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UK government exempting itself from cyber law inspires little confidence

firefax 9mo ago
[flagged]
- exsomet 9mo ago
  This isn’t an accurate interpretation. The UK is a _constitutional_ monarchy, not an absolute monarchy, meaning that the monarchy exists and acts in accordance with the constitution. In the case of the UK, some of the rituals (such as the one you’re referring to with the prime minister) are based on longstanding traditions, because humans are weird and we like those sorts of things, but the requirement to do that stems from the constitution, not from the King deciding if he likes the PM or not.
  - alistairSH 9mo ago
    And to be clear, the UK constitution is really the combined law passed over centuries (including the Magna Carts). There is no single, “sacred” document as in the US (which isn’t really sacred in practice - we can amend it or let SCOTUS re-interpret it).
    - gpderetta 9mo ago
      The biggest difference between the UK and other constitutional countries is that parliament power is pretty much absolute and it is not bound by any document or pre-existing law. In theory at least. In practice the courts have hinted that there are limits even for the parliament, and if it were to overstep some unwritten rules, it would cause a constitutional crisis.
      - bossyTeacher 9mo ago
        > if it were to overstep some unwritten rules What rules are those?
        alistairSH 9mo ago
        Boris Johnson asking the Queen to prorogue parliament during Brexit debates is a solid recent example.
- monooso 9mo ago
  This may have been the case historically, but these days the king's role is largely ceremonial. As to the House of Lords, around 11% of its members are hereditary peers. A bill [1] is in progress to reduce that to zero: > The bill would remove membership from 89 hereditary peers who currently sit in the House. Their membership would end at the conclusion of the current parliamentary session. So, in summary, the UK is a democracy with its own set of historical quirks, much like many other democracies (Electoral College, anyone?). [1]: https://lordslibrary.parliament.uk/hereditary-peers-in-the-house-of-lords/ https://lordslibrary.parliament.uk/hereditary-peers-in-the-h...
- foldr 9mo ago
  >because [the King has] heard of what happened in France etc And, err, in England: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Execution_of_Charles_I https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Execution_of_Charles_I >there is no "bill of rights" There very literally is a bill of rights: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_of_Rights_1689 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_of_Rights_1689 >which is akin to if we handed a bunch of decendants of the mayflower and rich industrialists and priests their own house of Congress. The House of Lords does need reform, but this is not in any way an accurate picture of it since at least 1999 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Lords_Act_1999 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Lords_Act_1999). When you strip away the historical baggage, the House of Lords is just an appointed second chamber. I'm fully in favor of removing the last vestiges of the hereditary principle in government, but hereditary peers do not have a significant amount of power in the current system. >And when they "elect" a prime minister Elections really do happen in the UK and really do determine who is Prime Minister. No need for the scare quotes here. > so basically, there's this constant ritual of pretending they're a democracy when really it's only like that because the king current feels like it. I'll resist the temptation to point out which country is more pertinently and accurately described this way in the present situation.
  - Defletter 9mo ago
    > Elections really do happen in the UK and really do determine who is Prime Minister. Different person, but while this is true, it's also true that the Prime Minister is not elected: they [ordinarily] emerge as being the leader of whichever party commands a majority in Parliament. It's how we've had so much Prime-Minister turnover since the Brexit referendum: those didn't happen because the electorate "determined" it.
    - foldr 9mo ago
      Yes sure, it’s a simplification to say that elections always directly determine who the Prime Minister is, and I probably should have been clearer on that point. However, this difference between a parliamentary system and a presidential one has nothing to do with rogue Kings going mad with power.
- afandian 9mo ago
  We recently had a significant test of this. Boris Johnson asked the late Queen to prorogue (shut down) parliament in order to prevent debate on the Brexit negotiations between the UK and the European Union. In theory he was asking permission from the Queen. But in practice, everyone knew that the Queen was powerless to reject his request. Even for something as plainly anti-democratic. The Supreme Court eventually ruled that the prorogation was not lawful. Lots of people were hoping that the Queen would stand up for the people. It was a complicated moment when she didn't! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_United_Kingdom_prorogation_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_United_Kingdom_prorogatio...
  - Defletter 9mo ago
    This kind of stuff is fascinating because it's the state interacting with itself. The Queen was powerless to reject his request, he being the leader of the government who governed in her name, whose prorogation was overturned by judges she appointed. She ultimately did not need to act because she had an army of people who acted on her behalf. This is not to say that every misuse of power is always caught, but rather that the Monarch gets to maintain a facade of impartiality because all the partiality is being done by their institutions instead.
  - Winblows11 9mo ago
    The page you linked to ends with: > The proposed Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Bill emphasised the non-justiciability of the revived prerogative powers, prevented courts from making certain rulings in relation to a Government's power to dissolve Parliament. It received royal assent over two years later, on 24 March 2022. As some have said before, it effectively means in future the Supreme Court can't undo or interfere with prorogation like what Boris Johnson did in 2019. The Labour party have said they won't cancel this law, so Kier Starmer can now do same as Boris and courts can't stop him.
- amiga386 9mo ago
  You will find that written constitutions are about as effective as unwritten ones; if the people in power choose to disregard them, and have popular support, they tend to get away with it for long enough to do damage. Fun fact: The UK has the Magna Carta, the original bill of rights signed in 1215. Did you know that's 561 years before the US declared its independence from the UK? To put it another way, 561 years is more than double the length of time the US has been a country. Second fun fact: UK Prime Ministers aren't elected. Their party is elected, and tends to command a majority in the House of Commons, but if they don't, they get to trade horses with other parties to see which coalition can command a majority, and thus win a confidence vote. The party selects a leader through their own internal processes. Doesn't even have to be an elected MP. Then they tell the king, who rubberstamps the decision. They can do this at any time, not just after an election. Provided the leader can command a majority in Parliament, they get to continue. If enough of your own party dislikes you as leader, they will vote against a confidence motion and drop themselves and you out of power; your job is to not let it get to that. The House of Lords is a secondary chamber, which scrutinises what the House of Commons passes and suggests rewordings and rewrites. (There's a whole other layer of scrutiny at the committee stage, for costing, etc.) They can send back bad bills, but can't send them back indefinitely, if the government had that in its election manifesto, so appointed or not, they can't defy the "will of the people". The king doesn't rock the boat, not because he fears for his life, but because he'd trigger a constitutional crisis which will inevitably resolve in the form of a republican UK.
- 9dev 9mo ago
  Even ignoring your flawed understanding of the UK's government, what is your glorious bill of rights worth at the end of the day? Your president just does whatever the hell he wants, ignoring any checks and balances as he sees fit. Freedom of speech? Well, as long as you don't criticise a certain deceased extremist, that is. Freedom of religion? Well, as long as you're a Christian. Freedom of the Press? As long as you're a right-wing influencer. Freedom of assembly? As long as you're not a Democrat. Right to petition the government? You might get shot by ICE agents for following their orders.
  - firefax 9mo ago
    >Even ignoring your flawed understanding of the UK's government, what is your glorious bill of rights worth at the end of the day? Your president just does whatever the hell he wants, ignoring any checks and balances as he sees fit. Are you talking about Bush, or Trump? Because the logic goes both ways -- when Blair bent over over when Bush wanted to go gallivanting into Iraq, we were set upon this path, one that started before I was old enough to vote... so maybe don't show up at the finish line to tut after literal decades of inaction?
ambicapter 9mo ago
Why is the UK so authoritarian on cyber security? I feel like they're consistently on HN with this type of "rules for thee, not for me" attitude regarding computer law.
- Kenji 9mo ago
  Not just cyber security.
- spwa4 9mo ago
  [flagged]
  - drawfloat 9mo ago
    This is such a poor understanding of what happened in Rotherham, not least of all nobody has ever claimed the UK government itself was the one running the trafficking ring, it borders on fantasy. I’m guessing from your spelling you’re not from the UK, so I’d question where you’re getting your information on this, and your understanding of how the UK public sector and government is structured. The corruption in South Yorkshire Police and Rotherham council (neither of which are part of HMG) in the 1990s and early 2000s also has absolutely nothing to do with UK Government cyber security policy in 2026.
    - spwa4 9mo ago
      This is the reductio ad absurdum fallacy. What do you mean with "nobody has ever claimed the UK government itself was the one running the trafficking ring, it borders on fantasy". This is a "reductio ad absurdum" argument. You state an absurdity I never stated and then say it's ridiculous. HERE is what I mean: 1) was it UK government employees, including city hall workers and police officers and subcontractors helping to run the trafficking ring? Yes, it was. 2) was it the UK government, in a top down effort, organizing this? No. Although one might note that the police used violence, against kids no less, to make this child trafficking possible. That what youth services does, btw. Violence against kids. Supposedly to help them, but in this case it resulted in thousands of children being prostituted. And, again, this is hardly the first or last time youth services prostituted minors. It's just, for now, their record number of kids prostituted at the same time. For now. 3) did the government itself commit crimes (as in purposefully acted against the law), enabling the trafficking? Yes. For example, hiring people that were illegal to hire. To say nothing of the police officers that fucked minor girls while helping the trafficking ring. 4) did the government fail to indict it's own employees, at city hall, and police officers that knew, participated and even used some of the girls? Yes. 5) did city hall workers hide the crimes that their colleagues were committing using government resources and special powers for a decade? Yes. And now for legal theory. If you're a private company, and your employees use your company assets to commit a crime, the company is financially liable for the consequences. Not criminally, but 100% civil liability. The owners don't go to jail, but they pay for everything. For example, take a movie scenario: your employees steal a truck, and drive it into city hall, on purpose. Company is financially liable. Then the company can sue the driver, but only after paying. Or, directly to the point, let's say you own a hotel or a nightclub and your employees organize minors to have sex with hotel guests for payment. Is your company responsible, financially? Plain and simple: yes. Does it matter if the owner participated in prostituting minors? No, it doesn't. That wouldn't even make sense if it's a big hotel or a chain. What the employees do is considered the actions of the company WHETHER OR NOT it was "company policy" or whatever you want to call it. Of course, when it's the government themselves they refused, of course, all financial liability. Even a small damage award, by the standards of what is done to hotel owners, would have eaten the entire budget of youth services for years. As pointed out, the government's resources supposedly for protecting children caused more damage to UK youth, prostituting thousands of children, than all criminals in London do in a decade. I would also like to point out if a private organization committed a crime of this scale, whoever was involved would somehow be found dead, law or no law. In fact, that's what happened to a few of the "Pakistani men". Which brings the question: given that the law says that the organizations where this happens are responsible, whether the owners participated or not, whether it was policy or not, it would be very natural to hold the government responsible here. But, of course, the government disagreed, refusing to even hold it's subcontractors responsible. They sent a bunch of the kids home, and that's it. Oh, and they did so WITHOUT asking a judge first, which makes even the very few, very feeble actions the government took to redress the situation ... a criminal act (yes, a criminal act, changing who takes care of a minor without agreement from a judge is called "removing a child from parental supervision", and this includes taking a child out of youth services without a court order (in fact if children run away from youth services the government charges them with this crime to lock them up), and is a crime which carries up to two years' imprisonment, as well as a hefty fine). So you see what I mean, don't you? When it comes to the government's own actions, nobody cares about the law. Not when they damage people. They protect their colleagues. NOT EVEN the police officers who abused the situation to fuck minors were punished. And even the pathetic attempts the government made afterwards to make things right were criminal acts. They do not care about the law to the point that they openly commit crimes in the process of justice itself. THAT is the modern UK government.
lucasRW 9mo ago
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- greggoB 9mo ago
  Where does Socialism fit into this exactly? As a counter-example, the US is currently in the process of implementing an extraordinary amount of censorship across the board, and rolling out massive state surveillance apparatus, but you don't see anyone accusing the current autocratic regime there of spooky "Socialism"
  - AlecSchueler 9mo ago
    That account's history is almost entirely left bashing or giving praise to Elon Musk. I'd guess the comment above is part of his ongoing effort to destabilise the British political norms.
    - greggoB 9mo ago
      Thanks for the context haha. Left bashing is one thing, but someone gicing praise to Elon Musk in 2026 is just mind-blowing to me
      - lucasRW 9mo ago
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        pgalvin 9mo ago
        The front page of the BBC right now, at the very top, is a large photo of protests in Iran. The headline reports that hospitals are overwhelmed by the regime cracking down on protestors. The article focuses on first-hand accounts from medics inside Iran, describing the crackdown and casualties. It also contains statements from the Iranian opposition, the UN, US and French presidents and British PM, all critical of Khamenei, with just two mentions of the regime’s official statements. Also, I just switched to the BBC News TV broadcast. The Iran protests are the lead story: a special report with a focus on the protestors, showing videos shared by them. Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cj9rengvnp9o https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cj9rengvnp9o
bobse 9mo ago
[dead]
dwroberts 9mo ago
I think this is an overly cynical read on the whole thing, at least after skimming the main points from the bill. A lot of it is about designating critical suppliers + providers and their security obligations. Central government would typically be a customer, that uses other suppliers and providers to achieve its goals, not a supplier or a provider itself. So in that sense it doesn't seem so strange to see it omitted, or at least for first set of legislation etc.? Get the first party suppliers in shape first, then legislate the net result of government function using those suppliers etc.
- pdpi 9mo ago
  What you're describing would see the government fall outside the purview of the law naturally, without the need for an exemption. This is a true case of an exception that proves the rule — the fact that they made the exemption is itself proof that they would've been otherwise subject to the law.
  - canadiantim 9mo ago
    I’ve waited so long to hear an appropriate use of the term “exception that proves the rule”, thank you!
- halJordan 9mo ago
  The problem is that this has been (well one of) the fatal flaw of previous attempts. If this were the first revamp i could agree with you.
- pletsch 9mo ago
  Central government would typically be a customer This is a wrong assumption, it's not that they aren't customers as they'll deal with hundreds of vendors/partners and will benefit from these changes regardless but national cyber & supporting IT agencies (including the UK) are often providers themselves to both other government agencies and private organizations in the country. This can be anything from running their SOC functions to specialized consulting services to intelligence sharing so the bill is definitely relevant and the exclusion of the govt. doesn't seem to serve a purpose other than saving the budget to implement/maintain their own rules.
neuroelectron 9mo ago
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- verzali 9mo ago
  Have you forgotten who built the first computer? And who created the world wide web?
  - rvz 9mo ago
    The entire problem. Stuck in the past when almost no-one cares, unless you are in a museum. The UK is a crumbling museum compared to every leading G7 economy that has growth.
jph 9mo ago
UK government agencies have opportunities to improve cyber security in a pragmatic way by phasing in coordinated vulnerability disclosure. This matches the article's point that the UK CSR bill may be a first step that helps to phase in bespoke legislation to improve UK national security. For me this is professional because my work involves UK software engineering for medical information. Coordinated vulnerability disclosure: https://github.com/joelparkerhenderson/coordinated-vulnerability-disclosure https://github.com/joelparkerhenderson/coordinated-vulnerabi...
rvz 9mo ago
[flagged]
nephihaha 9mo ago
Do as we say not as we do, and the engineers of "change" sit back.
ProllyInfamous 9mo ago
It's similar to how in Texas (and many other places) state agencies don't have to follow local building codes. src: worked construction in state data centers ¿What asbestos, qué?
Beretta_Vexee 9mo ago
So there are legitimate reasons for doing this, such as avoiding having to write reports and request authorizations from oneself, not having to disclose certain sensitive information, etc. The right way to do this is to draft a framework law and a few decrees along the lines of “administrations XXX and YYY will apply NIS2 with the following exceptions and adaptations ....” This avoids creating overly broad exemptions, ensuring that there is a reference framework, and preventing each administration from developing its own system. This is very common in the arms and nuclear sectors, where many civil norms and standards clearly state “not applicable to nuclear” and the nuclear standard states “apply civil standard XXX, with the following specific provisions, the competent authority is the ONR.” Declaring an overly broad exemption from the outset is not the right way to go about it.
paul_h 9mo ago
Brit here. UK Government's position "we will hold ourselves to equivalent standards via the Cyber Action Plan, just without legal obligations" -is institutionally equivalent to "trust the PDF." Fast forward to the non-repudiable era, please.

[flagged]

exsomet 9mo ago
This isn’t an accurate interpretation. The UK is a _constitutional_ monarchy, not an absolute monarchy, meaning that the monarchy exists and acts in accordance with the constitution. In the case of the UK, some of the rituals (such as the one you’re referring to with the prime minister) are based on longstanding traditions, because humans are weird and we like those sorts of things, but the requirement to do that stems from the constitution, not from the King deciding if he likes the PM or not.
- alistairSH 9mo ago
  And to be clear, the UK constitution is really the combined law passed over centuries (including the Magna Carts). There is no single, “sacred” document as in the US (which isn’t really sacred in practice - we can amend it or let SCOTUS re-interpret it).
  - gpderetta 9mo ago
    The biggest difference between the UK and other constitutional countries is that parliament power is pretty much absolute and it is not bound by any document or pre-existing law. In theory at least. In practice the courts have hinted that there are limits even for the parliament, and if it were to overstep some unwritten rules, it would cause a constitutional crisis.
    - bossyTeacher 9mo ago
      > if it were to overstep some unwritten rules What rules are those?
      - alistairSH 9mo ago
        Boris Johnson asking the Queen to prorogue parliament during Brexit debates is a solid recent example.
monooso 9mo ago
This may have been the case historically, but these days the king's role is largely ceremonial. As to the House of Lords, around 11% of its members are hereditary peers. A bill [1] is in progress to reduce that to zero: > The bill would remove membership from 89 hereditary peers who currently sit in the House. Their membership would end at the conclusion of the current parliamentary session. So, in summary, the UK is a democracy with its own set of historical quirks, much like many other democracies (Electoral College, anyone?). [1]: https://lordslibrary.parliament.uk/hereditary-peers-in-the-house-of-lords/ https://lordslibrary.parliament.uk/hereditary-peers-in-the-h...
foldr 9mo ago
>because [the King has] heard of what happened in France etc And, err, in England: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Execution_of_Charles_I https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Execution_of_Charles_I >there is no "bill of rights" There very literally is a bill of rights: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_of_Rights_1689 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_of_Rights_1689 >which is akin to if we handed a bunch of decendants of the mayflower and rich industrialists and priests their own house of Congress. The House of Lords does need reform, but this is not in any way an accurate picture of it since at least 1999 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Lords_Act_1999 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Lords_Act_1999). When you strip away the historical baggage, the House of Lords is just an appointed second chamber. I'm fully in favor of removing the last vestiges of the hereditary principle in government, but hereditary peers do not have a significant amount of power in the current system. >And when they "elect" a prime minister Elections really do happen in the UK and really do determine who is Prime Minister. No need for the scare quotes here. > so basically, there's this constant ritual of pretending they're a democracy when really it's only like that because the king current feels like it. I'll resist the temptation to point out which country is more pertinently and accurately described this way in the present situation.
- Defletter 9mo ago
  > Elections really do happen in the UK and really do determine who is Prime Minister. Different person, but while this is true, it's also true that the Prime Minister is not elected: they [ordinarily] emerge as being the leader of whichever party commands a majority in Parliament. It's how we've had so much Prime-Minister turnover since the Brexit referendum: those didn't happen because the electorate "determined" it.
  - foldr 9mo ago
    Yes sure, it’s a simplification to say that elections always directly determine who the Prime Minister is, and I probably should have been clearer on that point. However, this difference between a parliamentary system and a presidential one has nothing to do with rogue Kings going mad with power.
afandian 9mo ago
We recently had a significant test of this. Boris Johnson asked the late Queen to prorogue (shut down) parliament in order to prevent debate on the Brexit negotiations between the UK and the European Union. In theory he was asking permission from the Queen. But in practice, everyone knew that the Queen was powerless to reject his request. Even for something as plainly anti-democratic. The Supreme Court eventually ruled that the prorogation was not lawful. Lots of people were hoping that the Queen would stand up for the people. It was a complicated moment when she didn't! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_United_Kingdom_prorogation_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_United_Kingdom_prorogatio...
- Defletter 9mo ago
  This kind of stuff is fascinating because it's the state interacting with itself. The Queen was powerless to reject his request, he being the leader of the government who governed in her name, whose prorogation was overturned by judges she appointed. She ultimately did not need to act because she had an army of people who acted on her behalf. This is not to say that every misuse of power is always caught, but rather that the Monarch gets to maintain a facade of impartiality because all the partiality is being done by their institutions instead.
- Winblows11 9mo ago
  The page you linked to ends with: > The proposed Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Bill emphasised the non-justiciability of the revived prerogative powers, prevented courts from making certain rulings in relation to a Government's power to dissolve Parliament. It received royal assent over two years later, on 24 March 2022. As some have said before, it effectively means in future the Supreme Court can't undo or interfere with prorogation like what Boris Johnson did in 2019. The Labour party have said they won't cancel this law, so Kier Starmer can now do same as Boris and courts can't stop him.
amiga386 9mo ago
You will find that written constitutions are about as effective as unwritten ones; if the people in power choose to disregard them, and have popular support, they tend to get away with it for long enough to do damage. Fun fact: The UK has the Magna Carta, the original bill of rights signed in 1215. Did you know that's 561 years before the US declared its independence from the UK? To put it another way, 561 years is more than double the length of time the US has been a country. Second fun fact: UK Prime Ministers aren't elected. Their party is elected, and tends to command a majority in the House of Commons, but if they don't, they get to trade horses with other parties to see which coalition can command a majority, and thus win a confidence vote. The party selects a leader through their own internal processes. Doesn't even have to be an elected MP. Then they tell the king, who rubberstamps the decision. They can do this at any time, not just after an election. Provided the leader can command a majority in Parliament, they get to continue. If enough of your own party dislikes you as leader, they will vote against a confidence motion and drop themselves and you out of power; your job is to not let it get to that. The House of Lords is a secondary chamber, which scrutinises what the House of Commons passes and suggests rewordings and rewrites. (There's a whole other layer of scrutiny at the committee stage, for costing, etc.) They can send back bad bills, but can't send them back indefinitely, if the government had that in its election manifesto, so appointed or not, they can't defy the "will of the people". The king doesn't rock the boat, not because he fears for his life, but because he'd trigger a constitutional crisis which will inevitably resolve in the form of a republican UK.
9dev 9mo ago
Even ignoring your flawed understanding of the UK's government, what is your glorious bill of rights worth at the end of the day? Your president just does whatever the hell he wants, ignoring any checks and balances as he sees fit. Freedom of speech? Well, as long as you don't criticise a certain deceased extremist, that is. Freedom of religion? Well, as long as you're a Christian. Freedom of the Press? As long as you're a right-wing influencer. Freedom of assembly? As long as you're not a Democrat. Right to petition the government? You might get shot by ICE agents for following their orders.
- firefax 9mo ago
  >Even ignoring your flawed understanding of the UK's government, what is your glorious bill of rights worth at the end of the day? Your president just does whatever the hell he wants, ignoring any checks and balances as he sees fit. Are you talking about Bush, or Trump? Because the logic goes both ways -- when Blair bent over over when Bush wanted to go gallivanting into Iraq, we were set upon this path, one that started before I was old enough to vote... so maybe don't show up at the finish line to tut after literal decades of inaction?

Why is the UK so authoritarian on cyber security? I feel like they're consistently on HN with this type of "rules for thee, not for me" attitude regarding computer law.

Kenji 9mo ago
Not just cyber security.
spwa4 9mo ago
[flagged]
- drawfloat 9mo ago
  This is such a poor understanding of what happened in Rotherham, not least of all nobody has ever claimed the UK government itself was the one running the trafficking ring, it borders on fantasy. I’m guessing from your spelling you’re not from the UK, so I’d question where you’re getting your information on this, and your understanding of how the UK public sector and government is structured. The corruption in South Yorkshire Police and Rotherham council (neither of which are part of HMG) in the 1990s and early 2000s also has absolutely nothing to do with UK Government cyber security policy in 2026.
  - spwa4 9mo ago
    This is the reductio ad absurdum fallacy. What do you mean with "nobody has ever claimed the UK government itself was the one running the trafficking ring, it borders on fantasy". This is a "reductio ad absurdum" argument. You state an absurdity I never stated and then say it's ridiculous. HERE is what I mean: 1) was it UK government employees, including city hall workers and police officers and subcontractors helping to run the trafficking ring? Yes, it was. 2) was it the UK government, in a top down effort, organizing this? No. Although one might note that the police used violence, against kids no less, to make this child trafficking possible. That what youth services does, btw. Violence against kids. Supposedly to help them, but in this case it resulted in thousands of children being prostituted. And, again, this is hardly the first or last time youth services prostituted minors. It's just, for now, their record number of kids prostituted at the same time. For now. 3) did the government itself commit crimes (as in purposefully acted against the law), enabling the trafficking? Yes. For example, hiring people that were illegal to hire. To say nothing of the police officers that fucked minor girls while helping the trafficking ring. 4) did the government fail to indict it's own employees, at city hall, and police officers that knew, participated and even used some of the girls? Yes. 5) did city hall workers hide the crimes that their colleagues were committing using government resources and special powers for a decade? Yes. And now for legal theory. If you're a private company, and your employees use your company assets to commit a crime, the company is financially liable for the consequences. Not criminally, but 100% civil liability. The owners don't go to jail, but they pay for everything. For example, take a movie scenario: your employees steal a truck, and drive it into city hall, on purpose. Company is financially liable. Then the company can sue the driver, but only after paying. Or, directly to the point, let's say you own a hotel or a nightclub and your employees organize minors to have sex with hotel guests for payment. Is your company responsible, financially? Plain and simple: yes. Does it matter if the owner participated in prostituting minors? No, it doesn't. That wouldn't even make sense if it's a big hotel or a chain. What the employees do is considered the actions of the company WHETHER OR NOT it was "company policy" or whatever you want to call it. Of course, when it's the government themselves they refused, of course, all financial liability. Even a small damage award, by the standards of what is done to hotel owners, would have eaten the entire budget of youth services for years. As pointed out, the government's resources supposedly for protecting children caused more damage to UK youth, prostituting thousands of children, than all criminals in London do in a decade. I would also like to point out if a private organization committed a crime of this scale, whoever was involved would somehow be found dead, law or no law. In fact, that's what happened to a few of the "Pakistani men". Which brings the question: given that the law says that the organizations where this happens are responsible, whether the owners participated or not, whether it was policy or not, it would be very natural to hold the government responsible here. But, of course, the government disagreed, refusing to even hold it's subcontractors responsible. They sent a bunch of the kids home, and that's it. Oh, and they did so WITHOUT asking a judge first, which makes even the very few, very feeble actions the government took to redress the situation ... a criminal act (yes, a criminal act, changing who takes care of a minor without agreement from a judge is called "removing a child from parental supervision", and this includes taking a child out of youth services without a court order (in fact if children run away from youth services the government charges them with this crime to lock them up), and is a crime which carries up to two years' imprisonment, as well as a hefty fine). So you see what I mean, don't you? When it comes to the government's own actions, nobody cares about the law. Not when they damage people. They protect their colleagues. NOT EVEN the police officers who abused the situation to fuck minors were punished. And even the pathetic attempts the government made afterwards to make things right were criminal acts. They do not care about the law to the point that they openly commit crimes in the process of justice itself. THAT is the modern UK government.

lucasRW 9mo ago

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greggoB 9mo ago
Where does Socialism fit into this exactly? As a counter-example, the US is currently in the process of implementing an extraordinary amount of censorship across the board, and rolling out massive state surveillance apparatus, but you don't see anyone accusing the current autocratic regime there of spooky "Socialism"
- AlecSchueler 9mo ago
  That account's history is almost entirely left bashing or giving praise to Elon Musk. I'd guess the comment above is part of his ongoing effort to destabilise the British political norms.
  - greggoB 9mo ago
    Thanks for the context haha. Left bashing is one thing, but someone gicing praise to Elon Musk in 2026 is just mind-blowing to me
    - lucasRW 9mo ago
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      - pgalvin 9mo ago
        The front page of the BBC right now, at the very top, is a large photo of protests in Iran. The headline reports that hospitals are overwhelmed by the regime cracking down on protestors. The article focuses on first-hand accounts from medics inside Iran, describing the crackdown and casualties. It also contains statements from the Iranian opposition, the UN, US and French presidents and British PM, all critical of Khamenei, with just two mentions of the regime’s official statements. Also, I just switched to the BBC News TV broadcast. The Iran protests are the lead story: a special report with a focus on the protestors, showing videos shared by them. Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cj9rengvnp9o https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cj9rengvnp9o

bobse 9mo ago

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dwroberts 9mo ago

I think this is an overly cynical read on the whole thing, at least after skimming the main points from the bill. A lot of it is about designating critical suppliers + providers and their security obligations. Central government would typically be a customer, that uses other suppliers and providers to achieve its goals, not a supplier or a provider itself. So in that sense it doesn't seem so strange to see it omitted, or at least for first set of legislation etc.? Get the first party suppliers in shape first, then legislate the net result of government function using those suppliers etc.

pdpi 9mo ago
What you're describing would see the government fall outside the purview of the law naturally, without the need for an exemption. This is a true case of an exception that proves the rule — the fact that they made the exemption is itself proof that they would've been otherwise subject to the law.
- canadiantim 9mo ago
  I’ve waited so long to hear an appropriate use of the term “exception that proves the rule”, thank you!
halJordan 9mo ago
The problem is that this has been (well one of) the fatal flaw of previous attempts. If this were the first revamp i could agree with you.
pletsch 9mo ago
Central government would typically be a customer This is a wrong assumption, it's not that they aren't customers as they'll deal with hundreds of vendors/partners and will benefit from these changes regardless but national cyber & supporting IT agencies (including the UK) are often providers themselves to both other government agencies and private organizations in the country. This can be anything from running their SOC functions to specialized consulting services to intelligence sharing so the bill is definitely relevant and the exclusion of the govt. doesn't seem to serve a purpose other than saving the budget to implement/maintain their own rules.

neuroelectron 9mo ago

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verzali 9mo ago
Have you forgotten who built the first computer? And who created the world wide web?
- rvz 9mo ago
  The entire problem. Stuck in the past when almost no-one cares, unless you are in a museum. The UK is a crumbling museum compared to every leading G7 economy that has growth.

jph 9mo ago

UK government agencies have opportunities to improve cyber security in a pragmatic way by phasing in coordinated vulnerability disclosure. This matches the article's point that the UK CSR bill may be a first step that helps to phase in bespoke legislation to improve UK national security. For me this is professional because my work involves UK software engineering for medical information. Coordinated vulnerability disclosure: https://github.com/joelparkerhenderson/coordinated-vulnerability-disclosure https://github.com/joelparkerhenderson/coordinated-vulnerabi...

rvz 9mo ago

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nephihaha 9mo ago

Do as we say not as we do, and the engineers of "change" sit back.

ProllyInfamous 9mo ago

It's similar to how in Texas (and many other places) state agencies don't have to follow local building codes. src: worked construction in state data centers ¿What asbestos, qué?

Beretta_Vexee 9mo ago

So there are legitimate reasons for doing this, such as avoiding having to write reports and request authorizations from oneself, not having to disclose certain sensitive information, etc. The right way to do this is to draft a framework law and a few decrees along the lines of “administrations XXX and YYY will apply NIS2 with the following exceptions and adaptations ....” This avoids creating overly broad exemptions, ensuring that there is a reference framework, and preventing each administration from developing its own system. This is very common in the arms and nuclear sectors, where many civil norms and standards clearly state “not applicable to nuclear” and the nuclear standard states “apply civil standard XXX, with the following specific provisions, the competent authority is the ONR.” Declaring an overly broad exemption from the outset is not the right way to go about it.

paul_h 9mo ago

Brit here. UK Government's position "we will hold ourselves to equivalent standards via the Cyber Action Plan, just without legal obligations" -is institutionally equivalent to "trust the PDF." Fast forward to the non-repudiable era, please.