestrians with his car.

[https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/04/03/uk_home_secretary_a...](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/04/03/uk_home_secretary_amber_rudd_hashing_not_hashtags/)

------
PeachPlum
Does that mean it will be clearly labelled ?

Will I be able to check my remaining allocation at far-right-
views.direct.gov.uk ?

They labelled Le Penn and AFD as "far right extremists", can I only read their
websites so many times ?

Is Islamofacism far-right ?

Can Jews be far-right ?

~~~
SideburnsOfDoom
Can the Conservative Party of the UK be far right? Many would say that at
times they are, and around now is one of those times.

I'm not just talking about this proposal, there's a long list of things from
Theresa May's "Racist van" initiative through to her "citizen of nowhere"
comment.

~~~
vilmosi
The Conservative Party in the UK introduced introduced gay marriage and
support the NHS, they're definitely not "far right".

~~~
SideburnsOfDoom
Gay marriage: David Cameron introduced that, but more Conservative MPs voted
against it than voted for it. It passed because of 90% of the Labour MPs
supporting it

here are the numbers:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marriage_(Same_Sex_Couples)_Ac...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marriage_\(Same_Sex_Couples\)_Act_2013#First_Reading)

And if I'm specifically talking about Theresa May's tenure, then that's after
David Cameron's leadership.

"support the NHS" is a much vaguer statement, but I don't think that's
entirely true either, see e.g.

[https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=doctors+fight+jeremy+hunt](https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=doctors+fight+jeremy+hunt)
[https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=nhs+privatisation+virgin+c...](https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=nhs+privatisation+virgin+care)
[https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=winter+hospital+crisis](https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=winter+hospital+crisis)

My opinion is that the Conservative party currently does not "support" the
NHS, but would not dare move openly against it, that would cost far to many
votes. Rather they follow, the model of "defund, induce crisis, introduce a
privatised solution"

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/06/27/government-
delibe...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/06/27/government-deliberately-
creating-health-crisis-privatise-nhs/)

[http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/nhs-deficit-
cr...](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/nhs-deficit-crisis-one-
chart-that-shows-how-the-nhs-is-headed-for-financial-ruin-a6687926.html)

[https://nhsreality.wordpress.com/2015/12/03/thats-the-
standa...](https://nhsreality.wordpress.com/2015/12/03/thats-the-standard-
technique-of-privatization-defund-make-sure-things-dont-work-people-get-angry-
you-hand-it-over-to-private-capital/)

~~~
vilmosi
>>> Gay marriage: David Cameron introduced that, but more Conservative MPs
voted against it than voted for it. It passed because of 90% of the Labour MPs
supporting it

And how does that contradict anything I said? Did Labour, with all that
aparent gay marriage support, actually do it? No, they didn't.

>>> Conservative party currently does not "support" the NHS, but would not
dare move openly against it, that would cost far to many votes.

That's like complaining companies only do things "for money". Well _of course_
they do what the people want, that's what they're there for.

>>> Rather they follow, the model of "defund, induce crisis, introduce a
privatised solution"

I would believe it if the NHS actually got less funds year over year. But they
don't.

~~~
SideburnsOfDoom
> And how does that contradict anything I said?

But has the conservative party moved to the right after Cameron resigned?
Cameron formed a coalition with a centrist Party (LibDems), but May courted
the voters of one extreme right-wing party (UKIP) quite successfully and
formed an alliance with another (DUP).

And May's instincts, as pointed out in her actions above, are nowhere near as
liberal as Cameron's.

~~~
vilmosi
>>> But has the conservative party moved to the right after Cameron resigned?

Yeah probably, I don't know. But I'm not gonna trivialise what far right
means.

>>> May courted the voters of one extreme right-wing party (UKIP) quite
successfully.

By being anti-Brexit? How exactly did she court UKIP voters?

Labour gained more seats than the Conservatives lost, it's quite clear where
UKIP voters went.

You, as well as the polls, assumed UKIP voters are all right wing. You're
wrong.

------
fredley
Where do you even start. Firstly, this is just a law Amber Rudd wants to make,
it's not anywhere _close_ to being made into actual law, it's very unlikely it
will be. It's probably more a bit of signalling/posturing by Amber Rudd to
appear as the "Tough on extremists" candidate in the forthcoming Tory
leadership (and hence Prime Ministerial) election.

Secondly, even if this law was passed, it would never be actively used against
the public. It would be used to throw more charges at people they have
arrested already, or to have some charges to throw at people who they have
arrested but can't charge. It's a handy catch-all (along with vague bans on
pornography) that criminalises many normal people who have internet-connected
devices. It means they can haul you over at Heathrow, search your device and
say "Ah! You've looked at this naughty thing! Too bad!", for example - giving
the state an easy way to reject people they don't like much more easily.

A lot of this approach stems from Theresa May herself, who spent many years as
Home Secretary struggling to deport Anjem Choudary.

~~~
pricechild
> it would never be actively used against the public.

> or to have some charges to throw at people who they have arrested but can't
> charge.

I don't understand who else it would be used against?

~~~
fredley
Sorry for not being clearer, I'm trying to distinguish between active and
passive use of the law. Active implying trying to track down those who are
breaking it vs. passive implying using it against those who have been
reprimanded already.

------
tmnvix
How do you know it's extremist until you've read it?

~~~
mosselman
Exactly, a very good point. You could make websites that start out with:

"Once upon a time there was a girl who always wore a red riding hood...grand
ma was sick... wolf... 'We should just have a big genocide' screamed grandma
as she pointed her right arm in the air."

~~~
thinkMOAR
ah man! :) you just made HN an extremist propaganda website

(but yes exactly what you write, plus, its quite an extremist measure to say
you can't read something of other extremists)

~~~
mosselman
I find that to be a bit extreme. Better not read it anyone ;)

------
martinko
Welcome to 1984. Really ironic that is happening in Britain (not that its not
happening elsewhere).

~~~
staticelf
I would argue that it is not happening in EU.

~~~
docdeek
It’s happening here in France. A report in the free commuter newspaper in Lyon
this morning recounted the arrest of a guy who had watched videos of
decapitations (I presume ISIS-produced). Perhaps he downloaded the video, but
likely he just viewed it online.

~~~
mosselman
People often say 'downloading' and 'viewing online' are the same because
technologically there isn't much to differentiate the two. We could start
saying 'he saved the files on his computer' vs 'watched it online'. That way
the difference in intent is more clear. Saving the files on your harddisk so
you can look at them later and building up a collection of ISIS videos should
be considered different from looking at the same videos online.

~~~
tunisiamike
I don't understand, what's the difference in intent?

Do you think it should be illegal to save a collection of isis videos?

~~~
mosselman
No. I am just saying there is a difference that is often ignored in order to
make people seem more guilty or untrustworthy.

------
Quarrelsome
Can we not just make a worm that does this thereby rendering everyone guilty?
Better: target devices in Westminster exclusively so their own names turn up
on the list.

I personally like how they've attempted to distinguish downloading and reading
as if when you browse to a website it doesn't download the HTML and store it
in a temp cache on your local disk. This suggests that today the difference
between innocent and guilty is the directory path of an illicit file. :D

~~~
throwaway613834
Downloading is saving something that's online for later offline use. I think
that's pretty easy to tell apart from reading something online?

~~~
Quarrelsome
the temp cache still exists offline. This means that if I wanted to store
"illicit" files I'd just store them in my temp cache under a plausibly temp-
cachy sounding file name. Effectively the crime is distinguished by the
directory path. In both cases the effect on your machine is identical. It
loads the content to disk, then into memory and then displays it in your
viewer/browser.

~~~
throwaway613834
What I was trying to say was that the intention and the reason for the action
that make a difference.

~~~
Quarrelsome
and what I was trying to say is that the intention and reason are derived from
merely the directory path of a file.

~~~
throwaway613834
Okay. So what's wrong with that? It's like saying the difference between
protected and unprotected speech can be the location of the speech in
question. Yeah, it very much can be. What's wrong with that?

~~~
albertgoeswoof
Because path of the file is not determined by the user in all cases. This
means the prosecutor will have to prove that the user deliberately stored it
for later consumption.

For example, if a web browser has a semi-permanent cache by default for all
pdf files, and the browser downloads a pdf to this cache, it's not possible to
determine if the user "downloaded" it (ie. deliberately, to access later or
repeatedly) or "streamed" it (ie. accidentally accessed it and closed it after
viewing the content)

The fundamental issue is that politicians and the general public do not
understand how software works. Many applications access and store data by
default which the user has not implicitly asked them to do. If the law is
determined so broadly, it can put any user with an application that accesses
content without somehow validating that it is legal (how you do that without
accessing it I do not know) into a grey area which the state can choose to
exploit/prosecute with if needed.

------
jlebrech
far-right but not far-left, and the left will decide how far right you are.

also will certain passages or holy books be deemed extremists or not.

what of movies that they don't like, will those be banned?

~~~
DanBC
> far-right but not far-left

This often comes up in these discussions. You need to realise that the far-
right spawns much more violence (against individuals; against groups; against
the state) than the far left.

In the UK we recently saw an MP being murdered by a far right extremist; we've
seen an increase in racially motivated violence against Muslims and Jews;
we've seen small but violent demonstrations by far right organisations.

This kind of stuff just isn't happening from the far left.

~~~
gspetr
> You need to realise that the far-right spawns much more violence (against
> individuals; against groups; against the state) than the far left.

In the UK perhaps.

The most recent attempt on a US Congressman's life:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Congressional_baseball_sh...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Congressional_baseball_shooting#Perpetrator)

On May 22, 2017, Hodgkinson wrote "Trump is a Traitor. Trump Has Destroyed Our
Democracy. It's Time to Destroy Trump & Co." above his repost of a Change.org
petition demanding "the legal removal" of Trump and Vice President Mike Pence
for "treason". He belonged to numerous politically-oriented Facebook groups,
including those named "Terminate the Republican Party," "The Road To Hell Is
Paved With Republicans," and "Donald Trump is not my President."

When the media normalizes that "punching Nazis" is A-OK, this violence from
very unhinged, disturbed individuals is the result.

~~~
DanBC
Ignoring for the moment this article is about a UK politician wanting to make
changes to UK law - you might want to look at THE FBI lists. They haven't
featured left wing groups since the 70s. They still regularly feature extreme
right wing groups.

Most "lone wolf" mass shooters are on the far right; we've seen far right
activists shooting into crowds of demonstrators, or driving vehicles into
crowds of demonstrators.

For all the talk of "punching Nazis" it's not the left wing who are
perpetrating violence in the US.

~~~
gspetr
> They haven't featured left wing groups since the 70s.

The Times They Are A-changin':

[http://www.politico.com/story/2017/09/01/antifa-
charlottesvi...](http://www.politico.com/story/2017/09/01/antifa-
charlottesville-violence-fbi-242235)

> Most "lone wolf" mass shooters are on the far right;

The former deadliest shooter, Omar Mateen was a registered Democrat.

> it's not the left wing who are perpetrating violence in the US.

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/10/01/...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/10/01/dont-
criticize-black-lives-matter-for-provoking-violence-the-civil-rights-movement-
did-too/?utm_term=.979c1cb5e9ae)

Is BLM a right-wing group? What's more astonishing here is that the media is
A-OK with left-wing violence. They try to portray them as some kind of freedom
fighters.

------
mverwijs
"The law would move from criminalizing the downloading of information to
simply reading it."

I cannot find the sources of that statement. Which law? Where is the text?

~~~
pjc50
There's no text, it's just a Conservative party conference speech. It may not
even happen given that the legislative timetable ought to be full of Brexit-
related material.

------
return0
I don't much get the point - you 're making sure that journalists and ordinary
people cannot use this material to extract information and in general find
ways to deal with this plague. If anything you should find the people who read
this material and send them to school.

~~~
dagw
_you 're making sure that journalists and ordinary people cannot use this
material to extract information and in general find ways to deal with this
plague._

According to the official statement they're still going to allow a "reasonable
excuse" defense for journalists, academics and others who can convince the
courts that they're nice people really.

------
k-mcgrady
Amber Rudd also said this week that techies were ‘patronising’ and she doesn’t
need to understand encryption. She wants them to give her access to terrorist
messages on WhatsApp etc. - but she’s not asking for a backdoor.

------
peteretep

        > Britain has long relied on the
        > presumed benevolence of the
        > government
    

Yes. That's what parliamentary sovereignty actually _means_. We don't have an
actual constitution. In fairness, we've been at it for 90 years longer than
the US has had a constitution, and so far it works.

Most of the worst excesses of US politics seem to go back to deep mistrust of
government and people taking about their "rights".

~~~
wallace_f
>Most of the worst excesses of US politics seem to go back to deep mistrust of
government and people taking about their "rights".

And what would those be?

~~~
derefr
Presumably something to do with heavy resistance to even very watered-down
gun-control laws.

~~~
wallace_f
Every month goes by and the hood in Chicago kills more people than died in Las
Vegas, and no one says anything about gun control. Probably because most of
the people in the hood already have illegal guns.

Anyways it is very rare to die by illegitimate gunfire (not from the state).
You are more likely to die in falls, slips, choking, drowning, cars,
motorcycles... The list is never ending.

In the West we are conditioned to be terrified of guns and terrorists, but it
is incredibly rare to die of either, especially if you stay out the hood.

Why not campaign against something that kills more people but which doesn't
serve an arguably necessary purpose? Why try to jump for one of the highest
and most questionable fruits on the tree?

Tyrants always will seek to consolidate power. If your intention is altruism,
try to save lives by an easier means.

------
DanBC
this article is wrong. reading extremist material is already illegal in the
UK.

the changes are to increase the sentence for repeated visits to 15 years.

since reading extremist material is already illegal the article could point to
all the miscarriages of justice caused by people convicted for mere possession
of a chemistry textbook or for journalistic research into terrorist
organisations.

------
SideburnsOfDoom
If you can be arrested and imprisoned for what appears in your browser, this
is going to take rickrolling to a whole new level.

Also since this would be inspected from the ISP's end of the pipe, it's easy
to simulate the network traffic of a lot of page views without the user ever
seeing anything. See also "curl".

~~~
BrockSamson
The dawn of a new type of troll?

------
BrockSamson
I was concerned by the lack of technical expertise in the home office when
Theresa May was Home Sec. Now with Amber Rudd I am terrified. Here is a person
who admits she doesn't understand that which she is attempting to regulate,
and doesn't care either

------
oliwarner
Britain has frequently been regressive when it comes to freedoms. It's the
classic nanny state and both the parties play into it. Labour want welfare to
help people into work. Conservatives want to ban everything nasty to make
people nice.

But while censorship in the UK is nothing new, I feel like we're entering
grand new era where I can send you a few links to extremist material, an
encrypted USB stick without keys and you disappear into a black hole. Forever.

If that —or even the heightened fear of that— isn't terrorism, I don't know
what is. I certainly feel more threatened by accidentally breaking a law than
terrorists where I am.

------
nbevans
Amber Rudd is a lightweight. She almost lost her seat at the snap general
election - she's deluded if she thinks the CCHQ would let her become the PM
whilst in her "unsafe seat".

------
phatbyte
This is just ridiculous. Where do you draw the line? Today is religion,
tomorrow maybe a technical paper on hacking or whatever.

We need to discuss this as a society, not hiding it.

------
projectant
It's an unpopular view but I think this is a good start.

Why? Violence is supported and enabled by the narratives people use to justify
it. Some element of policing & countering the narrative is going to control
ideas that embolden people to commit crimes or to harm others.

It's really no different than saying the way we talk about women, or PoC, or
gender, or sex helps constructs the reality of how we behave. A lot of people
are already shouldering the burden of trying to police and counter how other
people speak and think, but they are often not backed up by legislation in
doing so.

Trying to stamp out the wrong ways people talk and think about other people is
part of making a society that is more free and just.

I think actually in this case 1984 has the unfortunate chilling effect of
making it so easy to equate any sort of control with dire, evil and illogical
totalitarian government. It's the sort of "short circuited" thinking that i
think impedes people actually thinking clearly or deeply or even at all about
these things. In that sense, having neat metaphors from literature to reach
for actually harms the public discourse, because it is silenced before it can
start.

We do need to be talking about these things, and looking at them, not
stereotyping and simplifying them, so I think a proposed piece of legislation
is a good start and a sign that people are waking up to the importance of the
stories we tell each other about who we are, and what's okay, in shaping and
normalizing the culture and society we have.

~~~
badsectoracula
The best, less biased and least slippery slopey way to do this would be to
provide _more_ information, not _less_. If people are in a position to justify
violence through something they read online, they also need to learn the
opposite side and why that something they read might be wrong.

Of course this assumes things happen in a vacuum, but in reality people don't
really justify violence by reading a thing as much as they confirm and
reinforce pre-existing ideas they have. In which case all you've managed to do
is to give power to already too powerful people (government) for silencing
thoughts they disagree with.

Also FWIW i disagree with the notion that trying to restrict the ways people
talk and think has anything to do with freedom. And consider that your
thoughts about 1984 might also be your inability to see yourself being wrong
(i mean if you cannot consider yourself being wrong in this case and since
what you consider a good solution is shown as a bad one in 1984, then you
consider 1984 to be bad instead of your solution).

~~~
projectant
I think theoretically _more_ not _less_ sounds technically correct, the
problem is we seem to already been enveloped in too much information. So there
has to be some filtering, and filtering is basically editorializing, so who
decides?

I don't know if I'm right. And I don't know if I'm advancing even a coherent
idea about this.

I think in reality people do justify violence by the narratives they are
exposed to. I think they see other people justifying hate and violence with
these narratives, and they think to do it as well. I think narrative can give
a concrete form to a pre-existing hate, frustration, anger or disatisfaction,
and narrate a villain responsible for that feeling. These narratives inform
and shape a person's worldview and their notions of who or what is responsible
for how they feel and things they see happening. Narrative is an incredibly
powerful way to guide people's actions.

Observe this: your narrative about the weakness of narrative in determining
action, guides us to believe we ought not regulate narrative. You're shaping
reality using the very tool you are saying cannot be used to shape it!

Double-think extraordinaire! No offence to you, just trying to (en)lighten
this up.

~~~
pjc50
> I think in reality people do justify violence by the narratives they are
> exposed to. I think they see other people justifying hate and violence with
> these narratives

This is true, but the question is then Plato's: who guards the narrative
guards? What narratives do they tell themselves in their righteousness? Pretty
much everyone ends up with a narrative about how they're doing X for the good
of society, even the Nazis.

~~~
projectant
It's a very good question.

As to a condition required for this to operate safely, I think it depends on
having a clear set of morals and values in society that we agree on. The West
has lost that after the boom post WWII. Maybe it will find its way back, and
"moral authority" will be something people mostly agree on again. I think the
way we get there is by debate, so we need to be able to openly talk about and
criticise a whole range of ideas, nothing should be off the table during the
debating phase.

As to the operation of it with supervision, hopefully, for those of us in
democracies, it operates in the same way that our democracies operate, where
the guards of the people are guarded by the people. At least, that's the idea,
right?

------
keitarofujiwara
I can't wait for them to start defining what extremist material is.

~~~
Kequc
Don't wanna point any fingers but that sounded a little bit extremist to me.

------
milesf
Where is the actual text of the law? Link or it didn't happen.

~~~
libeclipse
It's a conservative party speech, so it's not law yet. But the censorvatives
can pretty much push through any law they want at this point.

------
flotillo
If someone is repeating watching beheading videos, engaging in terrorism
forums, reading bomb-making instructions, and other such material, then I
would rather prefer the police and the justice system to get involved. Better
that than another terrorist attack that could have been stopped.

It saddens me that a rational move to prevent terrorism in its formative
stages leads to such a knee-jerk negative reaction, with commenters ranting
about "1984" and "infringing our civil liberties" and "leftist censorship" and
other such overreacting nonsense.

~~~
beejiu
What counts as bomb-making instructions? You could probably acquire enough
knowledge from chemistry books (stocked in every good government library) and
common sense (please correct me if I am wrong).

~~~
flotillo
Unless the chemistry book has a chapter titled "how to make a bomb to kill
lots of people" with full instructions on how to assemble and detonate one
using readily sourced materials, then I'm sure such books will be entirely
unaffected by police investigations.

------
inasring
How would you enforce something like prohibiting reading content online? You
just watch what everyone's reading all time

~~~
libeclipse
In the UK, your internet browsing history is stored by your ISP for one year.

~~~
fish_fan
Except if they invest a whole $0 in a letsencrypt cert or any service with
one.... or have they persuaded the services to allow them to MITM their own
citizens?

~~~
libeclipse
What? Why would HTTPS prevent logging. Do you mean a VPN?

~~~
fish_fan
Https encrypts the path and headers. How would they know which site you’re on?
I doubt they’re going to RadicalBombPlans.com.

------
0xbear
Next thing to criminalize is thinking “extremist” thoughts. All for the
benefit of her majesty’s subjects, of course.

------
enterx
Burn the books too! :D

------
andy_ppp
I wish we had a constition in this country; if a Donald Trump ever got in here
he would have literally limitless power to lock up journalist or anyone he
didn’t like really.

~~~
peteretep
You deeply misunderstand how the parliamentary system works.

The PM does not have that power, but yes, parliament does (modulo EU Human
Rights), and that's considered a feature not a bug.

~~~
pjc50
Considered by whom? The British constitution _functions_ , yes, but not very
well. It's a huge legacy mess of patch sets and emergency bug fixes.

~~~
peteretep

        > Considered by whom?
    

... the people who put it in place 300 years ago?

~~~
pjc50
Isn't it more relevant what people alive today consider?

~~~
peteretep
In determining if the system is a good one or not, yes.

But in determining if it's working how the creators wanted it to, and hence
whether it's a feature or bug? No.

~~~
pjc50
The intent of the original creators was, among other things, vehement anti-
Catholicism. That's what the line "That the Subjects which are Protestants may
have Arms for their Defence suitable to their Conditions and as allowed by
Law." is doing in the original text.

Sectarianism: bug or feature?

------
nnfy
Meanwhile we are lobbying for net neutrality legislation which gives out own
government (famous for freedoms like the patriot act) additional power over
ISPs by reclassifying them as common carriers.

Do you really want your government deciding what is and is not neutral content
delivery? No one sees any way in which it can go wrong?

~~~
Vinnl
Do you mean legislation abolishing net neutrality? Because AFAIA the point of
net neutrality is that only the delivery of _all_ content is neutral. (Note
that it's not the content that's supposed to be neutral, whatever that would
mean, but the delivery.)

~~~
nnfy
How are people so niave as to not understand that such a broad concept like
"neutrality" can easily be abused? Legislation is slow to change and adapt as
is, you want to give government further power to apply law to an industry
which has already been captured? Never mind the quickness with which tech like
the internet changes.

I feel like I'm the only sane person on HN. How are people so oblivious to the
downsides of broad, sweeping regulation?

~~~
Vinnl
It sounds like you mean that people can redefine the word neutral to suit
their use case? Because "net neutrality" is pretty well defined, and basically
means "nobody should have the power to interfere with our communications". The
government already has the power to apply law - what we're supposed to care
about is what law they're applying, and whether those are good laws.

I think the reason people are "oblivious" is basically because they're __also
__(i.e. not __only __) aware of the downside of the absence of regulation, and
feel that those downsides outweigh those of regulation.

