zlacker

>>donoho+(OP)
I wonder how the public in the UK feels about their country quickly devolving into an oversurveilled state.

>>N_Lens+v5
One of the original motivations for the First Amendment was the UK's surveillance and censorship of American mail; the UK has been a surveillance state for a very long time.

>>logicc+gd
I was amused by the UK TV show Spooks (aka MI5), from the early 2000s - it showed an organization with a ridiculous amount of surveillance and other powers, acting in blatantly partisan ways, but it tried very hard to make that all seem like a good thing.

The underlying argument was essentially the same one used in the US: almost anything is justified if it helps prevent anything they subjectively determine as “terrorism”.