[maeil]

> As a UK citizen, is there anything I can do to dissuade this?

If you voted for this Tory-lite government, then you can stop voting for any future Tory-lite governments. If you did not, there's not much you can do in practice without devoting your life to it.

[briandear]

Wait. The Tories aren’t in power yet you want to attribute this to “Tory-lite?” It’s the Labour Party that is in charge, so why not put the blame on the actual perpetrators? Is it because you don’t want Labour getting blamed? I am confused. The Labour Party is the one jailing people for speech, so it follows that they would want backdoors into iCloud so they can better investigate ThoughtCrime.

The director of public prosecutions of England and Wales, Stephen Parkinson (appointed by the Labour Attorney General), warned against "publishing or distributing material which is insulting or abusive which is intended to or likely to start racial hatred. So, if you retweet that, then you’re republishing that and then potentially you're committing that offense [incitement to racial hatred]."

He added further, "We do have dedicated police officers who are scouring social media. Their job is to look for this material, and then follow up with identification, arrests, and so forth."

This isn’t “Tory-lite,” this is Labour.

Sources: https://freespeechunion.org/labours-war-on-free-speech/

https://x.com/skynews/status/1821178852397477984?s=46

[madeofpalk]

Parent seems to be attempting to discredit, not protect, Labour by calling them "Tory-lite".

[maeil]

I'm very surprised that I got as many as three replies by people who interpred my comment this way! You got it right indeed.

I'm a bit confused though, surely if I call someone "Hitler-lite" this couldn't possibly be inteprered as something positive, haha. Maybe it's just tribalist reflexes, or maybe I did word things strangely.

[tim333]

This stuff started from the Online Safety Act 2023 passed under Rishi Sunak's Tory government.

For some reason Americans, including Musk, go all partisan and feel the need to blame speech restriction on the lefty party but it's not what happened.

[robertlagrant]

No, it started with the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (RIPA), passed under Tony Blair's Labour government.

I'll skip the same extreme partisan rant, but replacing Musk with Soros or whoever.

[Lio]

Which party, with a realistic chance of being first past the post, could you vote for that wouldn't bring this in?

This is Hobson's choice as far as I can see.

I don't think there's anyone you could currently vote for that wouldn't do this.

[maeil]

You know the answer, of course with FPTP there's only two parties with a realistic chance. But why do they? Because you keep voting on them. Your votes made e.g. Corbyn lose but Starmer win. What signal does this give off? A very different signal than if both would've lost. Would another Tory government would have been even worse? In the short term, maybe. But this kind of short-termism is what has got Labour (and all of the other similar parties all over Europe) in this exact predicament. Better to make them lose for picking an awful candidate that's a Tory-lite and bite the bullet. It's not like the Tories would have kept winning for decades on end with the way things were going.

[Lio]

I’m sorry but Corbyn was a terrible choice as Labour leader, and I vote Labour in that election!

He was unelectable for a variety of reasons.

Here’s three:

Wanting to pull out of NATO and instead appease Putin.

Lying about being forced to sit on the floor of what was later shown to be an empty train.

Basically doing nothing during the Brexit fiasco.

He was just gaff after gaff.

[rvz]

> If you voted for this Tory-lite government

If you agree that Brexit happened under the Tories and not Labour, then we can also agree that THIS order is happening under the newly elected "Labour Party" and not the "Tories", or so-called "Tory-lite" names.

It's completely pointless trying to remove accountability of this government's illogical actions and then to immediately resort to blaming the previous government for bad decisions like this one.

Just admit that this is under the Labour government.

[zahllos]

RIPA and key disclosure law came in under Tony Blair's labour government as well, along with https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Data_Bill_200..., arguably the precursor idea to the IPA that this notice was issued under.

[maeil]

Huh? You completely misunderstood what I meant by that moniker. In no way at all does it absolve them of blame - quite the opposite, it's calling them nearly as bad, so close that the difference doesn't really matter.

[chgs]

The government is a reflection of the people. It might not be perfect, but if 80% of the country didn’t want this type of surveillance we wouldn’t see any government pushing it.

You have to change the view of the country as a whole, and for generations the U.K. has been a country of curtain twitchers.

[galangalalgol]

Coupd protest on weekends and holidays as a hobby, bring a Bluetooth speaker and blast the kinks.

[gambiting]

Well, in the UK just planning a non-violent protest can get you 5 years in prison as many people have already discovered. Protesting has been pretty much made illegal by a very broad legislation that defines any protest that causes "disruption" as illegal - what "disruption" means is up to interpretation of course.

[bluGill]

Which just means you need a large group to protest. They can arrest 10,000 people no problem, but get several million together and you have an army. Best is to get some of the actually army/police with you so that when (not if!) they try to get violent you can make it clear this is a revolution they won't win.

I hope it never reaches the above level, but always remember that remains an option.

[gambiting]

Yeah but to get a million people together you need to plan for it first, and that's where they get you :P It's honestly shocking the state of things in the UK in that regard. I'm surprised there isn't more outrage around it, even the people I know who used to say they hate the Just Stop Oil protesters expressed shock that they've been given 5 years for just talking about a protest, not actually doing it.

[foldr]

I don't support the legislation you're referring to, but I think you're painting an exaggerated picture (unfortunately a common theme of these threads on HN about the UK). You can easily find examples of recent protests in London: https://news.google.com/search?q=protests%20london&hl=en-GB&...

[gambiting]

Note how I didn't say that protests don't happen in the UK. They obviously do. But the problem is that now that effectively every protest has been made illegal due to the fluid definition of what "disruptive" means, the enforcement is arbitrary. Just stop oil protesters? Thrown in jail. Protesting in front of the Chinese embassy? Carry on. That's the problem with the broad legislation in the UK - government wants to have the power to spy on everyone, but obviously it doesn't mean everyone will be spied on. Just people who do something the government doesn't like.

[foldr]

I understand. However, I think your original post was very much open to being misinterpreted by people who don’t live in the UK or follow UK news. It’s obvious to us that protests still happen in the UK. But many people here only read negative news stories about the UK and would just assume from your post that protest in general was now effectively banned.

Weren’t the few JSO protestors who were jailed convicted of doing things that would be objectively illegal in more or less any country? Where are the countries that allow me to deface priceless works of art or block public highways without any legal consequences? I am not saying that these are necessarily illegitimate forms of protest, but they come under the heading of ‘civil disobedience’. The whole point of civil disobedience is that you get punished and thereby draw attention to your cause. Even in the US you can easily be jailed for protests involving blockading or trespassing: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-69003240.amp, https://www.vpm.org/news/2024-06-24/gaza-protest-interstate-...

It may well be that the new legislation is overly broad, but I don’t think the JSO protests are a great example of this.

[wkat4242]

But the Tories are not in power. Can't labour just repeal it?

[bluehatbrit]

Labour have no problem with it, just the same as the Online Safety Act which is causing chaos right now. They're fine with the legislation and have never expressed a desire to see it repealed. They didn't even do much to prevent it in the first place.

This is what the parent comment is getting at when they say "Tory-lite".

[robertlagrant]

What they're not getting at is that this isn't particularly a Tory thing.

[yunruse]

"Tory-lite" is a pejorative for Labour, the implication being that they are almost identical in behaviour.

(I very much agree with the sentiment...)

[Jigsy]

Which party do you think passed the "Tell us your password or go to prison law" to begin with?

(Hint: It certainly isn't Tory.)

It's also one of the reasons why I will never vote Labour as long as I live.

[int_19h]

Are there any parties in UK that are anti-surveillance and have ever had even one seat?

[alt227]

Are you still under the impression that different political parties will actually do diffrent things? It even sounds like you think Labor are 'good' and the Tories are 'bad'. I think you may change this opinion after the next 4 years.

[isaacremuant]

My sweet summer child. It's a false dichotomy, like most of these types of issues, it has actual bipartisan support.

Same thing happens in many other countries no matter how strongly HN users want to tell you A is literally hitler and B is great.

[briandear]

Labour caused it. Why would they repeal what they want?

[InTheArena]

Yeah know, at some point a historical review would suggest that the constant stream of labour led initiatives to end privacy might indicate that the problem is not just the tories.

[HamsterDan]

"Don't blame me. I voted for Kodos"