6 ms·

It's still democracy and it still protects against extreme runaway government power. Ultimately the issue is that people want this. People are scared of terrori

• jhrrsn 11y ago
  Yes, but I believe in a society where almost all of the major news outlets are owned by supporters of the current government, the politicians also have a strong ability to control what their voters are demanding.
  • notahacker 11y ago
    Not really. The Murdochs are quite enamoured with Cameron, but they're not in the least bit interested in doing what he asks of them (and just as obsessed with opposing proposed press censorship as they are with reporting on Islamic terrorism). The staunchly anti-present-government Guardian and the Mirror sell plenty of newspapers. And even that bastion of knee-jerk conservatism Daily Mail is happy to run smear stories on the Prime Minister as a major exclusive. Government control over media output in the UK is minimal at best.
    • JupiterMoon 11y ago
      The illusion of choice. These papers do run many stories that are anti-government true. But for certain issues they line up behind the government. The Snowden files story was initially fully covered only by the Guardian -- who have since had a change of Editor after their offices were raided by the security services and equipment smashed. There has been (until now) almost no coverage that the government wants to pass the snoopers charter soon. There is no coverage that the 'emergency' DRIP bill from last year is due for renewal before Christmas. Due to the way that DRIP was rammed through Parliament last year in defiance of normal procedure my MP promised me a robust debate before the renewal. It looks like it will go through without so much as whisper. EDITED as the telegraph currently has a front page article on the snoopers charter on its website. I hope that there is time for people to lobby their MPs (which is what killed it off last time).
      • notahacker 11y ago
        The mostly foreign-owned UK press exists to sell newspapers, not to conspire against the public on purported issues of national security. There's almost no coverage of the Draft Communications Bill or DRIP because the average UK citizen doesn't find some legislation that might be debated which might compel ISPs to hold the same sort of data they already hold for a bit longer to be particularly intelligible, never mind interesting when compared with tax credit cuts, migrants, people being blown up in Syria and the latest celebrity gossip. Or as Charlie Brooker, hardly the most technophobic or pro-government of commentators put it, it's the "the most tedious outrage ever". There was rather more noise made (on both sides of the debate) about the more emotive issue of Cameron's attempt to censor internet porn. It's not as if the media is seeking to hide the fact that private messages people have sent, websites they've visited or triangulated locations from mobile phones are regularly used in prosecutions and have been long before this legislation hit the drafting table. Or indeed as if proposed legislative measures are not being discussed at all: here's the far-from-supportive angle of the newspaper closest to being the informal mouthpiece of the Conservative government: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/11964655/Police-to-be-granted-powers-to-view-your-internet-history.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/11964655/Police... As for Snowden, even on this website where people actually understand the potential of surveillance techniques it's the stories about his personal situation and options, as widely run in all UK newspapers from all angles, that seem to have captured the imagination more than the details of what was revealed. And I'm not sure he and his allies, who sought to carefully control how PRISM was reported, even offered the files to other UK newspapers...
        • wfo 11y ago
          "Journalists' jobs are to sell sensationalist garbage, not to do journalism" -- I think that in fact you are correct (who can disagree with the market in a cultural regime of extremist capitalism?) but it's a troubling state of affairs.
• steckerbrett 11y ago
  > People are scared of terrorists. Are they? If they are it's irrational, you're far more likely to be killed by a falling fridge or alcohol induced liver damage. Attacking a bogyman in an attempt to take eyes off what your government is really doing is quite sickening. Everyone would be significantly better off if we stopped parading around with 'defense' funding and put it to something with a perceivable impact like public healthcare. It's ridiculous that people are justifying this sort of enormous waste of time and resources as worthwhile.
  • collyw 11y ago
    Sadly the Guardian did a study on it recently, and the UK public's number one fear was of a terrorist attack. The propoganda is working.
    • steckerbrett 11y ago
      Yes, undoubtedly. I often wonder how much of commentary on social media sites is shills.
      • JupiterMoon 11y ago
        https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/07/14/manipulating-online-polls-ways-british-spies-seek-control-internet/ https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/07/14/manipulating-o... Unfortunately they will be on this site as well and although the mods work hard on detecting voting rings and shills I doubt that they'll be able to detect state level work.
    • crdoconnor 11y ago
      You ask people what they consider a geopolitical threat (a pretty abstract concept at the best of times) and they say terrorism because that's what's talked about in the news all the time. You ask what they're actually afraid of and it's knife crime, snakes and dying alone. Dying in a terrorist attack is probably, like, #75 on that list.
  • wfunction 11y ago
• scrollaway 11y ago
  People are scared of what they're told is scary. You and I aren't scared of being bitten by a black widow while we sleep because we know the chances are remote (or in my case, nonexistant given where I live), and it's not really something we think about. The media constantly harassing the population with the big bad scary terrorist who's out to get you, of course people watching said media are going to be scared of that, even if the chances are remote. People "want" this because they are scared of a primarily fabricated threat. What people really want is for the "threat" to go away, but that's as simple as having better media that doesn't distort truth for financial gains.
  • johncolanduoni 11y ago
    That's not simple at all, especially if you don't want to become what you fight and restrict freedom of the press while you're doing it.
    • scrollaway 11y ago
      > That's not simple at all I did not mean simple in terms of implementation; you're absolutely right :) > and restrict freedom of the press while you're doing it Yeah. I think there's better ways. There's a lot to it... we need to incentivize media to report on the facts without twisting them, criminalize abuses of trust and power, create meaningful "trust rating" systems that actually impact audiences' willingness to follow certain sources (like we have with restaurants). "You can't say x" is a pointless game of whack-a-mole and has the arbiter as a single point of failure. We need a better system altogether.
      • jon-wood 11y ago
        What we need is better education, teaching critical thinking, and scepticism. If more people had the skills needed to look at a newspaper report and see that it's fabricated nonsense then no one would buy that newspaper, incentivising them to report on reality instead. Sadly, politicians quite like the ability to manipulate the public via their friends in the press, and very few of them are going to campaign for making that less effective.
• jakeogh 11y ago
  "protects against extreme runaway government power" How? Does the UK majority believe they are not entitled to protect their lives and liberty with effective tools?
• madaxe_again 11y ago
  How incredibly naif. As others point out media control has got to the point that the people always want what they're told they want, and if they don't, too bad, they're getting it anyway. I suppose you're one of these poor bairns who quakes under his bedsheets at the thought of the ghost of Bin Laden coming back to be Muslim in your presence?
• crdoconnor 11y ago
  >Ultimately the issue is that people want this. People are scared of terrorists. People do want the government to bend the rules to track them down. That's exactly what democracy is supposed to be. The actual fear these days is pretty low. The government manufactured consent for "chasing terrorists" by 9/11 and is now relying upon political inertia to keep and gradually expand those powers. >In short, politicians do what their voters demand. Or rather, politicians try to shape voter opinion in such a way that they accept the reforms being rammed down their throats without too much protest.
• Eupolemos 11y ago
  That is only half the story, presented in such a way that it is - IMHO - closer to false. I really balk at these fatalistic one-liners. Voters vote for packages of politicians and views. Particularly in the UK with its silly voting system there are very few options for voters to tell the politicians what they feel with any acceptable degree of nuance. Politicians do stuff the majority disagree with all the time. That alone shows your statement to be false. A common issue is, of course, that the solutions politicians come up with for problems we want solved, doesn't always agree with us. E.g. the fact that we do not want paedophiles in our lives doesn't mean that we want the politicians to cover up scandals like Jimmy Savile. It is a perversion of intent. Or would you claim that that is what the voters demand?
• grey-area 11y ago
  it still protects against extreme runaway government power There are no meaningful checks on the surveillance powers of GCHQ, it has broken the law with impunity, and surveils the very people supposed to keep it in check. While I agree the UK is still democratic (for what that's worth), I think you'd find it hard to prove that people want terrorism laws to be misused or extended, but they are certainly indifferent to it unless it affects them clearly and directly. The population did not vote for dragnet surveillance or draconian terrorism laws, because they never had a choice - both major parties have proposed and passed draconian counter-terrorism laws, and misused them for other ends and on people who are clearly not terrorists. So you're incorrect in stating that voters demanded this.
• pjc50 11y ago
  extreme runaway government power It's always strange to me to compare the response to Islamic terrorism with the response to IRA terrorism. The latter was more deadly in the UK, but the illiberal response was mostly contained within Northern Ireland itself. Yet people seem far more scared about Islamic terrorism and far more willing to encourage a brutal response. Is this simply down to racism? (Censorship has long been an issue though. See: Spycatcher, the Zircon affair, Matrix-Churchill, and "Gerry Adams' words are read by an actor")
  • camexp 11y ago
    Reminds me of a certain programme. "...under broadcasting restrictions he must inhale helium to subtract credibility from his statements." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOUeauLWEaE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOUeauLWEaE After reading the "Welcome" page, this post should probably be deleted, even though I think it is at least vaguely relevent, but is effectively comedy. Sorry about that.
  • notahacker 11y ago
    Not really. The IRA was a relatively easy-to-understand phenomenon, and in the mainland UK generally saw causing civilian casualties as an propaganda own goal to be reduced through coded warnings rather than a means to achieve greater status in Paradise. And policing in Northern Ireland was far more draconian than occasionally confiscating journalists' laptops when politely questioning them might have yielded more useful results. The 3.5k killings perpetrated by all sides over the course of the Troubles over many years also rather pales in comparison with the body count in the overseas conflicts that ISIS is also recruiting for.
    • pjc50 11y ago
      And policing in Northern Ireland was far more draconian than occasionally confiscating journalists' laptops when politely questioning them might have yielded more useful results. This is absolutely true and the security services have largely refused to learn the right lessons from NI. The thing about the overseas conflicts is that they're overseas, and there are many more countries and intelligence services involved on various sides. That makes them a lot harder to tackle and purely domestic solutions somewhat futile.
• celticninja 11y ago
  or what the media says the voters demand. Because I remember a million voters marching against the iraq war in 2003 and the politicians did nothing about those voters demands, what they did was whatever tony had agreed with george 12 months earlier regardless of the will of the people.