Governments often try that kind of nonsense. Usually against organized crime, terrorism, child abuse.
But in the end it’s just used for the heavy crimes like copyright infringement
China has always been authoritarian (and hyper-centralized).
The US is working hard to copy bad ideas from authoritarians, but can't do it in exactly the same way, otherwise the ability to criticize the EU, UK, and China is lost.
Closer than to the US?
I'm not sure about the first two. The latter is also debatable, at least from the UK's point of view. Ireland feels closer to Europe than the UK does.
Much closer. It's a unitary state with a monarchy and parliamentary sovereignty, it's highly centralized economically and culturally. It's more European than much of Europe. Post war Germany, republican and decentralized economically is structurally more like the US than Britain. The only reason people in the US tend to identify with Britain is Anglo-Protestant identitarianism.
Britain in reality operates a lot like France or Russia, an overwhelmingly strong capital and grand historical old world nationalism with relatively weak constitutional or formal limits on government.