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Despite loudly, and repeatedly, raised concerns from activists and members of Parliament, the UK's Snooper's Charter (a.k.a., Investigatory Powers bill [PDF]) has been passed by both parliamentary houses and only needs the formality of the royal signature to make it official.
[...] The government, of course, is trying to portray this as nothing more than a fine tuning of pre-existing laws, specifically the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA). Glossed over in its perfunctory "nothing to see here" explanation is the fact that RIPA was also rushed into existence to codify other secret and illegal surveillance programs.
But it's no ordinary update of existing investigatory laws. Jim Killock of the Open Rights Group calls the Snooper's Charter "the most extreme surveillance law ever passed in a democracy." Thanks to the new powers, UK intelligence agencies should be able to put together very extensive dossiers on pretty much anyone they feel like.
Quick, Deucalion, run!
(Score: 4, Insightful) by mhajicek on Saturday November 19 2016, @06:50AM
Protests are pretty meaningless when you as a people have been disarmed. The government has no reason to fear you, so no reason to listen to you. You are powerless serfs, and will continue to be subjugated.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 19 2016, @07:32AM
2 + 2 = ... 4? I knew it, BUY MOAR GUNS!
(Score: 1, Troll) by ledow on Saturday November 19 2016, @12:18PM
We haven't been disarmed.
We were never, in fact, armed.
There's a big difference.
And as someone who's grown up in that environment, I'm unbelievably happier with my lot than, say, living in a country where every idiot carries a gun, and every cop pulls one for every minor thing.
Honestly, you need to go read some books, social experiments, and statistics.
I watched "The 100" for the first time the other week (it's on Amazon Prime). Apart from the fact that I'd written an almost identical story back in my teens that matches with the first episode virtually perfectly, the next thing that really annoyed me? Within minutes of arriving, they are crafting weapons. Within days there are multiple murders. Within a handful of episodes they have guns. Every episode someone dies or is beaten to a pulp or tortured. Despite the undercurrent of "Let's do this peacefully", all the main characters eventually collude in order to kill or torture people. It's like a Milgram experiment on the screen. 7 episodes in, 14 people were dead.
I honestly love the "survival" scenario kind of programs, documentary or fiction. I'm usually yelling at the documentary ones - where people try to survive as if it were 10,000 BC, or on an island with limited resources, etc. - because they're almost always a bunch of idiots who run out of food through gorging themselves and end up all shagging each other.
And I watched "The 100" and did what I always do - shout at them to do the sensible things throughout. My very first thought was "I'd get away from the entire fucking lot of them". The greatest danger in the first few episodes is those exact people who think that crafting a bunch of weapons against - at that point - no threat but themselves - as their first idea. Almost before food, shelter, exploration.
To you that probably reinforces your "You should have a gun, then" attitude. To me, it just confirms the Milgram experiment - that everyone is capable of atrocities. And giving them weapons gives them the power to commit them so easily they are barely a thought, even in an entertainment format, and prevents discussion, even argument, for fear of death.
My first outburst towards the screen while watching it - maybe even in Episode 1, I can't remember - was "Get the fuck away from these people and go it alone, you silly bitch". And I'm so unhappy that NOBODY does that. In fact, by Episode 8 the entire purpose given from the first day on the ground (get to a shelter that was a long way away) has been totally forgotten, and it turns into Animal Farm, with the group killing each other, others (even in peace negotiations), and themselves.
I literally stopped watching it as it descended from there. It was depressing when even the main peaceful characters just order people to perform torture as if it's no big deal - certainly less tears than their boyfriend shagging another woman, for example.
Keep your guns, and your dystopia, and keep them far away from me. I won't live in a dystopia where it's necessary for me to arm myself beyond literal self-defence. I.e. for a limited time, against an obvious and direct and immediate threat. I honestly think I'd rather die. But the UK isn't like that, even if Theresa May has finally got the snooper bill she's been pushing for nearly a decade.
(Score: 2) by fritsd on Saturday November 19 2016, @12:43PM
No, the UK isn't like that, the UK has Taransay [wikipedia.org] :-) (The BBC, in any case). One of the most interesting things I've ever seen on TV.
There was violence on Taransay as well, a few people got into fights. I don't recall that they dismembered each other with their butcher's knives, though.
But it was a fascinating program to watch on TV. In fact the only reality-TV program I have ever watched.
Could there be tribes that would have made it a priority to build a cannon to repel invaders that surely would try to attack their peaceful island?
I'm not even thinking about Americans here; but about e.g. people from the Andaman islands [wikipedia.org].
Must be a cultural thing.
(Score: 2) by Squidious on Saturday November 19 2016, @03:45PM
This is just one anecdote, but when my family went to the UK in the late 70's we stayed entirely at Bed and Breakfasts around the countryside. One morning we were woken up by the sound of a machine gun going rat-tat-tat. The elderly lady we were staying with had a freaking Bren gun mounted on a tripod in her back yard. Her late husband had put it there for her to take care of the rabbits getting into her garden. Having taken care of business, she covered it back up with a tarp and proceeded to made us breakfast.
The terrorists have won, game, set, match. They've scared the people into electing authoritarian regimes.
(Score: 2) by ledow on Saturday November 19 2016, @05:31PM
Likely it would have been completely illegal even then.
https://www.gov.uk/shotgun-and-firearm-certificates [www.gov.uk]
That's a "go directly to jail, do not pass go" kind of firearm.
But, yes, some farmers have shotguns and some licensed people have small arms.
I've literally never held, fired, or known any person who owns a gun. I've seen them only on police at airports. Not even normal police.
(Score: 2) by Squidious on Saturday November 19 2016, @10:31PM
Possibly her late husband was a high ranking officer in WW2, and thus got a free pass with the local constabulary? It was one of the experiences from our trip that left the biggest impression upon a very young me.
The terrorists have won, game, set, match. They've scared the people into electing authoritarian regimes.
(Score: 1, Troll) by mhajicek on Saturday November 19 2016, @04:37PM
Maybe you should learn to distinguish real life from fiction. Most tv shows have people regularly getting over emotional and doing stupid things in order to create conflict. Peace makes for bad tv.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek