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Ask HN: UK based blogs on freedom and surveillence?
49 points by puppycodes 35 days ago | hide | past | favorite | 46 comments
Does anyone have any good frequently updated podcasts, blogs, news, etc, focused on freedom of speech in the UK? Specifically technology focused freedoms?

I'm interested in updates to facial recognition, social media monitoring, "anti-social behavior" (AKA ASBOs), CCTV, basically all the things that scare me about the UK.

Post Snowden leaks with the GCHQ essentially devouring all internet content on the deep packet level, i've been hoping to hear more updates about the fight against that. Perhaps this is the very reason I've struggled to find resources that are somewhat from folks "on the ground"?

Thanks so much! Any leads much appreciated :)




> "anti-social behavior" (AKA ASBOs)

I was curious so I googled it.

> An anti-social behaviour order (ASBO /ˈæzboʊ/) is a civil order made in the United Kingdom against a person who had been shown, on the balance of evidence, to have engaged in anti-social behaviour. The orders were introduced by Prime Minister Tony Blair in 1998,[1] and continued in use until abolished in England and Wales by the Anti-Social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014 on 20 October 2014—although they continue to be used in Scotland and Northern Ireland.[2] ASBOs were replaced in England and Wales by the civil injunctions and criminal behaviour orders

So in England and Wales (covering most of the population of the UK), it has been replaced by CBOs:

> A CBO can be issued following a conviction for any criminal [2] offence in the Crown Court, a magistrates' court or a youth court. There is great discretion on the content of the order. A CBO can prohibit the offender from doing anything described in the order or require the offender to do anything described in the order or both.[1]

> For a CBO to be made the court must be satisfied, beyond reasonable doubt, that the offender has engaged in behaviour that caused, or was likely to cause, harassment, alarm or distress to any person; and that the court considers making the order will help in preventing the offender from engaging in such behaviour.[1]

That sounds somewhat reasonable? Are there examples of this being abused by courts? Sounds like a perfect and light answer to hooliganism, the recent far-right rioters, etc etc. Instead of locking them up for a prolonged period of time, a short sentence + restrictions to ensure they don't repeat offend.


The CBO is more reasonable than the ASBO, certainly - one of the issues with the ASBO is that 'anti-social' was defined in an enormously wide-ranging way, so could (by design) be applied to people who were not breaking the law but were unpopular with the rest of the public for whatever reason.

There remain at least two difficulties. The first is that it gives a general power to make any legal act illegal, on a person-by-person basis. So you can, for example, be exiled from a particular area by the judge, with criminal penalties for disobeying (even though that's not a prescribed punishment in itself for any criminal offence). Where the order prohibits things that are likely preparatory to further crime and not something someone would want to do otherwise (car thief prohibited from touching unoccupied cars, for example, as in a recent case) it makes a lot of sense. But it does rely on the discretion of the judge being exercised reasonably.

The second one is much blunter: if you tell someone who has already broken the law (and doesn't care) that they can't do something, they are quite likely to ignore you. So they can generate quite a lot of further punishment/court time without actually deterring much. That's more of a practical objection than a philosophical one, though.


https://privacyinternational.org/

According to Wikipedia "Privacy International (PI) is a UK-based registered charity that defends and promotes the right to privacy across the world."

They are well known in privacy circles and have done some excellent investigations in past.


The Open Rights Group - https://www.openrightsgroup.org/blog/ - is probably a reasonable place to start.

Curious about what is scaring you btw.


Scaring me is getting to prison for expressing my opinion on a social platform.


Coincidentally, I just met this article from the Spectator:

# Free speech is dying in Britain - https://thespectator.com/topic/free-speech-died-britain/

Everything should be verified, but the article mentions cases that can be of concern.


See also: https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/britain-isnt-a-free-coun...


Unless your opinion is that XYZ group of immutable characteristics is subhuman/has to be expelled/deserves less rights/has to be killed , you're safe.


I take it that you cannot be pro abortion in the UK, then?

"Oh, but they are not human that can have any rights. Of course they can be killed and expelled."


You're comparing people saying "All people of a certain ethnicity should be removed" vs people saying "Women have a right to decide whether to abort a pregnancy".


Which is worse: Being expelled from a foreign country or being killed because as a fetus you are considered subhuman? Historically newborns in Europe have also been considered subhuman, without any rights, and subject to the practice of "exposure" if the parents pleased.

Just as easily as upstanding citizens today consider the unborn to be subhuman, just as easy has it been in the past (and in the future) for upstanding citizens to consider certain groups of people as subhuman. It only depends on what the rulers consider convenient at the moment, and 90% of the population are ready to adopt any opinion at the drop of a hat if instructed so by their rulers. Especially intelligent people, who can take pleasure in mental games to justify following orders.


I wouldn't say that a foetus is subhuman. I just think that a human's right to life does not extend to the right to use another's body for 9 months. Which is another reason why this doesn't compare to immigration.


Then you're a step above, because many consider the fetus to be subhuman. You consider the fetus to be a human without the right to life. A newborn is also completely dependent on other people for survival – for a long time. In the past, the common opinion was that also the newborn and infants did not have the right to life if it was too inconvenient for the parents. Hence the practice of exposure, where they were put out to be killed by the elements or eaten by animals.

The fetus is not to blame for being within the womb. Yet the fetus should be without the right to life, because they are an inconvenience to the mother. What rights does the asylum seeker get, in comparison? They are quite extensive.

Within our life time, the practice of killing newborns and infants will return and will be celebrated by upstanding citizens as a natural and moral thing. People opposing it will be shunned as dangerous and ignorant brutes – a threat to society.


> You consider the fetus to be a human without the right to life.

Not quite. I'm saying that the right to life does not imply the right to use another's body. The same reason we don't make organ or blood donation enforceable by law even if it would save a life.

> A newborn is also completely dependent on other people for survival.

True, but not any one specific person. The parents can put a newborn up for adoption. The difference with an early stage pregnancy is that there is no way for the foetus to survive when removed from the womb.

> Within our life time, the practice of killing newborns and infants will return and will be celebrated by upstanding citizens as a natural and moral thing.

Definitely don't think this will happen.


If you take a higher perspective on your own arguments, you can sense what I meant earlier, that being pro-abortion (or pro-choice if you want to call it that), is attractive to intellectuals more for the thrills and challenges of finding arguments for something so wrong.

If a pregnant woman that you know in real life would come to you and say that she's deciding to abort her baby because she thinks it has no right to use her body to live, how would you feel in that situation? My guess is that your first instinct would be to think she's a psychopath or going through a nervous-psychotic breakdown.

But it is normalized, just with other arguments than are used in these online debates. The arguments are probably not even verbalized, because people doing abortions would rather not think about what they are truly doing and just get over with it.

Now think if a person you know in real life would come to you and say that they're going to start killing people of a certain group. My strong guess is that you would think they are a psychopath or going through psychosis. Probably you'd call the police.

Yet, this is also normalized whenever the rulers want war. Look at how both sides are dehumanizing each other in the Ukraine conflict, in the most disgusting ways imaginable.


> If a pregnant woman that you know in real life would come to you and say that she's deciding to abort her baby because she thinks it has no right to use her body to live, how would you feel in that situation? My guess is that your first instinct would be to think she's a psychopath or going through a nervous-psychotic breakdown.

If that was the only reason she was aborting - and there were no mitigating factors such as early-stage accidental pregnancy or difficult life circumstances - then I might think that person selfish. But that's not what actually happens. Abortions by and large are wanted because a woman does not think they are in a good position to bring up a child in the world. Perhaps she had a one-night stand and the contraception failed. Perhaps there are abnormalities that will make the baby's life full of suffering and difficulty. The "no right to use her body" bit is not usually the sole reason for wanting the abortion, but it's the part that makes it ethically justifiable.


> But that's not what actually happens.

Exactly, because that argument is so far-fetched and cruel, that it's rarely seen outside of online debates. Having an abortion is still cruel, but there are always ways for people to do shameful things while putting their consciousness aside. It's probably rather easy for most.

I think your argument on the health of the baby (or mother) is more ethical than any "no right to use her body" argument. She was the person who decided to put the fetus in that situation.

To make a comparison, there are people arguing that the fate of prisoners in the German death camps during WWII was not really the Germans' fault because they didn't have enough food to feed themselves, much less war prisoners and other detainees. Which is inching quite close to the abortion arguments, especially if you reduce the victim to subhuman status. Hoping to show that this way of reasoning is misguided.


Well, I'd argue that it's cruel to deprive a woman of the right to her own body and mental health. Speaking as a recent father, pregnancy and birth is an epic and hugely challenging journey with potentially lifelong consequences on mind and body.

I don't find the German death camp analogy accurate or compelling; the Germans actively and deliberately herded up the Jews (and others) locked them up. This conscious intervention in the course of a living human being's life rendered responsibiloty onto the German state.

Have you heard of Judith Thompson's "famous violinist" thought experiment? [0] It neatly captures the idea of how a right to life oughtn't extend heavy legal responsibilities onto an individual. At least, most people would say that the main character has the right to say "no" to the situation.

[0] https://ethics.org.au/thought-experiment-the-famous-violinis...


For context, there's a right-wing narrative in the UK that "thousands of people have been arrested just for posting their opinion on social media".

The reality is that the UK's "Communications Act" [0] does allow prosecutions for electronic communications (email, forums, and social media). The number of arrests under this Act are in the thousands, but it covers a wide range of issues like grooming, stalking, and racially aggravated hate crimes.

Earlier this year there were a number of violent & destructive riots across the UK which happened in response to a stabbing of 3 kids in Southport [1]. The riots were whipped up by a number of far-right entities on social media - personalities such as Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, Andrew Tate, and Katie Hopkins - as well as more nebulous entities such as Europe Invasion. A crucial aspect of the far-right narrative was a false claim that the perpetrator was a Muslim asylum seeker. Arrests were made for directly inciting violence [2] as well as for generating misinformation about the perpetrator [3].

The discussion around this is in the sensitive area of free speech vs hate speech. In the UK we are a little more nuanced about the absolute requirement for freedom of speech. While I do appreciate the argument that policing of speech can become dangerous depending on who does the policing, I think the case of the riots is a good example of where we may need to evolve our ideas about what it means to incite violence. This episode demonstrates social media's potency and the horrific potential of the deliberate spreading of misinformation.

[0] https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/21/section/127

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_Kingdom_riots

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/aug/09/two...

[3] https://metro.co.uk/2024/08/08/woman-first-shared-fake-south...


Stephen Yaxley-Lennon repeatedly called for calm, and explicitly condemned the violence.

The lies around this issue are really noticeable now. I used to believe that Yaxley-Lennon -- "Tommy Robinson" -- was a bigot, until I watched his Oxford union speech: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YQ94jFg_4A

All violence should be condemned and prosecuted. However when looking for the causes, what happened regarding the riots wasn't "whipped up" by online agitators. It was the result of failure of government policy.

Successive governments have lost control of the border, and there have been insane policies, such as putting a hotel of unvetted migrant men into a hotel in Rotherham, where immigration notoriously resulted in mass rape by grooming gangs. The authorities turned a blind eye to grooming gangs, worried about being accused of racism. [1]

"The report found: "Several staff described their nervousness about identifying the ethnic origins of perpetrators for fear of being thought as racist; others remembered clear direction from their managers not to do so".

Furthermore, the rioting occurred after the government suggested that rioting works. In Harehills, Leeds, government social workers returned children after riots. [2]

[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-south-yorkshire-289390... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Harehills_riot


Yaxley-Lennon made several tweets spreading misinformation, inflaming racial tensions, legitimising ongoing violence, and undermining trust in the establishment. For example:

- Spreading false claims that a stabbing in Stirling was carried out by a muslim

- Spreading false claims that a far-right protester in Stoke was stabbed by muslims

- Spreading the false rumour that the Southport attacker was muslim

- Claiming that the police were lying about the Southport attacker's identity

- Calling the Southport riots "justified"

- Describing Islam as a "mental health issue"

He's spent years crafting a narrative in which the once-glorious UK is being overrun by dirty foreigners who are changing its way of life and raping and pillaging its people. It's the quintessential archetype of far-right propaganda, so analogous to the kind of things Hitler said in the 1920s that I have to pinch myself. My belief is that he enjoys the idea of having an army of followers hanging off every word.

I've skipped through the Oxford union address. It looks like the same tired story he peddles about how he saw some bad things growing up in Luton while the al-Muhajiroun were active. I will concede that he is a good speaker, he caters to his audience, and is mostly smart about sticking to dogwhistles and cherry-picked datapoints, stopping short of directly inciting violence.


> Calling the Southport riots "justified"

He explained the riots within the context.

Not once did he say violence was justified.

In comparison, Nick Lowles, leader of a far-left organisation, claimed falsely that Muslims had been attacked with acid to inflame tensions.

I would encourage anyone to watch the Oxford union address. That you haven't seen it means that you are uninformed.

I would recommend anyone else watch it:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=_YQ94jFg_4A


Listen to yourself. There were people burning buildings, looting shops, destroying cars, and attacking innocent bystanders. SYL didn't say "this is wrong" or "this must stop". He said "the rioters concerns are legtimate". What do you think that is going to suggest to the rioters? That they wrap it up there and switch to more peaceful means?


I just stumbled for an article on the Spectator (looking for something else), posted nearby, and I read:

> After the recent riots, people were given prison sentences for posting words and images on social media. In some cases, the illegal incitement to violence was obvious [... But] Lee Dunn, fifty-one, on the other hand, got eight weeks for sharing three images of Asian-looking men with captions such as “Coming to a town near you”


In my view The Spectator is being disingenuous (which makes sense as one of the most right-wing mainstream publications in the UK). They omit to describe the content of the images, which showed Asian men entering Britain by boat and wielding knives in Westminster. This fuels the narrative of Asian/muslim asylum seekers being a violent threat to British society. In the context of an ongoing frenzy being whipped up based on false claims about asylum seekers, I think this did verge into the realm of racist hate speech.

Note that Lee Dunn pled guilty to the charges.


> Note that Lee Dunn pled guilty to the charges.

This did not strengthen your comment. You know many innocent people plead guilty all the time.

> This fuels the narrative of Asian/muslim asylum seekers being a violent threat to British society

Narrative? That almost seems to imply it is wholly false [0]

"Moroccan asylum seeker Ahmed Alid, 45, roamed the streets in Hartlepool looking for a victim to attack in "revenge" for the Israel-Hamas conflict in October" [0]

(You need not point out that the overwhelming of terrorist incidents are by British-born people. I am addressing what you meant to imply by "narrative")

[0] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/crgyggw4z05o


By "narrative" I mean the idea that the typical muslim asylum seeker would be a threat to anyone in the UK.


For those not in the UK, the parent comment is the middle-class left wing perspective.

It is worth noting that the leader of a left wing organisation, "Hope Not Hate" also spread an unfounded rumour on X that a fascist protestor had thrown acid on a muslim woman. This attempt to stir up counter protests was not prosecuted.

There are many examples of two tier policing and prosecution like this in the UK.


> the parent comment is the middle-class left wing perspective

Won't deny it, but note that I thoroughly cited my post.

> It is worth noting that the leader of a left wing organisation, "Hope Not Hate" also spread an unfounded rumour on X that a fascist protestor had thrown acid on a muslim woman.

Won't deny this. Hard to argue that such a post stirs up racial hatred.

> two tier policing

This is laughable. The rioters threw petrol bombs at mosques, set fire to hotels and cars, attacked and injured police personnel, looted shops, and beat up bystanders. Counter-protests were generally peaceful with the exception of a couple of isolated incidents (which I hope are brought to justice).


I mean two tier policing of the anti-immigration protestors vs the rioters two weeks or so earlier in Leeds, sparked by children of (I believe) Romanian travellers being taken into care.

You could also look at other examples - protestors against Israel's actions in Gaza doing nazi salutes, for instance, or singing anti-semitic songs.

The other canonnical example is during lockdown, the treatment given to women protesting the murder of Sarah Everard vs BLM protestors.


> the rioters two weeks or so earlier in Leeds

So in a riot of vastly smaller scale, there 27 arrests and 4 charged.

> protestors against Israel's actions in Gaza doing nazi salutes, for instance

In a protest that was overwhelmingly peaceful, there were 4 arrests, including of someone who did a nazi salute: https://www.mylondon.news/news/three-arrested-after-nazi-sal... . And if we compare it to the delightful things we're seeing in far-right protests:

- https://x.com/AntiRacismDay/status/1819790189369143691

- https://x.com/StanCollymore/status/1819451687566004237

The responses look proportionate to the behaviour.


[flagged]


The stabber was British-born of legal Rwandan immigrants, and from a devout Christian family. The incitement was the completely fabricated narrative that the stabber was an immigrant, which he isn't unless you count him being second generation, and/or a Muslim, which he isn't in any sense, hence the protests being mostly directed at immigrants and Muslims rather than anything actually relevant to the stabbings.


The relevant information is that they are neither muslim nor a migrant, two false claims that formed the basis for the riots.


> I'm interested in updates to facial recognition, social media monitoring, "anti-social behavior" (AKA ASBOs), CCTV, basically all the things that scare me about the UK.


I think you need to address your desire to doom scroll and it's impact on your mental health before you go hunting for more sources.


Appreciate all the comments here and background! Thank you. In the USA there are some folks that are expressly interested in civil rights, online freedoms, etc... and the ones I really appreciate divorce themselves from politics as much as they can. Some might beleive you cannot and I get that, but i'm less interested in what is right or wrong and more interested in what currently "is" the law in the UK. Seems like politics might be so tightly coupled with this info though that getting a neutral news source might be wishful thinking?


https://privacyinternational.org/ is a great UK-based org that campaigns on these matters.

https://x.com/privacyint


Can be a bit sensationalist but

- https://bigbrotherwatch.org.uk/

- https://www.statewatch.org/

Are the ones I've come across


The UK government and media recently coordinated to label anyone protesting about completely failed government immigration policy as "far-right".

In my lifetime, today is the most concerned about I have ever felt about living in the UK.


> is the most concerned about I have ever felt about living in the UK

I understand you. The Country we loved, Britons or foreigners, has shown vast devastating amounts of cracks.

Have you seen the disaster in Education? How can a Country be competitive with that downfall? The population seems unaware of the cost of compromises, relying on a "There'll always be" idea that discounts the "critical detail" that to have things, you have to maintain them.

Anyway: when a not trivial part of the world loves the British spirit, you can find a consolation - but there is much to fix.

And anyway: Britain is far from being alone in the crisis. Concerned about the sinister lurking? Maybe dreaming of Spain, as is customary North of the Contintent? Have you heard about those "laws for the new millennium" of ten years ago, after which - I read - people receive hefty fines for having expressed discontent about the activity of the Spanish police (and more similar cases)?


You figure if there is not somebody passing by that just wants to be annoying. You have an argument, formulate it; you don't, don't express yourself with grunts.


> The UK government and media recently coordinated to label anyone protesting about completely failed government immigration policy as "far-right".

No just the guys throwing rocks and stones based on conspiracy theories spouted online.


Free Speech Union - https://freespeechunion.org/


https://www.libertyhumanrights.org.uk/


Do you have a "Loicense" for that?


Brother comrade puppycodes, under EngSoc we have no freedom of speech. Did you forget?




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