[SnazzyUncle]

> OK, so reflecting on the world at the moment. Do you want the police to suspend investigating all complaints involving social media, or to continue to investigate them?

Yes. I do. I want them to put resources into catch the criminals in my area that have been stealing motor vehicles instead as that actually affect me and my community. Not policing social media.

[mjburgess]

The criminals in your area are probably plotting those thefts on whatsapp.

I dont know what century you think this is, if you're sincere about catching criminals you would want even more intrusion into online spaces.

[SnazzyUncle]

They could you know arrest the person and search the phone under suspicion, or get a court order. They don't need mass surveillance. Maybe they should do their job and actually investigate it, which they don't do.

You can always justify more infringements on personal liberties under the guise of stopping crime, protecting the children, stopping the terrorists. That doesn't mean we should.

What we shouldn't be doing is using resources to find people saying naughty words on facebook (which is literally what they do).

This was literally posted here like last week, I suggest you read it:

https://www.privacyguides.org/articles/2025/04/11/encryption...

[mrguyorama]

>if you're sincere about catching criminals you would want even more intrusion into online spaces

Why?

For 40 years, Police in the US have been given basically carte-blanche to do whatever dragnet surveillance they want, as long as it "technically" is done by a third party they just buy services from. Police have had constant and perfect visibility into the digital world, with almost no moderating force, and yet they're so bad at finding culprits that violent crime clearance rates are still a coinflip.

Oh actually that's just in my State. ME claims the national violent crime clearance rate is ~20%. Jesus.

It seems obvious to me that police departments are either utterly incapable of, or utterly unwilling of, doing their damn job. We have given them near infinite power and zero responsibility and they've spent those immense resources being trained that everyone is trying to kill them, being taught how to shoot people first and ask questions later, and harassing people, often including journalists literally exposing their mob activity.

Please don't give them more power until they demonstrate an ability to productively use the power we have already given them.

[bombcar]

Why is everyone assuming the police should be policing pre-crime?

[mjburgess]

No one's talking about pre-crime. I'm talking about crime.

It's a crime to conspire to murder; to commit fraud; to arrange an act of terrorism; and so on. And in all relevant cases, social media was used in court after-the-fact just as evidence.

So we're talking about activity on social media which are crimes themselves, just being used as evidence after other crimes have been committed.

This is the problem with the propaganda being put out there at the moment, none of it is true -- and all of it is in the service of disgusing the content of actual court cases.

People on the far-right like to use the phrase "posting to social media" when they mean "using online communication platforms to arrange a violent riot with the intent to murder people". And they like to pretend this evidence collection is happening before those actions -- when its after, and presented in court.

[SnazzyUncle]

Is the "far right" in the room now with you now? When have you dealt with any of the "far right". How do you know they really exist? Most of the people I've encountered on the far right have been losers that literally live with their mother or edgy teenagers trolling people online.

It is you my friend that has been propagandised. They always point at a scary person and then say that they need to take away your rights and your privacy.

> It's a crime to conspire to murder; to commit fraud; to arrange an act of terrorism; and so on. And in all relevant cases, social media was used in court after-the-fact just as evidence.

Why should I lose privacy and my ability to speak freely because someone else committed an unrelated crime?

Why does this require mass surveillance, when they can get a warrant to search their electronic devices?

The answer is I shouldn't.

> So we're talking about activity on social media which are crimes themselves, just being used as evidence after other crimes have been committed.

Some of this activity that are crimes is making edgy comments on twitter while drunk and then deleting it the next day. That is illegal under the communications act of 2003.

[mjburgess]

The far right have just recently put ~130 unknowns into black vans, on to plans, to be sold into slavery in an elsavadorian prison. Of the two we have information on, both are legal residents of their own country. Of the rest, all we know is that they are innocent before the law, since theyve had no trial.

The oligarch who presently threatens the legislature of the largest democracy in the world with being having their opponents funded at the primary stage -- is also the same person who has had 100,000s of legal employees of the government fired and who has prompted these stories about the UK on the world's most imporatnt political media platform, that he owns. He did so after riots took place in the UK whose aim was to murder immigrants who had been falsely accused of crimes, these accusations also spread by the very same oligarch.

There's a line from the person trying to burn down a hotel with immigrants inside, in the UK, to social media, to the enslavement of unknown persons in the US. That line we call "the far right" and it's a pretty small group, at the top.

I cannot really grasp how a person would be confused by who the far right are and at the same time have at their fingertips news stories about girls in liverpool. One has to imagine you aren't really being serious.

[SnazzyUncle]

This is exhausting. Now you are bringing up US politics. We are talking about the UK and the UK law.

I have linked you the communications act of 2003, I have linked you examples of cases where people have be prosecuted for speech and you are going on about the current Administration in the United States which is on the other-side of an ocean.

I am asking you when have you met someone in real life that is "far right"? You are unlikely to have done so because there is maybe a few thousand at most in a country of 80 million people.

I have seen the leaked membership details of the BNP. Do you know how many people were in the BNP? IIRC it was less than 500 people for the entire UK.

You are talking as if there are Brown Shirts marching up every UK high street.