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On a related note, they built their digital ID so that third parties could verify attributes (it's NOT just a single-service login across government + a linking
by baazaa 10mo ago
On a related note, they built their digital ID so that third parties could verify attributes (it's NOT just a single-service login across government + a linking ID across government services, which is how it was sold by the BBC).
They're pretty close to completely de-anonymising the internet for UK citizens. Say they introduce an Australian-style social media ban for under 16s, then requires all social media to link their accounts to digital IDs for this verification.
Naturally the only remaining loophole is if a UK citizen manages to avoid being flagged as British ever by using a VPN, so I expect they will focus on that going forwards. Keep in mind the UK already arrests and imprisons vast numbers of people for speech offences, there's no slippery-slope argument here because the UK is already at the bottom of the slope as an ultra-authoratitarian anti-speech nation.
- iamacyborg 10mo ago> Keep in mind the UK already arrests and imprisons vast numbers of people for speech offences I think you’ve been spending too much time on Twitter
- gmac 10mo agoI wouldn’t dismiss this so easily, the Palestine Action stuff is pretty appalling.
- iamacyborg 10mo agoYou mean folks choosing to protest under the guise of a proscribed organisation? Protesting in favour of Palestine remains legal, doing so under the name of a proscribed organisation is not. Admittedly, the reason for them being proscribed is rather idiotic.
- pjc50 10mo agoThat's exactly it. The proscription is ridiculous and delegitimises the whole concept of proscribed organization. It collapses into "mere support for Palestine is an arrestable offense". This didn't work against Sinn Fein and it will not work now.
- iamacyborg 10mo ago> It collapses into "mere support for Palestine is an arrestable offense". It explicitly doesn’t do that, folks are still very much free to protest in support of Palestine.
- JumpCrisscross 10mo ago> The proscription is ridiculous They broke into a military base. If that was sanctioned by the organisation, they should be shut down.
- mosura 10mo agoExposing the military for being an inept paper tiger is a truly heinous crime.
- ben_w 10mo agoI think it's general knowledge that the UK military is a paper tiger, I think Charlie Stross said something about it being enough to defend one small village or something like that (he occasionally comments on this site so may correct me). I think that damaging what little remains of its defences, which may exist mostly to keep the nukes safe so nobody tries anything, is still a really bad idea. Especially given that the US is increasingly unstable and seems like it may stop responding to calls from assistance from anyone else in NATO, and the UK isn't in the EU any more and therefore can't ask the entire EU for help either just the bits that are also in NATO. Theoretically the UK could also ask Canada for help, but right now it seems more likely that Canada will be asking all of NATO except for the USA for military aid to keep the USA out. (What strange days, to write that without it being fiction…)
- bawolff 10mo agoDestroying military equipment neccesary for national defense is a good way to get in legal trouble in pretty much any country. They should consider themselves lucky they did it in an enlightened country like Britian. Many places in the world that would be a death sentence.
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- oncallthrow 10mo ago[flagged]
- Cyph0n 10mo agoSo you understand that the proscription is the core problem, but in the same breath, still focus the blame on protestors for fighting this proscription? By the way, in case you somehow overlooked it, the whole point of people protesting under the banner of Palestine Action is to protest the illegitimate proscription.
- piker 10mo ago> While figures show that the total number of arrests for online posts fell to 9,700 last year, down from a record 13,800 in 2023... https://freespeechunion.org/daily-mail-investigation-exposes-number-of-people-arrested-for-offensive-social-media-posts/?v=7885444af42e https://freespeechunion.org/daily-mail-investigation-exposes...
- cyanydeez 10mo ago[flagged]
- stickfigure 10mo agoThat's not reassuring in the slightest.
- ethanwillis 10mo agoYes, let me just arrest you over some text and hold you for a couple of days. Surely no problem! But being serious if anything this is worse than no imprisonment. Why are they arresting so many people they don't have any grounds to jail longer term?
- iamacyborg 10mo ago
- cultofmetatron 10mo agothen you haven't been paying attention. the UK is in fact arresting people for all sorts of speech online. the vast majority is not a call for violence at all.
- PunchyHamster 10mo agocompared to most countries that's correct
- tekla 10mo agohttps://www.thetimes.com/uk/crime/article/police-make-30-arrests-a-day-for-offensive-online-messages-zbv886tqf https://www.thetimes.com/uk/crime/article/police-make-30-arr... > Officers from 37 police forces made 12,183 arrests in 2023, the equivalent of about 33 per day. This marks an almost 58 per cent rise in arrests since before the pandemic. In 2019, forces logged 7,734 detentions.
- 4ndrewl 10mo agoIn England and Wales there are 85k people serving custodial sentences and 250k community sentences. 12k seems significant, if true.
- iamacyborg 10mo agoArrests are not the same thing as imprisonment or community sentences.
- viraptor 10mo agoThis article really doesn't go into what the communication was about. They have some anecdata, but once you go into 10k+ of examples, you're almost guaranteed to get mistakes. Maybe the situation is bad overall, but that article really doesn't show it.
- jabedude 10mo agoHow many people would you guess were arrested last year for online posts?
- goalieca 10mo agoThe simple threat of arrest, even if they only happen by the hundreds, is enough to have a chilling effect on free speech.
- iamacyborg 10mo ago[flagged]
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- nothrabannosir 10mo agoCitation not needed at all. This is not a scientific journal; it’s a discussion forum. If you disagree feel free to share your own opinion.
- SlackingOff123 10mo agoDo you want a citation for an opinion?
- exe34 10mo agoif it's being offered as a well thought out opinion based on facts, yes absolutely, it's fine to ask for the sauce.
- kubb 10mo agoParallel realities. Over here it seems like the US is a dystopia, with how hostile their leadership is to democratic institutions and how greatly it empowers oligarchs. They think that European countries (or commonly just "Europe") are about to arrest all citizens for criticizing politicians. "Europe" must be saved from their leftist fascist regimes. For now using propaganda. Soon militarily.
- ThrowawayTestr 10mo agoDidn't Germany just make it illegal to insult politicians?
- tormeh 10mo agoIt's illegal to insult anyone in Germany, and has been for a long time. Libel, slander, and insults are all criminal (not civil) offences. I know what you're thinking: "That sounds crazy" - Yeah, it kinda is. In practice this is rarely enforced, as the offended party must file a formal complaint and most people have better things to do.
- Amezarak 10mo agoGerman prosecutors actually did a bizarre and out-of-touch (for an American audience) interview with 60 Minutes recently where they proudly declare they're going to bring order to the Internet and how things like calling politicians "dicks"[1] is rightfully VERBOTEN. > But it was a 2021 case involving a local politician named Andy Grote that captured the country's attention. Grote complained about a tweet, that called him a "pimmel," a German word for the male anatomy. That triggered a police raid and accusations of excessive censorship by the government. As prosecutors explained to us, in Germany, it's OK to debate politics online. But it can be a crime to call anyone a "pimmel," even a politician. Naturally, it's necessary to arrest people for being mean and/or expressing VERBOTEN political beliefs on the Internet so that...uh...everyone will feel free to express their opinions. > Josephine Ballon: This is not only a fear. It's already taking place, already half of the internet users in Germany are afraid to express their political opinion, and they rarely participate in public debates online anymore. Half of the internet users. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/policing-speech-online-germany-60-minutes-transcript/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/policing-speech-online-germany-...
- miohtama 10mo agoHere is House of Lords if Twitter is unreliable https://hansard.parliament.uk/lords/2025-07-17/debates/F807CB70-D90D-4A19-9433-99539B7CF21F/OnlineCommunicationOffenceArrests https://hansard.parliament.uk/lords/2025-07-17/debates/F807C... Online Communication Offence Arrests Volume 847: debated on Thursday 17 July 2025
- sys_64738 10mo agoOr spending too much time in jail from speaking freely.
- andyjohnson0 10mo ago> Keep in mind the UK already arrests and imprisons vast numbers of people for speech offences. Vast? No, they really don't.
- oncallthrow 10mo agoIs tens of thousands vast enough for you?
- elephant81 10mo agoHow would you argue that more than one arrest is fair in a modern democracy? Can you even point to an arrest where it passes the pub test?
- cortic 10mo ago[flagged]
- iLoveOncall 10mo ago> The UK is actually a scary place right now, if you are paying attention.. It has been the most authoritarian country in the West for decades already, this is nothing new. British people are the most apathetic people in the world, so it's really easy to abuse them.
- cortic 10mo ago>the most authoritarian country in the West Australia and the US are more authoritarian in specific areas e.g. censorship and taxation respectively.. but overall, yes, the UK is worse. >British people are the most apathetic I'm not sure that's fair, our culture looks apathetic from abroad, but like other countries we care deeply about what our media tell us to care about.
- iLoveOncall 10mo ago> our culture looks apathetic from abroad I live in the UK, and have lived in multiple other western countries before. British people absolutely ARE apathetic.
- varispeed 10mo agoDon't forget that Digital ID really has been pushed by Labour after a meeting with Larry Fink and BlackRock. This is how democracy gets bypassed by the wealthy and in functioning country it should result in the entire government going to prison. Unfortunately MI5 that is in charge of that is asleep at the wheel - probably corrupt themselves.
- avianlyric 10mo ago> On a related note, they built their digital ID so that third parties could verify attributes Isn’t that the entire point of government ID of any variety? The only reason anyone ever asks to see ID is so they can use it verify attributes of your identity, such as name and age. Otherwise what’s the point of an Identity Document, if it’s not to document something? Digital ID has always been sold as something approximating your passport/Driver License (there is no official government ID in the UK), but digital, on your phone, and actually a government identity document. Rather than a government document that has a specific purpose (such as crossing the border or driving a car), which people pretend is government ID. Something that can cause a serious problem for people because passports and driver’s licenses aren’t free to obtain, replace or keep valid. Plus the government departments that issue them refuse to take any responsibility or liability for the accuracy or validity of the documents for any use case outside their very specific role in narrow government functions, like crossing the border, or figuring out if you’re allowed to drive a car. The UK already has citizen SSO that stretches across all digital government services, and has had that for a decade plus now. Although it’s not really attached your identity, it’s just a unified auth system so government departments don’t end up creating their own broken auth systems instead.
- rtkwe 10mo ago> Isn’t that the entire point of government ID of any variety? Ideally this could be done without deanonymizing accounts to service providers unless the user wants to for a 'verified' account linked to their identity publically but I don't think any digital ID system has been built that way. Imagine it acting like OAuth but instead of passing back an identity token it's just verification of age, platforms would store that which would show they had performed the age verification and could be used for other age gates if there are any.
- xp84 10mo agoYou're totally right that it would be easy from a tech perspective to do that. it's a shame that: (A) most people cannot grasp how it could be that "GovSSO" can attest "This person you just sent our way just logged into GovSSO [with biometric 2FA], and they are at least 16 years old" without the receiving system having any way of knowing who that citizen is or even whether they're 16 or 99. (B) very real terrible government policies the UK has (like jailing people for speech, and like demanding encryption backdoors that compromise the security, at minimum, of the whole of every British citizen's devices, and at worst every device in the world) incline anyone who's paying attention to assume that the government will somehow use anything related to "ID" and "internet" to do idiotic things like figuring out who owns a Twitter account that committed some wrongspeak so the bobbies can come round them up.
- goobatrooba 10mo ago[flagged]
- nine_k 10mo agoCertainly, calling the UK "ultra-authoritarian" is incorrect. But the point about attempts of completely deanonymizing Internet access is still important. The inability of the government to know everything about its citizens is an important check that prevents it from slipping towards illiberal, even if prosperous, system, like that in mainland China, or Singapore.
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- pydry 10mo ago>Certainly, calling the UK "ultra-authoritarian" is incorrect. It's Russia level. They're prosecuting people for holding up signs protesting a genocide.
- JumpCrisscross 10mo ago> They're prosecuting people for holding up signs Source?
- pydry 10mo ago[flagged]
- JumpCrisscross 10mo agoYeah, that’s dumb. Curious what they were charged with, e.g. if they were told to disperse and didn’t, and if the charges will stick. As dumb as it may be, you should be free-in a democracy, with limited exceptions—to verbalize support for a foreign or even domestic terrorist organization as long as you aren’t materially aiding it. Is “supporting” defined in the UK Terrorist Act?
- anthem2025 10mo ago[dead]
- exasperaited 10mo ago> Keep in mind the UK already arrests and imprisons vast numbers of people for speech offences No it fucking doesn’t.
- TacticalCoder 10mo agoThe UK is the country with the biggest yearly outflow of millionaires in the world. And the numbers are huge: there are about the same number of millionaires in the UK and in France, about 3 million. And yet there are 20x more net millionaires outflow leaving the UK than leaving France (16 000 vs 800 net outflow). Make of that what you will but to me the net outflow is the canary in the coalmine. The UK is headed for a dark future.
- u_sama 10mo agoWait are you baazaa9, I love your writings and specially your analysis of bureaucracy