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What is it about Commonwealth governments - the U.K. in particular - that makes them so extremely hostile towards privacy? There is always some push to monitor

What is it about Commonwealth governments - the U.K. in particular - that makes them so extremely hostile towards privacy? There is always some push to monitor all [X], require registration to do [Y], or outlaw [Z] in the name of safety. Is there some cultural aspect to this that I as an American just don't grok? Yes, I know our government tries this B.S. too, but not nearly as eagerly and to the same degree.

pasabagi 5y ago
I don't know if they are so much more hostile towards privacy - I moved from the UK to Germany, and while overt data collection is much more limited here, the tendency is still there for government agencies (especially the police) to collect every bit of data they can, and never delete it. The UK has the disadvantage that there's no constitution and a weak court system, so there's no opposition other than pure political opposition. That makes anti-privacy laws pretty easy to pass, since they tend to be generally popular amongst voters. Ultimately though, any country where big tech is allowed to operate has essentially unlimited access to the private lives of their citizens, through subpoenas. Until that particular barn door is closed, the UK's panoply of CCTV cameras vs Germany's proudly blanked-out google streetviews are much of a muchness.
- codeduck 5y ago
  What? Of course the UK has a constitution. It is simply not codified into a single document.
  - throwaway81523 5y ago
    I thought there was no constitution in the sense of a legal restriction against Parliament passing certain classes of laws, the way the US prevents Congress from passing certain laws. There are instead two conflicting strong traditions: 1) Parliament shouldn't do certain things; 2) acts of the current Parliament are never binding on later Parliaments. Any law the current one passes can be undone by a later one, things like Brexit notwithstanding since those are entangled with international treaties. So Parliament might attempt to pass a "prohibited" law, trigger some level of public outcry or even intervention from the Crown, but at the end of the day, getting it through (or not) is just a political contest. Is that wrong?
    - southerntofu 5y ago
      Has the US constitution ever been respected? There's plenty of human rights abuses in the history of the USA, most (not all) of which have been approved by congress. What's a piece of paper to protect people from institutions? If you want human rights for real, you want popular (armed) self-defense against the people in power and their police.
- NikolaeVarius 5y ago
  https://www.parliament.uk/globalassets/documents/commons-committees/political-and-constitutional-reform/The-UK-Constitution.pdf https://www.parliament.uk/globalassets/documents/commons-com... Do you really think the entire system has no set of written rules?
  - intunderflow 5y ago
    While the UK does have a sort-of constitution as a mashup of laws and conventions it can be amended by the government of the day by simply convincing their majority in the commons to vote for it in the form of a new bill, so it's considerably weaker than constitutions in other states that require significantly more consensus to amend (such as the USA).
    - pyuser583 5y ago
      Can you show me a situation where a UK government has done this? When have they enacted constitutional changes simply because it restricted their ability to enact policies? EDIT: Lloyd George comes to mind. That was over 100 years ago.
      - intunderflow 5y ago
        One that comes to mind recently is the Irish-sea border as part of Northern Ireland Protocol spanning from Brexit. This was challenged as being in violation of the Acts of Union 1800 (particularly Article 6, which establishes an all-UK Customs Union) but the High Court ruled that the relevant parts of the Acts of Union are "impliedly repealed" by the Withdrawal Agreement Act. There's a BBC article covering this here: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-57666255 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-57666255
        pyuser583 5y ago
        I don’t see that as being distinct from Brexit - which was absolutely a constitutional change. With Brexit, the UK deeply and seriously considered constitutional change and decided to go through with it. It wasn’t like they had some nefarious end in mind, realized the EU was getting in the way, and decided to withdraw to pursue this nefarious end. They left the EU because they wanted to leave the EU. Edit: I suppose it’s not really about Brexit, but about making trade agreements with the EU.
- TeaDude 5y ago
  Let's be real though. If the UK decided to create a constitution it would probably be stupid stuff like "Guarantee of safety" (24/7 surveillance, most outdoor hobbies banned, more powers for the British Board of Film Censors) and "Freedom from hate" (Criticism of politicians and media empires illegal)
  - throwawaylinux 5y ago
    Oh hang on a minute, I'm not so sure. The right to not be offended by anything could have its perks. I'm offended that people responsible for or complicit in wars and intervention and destruction of Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, etc. have not been found guilty and imprisoned for life, while we're being preached at by these same criminals about how the collective good is our paramount responsibility. I'm offended people are being told their freedom must be sacrificed so their hospital systems can remain as gutted and fragile as ever, years after fairly gradual pandemic with relatively low hospitalization and death rates almost caused health systems to collapse, while allowing the ruling class and multinational corporations to get away with obscene tax loopholes that could be helping to pay for an actual robust health system. Yes I think we could make some real progress here.
- southerntofu 5y ago
  > The UK has the disadvantage that there's no constitution and a weak court system That doesn't change much. The psychopaths in power never needs laws to apply power, as exemplified by laws which state cops are not supposed to kill "random" people. But as we well know all across the globe, it happens and the establishment will protect the murderers. Laws are the tools of the powerful to protect themselves from the weak, not the other way around. That's the same reason for which a baker who tries to hide 1000€ from taxes collectors will be severely fined, while politicians and corporations who hide millions or even billions will never face any sort of consequences.
Barrin92 5y ago
I think the US is the outlier here. Not just Commonwealth governments but pretty much any non-US government will put a higher priority on safety and avoidance of harm than the US does in pretty much any domain of public life. If the UK or Germany had the road or gun deaths of the US you'd see the same reaction, or Australia after Port Arthur.
- southerntofu 5y ago
  The US had some strong reactions against guns, but not because of violent deaths. They only started restricting gun ownership when they were used by militant groups to oppose the tyranny of US imperialism and its white-supremacist police. The first anti-gun laws in the US (under Raegan i believe?) were precisely designed to disarm the Black Panther and other militant organizations, who were patrolling the streets of popular neighborhoods to prevent the police from murdering "random" people. Their self-defense technique worked, and that's precisely why it was banned, and to this day we still have the police shooting killing peaceful people.
southerntofu 5y ago
It's not just the Commonwealth. It's the majority of Nation States across the planet, because fascism lies in the roots of liberal "democracy": it's the next stage of any "republic" when the people want to have rights and refuse to be exploited for the governing/abusive minority (see also: "Fascism Inc" doumentary). The political systems of France and USA (who have famously inspired others) have precisely been built to avoid and prevent democracy, whose rule of the mob were seen as dangerous by the wealthy elites. Likewise, most public school systems have been designed to destroy people's cultures and form mindless wage-slaves for the industry. WWII was won on the premise of Freedom and Equality for all. But as history has shown (eg. post-WWII anticolonial struggles and invention of modern "counter-insurrection" playbooks) liberalism was never about freedom or equality, but always about engineering consent for mass exploitation. See also Naomi Klein, Noam Chomsky... Across history, humanity as a whole has never been less free & equal. Even in the middle ages there were tons of free communes beyond the reach of kingdoms. Nowadays, where's a place you can live and your State is not going to be able to find and repress you with drones and satellites and helicopters and whatnot? Nation States are tyranny. Vive la Commune!

pasabagi 5y ago

I don't know if they are so much more hostile towards privacy - I moved from the UK to Germany, and while overt data collection is much more limited here, the tendency is still there for government agencies (especially the police) to collect every bit of data they can, and never delete it. The UK has the disadvantage that there's no constitution and a weak court system, so there's no opposition other than pure political opposition. That makes anti-privacy laws pretty easy to pass, since they tend to be generally popular amongst voters. Ultimately though, any country where big tech is allowed to operate has essentially unlimited access to the private lives of their citizens, through subpoenas. Until that particular barn door is closed, the UK's panoply of CCTV cameras vs Germany's proudly blanked-out google streetviews are much of a muchness.

codeduck 5y ago
What? Of course the UK has a constitution. It is simply not codified into a single document.
- throwaway81523 5y ago
  I thought there was no constitution in the sense of a legal restriction against Parliament passing certain classes of laws, the way the US prevents Congress from passing certain laws. There are instead two conflicting strong traditions: 1) Parliament shouldn't do certain things; 2) acts of the current Parliament are never binding on later Parliaments. Any law the current one passes can be undone by a later one, things like Brexit notwithstanding since those are entangled with international treaties. So Parliament might attempt to pass a "prohibited" law, trigger some level of public outcry or even intervention from the Crown, but at the end of the day, getting it through (or not) is just a political contest. Is that wrong?
  - southerntofu 5y ago
    Has the US constitution ever been respected? There's plenty of human rights abuses in the history of the USA, most (not all) of which have been approved by congress. What's a piece of paper to protect people from institutions? If you want human rights for real, you want popular (armed) self-defense against the people in power and their police.
NikolaeVarius 5y ago
https://www.parliament.uk/globalassets/documents/commons-committees/political-and-constitutional-reform/The-UK-Constitution.pdf https://www.parliament.uk/globalassets/documents/commons-com... Do you really think the entire system has no set of written rules?
- intunderflow 5y ago
  While the UK does have a sort-of constitution as a mashup of laws and conventions it can be amended by the government of the day by simply convincing their majority in the commons to vote for it in the form of a new bill, so it's considerably weaker than constitutions in other states that require significantly more consensus to amend (such as the USA).
  - pyuser583 5y ago
    Can you show me a situation where a UK government has done this? When have they enacted constitutional changes simply because it restricted their ability to enact policies? EDIT: Lloyd George comes to mind. That was over 100 years ago.
    - intunderflow 5y ago
      One that comes to mind recently is the Irish-sea border as part of Northern Ireland Protocol spanning from Brexit. This was challenged as being in violation of the Acts of Union 1800 (particularly Article 6, which establishes an all-UK Customs Union) but the High Court ruled that the relevant parts of the Acts of Union are "impliedly repealed" by the Withdrawal Agreement Act. There's a BBC article covering this here: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-57666255 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-57666255
      - pyuser583 5y ago
        I don’t see that as being distinct from Brexit - which was absolutely a constitutional change. With Brexit, the UK deeply and seriously considered constitutional change and decided to go through with it. It wasn’t like they had some nefarious end in mind, realized the EU was getting in the way, and decided to withdraw to pursue this nefarious end. They left the EU because they wanted to leave the EU. Edit: I suppose it’s not really about Brexit, but about making trade agreements with the EU.
TeaDude 5y ago
Let's be real though. If the UK decided to create a constitution it would probably be stupid stuff like "Guarantee of safety" (24/7 surveillance, most outdoor hobbies banned, more powers for the British Board of Film Censors) and "Freedom from hate" (Criticism of politicians and media empires illegal)
- throwawaylinux 5y ago
  Oh hang on a minute, I'm not so sure. The right to not be offended by anything could have its perks. I'm offended that people responsible for or complicit in wars and intervention and destruction of Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, etc. have not been found guilty and imprisoned for life, while we're being preached at by these same criminals about how the collective good is our paramount responsibility. I'm offended people are being told their freedom must be sacrificed so their hospital systems can remain as gutted and fragile as ever, years after fairly gradual pandemic with relatively low hospitalization and death rates almost caused health systems to collapse, while allowing the ruling class and multinational corporations to get away with obscene tax loopholes that could be helping to pay for an actual robust health system. Yes I think we could make some real progress here.
southerntofu 5y ago
> The UK has the disadvantage that there's no constitution and a weak court system That doesn't change much. The psychopaths in power never needs laws to apply power, as exemplified by laws which state cops are not supposed to kill "random" people. But as we well know all across the globe, it happens and the establishment will protect the murderers. Laws are the tools of the powerful to protect themselves from the weak, not the other way around. That's the same reason for which a baker who tries to hide 1000€ from taxes collectors will be severely fined, while politicians and corporations who hide millions or even billions will never face any sort of consequences.

Barrin92 5y ago

I think the US is the outlier here. Not just Commonwealth governments but pretty much any non-US government will put a higher priority on safety and avoidance of harm than the US does in pretty much any domain of public life. If the UK or Germany had the road or gun deaths of the US you'd see the same reaction, or Australia after Port Arthur.

southerntofu 5y ago
The US had some strong reactions against guns, but not because of violent deaths. They only started restricting gun ownership when they were used by militant groups to oppose the tyranny of US imperialism and its white-supremacist police. The first anti-gun laws in the US (under Raegan i believe?) were precisely designed to disarm the Black Panther and other militant organizations, who were patrolling the streets of popular neighborhoods to prevent the police from murdering "random" people. Their self-defense technique worked, and that's precisely why it was banned, and to this day we still have the police shooting killing peaceful people.

southerntofu 5y ago

It's not just the Commonwealth. It's the majority of Nation States across the planet, because fascism lies in the roots of liberal "democracy": it's the next stage of any "republic" when the people want to have rights and refuse to be exploited for the governing/abusive minority (see also: "Fascism Inc" doumentary). The political systems of France and USA (who have famously inspired others) have precisely been built to avoid and prevent democracy, whose rule of the mob were seen as dangerous by the wealthy elites. Likewise, most public school systems have been designed to destroy people's cultures and form mindless wage-slaves for the industry. WWII was won on the premise of Freedom and Equality for all. But as history has shown (eg. post-WWII anticolonial struggles and invention of modern "counter-insurrection" playbooks) liberalism was never about freedom or equality, but always about engineering consent for mass exploitation. See also Naomi Klein, Noam Chomsky... Across history, humanity as a whole has never been less free & equal. Even in the middle ages there were tons of free communes beyond the reach of kingdoms. Nowadays, where's a place you can live and your State is not going to be able to find and repress you with drones and satellites and helicopters and whatnot? Nation States are tyranny. Vive la Commune!