
Does the UK Think It Can Police the Internet? - jstanier
http://theengineeringmanager.com/growth/does-the-uk-really-think-it-can-police-the-internet/
======
jdietrich
More mundanely:

Sajid Javid, the current home secretary, clearly has ambitions to lead the
country. Within the purview of his ministry, he is attempting to position
himself as a decisive strong-man, in contrast to the weak and ineffectual
prime minister. His ability to actually reduce crime is hamstrung by years of
austerity, which have led to a substantial reduction in the number of police
officers and other law enforcement resources. He wants more money, but he
doesn't really have the influence to get it. He needs to look tough on crime,
but he can't do anything that costs money.

Silly legislation is practically free, even if it doesn't achieve much. We've
had a worrying increase in knife crime over the past few years. How should the
government respond? More police patrols in violence hot spots? Better
intelligence on gang-related disputes that might lead to violence? Social work
interventions to work with troubled young people who are at risk of becoming
involved in violent crime? No, because all of those things would cost money.

The government's only substantive policy has been the creation of "knife crime
prevention orders", which restrict the civil liberties of people who are
suspected of carrying knives with violent intent. It's illiberal, there's no
evidence that it'll work, but it looks tough and it doesn't really cost
anything.

[https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/feb/24/sajid-
javid-...](https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/feb/24/sajid-javid-youth-
knife-crime-orders-human-rights-fears)

The internet censorship agenda plays into this perfectly. It costs almost
nothing to force foreign internet companies to censor their content, but it
looks tough in the headlines. Terrorist attacks? Blame Facebook. Sex offences?
Blame Google. Gang crime? Blame Snapchat. It's free, it distracts the
newspapers for a couple of days and you get to make some vague but tough-
sounding pronouncements without actually being accountable for anything.

~~~
arethuza
Why they can't just implement the measures that seem to have worked in
Scotland to address knife crime seems a mystery - NIH at a political level?

[https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-
scotland-45572691](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-45572691)

~~~
NeedMoreTea
Scotland? That's in the distant colonies to the north of Watford Gap isn't it?
(And near me)

As far as Westminster governments are concerned we don't exist, have good
ideas or get infrastructure. Just somewhere to park nuclear things and
fracking.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Scottish counties have as much representation in Westminster as any other
area, so what's the origin of your grievance here?

Fwiw the average MP (in 2009, has it changed) represented 70k people in
England, 65k in Scotland, 55k in Wales. Which is probably the reverse of how
people "feel" they're represented.

~~~
NeedMoreTea
_Any_ source you like comparing north/south spending per person on pretty much
anything. Not just the relatively recent HS3 vs Crossrail 2, but any and all
infrastructure, public transport and services. Which ripples through into
health, depression, life expectancy and countless other measures.

First one search turned up:

[https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/dec/05/north-
contin...](https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/dec/05/north-continues-to-
see-bigger-cuts-in-public-spending-report-finds)

~~~
pbhjpbhj
But saying "they don't know we exist" suggests a lack of representation, which
is very different to spending. I've lived in Wales, Northern England, and
Scotland; I'm not at all going to argue with you about spending -- but
spending does localise in high population areas, no? I don't really think it's
that politicians don't represent their areas, but there is a limited pot of
money and it does make business sense to spend where there is a better return.
We're not of course running a business: I just don't like representation and
spending to be considered coterminous.

FWIW, your north-south divide article talks, amongst other things, about life-
expectency (LE). I think the thing you notice most in
[https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthan...](https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/healthandlifeexpectancies/bulletins/healthstatelifeexpectanciesuk/2015to2017)
(eg figure 5 of whole UK) is that England has higher LE than the other parts
of the UK, and that there are a number of northern areas (Ribble, Harogate,
York, etc.) with higher LE than any area of Scotland, say.

Funnily enough Wales/Scotland get the same issues in miniature, where spending
is focussed on the larger population centre in the South. But all areas have
representation. Still if you're working poor, you can live anywhere, the
spending in that area may be higher, but that doesn't mean you have a better
life; it might even be harder if you're living amongst richer people (higher
prices for accommodation, etc.).

It's one of the things that I've liked about being in the EU, spending is
distributed better to poor areas than it would normally be under Tory spending
control.

~~~
NeedMoreTea
> suggests a lack of representation

That's a big can of worms for HN. Suffice to say we have one of the least
representative democracies and it's steadily getting worse. First past the
post is no longer fit for an electorate that wants to vote increasingly for
minor parties. It works where there are just two choices. Individual
constituencies, especially safe seats, are often hugely unrepresentative.
Finally add demographics that skew the ageing electorate ever more tory, until
the baby boom finishes playing out.

So that's less North-South more safe seats vs everywhere else. Yet it does
often play out North-South most when seeing election results maps.

Still Scotland votes overwhelmingly against Conservative, who barely exist in
Scotland, yet gets English Tory government. Admittedly they won a couple back
in 2017, but I can see why they inch toward independence. It's different this
side of the border, but NW and NE England issues are equivalent in scale.

CGP Grey summarises it well:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9rGX91rq5I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9rGX91rq5I)

I'm trying hard to avoid a political argument. :)

> spending does localise in high population areas, no?

Well it does, but thanks to the ever increasing centralisation of funding -
started in 1974 I think, but especially since replacement of rates with
council tax, even high population areas can't compete. The funding Leeds or
Manchester gets for infrastructure, services is declining compared to the SE.
Even though both are booming, they are permitted to do less per capita. We've
ended up with one of the most centrally funded, and controlled, countries on
the planet.

The rules limit what can be done, whether on services, transport or housing.
The days when Manchester or Edinburgh could provide what was most needed
locally are long past. Only London still gets that.

At the same time the rural bits of Scotland, Yorkshire, Cumbria etc used to be
able to be cross-subsidised to provide mobile libraries, rail and bus routes
etc. The market approach means those areas are increasingly forgotten and
services and routes closed. Simply put, we went too far - both centralised
funding and market solutions favour the City most. The pressure to move away
is ever increasing, while it's never been easier to telecommute or locate your
business anywhere there's a net link.

> there are a number of northern areas

Sure there are comfortable well off areas. Harrogate, Ribble Valley, Cheshire,
York - are well off and attractive retirement locations. Yet it's also true
that the worst areas for mental health, life expectancy and so on are
clustered mainly in the north too - there's one just 50 odd miles down the
road in Blackpool that's in the worst 5 in the country for lots of measures. I
think there's a few bits around Barrow, Burnley and Preston that are little
better and crop up in deprivation news stories.

Talking of Blackpool, their county council votes against fracking, the
minister simply overrules them and changes the rules. That probably adds to
feeling unrepresented by their MPs. :)

 _> It's one of the things that I've liked about being in the EU, spending is
distributed better to poor areas than it would normally be under Tory spending
control._

Totally agree. It was disappointing that the EU didn't trumpet their benefits
a little more, as the areas benefiting most were often heavily voting for
Brexit - because they were deprived, not because they seemed anti-EU as such.
Without the EU many of those spots wouldn't have got the development funding.
Despite its many flaws I also felt the EU was a natural limiting factor on the
increasingly extremist stance of the Tory party.

Edit: That was longer than intended. Sorry!

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Thank you for laying your thoughts out clearly. As you seem cogent and level-
headed, if I can just prod one more time...

Fracking isn't the greatest example, as I'm against it, but there are
localised things that we all perhaps wouldn't want -- power plants, maybe --
but do want the benefit of. Even if there weren't a N-S divide, and large
wealth gap, and poor democratic representation -- we'd still need to do things
that people want just not near them (NIMBY!).

How do we go about that IYO?

~~~
NeedMoreTea
I think we could do much worse than look to our history. We _used_ to balance
this far, far better.

As is, the TL;DR is it's the lack of real power and budget in the regions
that's the problem. Whitehall, or a minister can simply overrule, and most of
the big ideas originate there now, anyway. I really should write less. :)

In the olden days, if Manchester or Cumbria wanted to build some
infrastructure project, including huge ones like commission a new power
station, reservoir or tram route, they first needed a local mandate. At least
some of these projects were promoted locally, with exhibitions, models and
leaflets, though I don't know if this was a required step. For some things,
like most of our older power stations etc, the city would set up a corporation
for it. Then they sponsored a private member's bill in parliament, usually via
the local MP, and it required a majority vote of MPs, not just a yes from some
mandarins at the department and a minister's OK like today. No vote in
parliament, no enabling act: no reservoir. I'm hazy on the details of it, I'm
certainly no expert in this area, but Westminster was sanity check rather than
originator of ideas. I think this process died in the 1974 local government
reorganisation[1].

Where an idea did originate in Westminster - say a naval base or nuclear
plant, I'm even more hazy, but I think that this then required local assent as
well. So for something unpalatable government needed to find a way to sweeten
the deal locally.

If we include some of the modern requirements for environmental impact, and
proper public consultation I think we would have a chance of a system that
works for most. If Leeds and Edinburgh decide amongst themselves a high-speed
rail link between them would work, then once the councils get a local mandate
they can try for parliamentary assent. Not wait for whatever scraps HS3 or
other never-to-be-built pipe dreams are offered them.

This is roughly the process that gave the great city trams and railways, power
stations and beautiful council estates or garden cities with parks and plenty
of play space. Also road and rail links with large borders as they bought
enough land for an expansion or two, rather than the sink estates and duct
tape of the cheapest bid. I trust the county or city to decide where they want
their treatment plant or power station far more than Whitehall. I trust the
city to sometimes spend a little more to get something that's not an eyesore.
Most of these things _used_ to be local decisions! Different places had very
different ideas.

 _Of course_ it wasn't perfect - this is the process that gave Manchester
Hulme Crescents, probably the most nationally notorious tower block hell-hole
ever built. Enough public consultation should ensure it's not "take this
worthy offering, you insignificant little person" ever again. Still, we're not
nearly so deferential as in the 50s. :)

We might then find that a few places start pushing to emulate Orkney and get
off fossil, or start implementing combined heat and power and such like, maybe
pushing to develop some local skills etc. We'd certainly have a little local
flavour once again, even if a few ideas turn out to be mistakes.

I may as well wish for rainbows and unicorns as this would need an undoing of
a lot of the centralisation of power and funding, and an unwinding of some of
the neo-liberal market as solution for everything. I think we've become _far_
too centralised for the health of the country, and it's badly hurting everyone
everywhere. Yes, even London. If Edinburgh or Truro want to build more public
housing, what the hell is it to do with Westminster if local taxes support it?
(This gets to the core of why we became so centralised) I wish it could become
a hot political issue, but seems vanishingly unlikely.

[1] Enacted 72, took effect 74:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_Government_Act_1972](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_Government_Act_1972)

------
pjc50
The lesson of Brexit is that all attempts at asking difficult questions like
"how will this work" and "will it achieve the stated purpose" have been
abandoned, and we're governed by pure short-term sloganeering.

But the restriction of free speech in the UK in the name of anti-terrorism has
a long history. I'm old enough to remember when the Sinn Fein MPs were
prohibited from speaking on television:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1988%E2%80%9394_British_broadc...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1988%E2%80%9394_British_broadcasting_voice_restrictions)

It's not clear how best to campaign against this, since the legacy print media
know that no matter how bad their hate content gets the law is unlikely to
inconvenience them, so they're happy to campaign against free speech for their
enemies.

~~~
NeedMoreTea
The most comical part was the words were still spoken by an actor trying to
lip sync. Which made a mockery of the intent to deny terrorists the oxygen of
publicity - _in every news broadcast._ They didn't think that one through too
far. :)

> asking difficult questions like "how will this work" and "will it achieve
> the stated purpose"

I think that's been steadily dying since the mid and later Thatcher years, and
accelerated rapidly under Blair. This current lot have just achieved peak
"strong and stable" absurdity. It really takes some doing to achieve a slogan
the journos are taking the piss out of _on the first and second day it 's
used._

~~~
Veen
It is a good thing that it made thugs like Martin McGuinness and Gerry Adams
look ridiculous as they attempted to represent themselves as peaceful
politicians rather than the terrorists they actually were.

~~~
Gupie
maybe but they were instrumental in making the lasting peace.

~~~
Veen
Yes, they stopped murdering people and then there was peace.

~~~
ben_w
The trick is to convince people that there is peace now so murder time is
over. If you don’t convince people peace has come, those who call themselves
soldiers keep fighting those they call their enemies.

------
inflatableDodo
>The ambitions of the UK government are bold. They want the UK “to be the
safest place in the world to go online, and the best place to start and grow a
digital business.”

Pick one.

~~~
Funes-
Why do they have to be mutually exclusive? Why would safety be contrary to
business opportunity? If anything, I would say that users' safety _should_ be
present in any legally viable business endeavor.

Edit: I want to clarify that I'm not in favor of surveillance or opaque
mechanisms run by any State.

~~~
inflatableDodo
>Why would safety be contrary to business opportunity?

They are a balancing act, you can't maximise both. If you maximised safety in
recreation, for instance, you would make things like horse racing illegal. If
you maximised business opportunity, you'd be allowed to feed the horse pcp
before the race.

------
bogle
Given the UK government's terrible record of really awful legislation, much of
it illegal itself (e.g. the recent attempts to whitewash [pollution][0]) it
seems the outcome will be more rubbish legislation, if anything at all.

[0]: [https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/feb/21/high-
cou...](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/feb/21/high-court-rules-
uk-air-pollution-plans-unlawful)

------
jmaa
I'm really conflicted at this. I do not want the internet to be censored, but
at the same time, I think that big internet companies are making the world
worse through inaction.

Even if a user or $/yr minimum is implemented in law, then what happens as
distributed and federated technology becomes more common? What does Mastadon
or Scuttlebutt count as?

~~~
dangerface
> What does Mastadon or Scuttlebutt count as? I think they are currently
> illegal because of various copyright and data protection laws in the UK.

~~~
mattlondon
Do you have any references for that?

I am not an expert but from my perspective I don't see why these would be
illegal due to copyright or data protection laws in the UK?

------
tootahe45
They can (at least for individuals & orgs in the UK), and they can decide one
day they don't want the media reporting on their censorship.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempora](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempora)

------
dangerface
The UK is a police state they think they can police everything but the
politicians who are literally above the law.

~~~
_lessthan0
It is that way somewhat, but then on the other hand you have the USA who think
they are the police of the whole world, the brute enforcers. Both situations
are very bad.

------
eplanit
The Nanny State brings us the Nanny 'net -- great (sigh).

------
Chris2048
I'm still angry about the face-sitting ban:
[http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/30454773/why-are-
peopl...](http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/30454773/why-are-people-face-
sitting-outside-parliament)

~~~
DanBC
There isn't a ban on face sitting or on pornography that involves face
sitting.

Please link to the actual law you think is banning this content.

~~~
Chris2048
[https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/a-long-list-of-sex-
act...](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/a-long-list-of-sex-acts-just-
got-banned-in-uk-porn-9897174.html)

~~~
DanBC
That's not the law!

That refers to this:
[https://www.legislation.gov.uk/cy/uksi/2014/2916/made/data.h...](https://www.legislation.gov.uk/cy/uksi/2014/2916/made/data.htm?wrap=true)

Which refers to this:
[https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/21/section/368A](https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/21/section/368A)

This splits content into three types: prohibited content (doesn't include
face-sitting), specially restricted content (18R) (does include face sitting),
and regular 18 content.

If you are a tv channel providing tv programmes and you have a VOD service you
cannot provide prohibited content, and you must not provide 18R content unless
you have a suitable age wall.

------
fit2rule
Nope. Censorship is damage. The Internet just routes around it.

~~~
dangerface
If only, the UK government might consider technology and magic the same thing
but when it comes to censorship they are serious about it. It has taken them
the better part of 20 years to figure it out but they are now doing real china
style censorship that can not be easily circumvented.

~~~
ChrisSD
All the "censorship" amounts to at the moment is ISPs redirecting DNS queries.
This is trivial to work around.

~~~
dangerface
Not any more now they block the ip and use active attacks to kill proxies.

~~~
ChrisSD
I'm in the UK with BT as my ISP. I've not had a problem accessing blocked
sites.

~~~
dangerface
Good to know, im on virgin and they block ip not dns.

~~~
ChrisSD
So that sounds like a Virgin block and not a UK government one.

