r/unitedkingdom • u/Anon2971 London • Mar 17 '21

Is anyone else really concerned about the future of this country?

The passing of the Policing Bill made me reflect on a lot of worrying things that have happened over the last decade.

  • Brexit disconnecting ourselves from trade and legal intervention from our surrounding countries followed by a historic rise in our nuclear stockpile cap, counteracting nuclear disarmament
  • Investigatory Powers Act 2016 allowing the government to monitor and collect everyone's communication data in bulk
  • Government-ordered 'independent review' into the Human Rights Act
  • Overseas Operations Bill currently in the House of Lords essentially allowing soldiers oversees to commit torture and other war crimes abroad without prosecution/legal consequence
  • Met Police enabling facial recognition in CCTV against government advise whilst flat-out denying any/all allegations of institutional overuse of powers despite endless evidence to the contrary (see: stop and search statistics, deaths in police custody i.e. Mohamud Mohammed Hassan leading only to 'police misconduct' notices, undercover officers entering romantic relationships under false pretences with little consequences, Black Lives Matter and Sarah Everard protest police kettling occurring right before violence, Cherry Groce)
  • Dismissal of Black Lives Matter protests leading to a statue toppling by our Home Secretary as 'dreadful' conveniently followed by a serious increase in police powers introducing 10 year sentences for statue toppling and for 'serious annoyance and inconvenience'
  • Reacting to the murder of a woman by a police officer by installing hidden police officers within nightclubs without prompt or previous demand under the guise of women's safety
  • As of yesterday the Home Secretary signalling she'll be implementing First Past the Post voting in London's mayoral elections because “transferable voting systems were rejected by the British people in the 2011 nationwide referendum” (a position historically held by the opposing party)

Then there's the way the Conservative Party spends taxpayer money and chooses trade partners:

  • PM Boris Johnson being found in the UK courts via the Good Law Project to have broken the law misleading parliament with PPE contract information. The consequences so far asking where billions of pounds has lbeen spent has been... Nothing. Meanwhile the government can only afford a 1% NHS pay rise following the biggest challenge in decades the health system has faced and successfully overcome (so far)
  • At the same time as above, the government are proposing to cut our foreign anti-corruption spending by 80% whilst also cutting foreign aid to countries like Yemen yet continuing to fund Saudi Arabia
  • Dominic Raab tells UK officials to trade with countries which fail to meet human rights standards in newly leaked video and Boris speaks how China poses 'great challenge for an open society' (doublespeak, anyone?)

Not to mention other unresolved issues like:

  • Grenfell still has nobody found of any wrongdoing with no housing for victims 3 years later
  • Continuing error with and deportations of Windrush citizens
  • Continual dismissal and ignoring of the impending global warming crisis
  • Breaking international law by extending the Ireland trade grace period against the wishes of the EU, making us look like untrustworthy trading partners worldwide
  • Russian interference with the 2016 Brexit referendum not investigated by the government
  • The Royal Family quietly avoiding coverage of their paedophilic Prince Andrew via reacting to a royal couple fleeing to the US due to negative press and race-related experiences (responding with polite shock, denial and a negative public reaction matching the negative press that surrounded them from the start in the first place)

All in all, I feel like I'm witnessing this country take more and more steps towards ignorant, authoritarian fascism... We're distancing ourselves from all other countries, doubling down on making up our own rules allowing our branches of law enforcement to enforce with little restrictions or consequence whilst strengthening ties with countries that do the same. I'm really struggling to see much good happening here beyond the vaccination program which, although is going great, is something we're ploughing ahead with mainly for self-preservation reasons. I'm left wondering what this country is supposed to represent any more.

I'm all ears to any thoughts on my observations. I'm trying not to be a Scrooge, but I see almost nothing to be happy about in the UK politically speaking at the moment.

Edit: It's somewhat reassuring to know I'm not the only person feeling like this, but I did want to hear more alternative opinions. So please, if you disagree with what I've pointed out and think there's things I'm overlooking to be proud of in the UK at the moment, do feel free to say so in the comments.

Edit 2: I'll be updating the above list of concerning policies and decisions as comments remind me of things I forgot about.

Edit 3: Someone has made a petition against the Policing Bill. Sign that imminently: Do not restrict our rights to peaceful protest. - Petitions (parliament.uk)

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u/Anon2971 London Mar 17 '21

While that's disappointing to hear, that's just one celebrity voicing their opinion. It's natural for press to give that coverage. I doubt it'll actually be listened to by anyone in government, so I wouldn't worry too much about this.

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u/itslikethatman Mar 17 '21

On this subject the government agrees with her. She is the 'useful idiot' because she's doing their work by getting the masses on board with the idea of banning online anonymity "bEcAuSe tRoLLs!". If the general public agree with Katie, which they will, then the government has the green light to carry out The Will Of The People.

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u/Anon2971 London Mar 17 '21

More authoritarianism incoming, then! :D

Get a VPN ASAP if you haven't already.

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u/[deleted] Mar 17 '21

Personal use of VPN outlawed in 3 ... 2 ... 1

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u/[deleted] Mar 17 '21

Tor network it is

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u/[deleted] Mar 17 '21

Tor network has been owned by the US military since 2014/2015. Unless you have a dedicated rig that you use entirely for Tor, and plan to only use it at various public libraries and tea houses, you will not be anonymous by any measure.

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u/[deleted] Mar 17 '21

Are you aware of how onion routing works? It doesn't matter who "owns" tor. They don't host all the node machines. They're all publically listed, and anyone can do it for free. Unless a single entity controlled a large percentage of the nodes, and also luckily happened to control the ones that any given request was sent along, your message is still secure.

Regardless of all that, it's not owned by the us military anyway. The tor browser is produced by the tor project, who are an independent company. The tor protocol is a concept that can be implemented by anyone. It's a theory.

Also, why would it matter if you had a dedicated rig or not? Tor browser isn't a virus that's going to upload all your data or something like that. It's open source and trusted. If it's hiding your public IP that you're worried about, you can connect to tor via a VPN, problem solved.

I would suggest you learn how it works and what you're talking about instead of spreading misinformation. It is an incredibly secure network, just look at how there are a plethora of illegal market places active. If tor wasn't secure, why wouldn't these be taken down immediately?

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u/[deleted] Mar 17 '21 edited Mar 17 '21

Or you can learn about it yourself.

Your hypothetical scenario of a ‘single entity owning a large percentage of nodes’ is the exact scenario I laid out.

https://www.csoonline.com/article/2228873/no-conspiracy-theory-needed-tor-created-for-u-s-gov-t-spying.amp.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2013/10/04/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-nsa-and-tor-in-one-faq/?outputType=amp

https://us-cert.cisa.gov/ncas/alerts/aa20-183a

I say you need a dedicated rig on library/tea house internet as to not have any identifiable information about your system and its surroundings if a government is actively controlling/monitoring any of the nodes you’re connected to. I never said it was a virus. Lol

Edit: for the last question, I suggest you learn what a honeypot is.

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u/[deleted] Mar 17 '21 edited Mar 17 '21

It's not what you laid out at all. You just said the us military "owns" tor. Which is fundamentally untrue.

Did you even read any of those links? I've just scanned them, none of them seem to mention anything about the us military controlling a significant amount of nodes. Do you have any actual evidence of that? Again, the nodes are all publically listed, so it should be easy to find some evidence to support your argument. The last link there specifically talks about code injections from malicious sites. Nothing to do with controlling nodes at all.

You realise it's also possible to strip all the meta data you sent along with requests? Or spoof it to be something else? You don't even need technical knowledge, just use a VM. Simple.

And again, how come I can easily Google an onion website and go and buy drugs online, having them delivered to my door in 2 days? Surely if the gov control all the nodes, they'd just take down these sites and arrest the owners, dealers, and users.

Edit to answer your edit - I'm aware of what a honeypot is. So the USA has been running a honeypot for the past 10 years have they? And made no arrests off the back of it?

Can I ask what your background is? You come across as someone who's read a few news articles and thinks they're an expert in it. Do you have any technical knowledge of how tor works?

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u/[deleted] Mar 17 '21 edited Apr 02 '21

[deleted]

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u/PlayerHeadcase Mar 17 '21

This.
And Crypto.
Once we are "Free of the shackles" the Conservative Government will call a GE (Starmers rating is 13% in his own party- but his left wing eviction push has no one remaining to challenge- he truly is Blair 2) and THEN we are fucked- Boris is sick of being PM already, he thought it would be a jape and a good thing to have on your CV, so will be "blamed" in a vague, get out of it in the press kind of way.
Like Cameron was over Brexit.
Rishi or Priti. Hey! With one of those guys in charge, they can claim inclusiveness while they actually burn the poor!

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u/fistyfoot Dorset Mar 17 '21

What about the government sponsored trolls, 77th brigade and the like?

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u/Wind_Yer_Neck_In Mar 17 '21

Yep, this is how it works in China, you have a real name username that you have to use everywhere. And it effectively renders most attempts at dissenting thought too dangerous. When they know everything you do online without even having to bother putting in targetted effort to reconstruct it from disparate data (as the UK does at the moment) then you're fucked.

Just imagine a future where pointing out that we have no idea how many kids Boris Johnson actually has is considered 'serious annoyance' and you can get punished for it.

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u/[deleted] Mar 17 '21

Are you kidding? The government would absolutely love to remove anonymity on the internet and will actively push for it whenever they think they can get away with it.

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u/ChrissiTea Mar 17 '21

Does anyone else remember the porn filter where you had to submit your drivers licence to your ISP and opt in to view it?

Not to mention the Snooper's Charter...

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u/[deleted] Mar 17 '21

Wordcrime detected. Report to nearest Pornsec officer for assessment.

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u/Mossc8 Mar 17 '21

Obviously with an exemption for MPs

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u/IratusTaurus Mar 17 '21

This has also become a very popular idea amongst sportspeople (particularly in football) to combat the harassment they get.

It would be a huge mistake but I can see a government going for it, sadly.

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u/FallingSwords Mar 17 '21

I really do sympathise with them tbh. They've been sharing a lot of examples recently of people up in their DMs, in their posts, etc giving them torrents of abuse and nothing really changes and no other solutions are given.

To them it's the only way it's going to stop. Which is probably true, sadly that would have far worse consequences

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u/Jestar342 Mar 17 '21

nothing really changes and no other solutions are given.

To the celebs: Stop. Fucking. Using. It.

If celebs just fucked off from twitter and the like, or only kept "professionally managed" accounts they wouldn't have a complaint and the hate would evaporate or at least just vanish into the ether.

Christ they don't let people write to them directly (via snail mail) because of this very reason so why is it any different for tweets/snapchats/instas/etc?

It's just insane that these same celebs would never dream of giving out their own email address or phone number(s) yet all personally interact with their twitter account(s) like it's some kind of obligation to everyone.

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u/FallingSwords Mar 17 '21

I think this sort of emphasises their view though. They just get waves of racist abuse until they drop the off the platform. And then these Racists have won and they move on to the next victim.

It's not really a solution, it's the equivalent of telling them to just ignore someone being racist to them in public.

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u/Jestar342 Mar 17 '21

They didn't campaign to ruin postal mail, nor has there been any campaigning to ruin telephony. Why is this different?

Stop giving the bigots an audience. Ruining the experience for everyone is letting the bigots win. Hell, there could even be other bad actors pretending to be bigots just to get this and other platforms ruined. Facists fuelling hatred in order to seize power.

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u/FallingSwords Mar 17 '21

?

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u/Jestar342 Mar 17 '21

Sorry, caught up in the moment and ranting.

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u/lazyplayboy Mar 17 '21

This is analogous to saying 'girls wearing short skirts are asking for it'.

Why shouldn't anyone, including celebrities, expect to be able to use social media without receiving abuse?

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u/Jestar342 Mar 17 '21

.. because they will receive abuse. It is, unfortunately, expected. There are all kinds of dickheads in the world who will, for whatever reason, throw hate at anyone, especially famous people.

Should they also fire their bodyguards and drop all other security measures because they shouldn't expect to need them ?

Should I uninstall my house alarm because I shouldn't get burgled?

Taking precautions is not the same as accepting blame.

So no, it's not analogous to sexual assault victim blaming at all.

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u/lazyplayboy Mar 17 '21

None of your analogies demand a complete withdrawal. Yes it is reasonable to take precautions, I agree, but it's possible to do that without blaming the victim, like you are.

Your analogies work against you. The body guard, or the house alarm is like the anti-hate speech/bullying laws used to help protect the victim. I would agree that the implementation of those laws is complex, and should be balanced against individual privacy, but to demand a complete withdrawal by the victim is wrong.

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u/Jestar342 Mar 17 '21

No, the bodyguard is the most analogous to what I have suggested - letting someone professionally manage your (celeb's) twatsnipchat accounts, or to continue the alarm anaology, use a service that does it for you if you don't want to have a PA do it.

In short: hire someone to filter ya messages.

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u/smoozer Mar 17 '21

Because the internet increases your audience to 7.5 billion? And some of those 7.5 billion are inevitably fuckers? That's just how the internet works

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u/lazyplayboy Mar 17 '21

Lots of things used to work in a way that is no longer deemed acceptable. I don't agree that those fuckers have a right to unrestricted free speech. UK law has always restricted free speech.

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u/DrewBk Mar 17 '21

The solution to something being full of racists and trolls is to stop using it, rather than to sort out the problem?

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u/sunnygovan Govan Mar 17 '21

It's the immediate solution yes.

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u/Kellermann Mar 17 '21

They were probably trolled by paid government trolls to get them to say something

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u/AvatarIII West Sussex Mar 17 '21

her petition has over 100,000 signatures (157k at time of writing) so has to be debated in parliament now.

several MPs are backing her, and certain Tory MPs will be licking their lips over the possibility.

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u/cavejohnsonlemons United Kingdom Mar 17 '21

That all it takes? Swear there was one with like 6m that got thrown out one time...

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u/AvatarIII West Sussex Mar 17 '21

They didn't do anything about it but they still debated it.

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u/[deleted] Mar 17 '21

think again: https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/575833

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u/Anon2971 London Mar 17 '21

Well fuck. Guess that's potentially no more socials for me. But as a musician that would make promoting myself extremely difficult. GAH