News Open Rights Group vows to fight new IP Law

How authoritarian can a country become before it's called an authoritarian state?

Genuine question as with our government attempting to use royal prerogative, the bulk monitoring of everyone, and the prospect of laws being rewritten without parliamentary oversight it seems the UK is starting to resembles authoritarian states like China, all we need now is a demagogue rising to power whose willing to abuse these powers we've put in place.

One good thing to come out of all this though is the dedicated search engine, because that's never going to be breached and peoples ICR's are never going to be leaked for the world to see.

 

I do suspect that the successful passing of this particular law is the reason that the bill to curtail the powers of the House of Lords has quietly disappeared.

 

You can borrow ours

 

That would mean taking Farage back... I think we'll pass...

 

It isn't any worse than before, the law simply legalizes the parts of the surveillance that where exposed due to Snowden but have been going on for years already.

And since they can always just yell terrorism to shut down any legal challenge legalizing it is nothing more than a token exercise.

 

I'd say it is worse than before, putting aside the technicalities of if the new snoopers charter give them more powers, something that I'd guess it does, putting that aside for a moment, what making the mass collection of everyones internet activity, and other nefarious activity, on the statute books means is that such activity is sanctioned by our government and politicians.

Id say there's a difference between knowing somethings happening and doing or saying nothing, and saying you fully support that something.

 

That bill has disappeared because we've had a change in PM and thus a change in policy direction/strategy. There's no greater conspiracy to it. New management, new priorities.

 

There is also a third option, recognizing you have no power to stop it.

Short of someone pulling a Guy Fawkes and actually succeeding we are far too deep down the rabbit hole of totalitarian governments to ever climb back out.

 

Why not join ORG, they could use the help:

https://www.openrightsgroup.org/join/

 

@Anfield, Yea, even a decade ago we were a long way down the rabbit hole, a 2007 report from privacy international (PDF Warning) put the UK on par with the likes of Russia and China when it came to privacy rankings.

 

What frustrates me is how little this has been reported in the mainstream media. Every time I talk to people about it, they don't even believe me!

 

If i had to guess, and it is only a guess as bulk data collection (aka: mass surveillance) seems nonsensical to me, at a guess most people probably don't care for a number of reasons, chiefly among those is the fallacy that if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear.

Another primary reason seems to be that the justifications used are imminent threats while the arguments against mass surveillance are both nebulous, complicated, and potentials that may either not come to pass or not be seen to directly effect our lives.

I'm all for keeping track of the "bad guys" however i feel innocent until proven guilty should mean something, if you can prove to me why you want to keep track of someone then go for it, just don't expect me to support tracking everyone without any evidence of wrongdoing.

 

Explain it to a Judge and get a warrant, thats how it should be, but we are so far down the rabbit hole...

And fighting back can be dangerous as our lovely government isn't exactly big on following ethical standards, or the law, just some well known examples:

https://www.theguardian.com/comment...s-strike-thatcher-real-enemy-within-extremism

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/nov/14/police-cambridge-university-secret-footage

https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2013/feb/03/police-spies-identities-dead-children

Unless of course they have something to hide, then they suddenly lose all ability to investigate:

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/aug/05/uk-child-abuse-inquiry-lost-three-chairs-timeline

 

the dark night rises for our privacy & security