zlacker

[return to "Independent review of UK national security law warns of overreach"]
1. flower+x6[view] [source] 2025-12-18 12:16:41
>>donoho+(OP)
> He warns that developers of apps like Signal and WhatsApp could technically fall within the legal definition of "hostile activity" simply because their technology "make[s] it more difficult for UK security and intelligence agencies to monitor communications.

Sounds like Let's Encrypt would also fall under that.

This has got to stop. If you want to stop criminals, then focus on their illegal activites, not the streets they walk on. I walk on them too. And don't use CP as a catch-all argument to insert backdoors.

Their big problem here is that previously, it was hard to find people with the same opinion as you. If you couldn't find someone in the same village who wanted to start a rebellion, it probably wouldn't happen. Today, someone can post a Telegram group message and make thousands of people rally to a town square. I see the dangers, and I see why governments think they are doing this to protect the people. No one wants civil war. That is still not a strong enough reason to call road construction a hostile activity.

I'm back in Sweden after 12 years abroad. Time to read up on which parties are sane and which aren't when it comes to technical infrastructure.

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2. mosura+R7[view] [source] 2025-12-18 12:27:40
>>flower+x6
> This has got to stop. If you want to stop criminals, then focus on their illegal activites, not the streets they walk on.

That would be against everything european governments stand for.

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3. mirolj+Pb[view] [source] 2025-12-18 12:57:20
>>mosura+R7
I don't understand why you got heavily downvoted.

Yes, there are governments that are worse than European, but the decline of European government is the fastest.

You may be surprised that the UK is the world leader in the number of people arrested because of internet posts. And that Germany, which is still way behind the UK, has more people arrested for the same reason than Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, Belarus, Saudi Arabia, and a few others combined.

And many people still believe that those countries are beacons of democracy while the others are backward dictatorships.

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4. Kbelic+rd[view] [source] 2025-12-18 13:10:59
>>mirolj+Pb
> I don't understand why you got heavily downvoted.

Because his post contributes nothing to the discussion.

> Yes, there are governments that are worse than European, but the decline of European government is the fastest.

What makes it the fastest?

> You may be surprised that the UK is the world leader in the number of people arrested because of internet posts. And that Germany, which is still way behind the UK, has more people arrested for the same reason than Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, Belarus, Saudi Arabia, and a few others combined.

Don't know about you but I'd rather be arrested for posting something in EU then be disappeared in any of the countries that you mentioned.

> And many people still believe that those countries are beacons of democracy while the others are backward dictatorships.

That is because Germany and UK are beacons of democracy when compared to the countries that you listed.

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5. mirolj+df[view] [source] 2025-12-18 13:20:12
>>Kbelic+rd
The UK arrests 12k people per year for social media posts, using vague laws to undermine free speech. Here's the citation from the EU parliament itself [1], since I doubt you'd believe non-government sources.

> That is because Germany and UK are beacons of democracy when compared to the countries that you listed.

Read my comment again. The fact that the UK and Germany are in some aspects still better than the ones I mentioned doesn't make them beacons of democracy. It's sad that those countries declined so fast that we are now comparing them.

[1] https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/E-10-2025-0022...

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6. Kbelic+Ih[view] [source] 2025-12-18 13:37:07
>>mirolj+df
> The UK arrests 12k people per year for social media posts, using vague laws to undermine free speech.

This doesn't mean anything in isolation.

> Here's the citation from the EU parliament itself [1], since I doubt you'd believe non-government sources.

Do we know each other?

> The fact that the UK and Germany are in some aspects still better than the ones I mentioned doesn't make them beacons of democracy.

No, but there aren't many that are much better so when you take all of that in to account, yes UK an Germany are beacons of democracy.

> It's sad that those countries declined so fast that we are now comparing them.

I already asked this but by what metric are they declining faste?

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7. mirolj+0k[view] [source] 2025-12-18 13:49:24
>>Kbelic+Ih
>> The UK arrests 12k people per year for social media posts, using vague laws to undermine free speech. > This doesn't mean anything in isolation.

It's pretty good proxy for freedom of speech, one of the features without which democracy is not possible.

>> Here's the citation from the EU parliament itself [1], since I doubt you'd believe non-government sources.

> Do we know each other?

Probably not, but I can smell a state believer when I see him.

> No, but there aren't many that are much better so when you take all of that in to account, yes UK an Germany are beacons of democracy.

If they are, it's a pretty low baseline. They are but a shadow of what they once were.

>> It's sad that those countries declined so fast that we are now comparing them.

> I already asked this but by what metric are they declining faste?

The article I posted has a link [1]. There you can see the number of people arrested went up from 5502 in 2017 to 12183 in 2023. It's a pretty sharp decline in freedom of speech.

[1] https://archive.is/kC5x2

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8. fao_+qQ[view] [source] 2025-12-18 16:15:43
>>mirolj+0k
The problem here is that contextually you are falling into the trap of "talking about committing a terrorist act" as being relevant to "having private communications", and in the process you are conflating the two. This means you are falling into the trap that the UK government intentionally creates to suppress privacy — within a reader's head, now the two are related. This also means you haven't had to develop any arguments other than "muh free speech!" with respect to why having private communication is important.

The second problem is that American conservatives have framed Nazi speech as a free speech issue, so to an onlooker who is not in the USA, when people talk about "free speech", it comes across as someone defending someone's right to say incredibly harmful, violent things about Jewish people, Transgender people, and so on. I think for most people outside of the USA (and, to be honest, most minority populations within the USA) you should consider "free speech" as being an incredibly tainted phrase for that purpose.

The flipside of all of this is that fascism is very, very possible even with freedom of speech (actually it seems to rely on it, given how virulent the spread of outright Nazi rhetoric has been in the USA so far). Freedom of speech is not the sole thing that holds up a democracy and it weakens your arguments for you to rely upon it like this.

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9. jandre+9b1[view] [source] 2025-12-18 17:36:39
>>fao_+qQ
> American conservatives have framed Nazi speech as a free speech issue

The famous US Supreme Court case[0] that explicitly confirmed that "Nazi speech is free speech" was brought to the court by the ACLU[1], a left-leaning organization that defends things like LGBTQ rights. Your take is completely divorced from factual reality.

American conservatives aren't "framing" it. They are restating what the US Supreme Court has already determined in a case brought to the court by the liberal left. This is a principled defense of free speech that has historically been supported by people across the political spectrum.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Socialist_Party_of_Am...

[1] https://www.aclu.org

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