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It's also quite sad that a big majority of the country is ambivalent of this. Despite having access to this news, many still feel this is okay. Why are people n

It's also quite sad that a big majority of the country is ambivalent of this. Despite having access to this news, many still feel this is okay. Why are people not outside parliament protesting? Why are there no big campaign/organisations in the UK trying to get people together to protest this? Are we already too late and the government is now censoring and breaking apart potential protest groups. People have got to get away from this idea that they should trust the government. Maybe this government is mildly democratic however it doesn't mean in the future it always will be. Protections need to be implemented now to protect from future governments not just the current.

DanBC 9y ago
> It's also quite sad that a big majority of the country is ambivalent of this. Despite having access to this news, many still feel this is okay. Why are people not outside parliament protesting? People sometimes volunteer to have their DNA taken and matched against the police DNA database when there's been high profile crime of sexual violence. People just don't care. They think (mostly correctly) that the Government knows everything about them anyway, what does it matter if they get metadata too. RIPA made things a bit more complicated - it meant that in theory everything now had controls and checks and balances on it. But we know that those were boken, and that the oversight of GCHQ / MI5 / Special Branch / etc was rubber stamping stuff that should not have been happening. But because of RIPA people vaguely think "they get it all with a warrant". It's important to recognise that approximately zero people care about this, and it's not going to feature in any election manifesto (except for niche parties such as the greens). Many people don't care that the NHS is being destroyed, and that's a much bigger problem.
- arethuza 9y ago
  What I wonder about is what people are going to do when they find out that maybe it wasn't the EU or immigration that has been causing the problems with the NHS but straightforward bad management by a succession of governments and not so subtle attacks from right wing that can't stand that we have a much loved and successful service that is explicitly socialist. The crisis in the NHS is intentional.
  - aembleton 9y ago
    Probably start electing governments that take action. Future governments will no longer be able to blame the EU.
  - mike-cardwell 9y ago
    I'm 36 and I don't remember a time when NHS wasn't about to collapse, or be destroyed by the Tories. Meanwhile, the NHS has been around for about 70 years, and nearly two thirds of that time was under the management of the Tories. I'm pretty sure, 50 years from now, when I'm 86, people will still be telling me that the NHS is about to be destroyed by the evil sinister Tories.
    - arethuza 9y ago
      Note that I didn't single the Tories out for criticism - New Labour was just as bad.
    - DanBC 9y ago
      There's a clear difference between the problems in the NHS today and the problems in the NHS 5 / 10 years ago. No one who works in health and social care is asking for unconstrained NuLabour style funding sprees. But now that they've made the NHS ruthlessly efficient, and we have NICE, it'd be a good idea to pay for what we know works, rather than weird ideas like 8 - 8 GPs, or 7 day services. (Especially since the information used to push 7 day services is a lie, and we've seen people die as a result.)
scrollaway 9y ago
> Why are people not outside parliament protesting? Because it requires effort. And if the british people go through with that effort, the government will wait, and do it later. It's a cat & mouse game except there's one cat and 200 mice. And the mice can fly. And throw the cat in jail. People aren't going to fight to delay issues. Hell, I'm very much an activist and I sure as hell don't have the will to fight for delays, how would you expect the general population to? If there's a solution, a real solution, people can fight for it.
astrobe_ 9y ago
> It's also quite sad that a big majority of the country is ambivalent of this. Despite having access to this news, many still feel this is okay. Why are people not outside parliament protesting? Because they don't realize what it means. Maybe doxxing a John Doe (with his approval, of course), and then saying "now, Internet companies and intelligence agencies can do ten times more because they have even better tools and/or have access to even better data" - that may open some eyes. Maybe someone should open a "doxx-me.org" website, that would let you doxx yourself. Of course this means it lets you doxx anyone, so it would be ethically questionable (well maybe that's more a suggestion for 4chan than for HN). On the other hand, I think it's important to know what others can know about you using these tools - in other words which parts of your privacy are exposed.

DanBC 9y ago

> It's also quite sad that a big majority of the country is ambivalent of this. Despite having access to this news, many still feel this is okay. Why are people not outside parliament protesting? People sometimes volunteer to have their DNA taken and matched against the police DNA database when there's been high profile crime of sexual violence. People just don't care. They think (mostly correctly) that the Government knows everything about them anyway, what does it matter if they get metadata too. RIPA made things a bit more complicated - it meant that in theory everything now had controls and checks and balances on it. But we know that those were boken, and that the oversight of GCHQ / MI5 / Special Branch / etc was rubber stamping stuff that should not have been happening. But because of RIPA people vaguely think "they get it all with a warrant". It's important to recognise that approximately zero people care about this, and it's not going to feature in any election manifesto (except for niche parties such as the greens). Many people don't care that the NHS is being destroyed, and that's a much bigger problem.

arethuza 9y ago
What I wonder about is what people are going to do when they find out that maybe it wasn't the EU or immigration that has been causing the problems with the NHS but straightforward bad management by a succession of governments and not so subtle attacks from right wing that can't stand that we have a much loved and successful service that is explicitly socialist. The crisis in the NHS is intentional.
- aembleton 9y ago
  Probably start electing governments that take action. Future governments will no longer be able to blame the EU.
- mike-cardwell 9y ago
  I'm 36 and I don't remember a time when NHS wasn't about to collapse, or be destroyed by the Tories. Meanwhile, the NHS has been around for about 70 years, and nearly two thirds of that time was under the management of the Tories. I'm pretty sure, 50 years from now, when I'm 86, people will still be telling me that the NHS is about to be destroyed by the evil sinister Tories.
  - arethuza 9y ago
    Note that I didn't single the Tories out for criticism - New Labour was just as bad.
  - DanBC 9y ago
    There's a clear difference between the problems in the NHS today and the problems in the NHS 5 / 10 years ago. No one who works in health and social care is asking for unconstrained NuLabour style funding sprees. But now that they've made the NHS ruthlessly efficient, and we have NICE, it'd be a good idea to pay for what we know works, rather than weird ideas like 8 - 8 GPs, or 7 day services. (Especially since the information used to push 7 day services is a lie, and we've seen people die as a result.)

scrollaway 9y ago

> Why are people not outside parliament protesting? Because it requires effort. And if the british people go through with that effort, the government will wait, and do it later. It's a cat & mouse game except there's one cat and 200 mice. And the mice can fly. And throw the cat in jail. People aren't going to fight to delay issues. Hell, I'm very much an activist and I sure as hell don't have the will to fight for delays, how would you expect the general population to? If there's a solution, a real solution, people can fight for it.

astrobe_ 9y ago

> It's also quite sad that a big majority of the country is ambivalent of this. Despite having access to this news, many still feel this is okay. Why are people not outside parliament protesting? Because they don't realize what it means. Maybe doxxing a John Doe (with his approval, of course), and then saying "now, Internet companies and intelligence agencies can do ten times more because they have even better tools and/or have access to even better data" - that may open some eyes. Maybe someone should open a "doxx-me.org" website, that would let you doxx yourself. Of course this means it lets you doxx anyone, so it would be ethically questionable (well maybe that's more a suggestion for 4chan than for HN). On the other hand, I think it's important to know what others can know about you using these tools - in other words which parts of your privacy are exposed.