14 ms·
The UK is shaping a future of precrime and dissent management (2025)
- fosron 9mo agoDay by day these things sound more like Sci-Fi series announcments.
- nine_zeros 9mo ago[dead]
- mountaineer727 9mo agoI hope they name it Pickles
- TuringNYC 9mo agoBlack Mirror continues to be a 5-7yr leading indicator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Mirror https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Mirror
- anthk 9mo agoOrwell predates Black Mirror by decades. 1984 should be a must read for everyone.
- xnorswap 9mo agoI'd argue that makes Black Mirror more prescient. In the case of Black Mirror, it was a set of studies on the dangers of current and near technologies. That some of those fears are materialising not long after the episodes, is in my opinion more damning than Orwell's fears of the state which didn't really come to pass in the same way, even decades later. I don't disagree that Nineteen Eighty-Four is essential reading however. ( I'd also add Brave New World to that list ).
- omnimus 9mo agoWe are one renaming cycle away from renaming Department of War to Department of Love.
- barrenko 9mo ago'Years and years' disturbing as well.
- gherkinnn 9mo agoShocking. I enjoyed Black Mirror from the start but found it a bit on the nose. A Prime Minister fucking a pig? That's a bit much. And before you know it, certain rumours of David Cameron arise.
- TuringNYC 9mo agoI think that one PM episode was the only one totally out of whack. The rest were quite on point. There are dozens of episodes deep in the realm of reality. https://variety.com/lists/black-mirror-best-episodes/ https://variety.com/lists/black-mirror-best-episodes/
- voidUpdate 9mo agoIsn't Minority Report a documentary about why this doesn't work?
- PUSH_AX 9mo agoI mean technically a lot of countries already have laws against conspiracy to murder, without doing the actual murder bit. And we are broadly ok with this because it makes a lot of sense.
- Tostino 9mo agoThat generally still takes the person taking some sort of action in furtherance of that plan, not just thinking it.
- PUSH_AX 9mo agoYeah because prosecution requires evidence. Not because we don't agree with the principal.
- voidUpdate 9mo agoI feel like "conspiracy to murder" means "we found a plan of you murdering someone and a baseball bat in your car" rather than "The algorithm has decided you are evil"
- ajb 9mo agoWhat do you mean by "doesn't work"? Doesn't work to prevent crime? Or doesn't work too suppress dissent?
- voidUpdate 9mo agoIt's been a while since I watched it, but doesn't it falsely imprison people because they disregarded some of the data that went contrary to other data?
- deleted 9mo ago
- Surac 9mo agowhere is my minority report?
- spacebanana7 9mo agoThis is how you govern from a position of unpopularity. The government knows they’re on the wrong side of many issues, to the point they know they can’t win an open debate. So media control, regulation by enforcement, and institutional control becomes the focus of effort.
- varispeed 9mo agoAlso never look at what current government is going to do with the framework, but what future much worse government could use it for.
- miroljub 9mo agoDoes it get worse? They are making a benchmark that is hard to beat.
- c0n5pir4cy 9mo agoI wouldn't like to see all the legal infrastructure they're putting in under a Reform UK government - I'd imagine they'll use it for far more nefarious means. That being said - the blame lies squarely with Labour here. I have a gut feel a lot of it has to do with donors to the Tony Blair Institute.
- miroljub 9mo agoWell World Economic Forum (WEF) lists Tony Blair and his institute as one of the top Agenda contributors [1]. It's not even funny that you can trace almost any person responsible for the deterioration of human rights in Western society to one of the WEF alumni or associates. These supernatural institutions and interest groups should be made illegal if we want to continue as a civilization. [1] https://www.weforum.org/stories/authors/tony-blair-2/ https://www.weforum.org/stories/authors/tony-blair-2/
- exe34 9mo ago
- jimmySixDOF 9mo agowho chooses who chooses who watches the watchers ?
- doublerabbit 9mo agoCorporate. Google, Meta, TikTok. All governmental entities or tied to. What's the harm if your data is "lost" along the way. /s
- geremiiah 9mo agoThey all believe to be morally infallible. I don't think they would even be able to function as politicians without such cognitive dissonance.
- varispeed 9mo ago"We detected that you are about to commit a crime. Here is provisional 2-years sentence shall you decide to go ahead with the plans. It includes free single room, 3 meals a day, gym, library, daily walks and company of people like yourself. You will also receive counselling and you could take up a free course to advance your skills in desired field and post-release support for a year."
- amitav1 9mo agoThis is the end result of Finland annexing the UK, lol
- codebyaditya 9mo agoWhat’s unsettling here isn’t any single policy, but the convergence: predictive policing, protest restrictions, and administrative punishments all justified as “risk management.” Even if each tool seems narrow, together they normalize acting on suspicion rather than action, which quietly lowers the bar for dissent.
- anthk 9mo agoDobleplusgood.
- FpUser 9mo agoI wonder at what point these countries will loose any moral ground against the likes of Russia, China etc. Up until this point it was mostly that they would gladly fuck the other countries up but treated their own people way better than the other camp. But this difference is disappearing. Of course there is always North Korea and other totally fucked up regimes they could use to compare and look white and fluffy
- fabianholzer 9mo ago> I wonder at what point these countries will loose any moral ground against the likes of Russia, China etc. When arbitrary extrajudicial killings happen at some scale on a regular basis?
- slfreference 9mo agoI heard Boeing whistleblowers died unexpectedly. Two prominent Boeing whistleblowers, John Barnett (died March 2024) and Joshua Dean (died April 2024), have died in recent times, raising significant concerns about retaliation and safety at the aerospace giant; Barnett died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound after battling Boeing in a retaliation lawsuit, while Dean died from a sudden infection after raising quality concerns, with his family suspecting foul play despite official rulings. Barnett's death was ruled a suicide, though his family's wrongful death suit claims Boeing's harassment caused his distress, while Dean's death followed rapid illness, with his family also alleging misconduct by his employer, Spirit Aerosystems, and Boeing.
- iamnothere 9mo agoAlso Suchir Balaji. And if you’re willing to go back further, Michael Hastings and Gary Webb. But that’s all the US. For the UK you need Gareth Williams, the GHCQ analyst who was found dead inside a padlocked duffel bag.
- js8 9mo agoAnother suspicious death was David Kelly, who was involved in weapons inspections in Iraq and disputed the casus belli for the Iraq war.
- mapt 9mo agoThis is a thousand times as concerning in the context of London than in the context of Baltimore. It addresses a concern that doesn't exist for the UK public, in a way that appears intended to oppress from the start, against a backdrop of arresting thousands of pensioners for disagreeing about a genocide.
- simmerup 9mo agoThe only people being arrested in the Uk are for supporting a proscribed group. A group that broke a police officers back with sledge hammers, committed multiple acts of vandalism against our military, and have tons of links to Hamas They can oppose Israel action in Palestine, they just can’t support terrorists
- throwaway85825 9mo agoDe facto, arresting 80 year old women for holding signs is always going to look authoritarian. They're not exactly the type to strap on a vest but we have to pretend we dont know what a terrorist looks like.
- simmerup 9mo agoThey are the type to sledgehammer police officers though apparently
- throwaway85825 9mo agoI find that physically unlikely.
- budududuroiu 9mo agoIn China, the social contract at least is "you give up some individual freedoms and some privacy, never dissent against the government, and in exchange the government promises you prosperity" I wonder what the Brits get in exchange for their giving up of personal freedoms?
- miroljub 9mo ago[flagged]
- liveoneggs 9mo agoThe people who talk pretty get to keep buying nice houses for their kids. It seems like a pretty good deal.
- myrmidon 9mo agoBrits already have more prosperity (=> median wages) even after adjusting for purchasing power. Some stagnation is to be expected from high energy prices and trade disruption (brexit). British surveillance state tolerance has always been pretty high for Europe, and is typically "sold" to the average citizen as anti-crime.
- casey2 9mo agoSome brits, most brits are worse off than the average Chinese in all but paper money. Restriced to Han chinese regions; PPP is on par. Overall china has much better social services and growth. Of the two I know which country I'd want to be born into in 2026
- myrmidon 9mo agoWhat numbers are you referring to? From what I found, median full-time salary in the UK is >40k USD/year, and in urban (!) China it's ~20k USD/y. Purchasing power adjustment is ~1.5 (in favor of China, obviously), so this should not be close no matter how you slice it.
- 9JollyOtter 9mo ago
- Piezoid 9mo agoNot a word on Palantir. Is this because of the adept wording by the ministry of justice? I highly doubt they are developing this in a vacuum. As re reminder, In the UK Palantir holds extensive contracts across defense (multi-billion MoD deals for AI-driven battlefield and intelligence systems) and healthcare (7y £330m+ NHS Data Platform). In France, its involvement is narrower but concentrated on *domestic* intelligence.
- OgsyedIE 9mo agoThe UK faces real structural problems with the inflating cost of living regardless of government, roughly halfway attributable to failing the lower-level challenge of continuing to import adequate quantities of diesel at affordable prices and the rest mostly coming from an aging population. Spot diesel has come down from the price spike of covid to approximately 1.3x the 2019 price. Almost all physical goods have diesel prices contribute to their sticker price in a significant way. The diesel exporting countries are all incrementally increasing their domestic consumption, leaving less for the world market year on year. The UK government isn't trying much policy for tackling the causes or the symptoms, largely because the government is disproportionately drawn from a class of people who don't want those policies. The media of the upper middle class of the UK has sincere column after sincere column of hating the rest of the population and calling for better controls over the cattle. Tens of millions of people, held hostage by a clique of crabs in a bucket.
- pjc50 9mo agoI would say "so diesel uses should be encouraged to transition to electric where feasible", except the government has also dropped the ball on electricity prices and is now looking at increasing taxes on EVs. > The UK government isn't trying much policy for tackling the causes or the symptoms, largely because the government is disproportionately drawn from a class of people who don't want those policies. The media of the upper middle class of the UK has sincere column after sincere column of hating the rest of the population and calling for better controls over the cattle. This is spot on, though. I joke that instead of state controlled media we have a media controlled state.
- Ntrails 9mo ago> The UK government isn't trying much policy for tackling the causes or the symptoms It doesn't know what it wants, nor how to prioritise between conflicts from vague pre (and post) election statements. It certainly doesn't want to make the hard compromises that are actually required. That said... I wouldn't want the job of trying to balance the books, fix the housing backlog, modernise our energy infrastructure, integrate social and medical care, address social cohesion, manage persistent inequality, improve our global competitiveness etc etc etc
- thesz 9mo agoOrwell worked in Spain for about a year, 1936-37, his work on BBC during WWII was twice as long. In my opinion, 1984 was shaped by his work in Britain.
- miroljub 9mo agoAnd the brilliant MI6 / BBC propaganda made it as if 1984 were about the Soviet Union :) As if it was not enough that the author himself put it in Britain. If you want Soviet Style distopia, better read "We" from Zamyatin.
- tjpnz 9mo agoBetween arresting grannies for saying they support Palestinian Action and using armed officers to apprehend comedy writers I doubt they'll have the time.
- azangru 9mo ago> The focus of policing is also shifting. As street crime continues to fall, more attention is directed toward protest, dissent, and the perceived risk of unrest. Does street crime in fact continue to fall? I keep hearing about bicycles getting stolen, or how in London, mobile phones get snatched. It was also common to hear how police fails to prosecute various kinds of crime (usually mentioned in contrast to how they do prosecute noncrime crimes such as 'hate speech'). Here, for comparison, is a paragraph from an essay by Konstantin Kisin: > A month earlier, I was walking through a posh part of London when I saw a young man in a balaclava snatch a bag from a tourist. When I told people about what I saw at various meetings, most people were surprised that I was surprised. Phone thefts, muggings and all kinds of petty crime are now considered normal and routine. Which story is correct? [0] -https://www.konstantinkisin.com/p/theres-good-news-for-britain-things https://www.konstantinkisin.com/p/theres-good-news-for-brita...
- fidotron 9mo agoEveryone in London knows what happens if you try to report "minor" street crime. Obviously everyone saying the UK isn't a utopia is a Russian bot, and we should be censoring them.
- foldr 9mo agoDo you even go here?
- fidotron 9mo ago> Do you even go here? Is that authentic vernacular?
- widdershins 9mo agoFine, but also how to explain the crazy claims flying around the internet that London is a warzone and a no-go area? I live here and... seriously, nothing has changed. I feel perfectly safe and always have. Yeah sure, there's some phone theft, it's not great. This phone theft wave is just a symptom of everyone carrying £500 devices around. Big cities have always had theft, pickpocket and snatching crimes. But it's nothing astonishingly new or different. I know one person who had their phone snatched, never seen it happen myself. So how to explain this massive wave of social media posts making out that London's unsafe? There is definitely a narrative being pushed, whether by Russian bots or not, I cannot say.
- jbjbjbjb 9mo agoThat’s just the way “freedom news” is framing it. Social movements don’t just happen from grassroots these days. They’re seeded by foreign states. A simpler solution would be require ids for social media posting. If you don’t provide an id you get a limited number of views. And I don’t see anything wrong with a preventative system in principle, we should be able to join up social services information with policing, because we have had cases where a mass murderer has been known to multiple services. Edit: probably not ids but a token that verifies my nationality would be enough.
- Aurornis 9mo ago> A simpler solution would be require ids for social media posting It’s strange times when even the comments on posts about government overreach are calling for more government overreach and limitations on speech and privacy. Do you really want to have to verify your ID to post anything online, including HN?
- jbjbjbjb 9mo agoYeah it might be just be a verified token to say I’m citizen of the country. Doesn’t have to be my actual id. The OSA is a crappy implementation.
- thmsths 9mo agoAnd I am willing to bet that on top of the chilling effect on regular people, it will only act as an inconvenience for the bad actors as they will find ways to circumvent it. Controlling the online discourse is far too valuable, they are not going to just shrug and give up because the government puts up a barrier.
- TheOtherHobbes 9mo ago[flagged]
- 9JollyOtter 9mo agoIn the UK what you are going to need to do going forward is essentially have an official and a non-official presence online. You are also going to need to use the cockroach strategy (at least tech wise), until this stuff gets unpopular enough amongst enough people that there is large push back that can't be ignored. > The surveillance and predictive systems now being assembled are being designed not only for the current moment, but in preparation for what comes next. Whether in response to renewed austerity, military escalation, or widespread resistance, these tools are positioned to contain unrest before it surfaces. What’s emerging is a model of preemptive policing—structured around behaviour, association, and predicted risk. Individuals are reduced to data profiles, tracked not for what they’ve done but for their statistical proximity to disruption. Suppression is exercised in advance. That is why they are so keen to backdoor any popular encrypted messaging platform. They can't monitor communications. Unfortunately most people seem to supportive of this. I was quite surprised when my Father (who is a layman) told me he supported this, this is a person that doesn't vote largely for the same reasons that I don't (I think all politicians are awful).. Additionally. I was listening to someone that engaged at essentially Red Teaming for UK authorities (I forget who it was now). They stated that if you were a dissident, if you kept your activities offline and organise in person the authorities wouldn't be aware of this activity. I don't know if this is true, but it sounds plausible.
- chimprich 9mo agoA lot of these attacks on the UK regarding free speech are coming from the American Right, an obsession which I can't quite understand the motive for. Notably, stories on HN about the very severe repression on civil liberties in the US (get shot in the face for protesting about ICE...) get flagged for closure, but putting the boot into the UK for much more wishy-washy issues like this seem to be fair game. I'm not saying there aren't genuine issues with civil liberties (for example, things like the Online Safety Act are ridiculous) but they are magnified out of all proportion by the US media / social media disinformation megaphone. This particular article is an opinion piece from last April by "the world's oldest surviving anarchist publication" (apparently). I'm not sure why it deserves front page HN status. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_(British_newspaper) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_(British_newspaper)
- room271 9mo ago100%. Unfortunately, rather than rebut the substance of your argument, people are voting you down (and the same for my own similar comment). It is convenient for certain parts of the US right (Fox and also Musk come to mind) to present a narrative about the UK which distracts from the actual hard realities of recent events in the US itself.
- vablings 9mo agoIt feels pretty awful to have such a one-sided bias in the media of the UK getting clowned on for civil liberties, I have noticed so much more astroturfing on reddit about these issues with made-up ragebait lies. There are absolutely issues with the police focusing more on "crime online" such as people posting or saying offensive things, I do think that saying something outright offensive to the benefit of nobody is a net bad for society but instead of punishing say British people for "wrong think" I think the police force should be really investigating where this kind of stuff comes from, Foreign influence bot farms ect and enact legal removal of protection to ensure that people when they say such online in a public manner are actually people
- youngtaff 9mo agoYup… there's a very strong right wing streak in parts of the HN audience Those with opposing views also tend to find themselves rate limited - dropped two comments on this story and now being told I'm posting too fast (even after going away for 60 mins)
- miohtama 9mo agoHere is a good book on how pre-crime society is created, who is driving more "management" and who benefits https://www.amazon.com/Compliance-Industrial-Complex-Operating-Pre-Crime-Society-ebook/dp/B0BL2NBDGJ https://www.amazon.com/Compliance-Industrial-Complex-Operati... God bless Managed Democracy.
- room271 9mo agoAs a Brit, I find it very hard to believe that the majority of comments in this thread are not either written out of ignorance or are bots. The article is from an anarchist organisation and sensationalist. 'Precrime' in the sense described is performed routinely by all intelligence agencies and police networks in the West. Criticisms from across the pond reflect a spectacular lack of perspective. The UK is far more free than the US - a country with a fascist leader, ICE thugs who go about masked with guns and shoot to kill US citizens apparently with the full endorsement of the US President, a weaponised justice system that can target the chairman of the federal bank and strip a military Senator of his pension and rank simply for what he says (so much for 'free speech!'), and levels of inequality and centralised wealth and political funding that undermine democracy.
- robtherobber 9mo agoAs a Brit, I find it very hard to believe that you're a Brit and that your method of drawing superficial conclusions about the other participants is sound. Perhaps we are both bots here. Instead of attacking the other participants for not being as enlightened as you may be and the source of the information, a more appreciated approach would've been to address the substance of the article. For example, what are some "intelligence agencies and police networks in the West" that are routinely performing those kind of programmes, and why should we conclude that all of them are doing that? Are those programmes identical to the UK's "homicide prediction project", as it was originally called? Are there better legal frameworks for such programmes in other countries (say, a Constitution), or at least more democratic oversight than in the UK? Perhaps some sources that document such a conclusion would help. You speak of lack of perspective from the commenters here, but haven't yet provided an informed one either. > The UK is far more free than the US Trump and his oligarchs aside, why do you believe that the UK is "far more free" than the US? And how exactly do you define that freedom? I'm no big fan of the US in general (mainly due to their neoliberal and religious culture), but to deny that they've enjoyed a variety of freedoms would be provably wrong. Different organisations measure these differently and the UK is generally not "far more free" in that sense, only marginally so - again, it depends on the frameworks employed. [0] [1] If the definition of freedom includes democratic accountability + equal political power + civil liberties in practice: neither country is doing that great; the UK's unelected Lords/sovereignty/executive dominance and First Past the Post voting system are undeniable flaws - many if not most European countries don't have that. It's also entirely true that US has deeper structural distortions (malapportionment + Electoral College + gerrymandering + life-tenured apex judiciary). Overall, the UK tends to score higher on broad civil-liberty/democracy assessments, but not by as far as you seem to imply. And judging by the recent developments, one wouldn't be entirely wrong to conclude that these freedoms are actively being eroded (which is what the article says). Let's not forget the deep drive of successive governments to privatise key public services which objectively gave the UK an advantage in terms of freedoms compared to US - for example universal healthcare, which works as a social safety net and effectively offering higher practical freedom of life choices for most citizens. > levels of inequality The UK has one of the highest levels of income inequality in Europe. [2] "OECD figures suggest that the UK has among the highest levels of income inequality in the European Union (as measured by the Gini coefficient), although income inequality is slightly lower than in the United States." [3] "The UK spends more than anywhere else in Europe subsidising the cost of structural inequality in favour of the rich, according to an analysis of 23 OECD countries." [4] "The key findings are that the UK has high levels of income inequality compared with similar developed economies, with a (pre-pandemic) Gini coefficient that is the second highest in the G7 (after the US), and is more unequal than all the countries in the EU other than Lithuania and Latvia." [5] [0] https://freedomhouse.org/explore-the-map?type=all&year=2025 https://freedomhouse.org/explore-the-map?type=all&year=2025 [1] https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/United-Kingdom/liberal_democracy_index/ https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/United-Kingdom/liberal_demo... [2] https://www.understandingglasgow.com/glasgow-indicators/economic-participation/income-inequality/uk https://www.understandingglasgow.com/glasgow-indicators/econ... [3] https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-7484/ https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-... [4] https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/2023/nov/27/uk-spends-more-financing-inequality-in-favour-of-rich-than-rest-of-europe-report-finds https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/2023/nov/27/uk-spends... [5] https://ifs.org.uk/inequality/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Trends-in-income-and-wealth-inequalities-IFS-Deaton-Review-of-Inequality-final.pdf https://ifs.org.uk/inequality/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Tre...
- baal80spam 9mo agoUK dystopia: accelerating (Precrime) EU dystopia: accelerating (Chat Control) US dystopia: probably accelerating? What a time to be alive!
- lavezzi 9mo ago> US dystopia: probably accelerating? Yeah, absolutely no indicators whatsoever we can go off of right now.
- rich_sasha 9mo agoI'm very confused by this, on many fronts. I don't really know why the government is doing it. It's not for grand headline reasons, as it's all pretty quiet, for this and for prior changes. I also really don't think the UK is in the grips of some kind of authoritarian nightmare. If anything, my experience is that it's impossible to convince the police to do anything. These days, surveillance state or not, when your car or phone get stolen, the police write you a crime number to take to the insurers and consider their job done. Even if it's all done for nefarious reasons, this would be an easy sidekick to running a surveillance state that earns the state some cash, and every autocrat likes money. The UK democracy is flawed in many ways, but I really don't think a spy state is currently the problem. So... Why?
- elcritch 9mo agoIn my view a corrupt government tends to also be less effective at basic governance while looking out more for the government. Hence police don't pursue thieves but will arrest people for twitter/x posts. Add in things like suspending the right to jury trial for some crimes because "its taking too long" shows how ineptitude in governance can overlap with government overreach.
- notepad0x90 9mo agoI think Orwell was prescient and attuned to this sort of thinking in England at his time. Perhaps, it never really went away? e.g.: "crimestop" https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/725596-crimestop-means-the-faculty-of-stopping-short-as-though-by https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/725596-crimestop-means-the-... It isn't precrime or "dissent management" that is the problem, but the engineering of behavior and thought in society where such concepts are acceptable to people. I don't think we can discuss it in detail here, but with this , chat control, and all sorts of other controversial laws, you'll notice the people of the country actually support that stuff. There is an interesting conversation there about democracy, and the priority of the working class people. Naturally, a person living paycheck-to-paycheck and fighting for healthcare and keeping their job (or getting one) does not care about this stuff. So who does? Not the ruling class. A lot of people (including on HN) who think this stuff is important (rightfully) are not poor people, perhaps middle-class? Is democracy itself something that can survive, if it is left entirely up to popular vote? Power has gravity, it always wants more. Ideally, there would be institutions that are democratically established and managed that would be trusted to safeguard the people's interests. In the US, there are executive department agencies for example like the FCC, FTC, FDA and more, but they are subject to those in power who are elected by the people. My "food for thought" here is that similar to supreme courts, there needs to be a regulatory and oversight branch of the government, whose chiefs are apolitical (like actually, not like the US supreme court), well compensated, long-tenured (but not lifetime, more like 20 years), and appointed by confirmation of all other branches of government. We need to address the problem of power, influence to wield power and incentives for those entrusted with power to act in good faith, but also with good competence. The last part is important, because I have no doubt, a lot of the politicians that come up with this Orwellian nonsense have good intentions, the outcome they seek are noble, just not the means. they just happen to be incompetent when it comes to the subject matter.
- vablings 9mo agoThis doesn't work. The current POTUS is clearly trying to politicize the chair of the federal reserve who is independent and for his sociopathic fanbase it is working a treat, they do not even understand that Powell is not the sole decision maker of the interest rates
- perching_aix 9mo agoI'm aware this is a cultural difference, government betrayal and overreach are hotbutton and mainstay topics in the common culture of the UK and related states (e.g. the US). It is nevertheless so weird to me that rather than trying to monitor and mitigate the abuses of legal instruments like the ones proposed, people are trying to prevent and abolish things wholesale. Everything is depicted as a slippery slope to abuse or as an excuse for abuse, and perhaps because people actually believe in it, they do materialize as one too. Presents as a vicious cycle to me, and as if people were disallowing themselves from recovering of it. I really have to wonder how much of it is the available options always being just two parties in these territories, and the electoral systems supporting that convergence. In such a scheme, I can indeed definitely imagine people being compelled to vote further and further from their own interests and values, and the slippery slope rhetoric being finding a manifestation.
- flumpcakes 9mo agoPeople are seemingly very unhappy with the status quo, but also even unhappier when the Government tries to legislate around real issues. For example, people in hacker news seem to bring up grooming rape gangs specifically when talking about "Diversity" in the UK as a cudgel when the UK tries to introduce safety laws. Meanwhile some of the most prolific child abusers are being sent to jail (who happened to be young 20s and white) who were only enabled to abuse hundreds of young people over a matter of months due to online platforms. The latter example is the type of thing the UK Government is trying to tackle. The abuse is rife, but people would rather talk about "Diversity" and complain about laws clearly designed to protect children. Do I want the laws? No. But other people have ruined it, and now we no longer live in a high trust society. I certainly want something that will try to lower the abuse women and children face from the Internet (and men).
- 9JollyOtter 9mo agoI don't understand how comments like yours fundamentally misunderstand both complaints. Regarding the Rape gangs. The complaint is "People migrated to the country and committed heinous crimes, the local authorities tried to cover it up". Therefore they want these people removed (in some cases they have not been deported) and be more picky about who is allowed to migrate. They also want the people involved in the cover up to face some sort of punishment. They mention it because they believe it shows the establishments hypocrisy. I don't understand why you and others don't understand this. > The latter example is the type of thing the UK Government is trying to tackle. The abuse is rife, but people would rather talk about "Diversity" and complain about laws clearly designed to protect children. The problem is that the "think of the children" arguments are a tried and tested way of deflecting criticism when it comes to any argument about protecting privacy. People aren't complaining about genuine attempts to catch online predators. They are complaining about the fact that they have to put to put in their ID to go to Pornhub to watch some chick in her early 20s diddle herself.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- flumpcakes 9mo agoI wonder how many people are actually from the UK on these threads. There is always comments about "diversity" and "grooming rape gangs" and how everything labour do is bad, or about how the UK is an oppressive regime or somehow fundamentally anti-freedom. This always reads like fear mongering / Russian psy-ops propaganda to me. I have many bones to pick with the UK government but a large number of people sprinting to these talking points at every chance they get is highly suspicious to me.
- gadders 9mo ago[flagged]
- Vates 9mo agoI'm also surprised by the tone of this thread. HN discussions usually involve more nuanced debate, but many comments here are hitting very specific talking point. Comparisons to China, sarcastic references to 'diversity,' grooming gangs, that I more commonly see in certain Reddit communities rather than in typical HN discussions about tech policy or civil liberties. There are legitimate concerns about UK surveillance, protest policing, and speech regulations worth discussing. But when the same cluster of talking points appears with this particular framing, it makes me wonder about the makeup of who's participating in this thread versus other HN discussions.
- daveac 9mo agoPublic money gets spent on the advice of AI systems and consultancies. Costs overrun, benefits are unclear, and it quietly disappears. Those responsible resurface later at consultancies, selling the same ideas elsewhere.
- jonehiskey1 9mo agojust think if the prior election went the other way in the US, this is where the us would be right now
- fleroviumna 9mo ago[dead]
- tim333 9mo agoPrecrime in Minority report results in "Would-be killers are placed in an electrically induced coma and held in a panopticon-like prison facility." Obviously dystopian. What they are doing in the UK is more chatting to people involved in gangs and the like to talk them out of screwing up their lives. Kind of common sense. This has led to "London’s lowest murder rate in more than a decade" https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/jan/12/why-londons-lowest-rate-in-more-than-a-decade-is-drawing-attention https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/jan/12/why-londons-... There was quite an interesting interview with Sadiq Khan about it yesterday https://youtu.be/SOhIxmYiZRg?t=202 https://youtu.be/SOhIxmYiZRg?t=202 (starting at the crime bit). The MAGA types love to go on about Khan, who is a lefty Pakistani origin muslim, as being the downfall of London but the reality is kind of different. (typed in central London).
- simianparrot 9mo agoPeople don't like to admit it, but JD Vance was right about Europe. And the UK is up there with the worst of us. I am European.
- CarlitosHighway 9mo ago> I am European. Not a real one. A traitor. You will get what you deserve.