4 ms·

I'm glad I live in the UK/Europe where privacy (certainly of physical post and my local network, plus the various services I use around Europe). Shame my Gmail

I'm glad I live in the UK/Europe where privacy (certainly of physical post and my local network, plus the various services I use around Europe). Shame my Gmail is firmly under the US authorities. It makes me sad to see the authorities of countries like the US using entrapment and other dodgy tactics to catch criminals. The US is soon to become like 1984 with drones monitoring people in cities, huge cloud computers monitoring all internet traffic, and feds running lawless tapping everyone's phones.

melvinmt 14y ago
I'm sorry but you live in the UK (aka the CCTV country) you say and think your privacy is protected more than in the States? Think again.
- StavrosK 14y ago
  It says something about the US that that's true, doesn't it...
- youngerdryas 14y ago
  It's beyond privacy, you can do time for a tweet!
wyager 14y ago
Claiming the UK has better individual privacy than the US is blatantly false. There are a lot of things I like about the UK, but privacy is not one of them. Some examples: The UK has no equivalent to the Fifth Amendment. In the UK, it is a crime not to give up your encryption keys to the police when requested. The punishment for keeping secret keys secret is two years in prison if you are suspected of most crimes, and five years in prison if you are suspected of "heinous" crimes. The UK also does not have something like the 4th amendment, which means that things like the Terrorism Act 2000 pass without challenge. Admittedly, the USA has been just as bad in this regard (with such things as the PATRIOT act), but I suppose some of the blame has to go towards the public attitude immediately following 9/11. In the landmark United States case Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479, the SCOTUS ruled 7-2 that there was an implicit right to privacy in the United States constitution, backed by Constitutional Amendments 1,3,4,5,9, and 14. This right to privacy has not yet been used to protect internet privacy, but considering that the internet as we know it has been around for only 20 or so years, this is not exactly surprising. SCOTUS judges have a history of voting for a right to privacy despite their own personal beliefs, as demonstrated in Griswold v. CT, Bowers v. Hardwick, Roe v. Wade, etc. so this should hold up when it comes to internet privacy as well. And then, of course, there's the UK's history of egregious privacy rights violations, including widespread state-sponsored video surveillance, suspicion-less stop-and-searches, extensive usage of web-filtering system, and even deep packet inspection of and tampering with content transferred over HTTP. So the funny thing is that the UK already has extensive monitoring of people in cities, huge cloud computers monitoring their traffic, and extensive wiretapping. What you're describing as a terrible future for the US is already a reality in the UK.
- SEMW 14y ago
  > The UK also does not have something like the 4th amendment, which means that things like the Terrorism Act 2000 pass without challenge. That's true, if by "does not have something like the 4th amendment" you mean "has Article 8 of the ECHR", and by "which means that things like the Terrorism Act 2000 pass without challenge", you mean "which means that things like the [suspicionless stop&search powers under the] Terrorism Act 2000 are ruled illegal by the European Court of Human Rights[1] under Article 8 and consequently repealed under s. 10 of the Human Rights Act[2]" [1] http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8453878.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8453878.stm ; http://hudoc.echr.coe.int/sites/eng/pages/search.aspx?i=001-96585 http://hudoc.echr.coe.int/sites/eng/pages/search.aspx?i=001-... [2] http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2011/631/made http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2011/631/made
  - wyager 14y ago
    Neither of those things are indigenous to the UK's government. It's not like the UK actually follows half the things outlined in the ECHR.
    - SEMW 14y ago
      > Neither of those things are indigenous to the UK's government. The Human Rights Act 1998 enacted the ECHR into UK law. So what if the ECHR applies to a wider area than just the UK? The US constitution isn't indigenous to the state of Michigan, but that doesn't make it any less applicable there. (You'd have had a better argument if you'd gone for 'unlike the US constitution, the HRA (and ECHR) isn't entrenched into UK law in a way that makes it hard for a government to repeal', which would have been a valid point). > It's not like the UK actually follows half the things outlined in the ECHR Of the 19 final declarations of incompatibility that had been issued by UK courts under the HRA by August 2011, only a single one hasn't yet been remedied (being the absolute ban on prisoner voting). So no, I don't think that's true. The UK's actually pretty good at fulfilling it's ECHR and EU legal obligations (certainly compared to some Eastern European countries).
      - 14y ago
yardie 14y ago
Isn't it the Netherlands the most frequent user of subpoenas for electronic information. Also, your assertion that you have more privacy than Americans is almost as ridiculous as Americans saying they have more freedom than the Chinese. We're all oppressed in slightly different ways.

melvinmt 14y ago

I'm sorry but you live in the UK (aka the CCTV country) you say and think your privacy is protected more than in the States? Think again.

StavrosK 14y ago
It says something about the US that that's true, doesn't it...
youngerdryas 14y ago
It's beyond privacy, you can do time for a tweet!

wyager 14y ago

Claiming the UK has better individual privacy than the US is blatantly false. There are a lot of things I like about the UK, but privacy is not one of them. Some examples: The UK has no equivalent to the Fifth Amendment. In the UK, it is a crime not to give up your encryption keys to the police when requested. The punishment for keeping secret keys secret is two years in prison if you are suspected of most crimes, and five years in prison if you are suspected of "heinous" crimes. The UK also does not have something like the 4th amendment, which means that things like the Terrorism Act 2000 pass without challenge. Admittedly, the USA has been just as bad in this regard (with such things as the PATRIOT act), but I suppose some of the blame has to go towards the public attitude immediately following 9/11. In the landmark United States case Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479, the SCOTUS ruled 7-2 that there was an implicit right to privacy in the United States constitution, backed by Constitutional Amendments 1,3,4,5,9, and 14. This right to privacy has not yet been used to protect internet privacy, but considering that the internet as we know it has been around for only 20 or so years, this is not exactly surprising. SCOTUS judges have a history of voting for a right to privacy despite their own personal beliefs, as demonstrated in Griswold v. CT, Bowers v. Hardwick, Roe v. Wade, etc. so this should hold up when it comes to internet privacy as well. And then, of course, there's the UK's history of egregious privacy rights violations, including widespread state-sponsored video surveillance, suspicion-less stop-and-searches, extensive usage of web-filtering system, and even deep packet inspection of and tampering with content transferred over HTTP. So the funny thing is that the UK already has extensive monitoring of people in cities, huge cloud computers monitoring their traffic, and extensive wiretapping. What you're describing as a terrible future for the US is already a reality in the UK.

SEMW 14y ago
> The UK also does not have something like the 4th amendment, which means that things like the Terrorism Act 2000 pass without challenge. That's true, if by "does not have something like the 4th amendment" you mean "has Article 8 of the ECHR", and by "which means that things like the Terrorism Act 2000 pass without challenge", you mean "which means that things like the [suspicionless stop&search powers under the] Terrorism Act 2000 are ruled illegal by the European Court of Human Rights[1] under Article 8 and consequently repealed under s. 10 of the Human Rights Act[2]" [1] http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8453878.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8453878.stm ; http://hudoc.echr.coe.int/sites/eng/pages/search.aspx?i=001-96585 http://hudoc.echr.coe.int/sites/eng/pages/search.aspx?i=001-... [2] http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2011/631/made http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2011/631/made
- wyager 14y ago
  Neither of those things are indigenous to the UK's government. It's not like the UK actually follows half the things outlined in the ECHR.
  - SEMW 14y ago
    > Neither of those things are indigenous to the UK's government. The Human Rights Act 1998 enacted the ECHR into UK law. So what if the ECHR applies to a wider area than just the UK? The US constitution isn't indigenous to the state of Michigan, but that doesn't make it any less applicable there. (You'd have had a better argument if you'd gone for 'unlike the US constitution, the HRA (and ECHR) isn't entrenched into UK law in a way that makes it hard for a government to repeal', which would have been a valid point). > It's not like the UK actually follows half the things outlined in the ECHR Of the 19 final declarations of incompatibility that had been issued by UK courts under the HRA by August 2011, only a single one hasn't yet been remedied (being the absolute ban on prisoner voting). So no, I don't think that's true. The UK's actually pretty good at fulfilling it's ECHR and EU legal obligations (certainly compared to some Eastern European countries).
    - 14y ago

yardie 14y ago

Isn't it the Netherlands the most frequent user of subpoenas for electronic information. Also, your assertion that you have more privacy than Americans is almost as ridiculous as Americans saying they have more freedom than the Chinese. We're all oppressed in slightly different ways.