[bemusedthrow75]

No, they aren’t.

British police, significantly, police by consent, are operationally independent of HM government, and cannot (currently) prosecute without the aid of the (equally independent) CPS. In England there isn’t even one single police force, and unlike the FBI, no normal part of the police is a part of a government department. (MoD Police are, I guess, but their remit is military policing).

I was responding to the somewhat hysterical parent post to correct the conflation of: the police literally are not the government, do not spy for the government, and do not routinely surveil the population; their surveillance powers are limited and regulated.

Does any arm of the state surveil the populace in any sense? It falls within MI5’s remit to spot domestic threats. Their surveillance operation surely operates far less less broadly than that of the NSA, which has far less oversight.

[HardlyCurious]

We only know what the NSA does because a person who leaked highly confidential documents and is now a refuge for the crime of showing the world what the US govt does in secret.

Do you really think the UK govt, or any govt, doesn't use the cloak of security and classification to do questionable things?

[bemusedthrow75]

I didn’t suggest any such thing, did I?

I am just observing that the scope of GCHQ’s abilities are obviously limited compared to the NSA (unless they have the most cost-efficient IT infrastructure in the world, and we don’t do cost-efficient government IT here even now). The budget just isn’t there for them to operate the way the NSA does.

[belter]

"NSA pays £100m in secret funding for GCHQ" - https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/aug/01/nsa-paid-gch...

"Americans pay GCHQ £100m to spy for them, leaked NSA papers from Edward Snowden claim" - https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/americans-pa...

[sjducb]

The thing you’re missing is that GCHQ spies on Americans (Foreigners from the UK perspective) using the NSA’s money, then it shares the findings from the spying with the NSA under an intelligence sharing agreement. GCHQ is mostly an outsourced wing of the NSA.

[bemusedthrow75]

> GCHQ is mostly an outsourced wing of the NSA.

Quite untrue but it does fit the default HN pattern of assumption about the UK.

American exceptionalism is a hell of a drug.

[wnoise]

> police by consent

It's a lovely idea, but Peelian principles are currently only paid lip-service. People are trying to drag it back to something approaching that, but it's not the current actual situation, particularly in London. (Kettling, etc.)

> are operationally independent of HM government,

> the police literally are not the government,

> do not spy for the government,

Again, in the sense of "political party currently in control of Parliament", yes. But they're literally the enforcers of the law -- and their meaning of the law. People not in Parliamentary systems have a broader, and far more useful meaning of "government" -- those governing, determining what is going to be punished and what won't. If you're actually stuck on term "government" in the partisan meaning, please give me some other term to refer to the coherent actions of the state. The bureaucracy and enforcement arms actually do govern, regardless of whether they're doing so at the behest of particular partisan guidance (though sure, that's worse in terms of being able to politically course correct). An arrest and detention whilst CPS sorts out taking to the next level is actually a punishment. Hence the quote "You can beat the rap, but you can't beat the ride."

> do not routinely surveil the population; their surveillance powers are limited and regulated.

Hah. Hah. Hah. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/24/business/london-police-fa... .

[belter]

> "...Their surveillance operation surely operates far less less broadly than that of the NSA, which has far less oversight."

"The Investigatory Powers Tribunal, however, ruled on 30 January 2023 that MI5 broke key legal safeguards by unlawfully retaining and using individuals’ private data gathered via covert bulk surveillance." - https://www.computerweekly.com/news/365529894/MI5-unlawfully....

"MI5 spy who fantasised about ‘eating children’s flesh’ escaped prosecution despite machete attack" - https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/05/19/mi5-spy-fantasis...

[bemusedthrow75]

Do these address my point? They don’t.