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I'm sorry, my point was specificaly about the US which has an almost religious relationship to its right of speech. Something that, to my knowledge, doesn't exi

by bsaul 12y ago

I'm sorry, my point was specificaly about the US which has an almost religious relationship to its right of speech. Something that, to my knowledge, doesn't exist in Europe for various historical reasons. Thanks for the interesting facts about UK though. Although i don't think the internet has changed the nature of any state. Countries that abuse internet surveillance now probably abused phone wiring and police investigation on individuals before.

iamwithnail 12y ago
That's exactly my point, though (and was to the French guy below). Your original point was 'have people in the US been arrested after being wiretapped or spied on over the internet?' Yes. The argument is always made that they were 'planning/conspiring' a particular act, something that's rarely taken through to prosecution/conviction, it's a well known harassment technique (as was overtly surveilling people with 'undercover' cars and foot patrols) by the FBI and the larger city police departments. So yes, people have been arrested for expressing their views, which were caught via surveillance, because law enforcement abused the information they had and brought trumped up charges. The UK examples I gave was because I'm more familiar with the stuff here - the US has a great and grimy history of abusing surveillance powers, from Hoover's FBI onwards.