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The British government’s thirst for authoriatarian control of the net is just about the strongest in a democracy; much stronger than that in the EU. In fact, t
by confounded 8y ago
The British government’s thirst for authoriatarian control of the net is just about the strongest in a democracy; much stronger than that in the EU.
In fact, the EU is currently making the UK’s investigatory powers act less extreme, as they’ve ruled that state-surveillance of the population at that scale, is incompatible with the human right to privacy.
I’m not the biggest fan of the EU, but they are a moderating force on the UK’s repressive tendencies.
- repolfx 8y agoWhilst true that under Theresa May the UK government is rather keen on controlling the internet, as the EU is demonstrating there's no real difference in terms of their desire for power. The relative disinterest by the EU in surveillance is more because they associate fighting terrorism = fighting Muslims = fighting immigrants = borders = bad. Quoting Juncker again, "Borders are the worst invention ever made by politicians." Doesn't really get clearer than that. The UK government is unfortunately keen on surveillance partly because people are keen on it, and it is ultimately a democracy. Opinion polls pretty consistently show that terrorism is one of the top two concerns citizens have, across the whole of Europe. The EU ignores these concerns completely; this may seem superficially beneficially democratic but as the cookie law, GDPR, copyright, hate speech, link tax laws etc show, this is not due to lack of desire for control over the internet.