I genuinely believe that in 2015 Apple had the balls to resist and today they don't.
I am judging by a simple fact, that "please confirm your age" screen is now mandatory during the iPhone setup in all countries, and in some it's behind a KYC. I have a strong opinion that this is insane. And once they let the foot in the door - there is no closing it.
microtonal 4 hours ago [-]
Even in 2015 Apple put in backdoors. They have been really good at making people believe things that are not true. E.g. from the linked post:
iCloud already protects sensitive categories of data (like Passwords, Health data, Messages in iCloud, etc) with end-to-end encryption by default.
Except that there is a footnote in Apple's security document where they confirm that Messages in iCloud is not end-to-end encrypted if you don't enable ADP and have iCloud Backup enabled (which is probably most users):
Standard data protection: When iCloud Backup is enabled, the keys to your backups are secured in Apple data centers. If you use both iCloud Backup and Messages in iCloud, your backup includes a copy of the Messages in iCloud encryption key to help you recover your data.
So, there is always a backup of Messages in iCloud accessible to Apple and thus (US?) law enforcement, unless you enable ADP and the people you communicate with also use ADP.
WhatsApp is similar by the way. Unless you enable E2E backups, they end up in iCloud/Google Drive backups and are only encrypted at rest. Of the major messengers, I think only Signal completely opts out of iCloud backups and have their own real E2E-encrypted backups.
Even most technical people I talk to do not know this and don't have ADP enabled.
There are a lot of weak defaults like that.
kyralis 3 hours ago [-]
The original implementation of iCloud included Apple's ability to recover the data. You can view this as a backdoor, and that might be fair, but the reality is that it's also a feature in the eyes of many customers - because people will lose devices and passwords, and when Apple doesn't have the keys that means they also lose data. Many customers would rather be able to get their data back.
Apple has moved more things into the bucket of "we do not have the keys for this" over time, but pretending that this isn't a tradeoff for the common customer is disingenuous. That's why ADP exists, so that those who want to make a different tradeoff can do so.
Commenters on HN tend to be technically savvy and tend to want the defaults to be tailored to a technically savvy customer base. That's fine, but that's not a real representation of all of the smartphone users out there, and in this case Apple is directly offering the choice that they usually get knocked for taking away.
briffle 8 hours ago [-]
They never did. they had the balls to resist against western governments, where it was politically adventagous to do so. They folded to China real quick, because they wanted to make sales. All "icloud storage" in china has been on another storage platform, that follows all the local laws.
egorfine 7 hours ago [-]
Folding before China in China is not the same as folding before totalitarian western demands.
throwawayffffas 7 hours ago [-]
Why? They only disabled ADP in the UK, how is it different?
unified101 5 hours ago [-]
It isn't.
Matl 3 hours ago [-]
Except for where Western governments pearl clutch about freedom and how free and open they are unlike big, bad China and all that.
pocksuppet 2 hours ago [-]
Remember that North Koreans genuinely believe they are living in the most free country on earth.
philipallstar 2 hours ago [-]
> Western governments pearl clutch about freedom and how free and open they are
That's not how to use "pearl clutch". And the UK doesn't do that, and it isn't very free or open, except in the deranged mind of Kier Starmer[0]. Classic liberalism in the UK has long given way to regulation of speech, proud conformity, state dependency, and all the other things that are hallmarks of people who treat the state as a surrogate parent.
It is not like their HQ is in China. They chose to enter the Chinese market.
sneak 2 hours ago [-]
Every iPhone sold everywhere is manufactured in China. They make 34,000 iOS devices every hour, 24/7. That’s not possible anywhere else.
Apple is, from a purely practical standpoint, more a Chinese operation than an American one.
ImJamal 2 hours ago [-]
They could manufacture them in China, but not sell the phones there?
sneak 57 minutes ago [-]
China is their second biggest market, I believe.
Additionally, the humans who make all of the iPhones and iPads are Chinese people, subject to Chinese law. Apple has to do exactly what the CCP wants, at least for now. They are desperately trying to ramp up phone production in India, but there is huge expertise at Foxconn that isn’t in India as yet.
indoordin0saur 58 minutes ago [-]
Wait... you mean this was all just a marketing and PR ploy?
realusername 7 hours ago [-]
The only thing where they tried to push back very hard was the EU's DMA, beyond that they folded quickly to absolutely everything else.
PorciiVorbesc 4 hours ago [-]
They pushed back on the DMA because that affects the monetisation opportunities of their walled garden ecosystem.
Any other invasive privacy/encryption interventions from the government only affects their users, not their money, so they cave without issues.
SXX 7 hours ago [-]
Apple routinely removes VPNs and other apps from App Store in Russia even though they supposedly left the market in 2022.
They obvioualy never ever resisted anything except its a good PR stunt.
Zenul_Abidin 5 hours ago [-]
Apple doesn't KYC in Russia though
We are quickly heading to a world where governments want us to KYC everything, and we saw with the Revolut breach what happens when very, very bad people gain access to our private data.
SXX 3 hours ago [-]
Whole point is that Apple routinely execute government orders from the most repressive regime on earth after North Korea. And from bloodiest one in last two decades.
Even though they have zero presence in a country.
hn_submit 55 minutes ago [-]
Apple is surely resisting, but there's a limit to how far they're willing to go. They won't risk losing the entire EU market, for example. Or the Chinese market.
The UK is a minor footnote. They can afford to lose it if push came to shove, but for now they're willing to make conciliatory gestures.
MisterMunchkin 42 minutes ago [-]
I never had to confirm my age because my account is old enough to prove I must be old enough
egorfine 16 minutes ago [-]
Same here. Problem is, I never gave Apple permission to infer about my age. It's none of anyone's business. So when iPhone rebooted after upgrade and told me "you are old enough, I know it" I was simultaneously relieved that I won't be required to pass KYC (never an option) and furious that this shit ever came about.
GJim 7 hours ago [-]
> "please confirm your age" screen is now mandatory during the iPhone setup in all countries
Not quite.
The request to confirm age is there, but actually completing it isn't mandatory (though granted, it does leave an 'alert' thingy on your phone settings saying you haven't finished setting it up).
EmbarrassedHelp 1 hours ago [-]
It locks down devices like ransomware, permanently restricting functionality of web browsers, messaging apps, and other apps until the user submits to age verification. Its mandatory if you want your device to function normally without restrictions.
egorfine 7 hours ago [-]
There is no "skip" button available.
throwawayffffas 7 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
someonebaggy 6 hours ago [-]
Is it required to KYC in those countries?
I'm generally okay with "how old are you?" without KYC and changeable later. It just allows apps and websites to display age-appropriate content.
egorfine 6 hours ago [-]
> I'm generally okay with "how old are you?"
It's a foot in the door. Once this question exists, the next logical one is "prove it".
someonebaggy 6 hours ago [-]
Ok but my phone already asks me for my name, isn't that bad too?
egorfine 5 hours ago [-]
Does it require you to prove your legal name?
throwawayffffas 5 hours ago [-]
Isn't that the next logical step according to your logic?
5 hours ago [-]
nkrisc 3 hours ago [-]
It asks for a name.
simulator5g 3 hours ago [-]
Yes.
ajsnigrutin 6 hours ago [-]
Same with digital IDs (for example the EU one), where you'll have to install it to provide a "zero knowledge" proof today, and since you already have everything in your phone, it'll be easy to implement the "real name" policy when registering/commenting/etc.
someonebaggy 5 hours ago [-]
I'm not aware of any EU project to make a smartphone literally mandatory (instead of just convenient). If they do, I'll buy a separate smartphone just to hold my ID.
I doubt that with the speed of thought dramatically increasing due to AI, that the door will stay closed just because it's being closed now. That decision will be revisited.
4 hours ago [-]
failbuffer 8 hours ago [-]
No need to speculate that the UK government "might" one day become the bad guys: they already arrest over 30 people a day for speech that offends the prevailing political orthodoxy.
Stories like this quickly put to rest the idea that everyone who gets arrested must actually deserve it. The bar for posting content that violates the law is very low.
There was also the tragic story of the Cambridge professor who was completely unqualified and had a fake life story. When journalists would get close to the story he would report them to the police for harassment to spike the stories.
walrus01 11 minutes ago [-]
Entirely aside from the getting arrested in the UK part, what sort of absolute noob posts photos of themselves shooting an AR15 that has no sights whatsoever on it?
chmod775 4 hours ago [-]
I don't know about that case, but the bar is as low as it can be anyways. Hapless UK police are willing to play attack dog for nearly anyone.
Imagine getting six police officers sent to your house and spending 11 hours at a police station for causing "disharmony" by disagreeing with how your daughter's school operates in a WhatsApp group. In a sensible country that might've been a phone call or a single officer stopping to chat and defusing the situation if police decided to get involved at all.
* This bizarre case has nothing to do with "speech that offends the prevailing political orthodoxy" (root comment).
If you look for examples of the police arresting people for stupid and unjustifiable reasons, you can find them in lots of countries, including the US. For example, here is someone being arrested in Kansas for clapping too loudly during a meeting: https://www.kbtx.com/2026/07/27/teacher-arrested-repeatedly-... It's absolutely right that this sort of thing is reported and it's right for people to be outraged about it. However, I'd be cautious about drawing overly sweeping conclusions about the UK from such cases.
amiga386 7 hours ago [-]
In this particular case, the IT consultant was owed money by a failing business, and he put 1) a picture of the business premises, and 2) pictures of him firing guns, on a website where he was sure the business owner would see it.
That's textbook intimidation, which in certain cases is a crime in the UK, and even some US states. You can also do it offline, for example, by sending a letter to the victim containing a photograph of the front of their house, and a photograph of you firing guns. The implication is pretty straightforward and doesn't even need to be stated: "I have guns and I know where you live. Pay me that money you owe me or I might use them." That implication is still there, for the victim, even if you add surface text like "Hey everyone look at these cool things!"
Only _after_ he was arrested, and the police went looking around his house for guns... did he admit that the pictures were taken overseas, he doesn't actually own the guns. And yet that's what the article leads with, like it was a known fact from the get-go and those silly-billy police knew that but went looking for them in the UK anyway.
This article is a great lesson in how to mislead without saying anything untrue.
His own words in a different article make the reason for the arrest clear:
> “The arrest was based on two separate social media posts,” he said. “One was the photo of myself with the shotgun, [...] And the second one was my LinkedIn banner at the top of the page.”
> “I used the photo my business partner took on his premises as a header photo on LinkedIn with the intention he would look at that and go, ‘Why’s this guy posting that? I’d better call him and find out rather than dodging me’ as it had done for months,” he said.
EDIT 2: for avoidance of doubt, he did three days in a row of LinkedIn blog posts, where
1) his PFP at the time (shown in the top-right corner) was a picture of the business premises
2) the text of the post talked about the "delinquent client"
3) the post ended with a no-context-given picture of him posing with guns
EDIT: and your second example is also dangerously misleading. Jason Arday (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jason_Arday) and/or his university reported 2 professors and 1 journalist to the police, pretending their requests for comment on his plagiarism were harrassment. For all three reports, police chose to take no action (nonetheless it still had a chilling effect on speech). What spiked the story is that Jason Arday and/or his university got very expensive reputation lawyers Carter-Fuck to send a C&D to the journalist's newspaper, promising expensive litigation if they published the story. That is what spiked the story, not intimidation via false harassment claims. Expensive lawyers making baseless threats work equally well in the US and UK to chill legal speech, it's not a policy issue.
kvuj 7 hours ago [-]
> In this particular case, the IT consultant was owed money by a failing business, and he put 1) a picture of the business premises, and 2) pictures of him firing guns, on a website where he was sure the business owner would see it.
From your own link, this was from 2 separate posts. I don't know man, this sounds like an excuse from the company to cause trouble and avoid having to pay the owed money.
Aurornis 6 hours ago [-]
Also the “website where he was sure the business owner would see it” is a cheap way to hide the fact that he posted on his on LinkedIn, which he used as his social media network. You can just say LinkedIn. We know what LinkedIn is.
amiga386 5 hours ago [-]
I'm glad you know what LinkedIn is.
Now imagine you owe this guy money, he's admitted in public that he put a picture of your business premises at the top of every blog post he makes on LinkedIn in order to get your attention, and his latest blog posts on the LinkedIn website therefore shows YOUR WORKPLACE and HIM SHOOTING GUNS.
Juxtaposition that he admits he wants you to see.
You can read all three blogposts. Note he has switched out the picture of the workplace (top-right PFP):
> I am disappointed that absolutely nothing has come back from the Secretary of State for Business and Trade (OR his Department) regarding my delinquent Client.. this is concerning as despite continuing to owe me
"delinquent client" who "owes" him and once again, picture of him shooting guns apropos of nothing, nothing explaining where he is, whose guns they are, just him shooting guns. Guess he just likes to shoot guns while talking about his "delinquent client" who "owes" him and he's put a picture of the delinquent client's premises as his PFP.
> Today I'll be following up on my message to the Yorkshire Post by calling the Secretary of State for Business and Trade regarding my delinquent Client.. it's become necessary given what the Owner of said Client is currently doing. I'm also going to escalate my concerns to North Yorkshire Police, then I'll grab the Popcorn and see where this goes.
And again no-context gun photo to add to the blog post about his delinquent client
Hopefully you can understand why the guy who owes him money would feel intimidated and call the police, and you can see why there appears to be enough evidence to charge the guy for harrassing the ower, and to arrest him so you can establish if he possesses the guns he has posted himself shooting.
Aurornis 5 hours ago [-]
I read the posts. He's obviously writing daily updates and posts and includes pictures from his travels.
The photos are obviously target shooting. This is a common sport in many countries.
Your argument is that because he wrote long daily updates about what he was doing and included two unrelated things, that he's implying that the guns are for those offhand remarks?
We get getting farther and farther from the real problem, which is that the UK police have been weaponized to respond to people's social media posts about how they make others feel. That's a ridiculously low bar.
> However, he said that a police officer later visited his home to warn him that concerns had been raised about the post.
> "I was told to be careful what I say online and I need to understand how it makes people feel," he said.
IslandRebel 4 hours ago [-]
> Hopefully you can understand why the guy who owes him money would feel intimidated and call the police, and you can see why there appears to be enough evidence to charge the guy for harrassing the ower, and to arrest him so you can establish if he possesses the guns he has posted himself shooting.
No, I don't understand why he would.
Nothing there was intimidation. Pretending it is intimidation is stretching crudility. The fact that he got arrested over this is straight up nonsense, IMO.
All the posts read like blog-style posts, and there wasn't any aggressive language used there at all. He also mentioned he was meeting with people to resolve the issue through legal means in the posts.
I suspect the owner who owed him money was acting maliciously.
joe463369 38 seconds ago [-]
Went to the gym, had a lovely meal at Piccolinos, them bastard's still won't pay me. Apropos of nothing, here's a picture of me with an assault rifle.
If you're buying that, I've got a bridge to sell you.
This is one of three days worth of posts where he talks about his "delinquent client" and ends with a picture of him and guns (with no explanation of why, where or how him and the guns are related to the body text). He put an image of the business owner's premises as his PFP in the top-right corner, which is now a picture of some people sitting in chairs. The business premises, "delinquent client" body text and gun photos appear on the same page.
> Today I'll be following up on my message to the Yorkshire Post by calling the Secretary of State for Business and Trade regarding my delinquent Client.. it's become necessary given what the Owner of said Client is currently doing. I'm also going to escalate my concerns to North Yorkshire Police, then I'll grab the Popcorn and see where this goes.
Wait, this is the threat?
I'm bewildered this could be grounds for an arrest. That's pretty scary.
It's the combination of the paragraph about the 'delinquent client' and the picture of him pointing a gun which could be construed as an implied threat. I don't know if that would hold up legally, but in any case, no charges were brought in the end.
As to why the police did anything at all, the most likely explanation is that once the 'delinquent client' reported the LinkedIn posts, the Police saw a photo of someone using a shotgun who didn't have a shotgun license. Unaware that the photo was taken outside the UK, they probably decided that the combination of an unlicensed firearm and a possible implied threat was worth investigating.
ifh-hn 7 hours ago [-]
Argh yes, context. I was wondering why the police were doing what they were doing. Police don't randomly do that to someone, there had to be a reason. Context is king.
Aurornis 6 hours ago [-]
Read the actual articles the person linked. The comment you’re replying to uses weasel words like saying “put them on a website” to conceal the fact that the “website” was the guy posting different unrelated things on his social media feed.
In the second case, the person involved was weaponizing the police against a journalist who had uncovered something about a completely unqualified university professor who had a fraudulent background story. The police didn’t do it “randomly”. The professor knew how to use the laws to intimidate and silence his critics (when even the GP comment admits).
Even the police later admitted they should not have gone as far as they did.
blipvert 2 hours ago [-]
Could you elaborate on how he was “completely unqualified”? AIUI his PhD was cleared on any claims of. It being untoward. Maybe something I missed, of course.
ifh-hn 6 hours ago [-]
I did read the article, and my only takeaway was that it was missing context.
But I agree that the law is being weaponised by bad actors, but irrespective of that the police are duty bound to investigate. They take the blame too. It's one of the few jobs everyone else knows how to do better than the people doing it.
amiga386 6 hours ago [-]
The website, which is also his social media feed, is LinkedIn. Both the header image (of the ower's premises) and pictures of the owee shooting guns are on the same site. Hence the complaint of intimidation from the ower.
In the second case, once again you repeat your nonsense. The chilling effect the police had, a wrong in and of itself, did not put the journalist off publishing.
> Despite the thoroughness of my investigation, THE did not run the story. While I was personally disappointed, I understood; by this point, Arday’s solicitors had been in touch with THE and it was clear that the story could tie the publication up in months of expensive litigation. Even if we were right – and I stand by my reporting – it would have been ruinously expensive.
You want to say POLICE POLICE POLICE were chilling speech here. Bullshit. It was LAWYERS LAWYERS LAWYERS suppressing the story.
Aurornis 5 hours ago [-]
> You want to say POLICE POLICE POLICE were chilling speech here. Bullshit.
You're the only person in this thread using the phrase "chilling speech" and you keep admitting that they did.
Let me quote you on this topic:
> The chilling effect the police had, a wrong in and of itself,
> In the case of the journalist Arday reported in 2025, police again did not arrest or charge him, but they (wrongly, in my opinion) phoned him and asked him not to contact Arday. This had a chilling effect
> For all three reports, police chose to take no action (nonetheless it still had a chilling effect on speech).
These are all three your own quotes from this thread. The last quote isn't even accurate because the police DID take action in the form of contacting the journalist and telling him to desist.
amiga386 3 hours ago [-]
I am in generally in favour of some sentiments you're expressing, but you're also wrong on the facts. If your facts are wrong, it harms everyone who shares your sentiments because you're arguing with verifiable bullshit.
You're trying to argue that Jason Arday held journalists at bay by reporting them for harrassment, therefore the UK speech laws are bad because they let wrongdoers avoid scrutiny by making harrassment claims against their scrutinisers. That is incorrect. There was only one journalist, and Arday held him off by engaging private lawyers. The harrassment reporting did not stop the journalist.
Arday falsely reported two people for harrassment to the Metropolitan Police, one professor in 2023 and one journalist in 2025. The (Devon and Cornwall) police declined to pursue the 2023 case. The (Metropolitan) police investigated the 2025 case for four months, then decided to take no action (no charge, arrest or caution). The investigating officer phoned the journalist to tell him the case was closed (they can do that). The fact that there had even been an investigation caused a chilling effect:
> But were my enquiries grounds for a criminal complaint? That was hugely troubling to me as a reporter who specialises in examining issues of research integrity and ethics.
I'd say that even in the professor's case, it could've had a chilling effect. If the police had interviewed anyone related to the professor, there could've been leaks and/or career-stunting rumours.
The officer requested the journalist not contact Arday. That's overreach, and shouldn't have happened.
The head of the Metropolitan police admitted the investigation should not have even been started. That's not the law at fault, that's shoddy policing: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0rd9y99grzo
But ultimately, it did not "spike the story". That was 100% on the lawsuit. Both things are bad
pepperoni_pizza 2 hours ago [-]
> That's textbook intimidation,
Exactly.
Every time I hear a story of "horrible abuses in UK where people get arrested for talking on the internet" it turns our they intimidated or scammed or bullied someone.
I wonder why people keep lying about it.
Aurornis 7 hours ago [-]
Your own quote clearly says it was “two separate social media posts”. The article I linked clearly says he was arrested for one count of stalking and another account of suspicion of possession of a firearm:
> A week later, on August 23, the officers returned and arrested him on suspicion of possessing a firearm with intent to cause fear of violence and another allegation of stalking related to a photograph of a house that appeared on his social media.
You’re trying hard to link the two as “textbook intimidation” but the firearm post that triggered this was just a vacation photo and post about his vacation.
You’re being misleading by saying he “posted them to a website” without explaining that what you mean by “website” is that he posted them on his personal social media.
> For all three reports, police chose to take no action (nonetheless it still had a chilling effect on speech).
Incorrect to say the police “took no action”. They contacted the journalist and instructed him to desist. The police later admitted it was a mistake to pursue the case. It says all of this in the link you used:
> Arday made a complaint about Grove to the Metropolitan Police, alleging harassment that was affecting his mental health; the police asked Grove to desist from further contact with Arday.[80] Mark Rowley, Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, later said that the complaint about Grove should not have been taken forward.[81]
It’s confusing that you’re trying to claim the police “took no action” when they admitted fault for following through with the complaint and they told the reporter to desist.
> Expensive lawyers making baseless threats work equally well in the US and UK to chill legal speech, it's not a policy issue.
If the expensive lawyers are equal in the UK and US, then that’s not the important point of this story. It’s the part about him engaging the police and the police following through with it.
I also strongly disagree that it’s equivalent in the US. That expensive legal firm would be utilizing the maximum extent of the laws available to them in the UK, which includes the very harassment laws we’re talking about!
You can’t say it’s “not a policy issue” by pointing to literal lawyers who are using the law.
amiga386 5 hours ago [-]
> You can’t say it’s “not a policy issue” by pointing to literal lawyers who are using the law.
It's not a UK speech policing policy issue, the topic of your post. The criminal law doesn't support Arday using false claims of harrassment to deter journalists.
You could say it's a worldwide civil law policy issue in terms of barratry / SLAPPs / cost of litigation / etc. No country, certainly not the US, has sufficient protection for whistleblowers against well-resourced litigants, and it is they (not the UK criminal law) who are successfully chilling speech.
Aurornis 5 hours ago [-]
> It's not a UK speech policing policy issue
It's the thing we're talking about.
The UK law was used to get police involved and the police told the journalist to desist.
> You could say it's a worldwide civil law policy issue
The fact that lawsuits exist everywhere does not make it equal everywhere.
We're talking about the UK's specific laws.
amiga386 5 hours ago [-]
Here's the full text of what you said. It's what we're talking about:
> There was also the tragic story of the Cambridge professor who was completely unqualified and had a fake life story. When journalists would get close to the story he would report them to the police for harassment to spike the stories.
You don't mention the threat that civil lawsuits pose to speech at all. And yet it was the threat of a civil lawsuit that actually quelled speech here.
You have no evidence that action A ("he would report them to the police for harassment") led to outcome B ("to spike the stories").
Jason Arday did not spike any journalist's story by reporting them for harrassment. He, or his universty, did spike the story by engaging reputation lawyers. He could do that in almost any country, including the US, despite its stronger free speech laws. Unless a US state has an effective anti-SLAPP law, it is very likely all that is needed to shut people up is to threaten a lawsuit they can't afford.
The thing you want to be mad about -- the police unlawfully instructing a journalist not to contact someone -- is a bad thing, is not even legal (i.e. the UK state doesn't actually allow it, let alone condone it), and it had no effect on the journalist. They still wanted their story published. It was the private threat of a lawsuit that spiked it.
avianlyric 4 hours ago [-]
“Getting the police involved” is a lot less exciting in the UK compared to the US. Our police don’t have a nasty habit of getting scared in the dark and shooting anything that moves. Mostly because most officers in the UK don’t carry firearms, and the UK often struggles to recruit officers into firearms units because officers just don’t want to mess with guns.
As a result getting the police involved is often little more than a slightly awkward chat at the front door where the officers politely ask you to stop being arsehole, but everyone knows the police are a bit limited in what they can actual do. Either because no crime has actually been committed, or because they don’t really have the time to properly investigate even if a crime had been committed.
Actually getting arrested takes some effort. The police really don’t want to deal with all the paperwork and mess that comes afterwards if they can avoid it.
someonebaggy 6 hours ago [-]
> arrested on... another [count] of suspicion of possession of a firearm:
That's not how it works. You get arrested on suspicion, the cops figure out if you actually did it or not, once they know you did it they charge you with counts of actual offences (not suspicions).
Aurornis 6 hours ago [-]
> > arrested on... another [count] of suspicion of possession of a firearm:
> That's not how it works. You get arrested on suspicion, the cops figure out if you actually did it or not, once they know you did it they charge you with counts of actual offences (not suspicions).
Isn’t that literally what the quote, which was from the article, says? It didn’t contain the word “count”. You added that. The quote says he was arrested on suspicion.
someonebaggy 6 hours ago [-]
"account" appears to be a simple autocorrect typo of "count" since the other half of the sentence is about "count"
Aurornis 5 hours ago [-]
No, I'm saying the word "count" doesn't appear in the quote in the article.
This is the quote from the article:
> > A week later, on August 23, the officers returned and arrested him on suspicion of possessing a firearm
You falsely added "[count]" to the quote and then argued about the count, which isn't in the quote.
someonebaggy 4 hours ago [-]
Actually, here's what you said and I quoted:
> The article I linked clearly says he was arrested for one count of stalking and another account of suspicion of possession of a firearm:
tigershark 7 hours ago [-]
Are you really defending Arday harassing journalists through the police and being overjoyed because just this time the police was not overzealous enough to arrest them (very likely they were fine only thanks to the huge media attention)? Unbelievable.
amiga386 6 hours ago [-]
I'm not defending Arday at all. I'm pointing out OP's claims are bullshit. At no point did anyone "spike" stories because Arday called the police on them.
OP appears to claim that involving the police is the way to get journalists off your tail. It isn't, and it didn't deter either the professors or the journalist. The much more effective way to get journalists off your tail, which OP didn't even mention, is lawyers. But that doesn't let OP rage against UK laws so he went with the bullshit claim instead.
There was absolutely zero media attention at the time police processed Arday's complaint against professor David Harris, in 2023. They closed the complaint without taking action. The professor didn't even know he was being investigated. His colleague Martyn Hammersley then went over Arday's head straight to the faculty. So much for the police getting people off your case!
In the case of the journalist Arday reported in 2025, police again did not arrest or charge him, but they (wrongly, in my opinion) phoned him and asked him not to contact Arday. This had a chilling effect and the police had no legal basis to direct him so. Again, this was long before any 2026 media attention.
It wasn't media attention that saved these people, it was that what they did wasn't illegal. The police shouldn't have given Arday's claims as much merit as they did, but no matter what Arday said, there was no evidence of crime there, it was never going any further than that.
Only once the deets about Arday were leaked by Cambridge faculty to Cofnas and he published them, and the media firestorm begain, did the details of the police phoning the journalist become known, and in reaction to that, the head of the police said that was clearly wrong and should not have happened: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0rd9y99grzo
Tanjreeve 6 hours ago [-]
Well he's dead now in no small part because he was 100% correct that partisan activists amplified by friendly "journalists' would follow the usual playbook of creating a reality distortion field by repeatedly lying and republishing each others half truths and outright lies into a massive gish gallop.
UltraSane 6 hours ago [-]
He is dead because he killed himself because his web of lies was unraveling.
Tanjreeve 2 hours ago [-]
Same question as always. What were the lies? Because all the ones I've seen were either found to be true or they were exaggerated versions of statements and then attacking that as a lie.
Especially rich to talk about habitual liars when it's a bunch of British press outlets and activists accusing others of being liars.
> 1 The Racism Of It All: It is not news when white men commit academic misconduct. It gets reported in a handful of stories, there’s a bit of media attention, but everyone quickly forgets about the problems.
> 2 Arday Was Definitely Guilty: The second point is somehow even more frustrating. Yes, Jason Arday was hounded by a society that demands different standards for young Black men than white guys. Yes, the amount of scrutiny he received was obviously connected to the colour of his skin. But also, he definitely did plagiarize. And not just a little bit. His work is riddled with clear, obvious, and extensive theft from other published academic papers.
> You do not need to trust race realists or other unpleasant people. Just download the thesis and check for yourself. It is clear that a significant portion of the thesis was copied directly from other people’s work. This is not in doubt, it’s not in question, and the fact that so many people online are arguing that the plagiarism charges are false because a university said so is deeply depressing. It’s arguably the worst case of plagiarism I’ve ever seen.
> Whatever your thoughts on plagiarism, it’s clear that Arday’s work harmed very few people. As he himself said, “I didn't murder somebody”. If he hadn’t been a Black academic and a poster child for diversity at Cambridge university, we’d probably have never known his name.
> For some of Arday’s supporters, acknowledging that any of the media scrutiny was justified has become tantamount to siding with his “killers.” He is instead a martyr—the victim of a “lynching”—and the inconvenient fact of his fabulism must be tidied away from the virtual shrine. This is an emotional position rather than a rational one, and its very indefensibility makes it a greater demonstration of tribal loyalty. Insisting that the academic was completely innocent, in the face of all the evidence, sends a strong social signal that you hate the right-wing media and care about racism.
> The postmortem airbrushing of Arday’s story also ignores how that story twisted and turned while he was alive. When The Guardian confronted him with the implausibility of some of his tall tales, Arday responded by editing them in real time: Yes, he had once claimed to have run 600 miles in six days, an exceptional feat for an endurance athlete, but what he actually meant was that he took daylong rest breaks in between. Yes, he had claimed to have raised more than £5 million for charity, but actually this was with the help of “many fundraising collectives” whose participants he could not name because they had signed nondisclosure agreements.
As they might say on Reddit, "Everybody Sucks Here". Arday the fabulist and plagiarist, the academic institutions who didn't vet him because they were razzle-dazzled by his bullshit lifestory (then drop him like a stone when their attempts to keep his plagiarism hidden don't work any more), the popular press who are happy to amp up a public shaming for clicks and views, the anti-woke and the racists who say this just confirms what they thought about DEI, and the anti-anti-woke and anti-racists who will deny the bleeding obvious if it makes them appear virtuous to their peers.
Tanjreeve 1 hours ago [-]
Why would I read this aimless waffle when I asked a pretty specific question?
UltraSane 41 minutes ago [-]
It is actually the opposite of aimless waffle. It is well written and fair and accurate.
amiga386 53 minutes ago [-]
That sounds like deflection.
Step 1: put out the suggestion that the lies weren't lies
Step 2: don't read the responses
Job done!
EDIT: I'll give you one set of lies. Is it "exaggerated versions of statements" or you just didn't see them?
If I say I won the Nobel Peace Prize for inventing a cure for cancer, and I have no evidence of either, but I insist I did both and make up a lame excuse as to why you can't see my prize (it's away being washed today) or why you can't find my cure (the journal pretended someone else wrote the article because they're all against me, but trust me mate it was really me who wrote it) am I just making "exaggerated versions of statements" in your view?
> In a subsequent interview with the Guardian, Arday claimed to have been confronted at his faculty building on two separate occasions by a masked man threatening to harm him if he did not resign, and evading detection both times. On the second occasion Arday said the intruder produced a knife and threatened him with it.
> The Guardian understands that after Arday reported the first intrusion to the university, enhanced CCTV was placed in the faculty and a panic alarm was installed in his office. The professor said he hit the panic alarm during the second confrontation, but that no one responded. It should have triggered an alarm alerting the faculty’s security team, all of whom were present at the time of the alleged incident.
> The intruder was not picked up by CCTV on either occasion and no one in the faculty reported seeing anyone suspicious. Arday did not report either intrusion at the time, telling the Guardian that after the second incident he continued his working day and even conducted a PhD viva for a student less than two hours later.
> He did not inform colleagues that a masked man with a knife was in the faculty building.
> Arday confirmed in an interview with the Guardian that the “mutilated animals sent to his family home” mentioned in the open letter was a severed pig’s head, delivered in a large cardboard box to his parents’ home address in south London. He claimed to have intercepted the package and immediately thrown it away, only telling the police several months later.
> In a subsequent interview he claimed the police investigated, checking with butchers in south London if they had sold a pig, eventually finding one that had sold a “whole hog” on the morning the head was left outside the family home.
> When the Guardian checked those details with the local butchers Arday named, they said no police officer had come in to ask them about a pig. When asked if they were sure, the butcher said “that’s the kind of thing we’d remember”.
> When the details Arday gave about the pig’s head investigation were checked by London’s Metropolitan police, the Guardian was told they were “categorically” incorrect and no investigation had taken place.
> Arday had contacted the Met to lodge a complaint of harassment against Harris after his plagiarism allegations and, because he was based in Plymouth, the case was handed over to Devon and Cornwall police. Correspondence seen by the Guardian confirmed that the force declined to pursue a case against Harris.
> Arday took no photographs of the bullet, the banana, the corrosive substance or the pig’s head. The only other people who saw any of the items were close family members, who told the Guardian Arday had shown them the bullet and the “poison”. Arday could produce no messages from the time in which he discussed any of the items with friends, family, colleagues or the police.
> There are many examples of prominent black figures being intimidated [...] But the abuse and harassment Arday has outlined would be some of the most extreme any academic has been subjected to in the UK. When Arday was asked about his claims by the Guardian, he stood by them. “To be honest with you, I thought you’d just believe me,” he said. “Why would I lie?” He would be jeopardising his career.
someonebaggy 6 hours ago [-]
It's intimidation in the form of speech. Enforcing it is enforcing speech.
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shrubby 7 hours ago [-]
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dgroshev 7 hours ago [-]
UK is substantially more democratic than the US.
- We just changed our PM, despite his party having a historic majority.
- Parliament routinely rebels against the government, and backbenchers have a lot of say about the business of government.
- We have a number of upstart parties; they might be populist, but at least it's not a two-party-forever system.
- We had a coalition government just a few years ago.
- We changed our constitution a few months ago (abolishing hereditary peers) and it was just another news among many.
- We ejected one of the previous PMs for having a party during a lockdown, with a massive scandal before that when the PM accepted a gift of some wallpaper.
Compare and contrast to the ossified and corrupt American system, where the president is openly enriching himself and his family and friends, and there's nothing threatening the presidency. The last amendment was passed half a century ago, and there's zero hope for reform.
Democracy is a living, breathing system of government, not a number of checkboxes like "can I shoot a gun for fun" or "can I call someone N-word online". It's important to see the forest for the trees.
4ndrewl 7 hours ago [-]
> We ejected one of the previous PMs for having a party during a lockdown
Weirdly that never happened, but that's how many people remember it.
He was ejected because he lost the support of his ministers (most of who resigned over a period of a few weeks) after he had made them to go out and lie to the public on his behalf in the case of Chris Pincher MP.
dgroshev 6 hours ago [-]
To be entirely fair, that was a combination of many things (Pincher, wallpaper, partygate, covid deaths, covid deals, brexit, etc). The ministers are also MPs, and they want to be reelected. By that point it was clear that the partygate is not going away, so they needed a scapegoat.
The point still stands though. A populist PM who did a tiny bit of mismanagement and corruption (relative to his current peer in the US) was forced to resign. Trump isn't.
tomp 6 hours ago [-]
> - We just changed our PM
non-democratically. there was no election. the ruling party simply made a decision itself. Just like in China.
dgroshev 6 hours ago [-]
A representative democracy is still a democracy.
The ruling party has changed just two years ago. Hardly China, is it
AlexandrB 6 hours ago [-]
I don't get why you're making excuses for this stuff. Trump is one kind of bad, but almost all western governments are increasingly unaccountable to their voters. And these are usually the folks that claim to be defenders of democracy. The hypocrisy is breathtaking.
dgroshev 6 hours ago [-]
> almost all western governments are increasingly unaccountable to their voters
In this country, the government with a vast majority couldn't even withdraw a small cash payment from better off pensioners without a rebellion from their own MPs.
Those generalising takes are entirely disconnected from the political reality of the UK outside of twitter.
tavavex 3 hours ago [-]
They're making excuses for this stuff because the wording used around it in this comment thread has been quite hysterical. For all the problems plaguing modern democracies, leadership elections are not one of them. In representative democracies, the leader of the party isn't god like how a president is in non-parliamentary systems. The role has some additional powers, but it doesn't get its own branch of government. Most importantly, party leaders are still MPs who were democratically elected by their constituents - the party leader designation is an internal role. You can even affect it by becoming a party member in most cases. This is incredibly mundane stuff that has existed for decades to centuries, so people here immediately jumping in to talk about China or say that this is somehow worse than Trump just seems like enraged flailing in an attempt to portray many other democracies not being exactly like the US as horrific injustice.
sippingabonedry 6 hours ago [-]
You left a few items off the list, for instance:
- We can't beat off to porn anymore without a VPN, because our nanny government has blocked it.
- Our government sends hilarious fines to foreign websites when it disapproves of their moderation.
OkayPhysicist 5 hours ago [-]
That's not necessarily evidence of undemocratic processes. One of the big downsides of democracy is that it gives the absolute knuckledraggers the same vote as anybody else. It seems to me like the UK has the same problem as the US: they have a revealed preference for autocratic policies, because no one gets excited about the government apparently doing nothing.
PorciiVorbesc 4 hours ago [-]
>because no one gets excited about the government apparently doing nothing.
Well yes. Precisely because the government was "doing nothing" while issues that plagued the voting population like migration, wealth disparity and affordability crisis were constantly growing for the past ~15 years until it reached breaking point.
Hence why people affected by this are now voting to give the new extremist parties a chance at the helm, because just voting more "doing nothing" by the parties who stood by and enabled this, just guarantees the same issues aggravating. So then what else do you expect to happen at the elections?
pocksuppet 2 hours ago [-]
Can you elaborate on "migration" being an "issue that plagues the voting population"?
PorciiVorbesc 31 minutes ago [-]
What of that was unclear to you?
A lot of voters disliked the effects migration had on their country, being also one of the reason why they voted for Brexit, and why the vote far right parties right now.
someonebaggy 4 hours ago [-]
I expect a variety of more extremist parties - some offering to kick out the immigrants, others offering to delete all regulations and let the free market prevail, others offering to delete billionaire wealth. Like in the Berlin mayor vote this week, where both the extreme left seize-billionaire-wealth party and the extreme right ban-immigrants party both won sizeable shares (in fact the extreme left party won a plurality)
PorciiVorbesc 3 hours ago [-]
>Like in the Berlin mayor vote this week, where both the extreme left seize-billionaire-wealth party
And how is Berlin planning to seize the wealth of billionaires?
Because I've seen this play out before, where every supposed promise to tax the billionaires, just ends up as another tax burden on the working class high earners and entrepreneurs who already pay the highest tax rates and are the furthest thing possible from billionaires, but still gets political support from the unwashed masses since it's entirely envy driven.
someonebaggy 3 hours ago [-]
How is the ban immigrants party going to ban immigrants? How is the delete regulations party going to delete regulations? Last time the extreme left party had any power, it set a city law saying rent couldn't be higher than a certain amount, but the landlords sued the city government in federal court, and won because apparently there is a constitutional right for landlords to collect as much money as possible.
RobotToaster 6 hours ago [-]
> despite his party having a historic majority.
33% of the vote is a historically low majority, so I guess you're technically correct.
dgroshev 6 hours ago [-]
As you're well aware, we have a first-past-the-post system and what matters in this system is the number of MPs.
RobotToaster 6 hours ago [-]
A system where the government is chosen by 33% of voters has no legitimate claim to be democracy, that is, rule by the people.
Analemma_ 4 hours ago [-]
This is not an actionable claim. What are you supposed to do in a multi-party system if nobody wins a majority and voter turnout is 60%? Just have anarchy until someone wins an outright majority?
pocksuppet 2 hours ago [-]
In most of them you form coalitions.
foldr 6 hours ago [-]
That's a substantially larger vote share than any other party:
The electoral college would throw up equally weird results if the US didn't have a fully two-party system. (How's that working out?)
MadrasThorn 6 hours ago [-]
UK does not have freedom of expression.
Both the UK and the US fail in rule of law regarding "all citizens and leaders must be equal before the law, supported by strong anti-corruption measures."
UK has stated separation of powers but the crown reportedly nudged Starmer to step down. The king is the one that can formally appoint government following elections.
Prince Andrew had and other royals have control over military forces in the UK, canada, australia, nz, ect. You can hem and haw all you want but the crown has constitutional and ceremonial control over the armed forces.
The King gives 'the kings speech' which is used to set the governments legislative agenda to parliment.
The king also gives royal assent to bills passed by parliment.
Black spider memos
The king also steers diplomatic efforts abroad.
every single aspect of UKs democracy can be cut by the King whenever he wants.
spiralpolitik 4 hours ago [-]
The UK constitutional system is built around mutually assured destruction. If one part doesn't follow convention, the whole system will collapse and everyone loses.
Yes, the monarch can in theory override the government by blocking legislation, but won't because one time a monarch did that, he ended up with his head cut off. If a monarch ever did that in modern times, Britain would quickly be a republic.
Everyone follows convention and stays in their lane and doesn't rock the boat. The last time a bill didn't get royal assent was in 1708. It simply hasn't happened since.
'The kings speech' is written by the government usually based on the manifesto they were elected on. The monarch just reads it. The monarch's role in modern times is to advise the prime minister and act as continuity advisor across governments. While the monarch may offer commentary on legislation, they won't block it, and the government is free to ignore it.
Same with the armed forces. It's ministers that control the army not the monarch. In modern Britain, the monarch's role is purely ceremonial. The monarch cannot order the armed forces into conflict.
Usually legislation gets blocked in the House Of Lords (the unelected chamber) which is why a lot constitutional reform is focused on cleaning that up, but it's game of inches because neither party wants to lose influence.
While the constitutional system may make it seem like the monarch has a lot of hard power, in reality they have none, and since the civil war can't do anything without the approval of Parliament.
someonebaggy 4 hours ago [-]
Last time I'm aware the monarch did something, it was the firing of the entire Australian parliament and calling a snap election. Which is quite a sensible thing to do if parliament is completely jammed, and since it was reasonably sensible and popular in the situation it happened, nothing happened to the monarch. (Imagine if someone had the power to do that to Congress! Maybe they'd actually do stuff again, and we'd have to rename them to Progress)
This is an alright use of a monarch IMO.
spiralpolitik 3 hours ago [-]
Yes. This fits with the UK monarch's modern role which is to ensure continuity of government.
The UK example would be if the UK government lost a vote of confidence, the monarch might ask the opposition parties to see if they could form a government that could pass a vote of confidence to avoid a general election. Although parliamentary math makes such a scenario unlikely in practice.
On the UK end I don't think the monarch can sack the Prime Minister. While the UK monarch could strongly suggest to a Prime Minister that it's time to resign. Usually when a Prime Minister gets to that point, it's usually the end of the road and they won't last much longer anyway even if they pushed forward.
The monarch has a lot of soft power which under the modern system is usually deployed to ensure continuity of government rather than in a controlling manner.
(The Australia, Canada, etc constitutions gives the monarch different powers than the UK and it's usually delegated to whoever is the governor for that nation)
avianlyric 4 hours ago [-]
Yeah, I don’t think you have any understanding of how the crown interacts with the rest of the UK government.
There are some oddities, but the idea that the crown could actually exercise any of their powers, without causing a constitutional crisis, and UK rapidly becoming a republic, is farcical.
> The King gives 'the kings speech' which is used to set the governments legislative agenda to parliment.
You’re aware that the kings speech is written by the government, not the crown. It’s how the government lays out its parliamentary agenda to parliament, the civil service and the country at large. Heck there’s a whole ritual around the crown having to beg permission to enter the commons etc to emphasise the point that crown enters and speaks at the pleasure of the commons.
> The king also steers diplomatic efforts abroad.
No, the king is given instructions by the foreign office on what he’s expected to help with. Every trip and meeting the king does is checked and cleared by the uk government, and they can and have vetoed trips before.
> every single aspect of UKs democracy can be cut by the King whenever he wants.
You should watch the Jonny English movies, they’re a great documentary on how this could happen.
dgroshev 6 hours ago [-]
What is the actual purpose of freedom of expression in a democracy? Is it being able to call people N-word online with no repercussions, or is it being able to organise, form political parties, and change the country?
If it's the former, then indeed the US has more of it.
If it's the latter, the UK has three new major parties with very different policies that openly and vocally oppose Labour, Conservatives, and Libdems. Mainstream media regularly broadcasts their views. I might strongly disagree with those views, but these parties are clearly freely operating political organisations. How is the US doing with viable non-Dem and non-Republican parties?
I won't comment on your Crown conspiracy theories.
zer00eyz 4 hours ago [-]
> What is the actual purpose of freedom of expression in a democracy? Is it being able to call people N-word online with no repercussions, or is it being able to organise, form political parties, and change the country?
What is the difference between the two? Because you're going to make a cultural argument and NOT a legal one. The C-word is one you throw around (and the Aussies to) but would cause an American woman be pretty upset. You seem perfectly fine with its use, but we frown on both terms socially but they are strictly legal.
Defamation VS political speech would be a better comparison, and I could make the argument that Americans being more lenient are better off with our freedoms.
dgroshev 4 hours ago [-]
Being as charitable as possible: there is a lot of difference between
- swear words
- slurs
- speech enabling political organising
…which is not a matter of "upset".
OkayPhysicist 5 hours ago [-]
From your list of purposes about freedom of expression, you're missing "the ability to criticize powerful individuals". If you cannot prove, in a court of law, that your statements are 100% true, you can absolutely lose your shirt in a defamation suit in the UK. It's so egregious that the US had to pass a law specifically shielding American free speech from the UK's libel laws. (to their credit, in 2013 they improved their laws substantially, such that you can no longer be found liable for provably true statements)
In the US, in contrast, you can say pretty much anything, as long as it plausibly enough true that the plaintiff can't prove you don't believe it. "Donald Trump is a child rapist" is an example of speech that would not be protected in UK courts. Sure, I can point at all his visits to Epstein's Island, and his running child pageant shows, and complaints made against him to establish that it's not unreasonable to believe it, but I cannot prove in a court of law that he did it. So in the UK, he would win a defamation suit against me. On the flip side, here in the States that is quite safe to say in a public forum. It's quite difficult to prove a negative, and even if they passed that bar, they would then need to prove to a court that I did not believe that statement.
Calling big changes in power, substantive shifts in policy, and constitutional changes "government theatre" to then link to "Flying_Rodent" on twitter as "reality" is just comically unselfaware.
someonebaggy 6 hours ago [-]
On some Twitter ripoff site called "x.com" actually
drnick1 4 hours ago [-]
And yet, you were ordered to stay home during coronavirus and threatened with fines if you did not comply. Also, the Internet is censored by your ISPs, you increasingly need to prove your age/identity to do anything online, and it isn't clear for how long you will be able to work around that with VPNs. Apart from that, the UK truly looks like a democratic paradise.
UltraSane 6 hours ago [-]
Parliament has absolutely no constitutional limits on it. It can and has made retroactive laws that are not allowed in the US.
dgroshev 6 hours ago [-]
Parliament does have constitutional limits on it (for example, see timetabling powers or Erskine May), even if it can't pass acts that will bind future Parliaments. The constitution being (largely) unwritten and changeable doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
The result is substantially more democratic, as per the list above.
UltraSane 5 hours ago [-]
Please explain the constitutional limits to Parliament in more detail.
The result seems substantially more chaotic.
And then there is the fact that the entire legal frame work is based on The Crown. If the king or queen killed someone they would have to prosecute themselves. This is the exact opposite of democracy.
dgroshev 5 hours ago [-]
Parliament is not in control of its own timetable, for one. Bit of a restriction on exercising its sovereignty, innit. And yes democracies can be chaotic.
It's entirely mad to me that I can make a list of easily verifiable, massively important examples of democratic processes in this country in the last few years and someone would just come up with a hypothetical like "but what if King kills someone" like it's somehow not just equal but has more weight than the list. Mad
zer00eyz 4 hours ago [-]
> "but what if King kills someone"
Anne Boleyn, Catherine Howard would like a word.
foldr 3 hours ago [-]
What would the argument even be here? That the UK can never be a democracy because of what Henry VIII did in the 16th century?
zer00eyz 52 minutes ago [-]
No.
But processes that exist to preserve democracy that arent governed by that democracy are problematic. Saying the "king would never do..." when a king has makes the argument silly.
The UK is not alone in this - a great example is the filibuster in the us (a senate rule).
UltraSane 60 minutes ago [-]
I'm sorry but someone claiming to have such an amazingly democratic government when they have a monarch who has absolute personal immunity from civil and criminal proceedings under UK law and whose face is on all the bank notes is a bit silly. This is the least democratic thing possible.
Queen Elizabeth used Queen's Consent many many times to prevent or modify laws she didn't like. An investigation by The Guardian revealed that more than 1,000 parliamentary bills were subjected to Queen's Consent or Prince's Consent during Queen Elizabeth II's reign.
The British government feels like a delicate standoff between Parliament and the crown.
AlexandrB 6 hours ago [-]
> We just changed our PM, despite his party having a historic majority.
Yeah? The country got to vote for the PM? I don't recall there being a national election. Having a bunch of party insiders replace the leader who won an election with an unelected one is the opposite of democracy.
dgroshev 6 hours ago [-]
We have a representative democracy, not a direct one.
I invite you to consider the rest of the points, too.
AlexandrB 6 hours ago [-]
The leader of the party stepping down (for non-medical reasons) should trigger an election. The fact that it doesn't is scandalous. We have the same problems in Canada where we elected a minority Liberal government that has now magically turned into a majority due to legislators switching parties. How can someone flip from the opposition party to the ruling one and still claim to be representing the will of the people who voted for them?
dgroshev 6 hours ago [-]
Funny thing is, your desired system is a constitutional change and it's entirely feasible in the UK if there's enough support for it. Which is exactly my point.
MrBuddyCasino 7 hours ago [-]
Quite the opposite, the problem is democracy:
"In democracy, one side always wins and makes its opponents illegal."
“The claim to legality renders every rebellion and counter-measure an injustice and a legal violation or ‘illegality.’ If legality and illegality can be arbitrarily at the disposal of the majority, then the majority can, above all, declare their domestic competitors illegal, that is, hors-la-loi… Whoever controls 51 percent would be able legally to render the remaining 49 percent illegal… and to treat partisan opponents like common criminals, who are then perhaps reduced to kicking their boots against the locked door.”
this is not limited to democracy - every form of government does this to varying degree, and in fact democracy tends to be (perhaps marginally) better than say autocracy.
as is often said with a sigh, "democracy is the worst form of government, except for every other."
to me, democracy is really about giving the masses enough feeling of agency, because the alternatives are either revolution and/or disengagement / low productivity / low creativity, and both are "bad for business" i.e. cannot compete with democracies.
China will be an interesting test of this theory. Notably, in China they have a terrific education system and the government is able to attract/retain smart ambitious people.
Another test will be the power of governments to thwart revolutions using digital and kinetic assymmetry. The masses have individual hackers and pea shooters and the government has digital armies and autonomous drone swarms. In turn, since revolution is off the table, governments don't need the overhead of democracy. In the US, we see this with the rise of Executive Orders for example.
MrBuddyCasino 6 hours ago [-]
> to me, democracy is really about giving the masses enough feeling of agency, because the alternatives are either revolution and/or disengagement / low productivity / low creativity, and both are "bad for business" i.e. cannot compete with democracies.
I'll pick this one because it is the easiest to refute (but the others are wrong, too). What form of government was predominant during the most creative and productive periods in recent history, namely the industrial revolution and the Italian Rennaissance?
You even mention China yourself, but do not update your priors.
throwawayqqq11 4 hours ago [-]
You cannot compare these eras, where one offers a zeitgeist of scientific progress and opportunity and the other of global scale problems met with ignorance and stagnation.
The tides will turn in china, once that positive notion gets suffocated by misaligned elites.
smolder 7 hours ago [-]
The problem is not democracy, it's corruption fueled by sociopaths who insist on controlling everything and buy politicians. The problem with everything in society is that many people are fundamentally broken. Plenty of people aren't broken and can get along without committing crimes or plotting to take over the world.
vkou 7 hours ago [-]
The magic of democracy isn't that it promises good governance, the magic of it is that it provides a clear avenue for a peaceful transfer of power that is exercised every few years.
Most functioning democracies require more than 51% of a senate and six justices and a criminal head of state to completely unravel.
MrBuddyCasino 6 hours ago [-]
> The magic of democracy isn't that it promises good governance, the magic of it is that it provides a clear avenue for a peaceful transfer of power that is exercised every few years.
We are currently witnessing the dismantling of this illusion. The reason western governments increasingly engage in lawfare against the opposition is that for the first time since the post-WWII order, they are threatened by a real regime change.
vkou 6 hours ago [-]
> for the first time since the post-WWII order, they are threatened by a real regime change.
It's only new if you are blind to post-WWII history.
In the western world alone, there was no shortage of incredibly vicious fights with communist/socialist groups in in post-war Europe (Most prominently in Italy and Greece), to say nothing of the various domestic decolonisation movements (The British and French governments were scared shitless of them), secessionist movements in Quebec, Spain, that entire thing in North Ireland (the understatement of the century), the Civil Rights and universal suffrage movement in the US, collapse of prominent dictatorships in Portugal and Spain...
State-threatening social upheaval is nothing new, we just have a particularly shitty flavour of it right now, as fascism and fascist-adjacent movements are currently waxing.
MrBuddyCasino 2 hours ago [-]
You are mixing every western conflict you've heard of in one big bucket, stir vigorously and call it an argument. What do wars of religion (which happen under most forms of government, except perhaps communism) have to do with democracy?
What is "the Civil Rights and universal suffrage movement in the US" if not a continuation of the leftist politics that Roosevelt started? What has the authoritarian Franco regime got to do with "democracy"?
None of this makes any sense.
vkou 1 hours ago [-]
Most of the events I've listed cannot be described as 'one side wins and makes the other illegal'. Many of them ended with compromises, or partial success, or complete success, but the losers were not banished from public life. (They just held on to coalitions of waning influence. Some of them are resurging.)
> What is "the Civil Rights and universal suffrage movement in the US" if not a continuation of the leftist politics that Roosevelt started
The CRM was bottom-up, with personalities like Malcolm X and MLK both scaring the shit out of the government, due to their ability to mobilize millions of people.
Did they win and make the other side illegal? No.
Did the dipshits they fought win and make them illegal? I'd say no to that, as well.
Quarrelsome 6 hours ago [-]
yes, its not legal to harass women getting an abortion. That includes being in a given range of an abortion clinic and making a political statement. What part of that is hard to understand?
People know the laws and yet they still do it thinking they're some sort of Catholic Batman. You want to change the law, do what we all do; write to your fucking MP, join a political party, campaign, donate. Don't harass someone vulnerable in a difficult state of mind and impose your morality upon them. Respect their choice and their agency.
In the US you can be arrested for the following speech:
* true threats of violence
* incitement to break the law specifically
* crimes of speech: soliciting crime, fraudulent representations, lying under oath
* stalking/cyberstalking
So lets quit this idea that its some abstract of "political orthodoxy". Stop framing crime as "difference of opinion". Hate speech and incitement to racial/religious hatred or violence are crimes here. People publishing hate speech online and then being all Pikachu face when they get arrested for breaking the law are not victims. The highest profile pretend victim was the wife of a Conservative Councillor who posted a message online that hundreds of thousands of people saw that encouraged people to set fire to hotels where asylum seekers were staying. The judges sentencing remarks were particularly eye opening given she demonstrated a relative lack of respect for the court ("If I get in trouble then I'll play the mental health card").
cobbzilla 6 hours ago [-]
Do you worry that if your worst enemies were in power, something that you or a friend might say would lead to an arrest?
Who decides what is hate speech? Apparently the current UK government has decided these things (among others) are so hateful their perpetrators must be arrested:
- private WhatsApp chats between friends
- standing still in public with hands folded in prayer
Be careful when you give sharp tools to the golem.
Quarrelsome 5 hours ago [-]
> Do you worry that if your worst enemies were in power, something that you or a friend might say would lead to an arrest?
I don't appreciate this thin end of the wedge argument. Policy is more pragmatic. Read up on what most of mainland Europe had to do in order to suppress all the Hitler Youth children after the second world war. They oppressed their free speech and it was the right thing to do.
> Who decides what is hate speech?
The rules are there for everyone to read[0]. If you want a rule of thumb, don't discriminate based on any aspect of the Equalities Act 2010 and you'll be fine.
> standing still in public with hands folded in prayer
Don't whitewash this shit. You know full well what we're talking about is specifically going to a place that you know you're not allowed to be in, doing a protest you're not allowed to do. Playing with the line is still taking the piss and the UK believe in the spirit of the law to avoid all this mucking about with the specification. Otherwise I can block traffic all day and make up some bullshit excuse as to how I'm somehow innocent. These are feeble excuses that Palestine in Action would be proud of.
> private WhatsApp chats between friends
As far as I'm aware the only case of this being the primary cause of a conviction was when police officers were arrested for grossly offensive messages. However they weren't charged with hate speech but rather: improper use of a public electronic communications network. 12 weeks in jail. They were discovered because it was the same group chat that Wayne Couzens (also a police officer at the time) was in, who is currently serving a life sentence for the kidnap, rape and murder of Sarah Everard.
like_any_other 3 hours ago [-]
> The rules are there for everyone to read[0]. If you want a rule of thumb, don't discriminate based on any aspect of the Equalities Act 2010 and you'll be fine.
As usual, the written law only gives a vague outline, so people like you can defend it with motte-and-bailey. In practice, stickers with slogans such as "It's OK to be white" and "Natives losing jobs; migrants pouring in" get you sent to jail [1,2]. But I'm sure you're okay with banning "race hate" or "incitement", so here's a question for you - do you think "Black People!" by the poet laureate of New Jersey, Amiri Baraka, should be banned? Maybe even is already banned in the UK, since I'm sure their anti-hate laws are enforced evenly? Here are the lyrics:
You can’t steal nothin’ from a white man. He’s already stole it. He owes you anything you want, even his life. All the stores will open if you will say the magic words. The magic words are: Up against the wall M-Fer, this is a stick up! [..] Run up and down Broad Street, Negroes, take the shit you want. Take their lives if need be, but get what you what, what you need.
> we're talking about is specifically going to a place that you know you're not allowed to be in, doing a protest you're not allowed to do.
"The law is good because you know you're not allowed to break the law." - yes, thank you, we know how laws work. That doesn't mean we agree with all of them. If she's not intimidating or obstructing anyone, she should be allowed.
> However they weren't charged with hate speech but rather: improper use of a public electronic communications network.
"Impropriety" is an even lower and vaguer standard than "hate".
> They were discovered because it was the same group chat that Wayne Couzens (also a police officer at the time) was in, who is currently serving a life sentence for the kidnap, rape and murder of Sarah Everard.
But he did not discuss or organize that murder on the chat, so this is just a sleazy attempt at guilt by association. Want to apply that standard evenly? Do you think everyone that shared group chats (where "improprieties" were spoken) with e.g. Tyler James Robinson, or Bryanna Dutcher, or Shannon Brandt, should go to jail? "Should" here refers to a moral, not legal standard - we're discussing what the law should be, not what it is, so don't bother with "laws in USA are different" counterarguments.
Sorry, how is [1] problematic exactly? Is this some yank shit where you're still so soft that you've managed to think that Neo-Nazism is ok?
> so here's a question for you - do you think "Black People!" by the poet laureate of New Jersey, Amiri Baraka, should be banned?
Yeah understanding the UK in 2027 based on a poem written in 1967 New Jersey USA is a great idea. Keep them coming squire, what's next: should I write a paper on volcanism based on the lasagne I cooked last night? It was quite hot.
> That doesn't mean we agree with all of them
that's fine. Just don't wutface when you get arrested and roll around on the floor like some kid in social acting all wounded.
> But he did not discuss or organize that murder on the chat, so this is just a sleazy attempt at guilt by association.
Is this really the hill you want to die on? Protecting a bunch of people who were good mates with a rapist murderer cop and participated in his group chat. Lets dig further, I wonder what they talked about:
* sexually assaulting women
* blaming domestic abuse victims for repeated abuse
oh yeah. Huh.
like_any_other 3 hours ago [-]
Good job dodging all my questions.
> you're still so soft that you've managed to think that Neo-Nazism is ok
Just make sure next time you defend censorship, that you open with "It's OK to be white" is Nazism and jailable, instead of hiding behind "don't discriminate and you'll be fine!"
Quarrelsome 2 hours ago [-]
Ofc you lead with the softest one:
* Britons Build Britain
* Equality or Quality – you can only have one
* Natives losing jobs; migrants pouring in
* We will be a minority in our homeland by 2066
* Diversity – designed to fail, built to replace
* Mass immigration is white genocide
* They seek conquest not asylum
* There is a war on whites
* Second-generation? Third? Fourth? You have to go back
* Stop immigration, start repatriation.
Ofc many of these are in violation of the Equalities Act 2010.
Idk wtf is going on in the US. Maybe you've conveniently forgotten WW2 but this shit is a thousand times more destructive then the thing it fears. If this shit isn't stamped on it gets us all killed. Nazism should always be illegal due to the tolerance paradox. It seeks to strip away people's rights, dehumanise them and murder them by initially claiming there is a specific filter that you're safe from. It then takes that same standard and applies it internally to any opposition without the filter. My grandparents were both part of that war. I haven't forgotten, you clearly have.
etcetcetcetceta 2 hours ago [-]
If you think some words or even some of the above actions are worse than what has been happening you must truly live in ignorance.
Quarrelsome 1 hours ago [-]
I live in a continent that suffered the ravages of Nazism. Its a brutal philosophy that begins with a comforting lie:
* What if; the problems in my society are not caused by people like me, but some external force?
Its extraordinarily tempting to humans, especially those who find self-reflection uncomfortable. So instead of property prices being a consequence of decades of NIMBYism and failure to build social housing for decades (uh-oh that sounds like something I might have voted for), it's reframed as an issue directly linked to immigration (ahhhh, very calming, I never wanted that!).
The problem is that its a mental health issue pretending to be a political movement. When a politician decides to discard all scruples and exploit this comforting lie in politics, they build a self-consuming state. By definition this state cannot be wrong and therefore everyone else is to blame. So when it makes mistakes, as all states do; it finds a scapegoat and once its done with the first scapegoat, it moves onto another, then another, then another, then another. We're all on this list, its just a case of order. If you try to push this then you'll get us all fucking killed you muppet.
Nazis need therapy, not politics. Alternatively go first wave and find yourselves early victims like the brown shirts. There's no loyalty in these movements.
like_any_other 2 hours ago [-]
> Ofc you lead with the softest one
Isn't it great how the judge didn't clarify which ones were illegal? Even when they send you to jail, they won't tell you exactly what is and isn't illegal to say! Meanwhile newspapers and academics and employers can disparage and discriminate against whites as much as they want, and it's never "hate":
I'm not sure why you included this one. I don't think any of them should be banned, especially in the wake of the estimated 250k predominantly-British victims of predominantly-Muslim rape gangs, but this one is a simple statement of fact, the best estimate given current trends: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/white-briton...
> Maybe you've conveniently forgotten WW2
We fought WW2 so that we could continue to exist as a people. It's the lessons of WW2 (not that they should be needed) that teach us how dangerous such censorship is.
And the men who fought in WW2 for the Allies were pro-segregation and against interracial marriage, maybe you should have talked to your grandparents instead of getting your history from Hollywood:
How do I feel about the country today? My two uncle’s gave their lives for this country, my father’s health was broken from gas in WW1. I did my little bit, my brother did his national service in the Canal Zone in Egypt. What has been our reward? EVERYTHING we fought for has been taken from us and given to foreigners, we are now third rate citizens in our own country. Our enemies rule us from Brussels and we are being colonized by ** and *** in this country. There is not one political party that is prepared to stand up and fight for our country and indigenous population. The holocaust is now being carried out on us. What are my main regrets? That I didn’t fight for Hitler, at least he was for his own people.* - https://archive.org/details/the-unknown-warriors (out of all the testimonies in that book, only about two are positive)
> Isn't it great how the judge didn't clarify which ones were illegal? Even when they send you to jail, they won't tell you exactly what is and isn't illegal to say!
How many times do I have to reference the Equalities Act 2010 before you actually bother to read it?
> Meanwhile newspapers and academics and employers can disparage and discriminate against whites as much as they want, and it's never "hate"
It's not my fault you don't know what the definition of "whiteness" actually is. I appreciate its not a useful choice of word to use in the modern era, but you need to appreciate it was coined in the 1920s. I trust I don't need to explain to you how that world looked. That a segregated underclass might choose language to describe their oppression that doesn't take into account the feelings of their oppression.
However I do believe that children today use these concepts in a more malicious fashion. The most ugly of which is misunderstanding the sociological idea that "racism without power isn't relevant" and failing to understand it ONLY applies to structural racism and not interpersonal racism. But hey, racist ideas are tempting to everyone I guess, which only goes to show how alike we all actually are.
> I'm not sure why you included this one.
Cos its bullshit and shows people can't count I guess. Also I love how "plurality" is an alien concept that is lost on everyone that talks like that.
> I don't think any of them should be banned
Well tough shit, they are banned because this is a European country and we're not as soft as the yanks are on this, we thankfully still have dread for the spectre of Nazism.
> And the men who fought in WW2 for the Allies were pro-segregation and against interracial marriage, maybe you should have talked to your grandparents instead of getting your history from Hollywood:
Hollywood, do you realise I'm British? Here's[0] the relevant part of history that you clearly have no understanding of. Its an informational film shown to American soldiers when they came over to the UK to prepare for Normandy. I've timestamped the relevant section for you.
There's also the "Battle of Bamber Bridge"[1] which shows it play out in real life. There was a stark difference between the US and the UK at that time around the subject of segregation that you are entirely blind to.
What's laughable about Americans is that they're weird about race. Like _really_ weird and they have zero self awareness about it. Nazism is a scourge and if you understood European history and its post war cultural context you'd appreciate that the lessons we took from the war are very different from the ones you've seemed to fixate upon.
Freedom is about not being killed because you're different, not about being free to harass and abuse minority groups.
> Don't whitewash this shit. You know full well what we're talking about is specifically going to a place that you know you're not allowed to be in, doing a protest you're not allowed to do. Playing with the line is still taking the piss and the UK believe in the spirit of the law to avoid all this mucking about with the specification. Otherwise I can block traffic all day and make up some bullshit excuse as to how I'm somehow innocent. These are feeble excuses that Palestine in Action would be proud of.
I don't think you know what happened. At least one case was a person standing quietly outside on a public sidewalk while not impeding traffic or people walking.
At best you can say it is loitering.
Quarrelsome 3 hours ago [-]
within the range of an abortion clinic. The UK has the spirit of the law. We don't tolerate people dicking about with the definition.
Isabel Vaughan-Spruce is the campaign director of 40 Days for Life Birmingham, which organises prayer vigils near abortion clinics, and a leader of March for Life UK.
She wasn't just "standing and praying". There's significant context.
ImJamal 3 hours ago [-]
First, she was not, at the time of arrest, holding a prayer vigil. She was by herself.
Second, if it was a legitimate arrest why was she was paid out by the government for a settlement?
Also, this has happened to multiple people who haven't organized prayer vigils in the past, not that it would matter if they had.
Quarrelsome 2 hours ago [-]
Isabel Vaughan-Spruce is an anti-abortion campaigner who is playing with the line that intends to prohibit what she does. This is theatre, its artificial news. Its someone intentionally going out into the world to play victim. Focusing on people like this is not a healthy way to understand the world.
DON'T PROTEST ABORTION NEAR OR OUTSIDE ABORTION CLINICS. Its that simple. If you're an anti-abortion campaigner, don't do your shit near abortion clinics.
I think the prosecution failed as it transpired the clinic had actually closed. Which demonstrates the issue. She was trying to get arrested so it didn't even matter that the clinic was operational.
ImJamal 1 hours ago [-]
You are only focusing on one person not the others because you think it is the strongest case. Second, you support thought crimes and I am opposed to them. She was not yelling or holding a sign. Literally just thinking. That is the very definition of a thought crime.
We have such a fundamental difference of an opinion on the thought crime issue that focusing on this specific case isn't going to go anywhere so continuing this conversation is just going to be a waste.
I hope your thoughts don't get you arrested.
Quarrelsome 45 minutes ago [-]
She was literally campaigning against abortion near an abortion clinic which she knows is against the law. Criminals who have self-respect don't fucking live-stream their crimes and then act like a victim when they get arrested.
Its not a thought crime, its a crime crime.
weatherlite 4 hours ago [-]
> Hate speech and incitement to racial/religious hatred or violence are crimes here
Unless it's hate speech against "Zionists" and/or Jews , then it's tolerated, often celebrated. Not all hate speech is created equal.
Quarrelsome 3 hours ago [-]
Shallow dredge of people arrested for anti-semitism in the UK:
* 19 May 2026 - John Haynes - Arrested after incidents of threatening behaviour; convicted of racially aggravated harassment involving antisemitic abuse and threats.
* 9 May 2026 - Dylan Ossei - Arrested after shouting threats at Jewish people in Enfield and assaulting a man; pleaded guilty to aggravated assault, fear of violence, and harassment.
* 7 May 2026 - Adam Bedoui - Arrested after filming and verbally abusing a Jewish man in Hackney for social media; pleaded guilty.
* 7 May 2026 - Abdelkader Bousloub - Arrested in the same Hackney incident; pleaded guilty to a religiously aggravated public order offence.
* 6 May 2026 - Wayne Kelly - Arrested after shouting antisemitic abuse and threats at Jewish men walking to a synagogue in Salford; pleaded guilty.
* 1 May 2026 - Unnamed 57-year-old man - Arrested on suspicion of threatening a Jewish man while using racially offensive language in London; police reported he was released on bail.
* 23 April 2026 - Shafiq Rahman - Arrested after shouting antisemitic abuse and threatening a Jewish man in Slough; pleaded guilty to offences involving words, assault, and damage.
* 5 April 2026 - Munir Saleh - Arrested after reports of shouting antisemitic abuse and spitting at people in London; charged with aggravated threatening behaviour and assault offences.
* 24 March 2026 - Jean Charles Tavius - Arrested after reports of shouting antisemitic abuse and throwing a rock at a moving car; charged with threatening behaviour and damage offences.
* By 23 December 2025 - Unnamed 28-year-old woman - Arrested on suspicion of an aggravated public order offence over alleged antisemitic comments in a Manchester protest speech. The police announcement did not report a conviction.
* 3 October 2025 - Aiden Stanley - Arrested over a social media post about Jewish people following the Manchester synagogue attack; pleaded guilty to sending a grossly offensive message.
* September 2025 - Thomas Webster - Arrested over social media posts that included antisemitic messages; pleaded guilty to offences involving material intended to stir up hatred.
* July 2024 - Lee Cole - Arrested after investigators found antisemitic and other hateful social media posts; pleaded guilty to inciting racial hatred offences.
* 3 April 2024 - Damion Bennett - Arrested over antisemitic videos posted on Gab; pleaded guilty to distributing recordings intended to stir up racial hatred.
* March 2024 - Zakir Hussain - Arrested after police linked him to an X account posting antisemitic comments and support for proscribed groups; pleaded guilty to public order and terrorism offences.
* November 2023 - Elliot Jackson - Arrested following reports of antisemitic social media messages; pleaded guilty to malicious communications.
* February 2023 - Robert Taylor - Arrested following an investigation involving verbal abuse of Jewish people, antisemitic material, and other conduct; pleaded guilty to public order and terrorism offences.
* February 2022 - Jaden Milne - Arrested over a conference speech containing antisemitic and other hateful material; pleaded guilty to public order and aggravated behaviour offences.
* 12 October 2021 - Oliver Riley - Arrested after posting extremist material, including antisemitic content, online; later admitted communications and terrorism offences.
> Not all hate speech is created equal.
This victim cosplay is rancid btw. It's painfully transparent. It's ugly to listen to two awful sides claiming the other is the _real_ problem and how their side is so victimised. These are the mannerisms of teenagers in social care. Please develop some level of responsibility and self-respect.
reading fox news to understand the uk is not normal at all. You should seek help or better sources than "entertainment news".
nullbio 2 hours ago [-]
You're too dumb to understand how media works in the year 2026, and I'm the one who needs to seek help. Hilarious. Fox News didn't break this story bud, the entire internet reshared it from UK sources.
Please don't lock me up for saying you're dumb by the way. I know that's probably a serious hate crime in your eyes.
Quarrelsome 41 minutes ago [-]
Yeah I know the source. Its the Torygraph. Once a mighty broadsheet but these days they print any old shit to get those boomer clicks and make them all upset. Tell them the world is falling apart to soften the blow of impending death. You're treating hospice fare as actual news you spanner.
I've been extremely invested in the British press since around 1992, so this experience of having someone not-British with seemingly limited understanding of its press telling me "you're too dumb" when discussing it, is quite amusing.
I have long considered what people think is "intelligence" is simply an appreciation for understanding how wrong they might be about their first impressions and a willingness to check themselves. This conversation is quite the re-enforcement of this idea. The strength of your conviction is inversely proportional to your level of knowledge on this matter.
devilsdata 1 hours ago [-]
Sorry, but if the information exists elsewhere, why not find a better news source? Fox News, and any company derived from Newscorp/News Limited are bad enough that I would say more than half of their articles are entirely false.
Find the same article on AP news, or Reuters or something.
fragilerock 8 hours ago [-]
> they already arrest over 30 people a day for speech that offends the prevailing political orthodoxy.
This is completely false and comes from a commonly misrepresented statistic; '30 arrests a day' is plainly the arrests made under section 127 of the Communications Act 2003 and section 1 of the Malicious Communications Act 1988 which includes things like online stalking and harassment. I hope you're just mistaken and not willfully implying that those issues are merely offensive to the prevailing political orthodoxy.
468854259853 2 hours ago [-]
How convenient for the terrorist regime in the UK that wrongthink falls under Malicious Communications.
gib444 7 hours ago [-]
You can't argue with data that doesn't exist, either. The arrests are not broken down, so nobody really knows. Both sides can argue their opinion
You can argue it's highly improbable that all arrests are over 'hurty words online', definitely – but anyone claiming zero arrests seems improbable too.
I do also feel it's quite convenient that the lack of breakdown allows people to clap back with accusations of encouraging stalking and harassment.
fragilerock 6 hours ago [-]
No one is encouraging you to argue with data that doesn't exist and no one is claiming that no arrests are being made over political speech online. I don't disagree with your third paragraph but it seems clear to me that my original statement stands and it's quite suspicious that you responded it to with these strawmen.
gib444 3 hours ago [-]
> no one is claiming that no arrests are being made over political speech online
Just very heavily implying it, thinking they're being clever
fragilerock 2 hours ago [-]
Nothing I said implied that. I just pointed out that the original claim was false, it's utterly moronic and devoid of nuance for you to think that by doing so I'm implying that the opposite of the claim is true.
3 hours ago [-]
crimsoneer 6 hours ago [-]
If they'd wanted the data, they could have submitted an FOI and asked for it, but the journalists far preferred to just run "30 people a day arrested for hurty words" rather than "this is quite complicated but potentially problematic and we should dig into it"
dboreham 4 hours ago [-]
Yes but anyone who posts something about "loads of innocent people arrested for just voicing their opinion (man)" is implicitly disingenuous. I say that because the first time I heard someone say this (a friend who lives in the UK no less) I thought "that doesn't seem right" and so did a few minutes of Google searching. And of course it isn't right. People have been arrested for being threatening a.holes which seems perfectly fine. For comparison here in the middle of the US we have a lady in town who liked to send death threats (via mail) to the town manager, based on his chosen policies for street crossings, or something. Well she was arrested and put in jail for a while. She said she really didn't mean it, it was all a joke. Still in jail.
foldr 7 hours ago [-]
Well, the breakdowns are according to the offences the arrests come under. The police can't really release official figures for "arrests that would seen unjustifiable to libertarian-leaning HN readers", or "arrests for things that would not be a crime in the US".
sdcfgy 6 hours ago [-]
I think this is mostly being misrepresented.
There is speech and there are consequences for speech.
If I incite or state that I am going to commit violence, stalking, rape or murder, should I face consequences? Yes. That's what is happening.
There are outlying cases which will be used to discredit this perspective but reality is there are a hell of a lot of very not nice people out there making active threats and inciting hatred and violence.
And everyone gets their day in court.
gadders 7 hours ago [-]
You can get arrested for making a joke that might offend someone in a private whatsapp group. Doesn't even have to be political.
Reddit often contains completely made up but believeable bullshit, so I wouldn't cite anything you see there. Every single post or comment could be a creative writing exercise to gain karma or sow discord.
However, if you want hard evidence what that post was claiming, I can give you a real citation from 2018:
> A house linked to an "offensive" video showing a model of Grenfell Tower being burned on a bonfire has been searched by police. Six men [...] were arrested on suspicion of a public order offence and have been released under investigation. A video shared on social media shows a cardboard model of the tower being set alight by a laughing crowd.
> Basically, yes. [...] if you make offensive comments in your home and they are recorded and posted online, it might be possible that you could be prosecuted.
amiga386 2 hours ago [-]
And in case you wondered what happened next, one of the six men charged went on to be tried in 2019, was found not guilty, and was acquitted.
- people who saw the video and were offended by it are happy "something was done"
- the CPS is happy because they gott'im
- the courts are happy because they got paid double
- the guy accused of offending people is happy this multi-year ordeal where the CPS won't stop hounding him until he confesses his guilt is finally over
- MPs are happy they didn't need to change any laws no matter how unreasonable they were
All good, right?
Are we also going to spend years prosecuting someone who mockingly reenacts the sinking of the Titanic? Or is that somehow water under the bridge?
someonebaggy 6 hours ago [-]
Since Reddit is now login-walled, can you share what it says?
gadders 6 hours ago [-]
Does this work?
----
Police have arrested and questioned 3 of my mates from our private WhatsApp group chat. They're asking to speak to me too, but I'm working abroad.
They've all been arrested and had interviews under s127 of the Communications Act.
There's 4 of us in a group chat on WhatsApp where we chat and also make some edgy jokes and stuff. We're two white, an Indian and a black guy who studied at uni together.
All three of them have been arrested and interviewed today. I don't know anyrhing more than this. This info comes from their gf and fiance.
I'm working abroad but I have received a WhatsApp message and attempted call from a UK officer who identified himself wanting to speak to me about an ongoing enquiry into a reported issue.
My mate's fiance says it was reported by another guy's ex who he dumped 4 weeks ago. I'm inclined to believe that as the officer's message said he was acting on a report.
The thing is, we shared a lot of edgy jokes beteen us - but it was literally just the 4 of us in a private fucking chat. Some of the jokes we made were racisr, but they were all banter directed at each other. Others were just taking the piss out of the major news events like saying "Who needs people flying planes when our own shitty buildings just burn themselves down?" about Grenfell.
It's crass, but it's literally just us talking shit in private. These messages arent public or anything.
I can't get through to any of the guys. Is this something the police are actually going to try and prosecute?!
At this point should I just not come home? I'm dual Austrian-British and Austria doesn't extradite to the UK.
PorciiVorbesc 4 hours ago [-]
> I'm dual Austrian-British
How so? Since Austria doesn't (typically) allow dual citizenship.
> Austria doesn't extradite to the UK.
With what guarantee? In 2013 Austria forced the landing of the plane of the Bolivian president on orders from the US because they had intelligence Snowden might be on board.
So if you think Austria will hesitate to ship your ass to the UK if you piss off the wrong elites, just because there's no official bi-lateral extradition agreement, you're kidding yourself. If needed, they'll just make up a spin story that you're some major child molester or something, to justify their actions in the media and reassure the public on why the violation of your rights was justified and they'll never ever do it again to anyone else as long as they behave, pinky promise wink-wink. In short, the people with guns can break the rules at will with little to no accountability.
makingstuffs 6 hours ago [-]
Anyone old enough to remember the London riots should remember the fact that the acting government issued a D notice to all broadcasters, preventing them from reporting the issue.
This is part of what started the death of BBM and proliferation of news via social media. You’d go on Twitter and see all the reports or riots and burning buildings then go to the BBC and… nothing.
All of this is to say that successive British governments, over a span of decades, have been actively destroying freedom of speech and a right to privacy for its citizens.
With AI and the rise of populism combined with the absolute decimation of the average person’s attention span it is going to get a lot worse.
sdcfgy 6 hours ago [-]
This is wrong. The BBC were reporting on it in detail both online and on TV news. I know this because I was actually working on contract for them at the time.
What we have is a lot of people changing the narrative since to discredit the BBC and divide everyone further.
makingstuffs 5 hours ago [-]
The BBC started reporting after the riots were in full swing and social media was already awash with information.
The point at which the BBC started reporting was the same as all other major news outlets: after the point that they just looked daft for not reporting it.
I know this as my videos of the riots took my little blog from 50 - 100 views a day to thousands per minute…
Quarrelsome 6 hours ago [-]
Mark Duggan was a gangster, so people trying to frame it as some sort of execution seemed to not understand that the police were seemingly doing their job. Chris Kaba's death also resulted in protests and demonstrations despite the evidence[0].
I’d say it is a very low quality article. There is very little detail about what the offending speech actually includes. For example:
> The wife of a conservative politician was sentenced to 31 months in prison for what police said was an unacceptable post.
What did she say? The article does not elucidate.
Inciting violence for example is not legal. I believe spaces around abortion clinics are also to be free from demonstrations. US free speech absolutists seem to vehemently disagree until you say something unkind about Charlie Kirk or ICE.
The low point might be quoting Elon Musk. This is true in any context, but in particular here. The scandal is real, but none of it is about people being arrested for non-politically-correct speech.
There’s plenty of otherwise real stuff to poke the UK about.
ljf 8 hours ago [-]
I don't have time to dig up her post - but she was calling on people to set fire to hotels housing asylum seekers - she had around 10,000 followers, and her post was read 300,000 times: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5yl7p4l11po
Quarrelsome 6 hours ago [-]
oh and in court she rested her entire defence on the tragic death of one of her children a decade prior. However her device had been confiscated and her WhatsApp messages to a friend included "if I end up in court I'll play the mental health card".
ctjr 7 hours ago [-]
I am disappointed in most reporting on this case. I wish they would include what she actually said. Here is the full tweet:
> Mass deportation now, set fire to all the fucking hotels full of the
bastards for all I care, while you’re at it take the treacherous government
and politicians with them. I feel physically sick knowing what these
families will now have to endure. If that makes me racist so be it
31 months for that is ridiculously low, especially with the rising prevalence of stochastic terrorism.
dgroshev 7 hours ago [-]
To add to this, she only served 40% of her sentence before being released.
AlexandrB 6 hours ago [-]
"Stochastic terrorism" accusations and charges only seem to flow in one direction.
> “Kill those motherfuckers. Let the streets soak in their red, capitalist blood, dude.” - Hasan Piker on landlords
ozlikethewizard 6 hours ago [-]
That Hasan guy is American right? Unsurprisingly British laws need not apply.
I don't think that statement would go down too well here, but even then context is very important for incitement to violence. Considering people were and did set fire to hotels I think it was worthwhile investigating.
AlexandrB 4 hours ago [-]
> context
A guy Hasan didn't like got shot in the neck during a public debate. A pair of Jewish embassy workers were gunned down while walking to a museum. A health insurance company CEO was shot outside of a hotel. I could go on.
In the UK there was an attempted murder when someone attacked a protestor burning a Koran, but luckily the UK authorities convicted the victim of the attack with "asking for it"[1] so justice was served.
UK abortion clinic laws go a lot further than banning demonstrations.
1. Holding up a sign offering help to any women being coerced into an abortion is illegal.
2. Standing silently on the road near one can be illegal.
3. parking a car with a bumper sticker near one can be illegal.
The whole paragraph about Musk and rape gangs is nonsense, of course. The biggest rape gang ever convicted in the UK was entirely white. Musk and his ilk only care about rape when the rapists are not white. On average immigrants are slightly less likely to commit sexual assaults (obviously averaging across many different groups).
> What did she say? The article does not elucidate.
She called for hotels housing asylum seekers to be burned. I think she is a nasty racist but I also think the sentence was excessive and I am not convinced it was a serious incitement to violence (and that was not what she was convicted of).
> US free speech absolutists seem to vehemently disagree until you say something unkind about Charlie Kirk or ICE.
Not American, and I entirely support the right of anyone to make unkind comments about anyone else. You are right that many people apply different standards to their own side, but right wing Americans are are from alone in that.
Quarrelsome 6 hours ago [-]
I also think it was excessive but the judges sentencing remarks[0] add some context. The primary issue is that the categorisation of the offence was high, but she could have done a better job of showing remorse. She didn't clock that they'd be able to read her WhatsApp messages.
Musk and his ilk care about dog whistle topics that can be used to trigger people into supporting them.
The emphasis on 'rape gangs', 'immigrants' and 'asylum seekers' isn't just objectively untrue, it's cynically manipulative. It's fundamentally a toxic and calculated form of marketing and branding.
And also a cynical distraction from - for example - the Epstein story and Musk's appearances in it.
There was a lot of this around Brexit. Many supporters voted to 'stop them coming over here'.
The government then ramped up immigration - a lot. For some reason the press failed to report this.
someonebaggy 6 hours ago [-]
I would have thought immigration was mainly a factor of the immigrants, not the government. Do people not support free movement? In China you're assigned to a city or rural zone and you can't leave that area.
gadders 7 hours ago [-]
>>The whole paragraph about Musk and rape gangs is nonsense, of course. The biggest rape gang ever convicted in the UK was entirely white. Musk and his ilk only care about rape when the rapists are not white.
They only care when the rapists are coming from outside the UK, and being protected by the authorities.
>>On average immigrants are slightly less likely to commit sexual assaults (obviously averaging across many different groups).
I think that is called picking your sample carefully. No-one is worried about EG the Chinese or the French.
IslandRebel 7 hours ago [-]
The British Government has be consistently violating people's rights for decades and probably well before that.
Recently I saw a clip on GB News where one of their analyst said that anyone that opposes a war and/or conscription with Russia will need to put in prison. The show host, Jacob Rees Mogg and Lord Redwood saw nothing wrong with the statements.
None of these people have been in the armed forces and are too old to be called up for conscription.
RobotToaster 6 hours ago [-]
> and probably well before that.
319 years, 4 months, 3 weeks, 2 days to be exact.
IslandRebel 5 hours ago [-]
Why would I or anyone else care about the exact duration? It doesn't add anything.
Generally this applies to all governments anyway. The British state is just the most blatant at it currently, as they are losing control.
maxehmookau 8 hours ago [-]
> The wife of a conservative politician was sentenced to 31 months in prison for what police said was an unacceptable post.
Pretty sure she called for the murder, by arson, of asylum seekers although the article missed that bit out.
crimsoneer 7 hours ago [-]
Sigh, this is an absolute bullshit figure and people need to stop parroting it - it's 30 arrests under the mal comms act which might include for example, phoning your ex girfriend to say you're coming to stab her. Or phoning in a bomb threat via telephone. Or any number of pretty terrible things it's perfectly reasonable to get nicked for. Or posting on Facebook telling everyone we should set the local migrant hotel on fire. These are not political prisoners.
Oh, it doesn't say what any of them were saying, except for the abortion clinic protestor who was violating a separate law against protesting abortion clinics. I wonder why it doesn't want to say any of the others.
timhh 6 hours ago [-]
Yeah come on, that figure has been widely debunked.
This is a deeply deranged opinion piece. The author ties himself into knots to conflate a tiny number of high profile instances involving social media posts with harassment and other negative behavior involving electronic communication.
cjrp 8 hours ago [-]
How many of those 30 are unarguably "bad" posts though? Threats of violence and so forth.
erkt 8 hours ago [-]
250 years ago some people made some bad posts about throwing some tea into the harbor. Calling for revolution isn't a bad post.
_verandaguy 6 hours ago [-]
This comment is remarkable in its lack of nuance. There's a huge spectrum of, let's call it, aggressive speech, ranging from trying to organize against an oppressive figure or class, to just punching down against people and groups who have either done nothing to the author of that speech which warrants an aggressive response, or where the target of that speech is already a victim.
My opinion is that free-speech absolutism is a policy position that causes much more harm than good, and which erodes social cohesion. There should be perpetual debate about where we as a society accept where the line is between speech which is allowed and that which is disallowed.
And to wit, on the tea party analogy: how's that working for the US now?
monkey_monkey 8 hours ago [-]
Big fucking difference between saying you want to throw some tea into a harbor vs inciting that hotels containing asylum seekers should be burnt down.
enedil 8 hours ago [-]
That's charitable to say that nobody was saying anything except for "let's drown that tea".
monkey_monkey 7 hours ago [-]
Weird that you think it was legal for people to say "kill the king" back then.
UpsideDownRide 7 hours ago [-]
Diffrence being state did not have control to stop disgruntled people from organizing. And it might be that preventing such formations is actually detrimental long run.
someonebaggy 6 hours ago [-]
The state did everything they could to prevent it back then, just as they do right now.
iamnothere 3 hours ago [-]
Using this line of argumentation, you might as well start enslaving (sorry, “impressing”) people into your navy again.
cucumber3732842 6 hours ago [-]
Everything they could was a lot less back before the fruits of industrial productivity allowed people to have their basic needs met while giving a huge fraction of their surplus to the state to do what it pleases with.
Catloafdev 7 hours ago [-]
Buddy you aren't addressing the comments that are replying to you.
You gotta stay on-topic. You keep coming up with random things to compare to that make no sense to anybody but you. Who said it was legal to say "kill the king"?
21 minutes ago [-]
djha-skin 7 hours ago [-]
I mean, in terms of property damage, the Boston Tea Party was a pretty big deal. Probably in arson territory in today's dollars.
wooger 8 hours ago [-]
I'd argue that nothing is "inarguable"
StrLght 8 hours ago [-]
And I'd argue that human dignity shall be inviolable
ThrowawayTestr 7 hours ago [-]
Define dignity
liveoneggs 7 hours ago [-]
If 27/30 meet the bar for "bad" is that an acceptable level of policing speech? 19/30?
PowerElectronix 7 hours ago [-]
I dislike harassing, threats, hate speech and everything wrong that people yell to other people.
But I dislike even more that we decide that the solution to it is to pass laws prohibiting speech, and even more that the ones in charge of passing those laws are very incentivised to prohibiting criticism to themselves or their policies or their ideologies.
someonebaggy 6 hours ago [-]
Why is speech a specific, precise red line? Yelling "fire" in a crowded theatre (and I'm aware that the case which coined this phrase was completely stupid, but the phrase itself stands) should probably not be legal, even though it is speech.
iamnothere 3 hours ago [-]
Why not? If shouting “fire” causes no harm, what’s the issue? And if it causes harm, isn’t that adequately served by civil lawsuits? Not everything on earth needs to be a criminal matter.
testfrequency 8 hours ago [-]
The chronically online anti-uk folks like to turn a blind eye to anything that’s justifiable for matter of principal.
It’s why the US has such a problem with gun control and laws.
I could argue everyone should have guns, and it’s just bad people, right?
WmWsjA6B29B4nfk 8 hours ago [-]
Right. Switzerland has 100x guns per capita than UK and 2x less intentional homicides than UK.
testfrequency 7 hours ago [-]
Why are we comparing Switzerland? Do you want to try again with the United States?
Let me give it a go; Switzerland has higher gun homicides than the UK.
nullbio 7 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
GJim 7 hours ago [-]
> Considering they arrest people for saying "there are only two genders"
Citation please.
(EDIT: Citation of an arrest just for saying that, not an arrest for incitement.)
tredre3 7 hours ago [-]
He's clearly quoting the Graham Linehan case where a group of police officers arrested him for his tweets that did include the only-two-gender thing. However, as you suspected, that's not all he said. Linehan suggested in another tweet that people should punch transwomen in the face if they refuse to leave the female bathroom.
dspillett 7 hours ago [-]
It was the balls:
If a trans-identified male is in a female-only space,
he is committing a violent, abusive act. Make a scene,
call the cops and if all else fails, punch him in the
balls.
By inference he thinks that if someone makes you feel uncomfortable, by doing nothing illegal nor immoral (in the mind of a right-thinking person), punching their genitalia is acceptable. If I ever meet him I think I might feel quite uncomfortable, which would be unfortunate.
nullbio 6 hours ago [-]
I'm not actually. How did you get "arrested for tweets" from my post where I said it was a video of a 20-something year old having a debate with someone at a pub?
I'll take that as confirmation that it happens all the time though - since this was evidently not an isolated case, as you have pointed out.
failbuffer 3 hours ago [-]
Unpopular opinion: your right to free speech includes the right to advocate for violence, so long as it's not imminent (as in inciting a riot).
That includes your right to support Hamas or Israel, your right to support abortion, your right to support defensive gun use, your right... well actually your right to support a lot of things given how readily innocuous things are described by opponents as "violence" or "assault".
Fortunately in the U.S. this is recognized under Brandenburg v. Ohio.
Quarrelsome 5 hours ago [-]
> Considering they arrest people for saying "there are only two genders"
Can we please stop using a country you clearly have limited understanding of, as a prop in your morality play for your own activism?
Bear in mind that these "takes" are often sensationalised with useful context removed in order to better sell the message to yank markets.
If you're gonna chat shit about my nation, please afford it some level of respect in doing some research of conflicting views instead of parroting whatever twaddle the demagogue du jour is bleating.
nullbio 4 hours ago [-]
I can't help it if facts about your country offend you. Maybe if you cry some more, you'll feel better. What I said is no secret, there are thousands of videos of police in the UK arresting people for saying the most trivial benign things. Perhaps that is what you should have issue with, not the people who mention it in passing.
> please afford it some level of respect in doing some research of conflicting views
There are no "conflicting views" to research. You're just upset that reality doesn't align with your dogma.
Quarrelsome 3 hours ago [-]
You said:
> Considering they arrest people for saying "there are only two genders"
I invite you to come try that out. You'll be fine unless you're a complete penis about it. What you should probably clock is that Graham Linehan doxxes and harasses people online with his followers brigading. If you recall the bail conditions when he got arrested was that he had to stop posting on twitter for its duration. THAT'S the headline issue, he's a publisher with a big audience. He's not just saying it at the back of a pub, and he's one of those obsessives that posts about it all the time.
Do you see the difference between what you said and what he gets in trouble for? Reducing it to just saying "there are only two genders" is taking harassment, brigading and doxxing and putting it in a nice frock so you can pretend its a victim.
I've lived in my country for decades and have added nuance to this subject. What gives you the confidence that makes you think you're better informed about my nation that I am?
nullbio 3 hours ago [-]
The fact that you're quite clearly either ill-informed, or blinded by your own biases. I'm not sure why you keep mentioning this Graham person when I had never mentioned them. Seems like you're trying to reframe using a cherry-picked example.
Do you think someone should be arrested for sharing a meme that says f** Hamas? Or did you not know about this?
It's common knowledge that the UK is arresting people on the daily for harmless things that no one actually cares about. Should someone go to jail for saying "fuck serial killers"? Is that a hate crime too?
Quarrelsome 3 hours ago [-]
> Do you think someone should be arrested for sharing a meme that says f* Hamas?
If you had an idea about our laws you'd realise that's not the problematic part. The issue is under the Equalities Act 2010 religion and ethnicity are protected characteristics. So its the "fuck Islam" and "fuck off to a Muslim country..." that is problematic here.
FYI using Fox News to try to understand the UK is like trying to run air traffic control with a Fischer-Price chatter telephone. Stating that I am ill-informed or blinded by bias when citing a yank source (who by their own definition are "entertainment news") as opposed to a serious broadcaster from the UK is quite the look.
nullbio 3 hours ago [-]
You didn't answer the question.
Do you not know how media works in the 21st century? They're republishing from UK sources. It was just the first hit on the SERPs because they have better SEO. Go find the original sources if you really want to. The point is that your country is putting people in prison for the dumbest reasons, and you apparently see no issue with it.
Quarrelsome 2 hours ago [-]
> You didn't answer the question.
Maybe don't use a source from the 1960s then. Victim cosplay is gross, so its no surprise I don't respond to it. Find me a contemporary source if you want to compare apples to apples. You want me to respond with some mostly irrelevant reference to ancient Greece or something? Cleon probably has a couple of tangential quotes we could explore.
Yeah I know the source. Its the Torygraph. Once a mighty broadsheet but these days they print any old shit to get those boomer clicks and make them all upset. Tell them the world is falling apart to soften the blow of impending death. You're treating hospice fare as actual news you spanner.
Anybody that is worth listening to doesn't focus on the Hamas part like that source does. They focus on the parts that violate the Equalities Act 2010 because they know what they're talking about.
DavidNielsen 7 hours ago [-]
On TERF island, I seriously doubt that.
DiogenesKynikos 8 hours ago [-]
I don't know, but the UK has criminalized expressions of support for Palestine Action.
They're dragging grannies off to prison just for holding up signs, and literally accusing them of supporting terrorism.
4ndrewl 7 hours ago [-]
Well they proscribed PA, and showing support for a proscribed organisation _is_ a crime.
NetMageSCW 7 hours ago [-]
But should that be possible?
roryirvine 3 hours ago [-]
Many (perhaps even most) countries ban public acts of support for what they consider to be terrorist organisations.
For example, the USA maintains a list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations, and penalities for providing support to those organisations are rather more severe than the in the UK.
Whether or not Palestine Action should be proscribed is a different matter - their most serious action to date has been simply damaging military aircraft. Personally, I'd tend to say that proscription is too harsh a response for property damage with no violence against a person.
I guess in the US that anyone doing something similar would simply have been killed, rather than their organisation being banned. That's not exactly great either!
spr-alex 3 hours ago [-]
"Withdrawing ADP in the UK did not affect the 14 iCloud categories that were already end-to-end encrypted by default, including iCloud Keychain and Health. ADP increases the total from 14 to 23 categories. For UK users without ADP, the additional categories (iCloud Backup, Photos, Notes, iCloud Drive and so on) revert to Standard Data Protection. ↩
"
Unfortunately this first phrase is not strictly true in the sense that UK customers have their e2ee secrets exposed under common use cases, without requiring a passcode. My copresenter and I published some research at DEF CON 34 this year showing how the e2ee data is particularly vulnerable when ADP is off. Overall, people that do not work with extraction capabilities are currently over-estimating the strength of apple's e2ee and encryption in general. The platform security whitepaper documentation is insufficient on transparency and there are a number of best practices Apple is not following to better meet the e2ee claims they currently advertise.
palmotea 7 hours ago [-]
> Faced with a legal order that would have required it to change the security architecture on which ADP depended, Apple found a third option: stop offering the feature that made this dilemma exist in the first place. It reverted affected UK iCloud data to Standard Data Protection, where Apple does hold the keys and can respond to lawful legal procress (except the baseline categories that stay end-to-end encrypted either way). This satisfied the underlying legal requirement without ever building a ‘backdoor’.
Maybe Apple should withdraw all encryption support from all UK government accounts? The Prime Minister can use a Huawei or some chunky thing from a military contractor.
EmbarrassedHelp 1 hours ago [-]
The UK is currently demanding that Apple install mandatory OS level client side real time scanning malware on every device, bypassing all security and encryption to monitor everything. Its an insanely evil and completely unacceptable demand.
Apple should withdraw from the UK until the UK government learns to respect encryption and privacy.
y-curious 4 hours ago [-]
Well in the article they explicitly said they can’t turn off ADP by design, so no luck. But I’m all for making the politicians suffer the consequences of their own decisions.
Obscurity4340 5 hours ago [-]
How are they allowed to even offer e2ee Keychain/iCloud Passwords for example? Isnt that subject to lawful access too?
spr-alex 28 minutes ago [-]
That is exactly the question. I took a look and we presented some of our findings at DEF CON 34. There are paths to decrypting e2ee secrets without the passcode, some of these paths are considered vulnerabilities and have received patches (CVE-2026-28864).
0cf8612b2e1e 4 hours ago [-]
Exactly my question as well.
Especially since big tech is steaming ahead to mandating passkeys that only they are allowed to control/backup. Not long until all governments could intercept your passwords to all services.
Hasz 7 hours ago [-]
A non-trivial reason I bought a fairly closed device (macbook) was that Tim Cook, at least publicly, told the FBI to get bent when asked to create a backdoor. Exactly what I want to see, a fight in court.
I would hope to see Apple pull out of the UK market over this, and certainly to stop selling Apple devices to the UK government and to remove the UK government entities from Apple services.
sdcfgy 6 hours ago [-]
I love this. Apple aren't going to pull out of a market. They aren't pulling out of China for example.
Hasz 6 hours ago [-]
oh, I know, but I wish they would. You can see what this looks like when someone like CMMG refuses to sell to specific law enforcement agencies based on local law.
selicos 5 hours ago [-]
Apple of yesteryear is not the Apple of today.
Think different.
Don't be Evil.
Works better. Plays better
Where did that all go? Same place as the Christmas bonus and empathy above middle management.
esskay 3 hours ago [-]
They dont really need to pull out, instead on every single piece of marketing material where they talk about anything remotely close to things affected by this they mention that unfortunately they cant give it to UK users due to the governments desire to erode privacy protection, and really hammer home how bad it is.
ghostly_s 7 hours ago [-]
This happened 18 months ago, you can stop hoping.
codedokode 9 hours ago [-]
Interesting, the government can demand creating a backdoor and doesn't let anyone tell about it. Basically, outlawing E2EE.
someonebaggy 6 hours ago [-]
I think it's like the EU rules against Monero: the thing itself isn't illegal, but you're not allowed to make a business around it.
pirates 9 hours ago [-]
If Bill left the UK temporarily would the ability to turn on ADP come back? Or is a device from the UK that’s not able to enroll somehow prevented forever? Not saying that this makes it OK, just curious
jxckstr 9 hours ago [-]
You can switch your Apple ID's region to another country, enable ADP then revert your account's region back to the United Kingdom. You've got to leave Family Sharing first and may also need to adjust/cancel subscriptions - I don't think it's totally straightforward.
ruszki 8 hours ago [-]
I changed countries a few months ago. It took me about two months with all the roadblocks, while I already had government issued proofs from both countries about the change and new address.
selicos 5 hours ago [-]
Why did it take 2 months and proofs to change your country on a private platform? Could you have created a new account and avoided that headache?
ruszki 2 hours ago [-]
With that, I would have the headache to transfer my files, apps, subscriptions, bought stuff, and other data. It was still way less painful, and less waste of my time, because that 2 months obviously wasn't an active waiting, but for example the mentioned waiting for my subscription to be ended after cancellation, or waiting for my new bank card. It was mainly just annoying that after every step there was more waiting, because they weren't clear upfront what they exactly needed, for example which subscriptions I needed to cancel.
netsharc 9 hours ago [-]
What a crazy answer you've written. In the sense of: it's wild that the procedure is like that.
It's almost as wild as when during the pandemic "lockdown", planes had to take off, burn tonnes of fuel and land empty some minutes later at the same airport, because there's some fucking law about landing spots and how they'd be lost if that bullshit wasn't done.
ljf 7 hours ago [-]
Off topic - but I am not sure that is true in the UK/EU - did it happen elsewhere in the world?:
Before the COVID restrictions, airlines were required to use their allotted spots at least 80% of the time.[6] During the pandemic, the European Commission temporarily suspended Europe's airport slot rule for a short period.[citation needed] Due to travel restrictions, many flights were cancelled or had limited capacity, which made it difficult for airlines to fulfill all the requirements for possessing an airport slot. The suspension of the slot rule was reinstated in October 2021. After the slot rule was reinstated, the rule only required European airlines to use 75% of their flight slots for the winter season.
AFAIK reverting region to UK wont work. First of all you cant change regions more often than a year (or close to it).
Also if you do revert account to UK you will get a warning that you either need to disable ADP or lose access to iCloud features.
aDyslecticCrow 4 hours ago [-]
What does the region even do? why not just stay in france mode?
SXX 3 hours ago [-]
Region affects pricing, what payments methods are availanle or accepted and also what apps are available. Some banks, government service apps and few commercial companies limit apps to certain regions.
Unlike Android there are way more hassle in installing iOS apps under different accounts with different regions. On Android I just have 5 diffetent accounts with different billing countries and it just work.
Also AFAIK iCloud family features dont work cross-region.
philo23 8 hours ago [-]
I've not looked into it but I suspect this uses eligibilityd, the same thing that does the location based checks to see if EU users can use 3rd party app stores.
From what I remember it uses a combination of things like your current GPS location, your SIM cards reported country and more to determine what country you're really in to restrict certain features.
So it's not as simple as swapping your location in settings, or even traveling to somewhere in the EU, theres a certain sticky-ness to what your device thinks is your current country.
Yeah, good point. I wonder what would happen if someone without ADP in the UK changed over the region settings to the United States, switched ADP on, and then switched the region back to the UK. I wonder if anybody's tried this?
petcat 9 hours ago [-]
I think country is associated with the iCloud/Apple ID account, not the physical device.
cassianoleal 9 hours ago [-]
To an extent. My account is on a different country. Even using a VPN, I was still asked to verify my age to access certain websites. The only explanation I could think of is that iOS abused my consent to them using location data for that.
RandomGerm4n 4 hours ago [-]
What I don't understand is why Apple is even responding to this absurd demand. Completely banning Apple products in the UK isn't a realistic option for the government, so Apple could simply state openly that it does not cooperate with authoritarian regimes and actively prompt British users via a pop-up to enable ADP to protect themselves from the government.
jeroenhd 15 minutes ago [-]
Apple complies with the Chinese government's demands, that's the minimum they're willing to play along with. The UK is well above that.
stateofinquiry 4 hours ago [-]
It seems you are suggesting that if a private corporation (a foreign one at that) is large enough it should ignore the law of the country its operating in. I don't think you will like the consequences of such a situation, and will charitably assume you have just not thought your message through for even a second before posting it.
PS: If you think the British gov is authoritarian.. well, you might not know what the term means and/or anything about the spectrum of governments operating today or in the past.
RandomGerm4n 4 hours ago [-]
If laws aren't transparent and reasonable, you shouldn't necessarily follow them. If I were to sell encryption software that's banned in Kazakhstan, you wouldn't expect me to stop selling to customers there, would you? I see no reason why the United Kingdom should be treated any differently than Kazakhstan in this case.
The British government is certainly not as authoritarian as those in China or Russia, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s still terrible and restricts people’s rights. For example, you can be detained for as long as they want if you refuse to unlock your encrypted device.
permalac 7 minutes ago [-]
You may be confused, so I'll try to illustrate the situation.
Supose you live in USA, your chickens have a list of laws, those laws apply to USA. If you try to sell those chickens in UK or Europe you'll find that your company will not be allowed to operate, and if you continue someone will go to jail.
Maybe digital products have an easy way out, but apple is not digital and they may need to find a way to comply.
aDyslecticCrow 4 hours ago [-]
But apple also cannot just stop selling or supporting their product in the UK either. So that card is dropped from both sides. As long as apple is beholden to a few million costumers and subscribers to their services in the UK; UK law is able to pressure them, fine them and restrict them because of those users.
We don't want it the other way around; companies placed outside the borders doing and selling whatever they want without a care. So we end up in a negotiation.
Apple choose to maliciously comply; subtly revealing the TCN, giving all UK users notices about what their government demanded of them to encourage public outrage, and push on the correct parts of the UK government that has their interest in mind.
EmbarrassedHelp 1 hours ago [-]
> But apple also cannot just stop selling or supporting their product in the UK either.
They can do both of things. There's no law against leaving a country for not respecting human rights like privacy and encryption.
ABNW 9 hours ago [-]
Fantastic article, and a real concern for UK Citizens.
hdgvhicv 5 hours ago [-]
There are many real concerns for U.K. citizens, from the price of fuel and food, to extreme weather, to constant attacks on infrastructure from undeclared actors.
This is not one. Nobody (within 2%) gives a stuff.
puppycodes 3 hours ago [-]
The UK's hostility to privacy is legendary.
Used to live there now I don't even want to visit.
jasonjei 7 hours ago [-]
Strange and hypothetical thought: could Bill purchase a US or international model of the iPhone with US or international iCloud account capable of ADP to activate ADP? Would this allow somebody living or working in the UK the ability to use ADP?
SXX 7 hours ago [-]
You can just register US Apple account or switch region to US and not bother with UK regulations.
Only disadvantage that you will need to pay fot services via US gift cards as you need US bank cards otherwise.
selicos 5 hours ago [-]
If ensuring digital devices can be accessed by law enforcement (are not "beyond the law") is so important where are the task forces shutting down crypto and networks using unregulated and anonymous currency? Literally follow the money, as they say. The current admin has 'made' millions if not more off his own fraudulent coin. Take down crypto and you stop crime instead of destroying privacy.
m11a 2 hours ago [-]
This news is about the UK. Across the channel, the EU has effectively outlawed anonymous currency. I believe the UK FCA also has such rules in force. So your post is rather moot.
bpavuk 5 hours ago [-]
this.
crypto has a lot of theoretical value, but in practice people only really think of crypto when they want to tap into shadow economy.
I do not deny that this technology will be instrumental to network communities, provided we are ever allowed to form such. I do not deny that offline POSes and fully offline tap-to-pay may become a possibility if an existing fiat currency adopts crypto as one "interface" among traditional banking, Apple/Google Pay, and cash. (this, by the way, would be incredible in Ukraine - right now it's power off, and you can't use your bank for offline purchases.)
in practice it's only really shadow economy. at this point it's not even a speculative asset of some notable value
int32_64 5 hours ago [-]
Did your bot malfunction and post in the wrong thread? "The current admin", this is a thread about the UK lmao.
iamnothere 4 hours ago [-]
This has happened to me several times recently, a reply with a partisan slant that would be normal IF it made any sense at all within the current thread. Either some “influencers” are cutting back on their token budget, or we’re collectively losing our semantic comprehension.
468854259853 2 hours ago [-]
On brand for two-tier Keir.
Grimeton 4 hours ago [-]
>. It reverted affected UK iCloud data to Standard Data Protection, where Apple does hold the keys and can respond to lawful legal procress (except the baseline categories that stay end-to-end encrypted either way). This satisfied the underlying legal requirement without ever building a ‘backdoor’.
Ah, just like that.
Of course something that is just possible in the public eye, after a lot of public scrutiny and for all accounts at once.
A single account, in secret? IMPOSSIBLE!
They never needed to build a backdoor....
Yeah I read the next few paragraphs and I've seen the turn off button....
djoldman 4 hours ago [-]
What happens if someone buys their iphone in the UK, sets their region to UK, then sets the region to USA? Can they then enable advanced data protection?
aDyslecticCrow 4 hours ago [-]
This got me curious as-well. It cannot be bound to phone number or carrier, since that's not a requirement to create an apple account. It could be bound to phones sold in the UK, but that is easily avoided. It could check the GPS, but then you can just take a trip over to France to activate your account.
Cider9986 9 hours ago [-]
It's crazy SimpleX is fine being based there. I mean, everything is open, the clients have reproducible builds, but it seems like it may end up being a hassle.
Has the UK started attacking any open source E2EE projects yet?
Apple's control over iOS is the main reason I prefer GrapheneOS so much over it. You get amazing privacy and security without sacrificing control. GrapheneOS has said they won't introduce age verification and a backdoor they obviously won't implement.
jcarrano 8 hours ago [-]
I'm guessing they could, in theory, attack open source projects, but it would not be very effective as those could be infinitely forked. That's the reason why governments will actually support an encourage an oligopoly of proprietary platforms via regulations (e.g. mandatory automated scanning) which only companies can practically comply with.
LoganDark 8 hours ago [-]
There's no way to obtain root access on GrapheneOS without making your own builds (which won't be affected by many of the apps adding support for GrapheneOS, who likely would only whitelist the official signing keys) or keeping the bootloader unlocked in perpetuity (because AFAIK there is currently no way to recalculate verified boot hashes on top of a systemless root like Magisk -- not that I even know if that works on GOS in the first place). Some years back I was actually working on calculating AVB2 hashes from a live system rather than ONLY through the Android build process, until TWRP wiped my phone without consent or confirmation due to an OpenRecoveryScript that I absolutely did not put there and I basically stopped tinkering with Android root due to that. I have an iPhone nowadays.
sjpb 7 hours ago [-]
given the story there, I'm surprised apple are still allowed to apply end to end encryption the the "baseline categories" such as messages etc in the UK. Anyone understand how that's happened? To be clear I am not saying what I think should happen, just it seems inconsistent with the UK's stance
athrowaway3z 7 hours ago [-]
What I don't understand, or what I can only guess at, is the cabal & likely global network of interests that are behind the push for this kind of legislation to exists in the first place.
Some delusional "save the children" anti-privacy extremist doesn't have the political capital or the technical insight to convince the government to create a law to issue secret gag orders.
People with good civil intention don't just propose the idea, or get the momentum, to institutionalize such mechanisms.
So who are the major influencers, and their thoughts, for pushing this?
selicos 5 hours ago [-]
There is a 2005 political cartoon by Jonik where an Uncle Sam has a box labelled Control of Internet Speech on the table. Corporate media is asking "How would you like this wrapped," with paper labeled either "Anti-Terrorism" or "Protect Kid."
For the last 25 years certain western governments (especially the US and UK/5 eyes) have focused on control over democracy. They've sold it as protections, defense, safety, etc. It's the opposite. Control, power, abuse, and the votes/$$$ to ignore their constituents. This is usually lead by conservative or far right parties who have zero history with abusing power and control (ex McCarthyism in the US).
We live in a world of surveillance. Even if most of that is to market you ads and extract capital it's still degrading and less safe for anyone but the core in group(s).
stuartjohnson12 7 hours ago [-]
I don't think you need a huge, wide-ranging conspiracy to end up with a strong anti-privacy movement, even in a state which otherwise tries to defend consumer rights (in varying degrees of competency) for the most part.
I think you can just start with:
1. Campaigning on behalf of a worthy victim, or against a terrible enemy, is a good way to become more socially powerful. Most people are less willing to disagree with you when you do this because it risks introducing motive uncertainty - are you criticising the means because you truly object to the means, or are you criticising the means because you don't support the worthy victim or oppose the terrible enemy? This is a socially disadvantageous position to argue from.
2. Exploited children are worthy victims, and drug traffickers and terrorists are terrible enemies.
3. Therefore, policies that nominally protect children or oppose drug traffickers and terrorists are socially advantageous, and arguing for them is likely to increase your social power.
The means here are disproportionately likely to be done in a concealed way if the underlying policy is not broadly popular, independently of the effects it has on localised politcal arguments. Many people, myself included, don't support every political cause that helps a worthy victim or opposes a terrible enemy.
Social pressure is harder to apply at a distance, so the reality-warping effects of motive uncertainty are less powerful, so it makes sense that it's kept to private pressure groups and lobbying.
someonebaggy 6 hours ago [-]
4. Tech activists are rallying against all less-invasive options
ajsnigrutin 6 hours ago [-]
Governments want this the most
You won't be criticizing your boss/mayor/president/local politician/whoever, if you have to do it from an account tied to your own name. Having everyine install a digital ID on their phones (to prove they're old enough to jerk off to pornhub) is the first step, the "real name" policy is the next. The encryption ... well, one of the separate steps inbetween those two.
vlyan 5 hours ago [-]
>So who are the major influencers, and their thoughts, for pushing this?
the governments themselves. left, right, or center, their number one priority is to maintain their power.
it amuses me immeasurably when the useful idiots in the West cheer on the policies of China and Russia. think of the children, think of the terrorists, think of the racists, think of the disinformation, blah blah blah. there are a myriad excuses but only one true goal -- suppression of dissent.
the UK establishment in particular primarily feels threatened by unredacted coverage of the consequences of its immigration policy, which they know gives voters to Reform. not because Reform would reverse that policy -- every "far-right fascist racist nazi" party in Europe had at best slowed the influx, not halted or reversed it -- but simply because someone else would be receiving lobbyists' money, favors, and sinecures after retirement.
ofou 8 hours ago [-]
The UK is becoming 1984.
jjbinx007 7 hours ago [-]
Border agents in America can search your phone or laptop without a warrant or sufficient suspicion at the border.
Jeff Gray is a man who regularly gets arrested and/or trespassed from public places for holding up a sign saying "God bless the homeless vets". Seems to happen nearly every time he does it at various locations.
Oh, and flock cameras and ICE aren't exactly a sign that America is this beacon of freedom that it likes to portray.
rdm_blackhole 7 hours ago [-]
The UK border agents (technically counter terrorism) can also stop you at the border, force you into a room, ask for your passwords to all your devices and you don't have the right to refuse.
You also don't have the right to a lawyer to be in a room with you and you are compelled to answer all their questions and they do not need to tell you why they stopped you.
Then if you are lucky they return your devices 7 days later after they have been through everything.
> Border agents in America can search your phone or laptop without a warrant or sufficient suspicion at the border.
That is something that can happen at nearly every international border crossing. Before posting I tried to find a list of countries that require a warrant to search your stuff and the only place that came up was Hong Kong. New Zealand requires some suspicion, but that's effectively the same as they can simply state "they were acting suspiciously to my eye."
>Oh, and flock cameras and ICE aren't exactly a sign that America is this beacon of freedom that it likes to portray.
The US never said that you won't be observed in public nor that you can enter, remain, and travel freely around the country forever without permission.
nozzlegear 7 hours ago [-]
I think the person you're replying to was talking about the UK, not the US.
iamnothere 4 hours ago [-]
What does the comment you’re replying to have to do with the US?
I think he's just suggesting this isn't isolated to the UK and is a trending global issue.
iamnothere 4 hours ago [-]
Well I agree with that, it just sounded like deflection.
abcd_f 7 hours ago [-]
Back in the early 00s the UK seemed to go all in on mass surveillance, with massive amount of cameras in public places and all that. I still remember how shocking it all looked even from Canada. So these 1984 parallels are certainly not a new development.
dingaling 4 hours ago [-]
Yes, there are many cameras. But they're not interlinked, most of them record locally or to the chain's HQ, not some mass surveillance panopticon like TV shows portray.
alt227 7 hours ago [-]
US has Flock, ICE, PRISM and many other privacy horrors. I would much rather live in the UK than in the land of orange.
GaryBluto 6 hours ago [-]
It’s the five eyes (probably more by now), not the one eye.
crimsoneer 6 hours ago [-]
Worth recognising this was (and still is) mostly nonsense. There were loads of figures like "3 CCTV cameras per person" that included your local shop having a camera in the back, which has nothing to do with state surveillance. The police in the UK have significantly less power to surveil people than police in the UK. Council CCTV is shockingly rare now days.
throwawayffffas 7 hours ago [-]
At least it's not becoming 1933 like some other places.
Ylpertnodi 7 hours ago [-]
It was 1984 when I left in 1998.
Not missed.
phyalow 7 hours ago [-]
Anyone have any steps on how I can enable this in the UK? I guess I need to update my billing details to a non UK address and hop on a VPN or something?
SXX 7 hours ago [-]
You can change billing details to US and then activate US gift card that you can buy of Amazon.com.
But keep in mind you have to disable all subscriptions first and also your family group if you have one must also switch their accounts to US.
So yeah pretending you're US customer is no brainer with Apple and unlike Google they dont have automatic detection that will move your account to other region.
Beware you can only change account region once a year or something.
selicos 5 hours ago [-]
Create a new account and reset. If you aren't willing due to the friction involved then it's time to decentralize anyway. If it's due to previous payments or licenses/subscriptions tied to the account then work with the vendor to transfer or pay the small cost to reset.
After spending 8-12 years in a single gmail account I learned my lesson. Don't get entrenched or you can't be flexible.
Barbing 7 hours ago [-]
> they dont have automatic detection
I thought they at least used something complex to attempt to prevent non-EU users using third-party app stores. I also recall a legitimate EU user is not allowed to travel abroad too long before losing access to those stores.
SXX 6 hours ago [-]
Might be in case of moving region to EU there are something like this, but to move it to US all you need is US gift card.
What Google does is completely different - they enforce local regulations on your accounts just if you keep using them within specific region for too long. Though Google dont actually change billing region or Google Play region.
implements 8 hours ago [-]
This’ll go down well (/s) but if you accept that the State has the right to be able to surveil public communications infrastructure (which it has been doing since paper mail was invented, through: radio, telegraph, telex, telephone, fax, email, and mobile telephony) then it’s not surprising certain commoditised public data handling services might be required to provide government access on demand or be restricted from implementing features that can effectively deny that access.
That angry’s up the blood of libertarians, but ultimately from the point of view of the State it has to be able to do its job of detecting and prosecuting serious crime, and it will redraw privacy lines whenever that is substantially impeded by new technology.
z0r 8 hours ago [-]
The quantity and quality of communications that have been externalized and become effectively searchable and retrievable has increased by many orders of magnitude since paper mail was invented. I think even if you agreed that the State might have had that right then (which not everyone would), it would be good to reconsider what that means with the communications and information systems of today.
someonebaggy 6 hours ago [-]
A term I've seen thrown around is "good old-fashioned police work" and to me the clear distinction is that it can't be done en masse - a real human police officer had to spend time tracking down each known suspect. E.g. clipping a pen register onto someone's telephone wires, tailing someone, asking the hotel clerk if he's been there, unlocking someone's phone to read their messages, and even watching footage on airgapped CCTV systems are all tasks that can be done one-at-a-time and require human power proportional to how much of them you do. This forces the state to only use them on actual suspects instead of using them on everyone, but still doesn't prevent the state from catching criminals.
nancyminusone 7 hours ago [-]
They can have the right to surveil, but I don't think they should have the right to demand understanding of my messages.
adrian_b 6 hours ago [-]
Even many dictatorship states, like many of the "socialist" countries, had in the past articles in their constitutions that guaranteed the secrecy of the mail and of the telephone communications (other telecommunications did not exist at that time). Thus it is false that there is some kind of established tradition that governments may have access to private communications.
In reality the secret police did not care about laws or constitution, so private mail correspondence was intercepted and opened, read, then closed again with care, trying to make this undetectable, and the telephone lines of persons of interest were tapped.
Nonetheless, it was understood that this surveillance is actually illegal, so it was hidden as much as possible.
Nowadays, the government institutions of most "free" states, like USA and UK have granted themselves far more rights to do surveillance of their citizens than the dictators of the past.
Detecting and prosecuting serious crime does not need any such general surveillance. The general surveillance just makes much cheaper the detecting of serious crimes, but in exchange it gives the means to the government employees to commit more serious crimes themselves.
Zenul_Abidin 5 hours ago [-]
Just call them backdoors.
snvzz 5 hours ago [-]
They simply do not want anyone to hear this: Millions must go.
sdcfgy 8 hours ago [-]
Very well written article.
It relays my main concern which is that while current governments may use this in moderation and under judicial oversight, future ones may not. And we should build tools for the future not just for now.
There’s a general regression towards fascist and right wing ideologies in the last few years and I don’t want to be up against a wall one day because someone did something with ignorant best intent.
p-e-w 8 hours ago [-]
> There’s a general regression towards fascist and right wing ideologies in the last few years
The “fascist” part (authoritarian/totalitarian tendencies) came long before the resurgence of the right, but most people seem to approve of those methods as long as they target those they dislike, so I won’t be shedding any tears for them when it’s their turn at last.
georgespencer 7 hours ago [-]
> Very well written article
It is self-evidently written by AI. You can tell from both tropes such as “To bring this into sharper focus” and the fact that it is entirely without an opinion or argument for most of the piece.
sdcfgy 6 hours ago [-]
I don't think it is. It's a presentation of the facts and current state more than anything. I mean I don't expect an opinion piece all the time.
Barbing 7 hours ago [-]
Wow, which model? I really enjoyed this piece and went and read their piece on Siri recap/Siri rewind. Following this blog.
sneak 9 hours ago [-]
The Apple-vs-FBI narrative is constructed fiction. Sure, they didn't make a custom firmware to dump the phone's contents, but that's irrelevant. Everything relevant to the investigation on that phone was in the non-E2EE iCloud Backup, which the FBI got from Apple long before, via normal search warrant means. Apple likely either got an FAA702 order (aka PRISM, aka the "backdoor" that Tim Apple says doesn't exist - it allows the USG to access anyone's iCloud data immediately, with no warrant (it's not an encryption backdoor, just an access backdoor)) or a standard search warrant and most probably turned over everything they had in iCloud instantly, just as they do constantly when receiving a search warrant or FAA702 order. (As I mentioned, the FAA702 order fulfillment is likely instantaneous/automated, which amounts to direct access to the storage servers.)
The whole "Apple won't do what the USG wants" story is farce, engineered specifically to protect Apple's brand image. Following the Snowden drop when we all learned that the USG has unfettered realtime access to everything in iCloud without a warrant via FAA702, Apple had a major fucking crisis on its hands, along with a lot of other companies. (If you think the CIA can't read any object in S3, you simply don't understand how the world works. Note also that AWS has built a custom, one-off, airgapped AWS region ON PREM for the CIA. https://aws.amazon.com/federal/us-intelligence-community/ )
Those CEOs all went to DC and sat down with Obama and talked it out. The official cover story was something like "Obama wants help with healthcare.gov".
> The top leaders from the world’s biggest technology companies pressed their case for reform of the National Security Agency’s controversial surveillance operations at a meeting with President Obama on Tuesday, resisting attempts by the White House to portray the encounter as a wide-ranging discussion of broader priorities.
It is very likely that this media plan was discussed and agreed upon in those meetings. Otherwise, nobody sane in any government in Europe would ever buy an iPhone (or let their citizens do same), given that the USG can read all their photos and messages and emails and contacts in iCloud instantly and without a warrant.
(China of course requires Apple run the iCloud servers for Chinese users in China via a joint venture with a CCP-operated company, which preserves the same realtime full access to all iCloud/iMessage data in China for the CCP as PRISM does for the USG.)
The Snowden releases support very plainly the direct realtime access of the US intelligence community to tech company servers without search warrants (just FISA orders).
It is the single most used data source by the US intelligence community.
Heres a favourite of mine. Apple & Google were/still are syphoning off all mobile device push messages to US government. They flat out denied it for years until it got leaked from another source, as soon as it was out in the open they admitted and said they were doing it all along but weren't allowed to tell anybody due to government NDAs.
These aren't conspiracy theories, these types of secret agreements happen all the time.
EDIT: it seems the original poster I was replying to has deleted their post, and so this may not make as much sense in the thread now.
wat10000 8 hours ago [-]
If it was irrelevant then why did the FBI make such a big deal about it? Are you saying the FBI did that just to make Apple look good? Why would they care about Apple's reputation?
axus 8 hours ago [-]
Well in theory more people use an insecure software, the more FBI can monitor
sneak 2 hours ago [-]
Yes. Apple is one of the largest companies in the US, and the NSA did them dirty by letting it become public that Apple is cooperating in allowing them to conduct warrantless surveillance. The alternative is Samsung, and the US government would prefer people buy iPhones. We’re also not just talking about the USA, but the 240 million iphones sold each year.
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icemanvault 3 hours ago [-]
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aidio 9 hours ago [-]
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CurbStomper2 8 hours ago [-]
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hn1rig3rak 9 hours ago [-]
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varispeed 9 hours ago [-]
Since Epstein is no more, the governments became crazy about going after people's private data, perhaps hoping to find some spice. Like some politicians lost their source.
Havoc 8 hours ago [-]
Just checked - I’m on the lower tier. FFS
Getting really tired of the UK govs incompetence/maliciousness around digital law making
hughw 7 hours ago [-]
If you didn't want it before, you probably never will. It comes with a convenience cost and the risk you may permanently lose access to your iCloud stuff if you lose your password. With the normal level of privacy, Apple is there to help you or your loved ones get access to your stuff. Most people need that much more than they need inviolable privacy.
Barbing 7 hours ago [-]
I’m rolling the dice myself. No ADP here. If I were a political activist (US) I’d definitely need it.
I guess if I lose my phone on a trip, I wanna be able to walk into an Apple store and restore it from their cloud copy that the feds have backed up & pored over by LLMs too. (not sure that’s done in realtime for 100% of the population, but tokens will be cheap enough eventually - they have their pre-LLM solution too)
I think I keep Signal data mostly out of the cloud though, declining to use their latest features. Hidden notifications too. Is it only personal family updates, yes, but the principle makes me feel good.
coldtea 8 hours ago [-]
Maliciousness.
Rendered at 21:34:06 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
I am judging by a simple fact, that "please confirm your age" screen is now mandatory during the iPhone setup in all countries, and in some it's behind a KYC. I have a strong opinion that this is insane. And once they let the foot in the door - there is no closing it.
iCloud already protects sensitive categories of data (like Passwords, Health data, Messages in iCloud, etc) with end-to-end encryption by default.
Except that there is a footnote in Apple's security document where they confirm that Messages in iCloud is not end-to-end encrypted if you don't enable ADP and have iCloud Backup enabled (which is probably most users):
Standard data protection: When iCloud Backup is enabled, the keys to your backups are secured in Apple data centers. If you use both iCloud Backup and Messages in iCloud, your backup includes a copy of the Messages in iCloud encryption key to help you recover your data.
https://support.apple.com/en-us/102651
So, there is always a backup of Messages in iCloud accessible to Apple and thus (US?) law enforcement, unless you enable ADP and the people you communicate with also use ADP.
WhatsApp is similar by the way. Unless you enable E2E backups, they end up in iCloud/Google Drive backups and are only encrypted at rest. Of the major messengers, I think only Signal completely opts out of iCloud backups and have their own real E2E-encrypted backups.
Even most technical people I talk to do not know this and don't have ADP enabled.
There are a lot of weak defaults like that.
Apple has moved more things into the bucket of "we do not have the keys for this" over time, but pretending that this isn't a tradeoff for the common customer is disingenuous. That's why ADP exists, so that those who want to make a different tradeoff can do so.
Commenters on HN tend to be technically savvy and tend to want the defaults to be tailored to a technically savvy customer base. That's fine, but that's not a real representation of all of the smartphone users out there, and in this case Apple is directly offering the choice that they usually get knocked for taking away.
That's not how to use "pearl clutch". And the UK doesn't do that, and it isn't very free or open, except in the deranged mind of Kier Starmer[0]. Classic liberalism in the UK has long given way to regulation of speech, proud conformity, state dependency, and all the other things that are hallmarks of people who treat the state as a surrogate parent.
[0] https://uk.news.yahoo.com/starmer-defends-uk-commitment-free...
Apple is, from a purely practical standpoint, more a Chinese operation than an American one.
Additionally, the humans who make all of the iPhones and iPads are Chinese people, subject to Chinese law. Apple has to do exactly what the CCP wants, at least for now. They are desperately trying to ramp up phone production in India, but there is huge expertise at Foxconn that isn’t in India as yet.
Any other invasive privacy/encryption interventions from the government only affects their users, not their money, so they cave without issues.
They obvioualy never ever resisted anything except its a good PR stunt.
We are quickly heading to a world where governments want us to KYC everything, and we saw with the Revolut breach what happens when very, very bad people gain access to our private data.
Even though they have zero presence in a country.
The UK is a minor footnote. They can afford to lose it if push came to shove, but for now they're willing to make conciliatory gestures.
Not quite.
The request to confirm age is there, but actually completing it isn't mandatory (though granted, it does leave an 'alert' thingy on your phone settings saying you haven't finished setting it up).
I'm generally okay with "how old are you?" without KYC and changeable later. It just allows apps and websites to display age-appropriate content.
It's a foot in the door. Once this question exists, the next logical one is "prove it".
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/steveforbes/2025/09/09/people-a...
Stories like this quickly put to rest the idea that everyone who gets arrested must actually deserve it. The bar for posting content that violates the law is very low.
There was also the tragic story of the Cambridge professor who was completely unqualified and had a fake life story. When journalists would get close to the story he would report them to the police for harassment to spike the stories.
Someone got arrested and intimidated by police because they criticized someone with even only a modicom of authority: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/mar/29/parents-arre...
Imagine getting six police officers sent to your house and spending 11 hours at a police station for causing "disharmony" by disagreeing with how your daughter's school operates in a WhatsApp group. In a sensible country that might've been a phone call or a single officer stopping to chat and defusing the situation if police decided to get involved at all.
* The Police admitted their obvious error and paid £20k in damages: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4gz1qy30v5o
* This bizarre case has nothing to do with "speech that offends the prevailing political orthodoxy" (root comment).
If you look for examples of the police arresting people for stupid and unjustifiable reasons, you can find them in lots of countries, including the US. For example, here is someone being arrested in Kansas for clapping too loudly during a meeting: https://www.kbtx.com/2026/07/27/teacher-arrested-repeatedly-... It's absolutely right that this sort of thing is reported and it's right for people to be outraged about it. However, I'd be cautious about drawing overly sweeping conclusions about the UK from such cases.
That's textbook intimidation, which in certain cases is a crime in the UK, and even some US states. You can also do it offline, for example, by sending a letter to the victim containing a photograph of the front of their house, and a photograph of you firing guns. The implication is pretty straightforward and doesn't even need to be stated: "I have guns and I know where you live. Pay me that money you owe me or I might use them." That implication is still there, for the victim, even if you add surface text like "Hey everyone look at these cool things!"
Only _after_ he was arrested, and the police went looking around his house for guns... did he admit that the pictures were taken overseas, he doesn't actually own the guns. And yet that's what the article leads with, like it was a known fact from the get-go and those silly-billy police knew that but went looking for them in the UK anyway.
This article is a great lesson in how to mislead without saying anything untrue.
His own words in a different article make the reason for the arrest clear:
https://nypost.com/2025/12/04/us-news/british-man-says-he-wa...
> “The arrest was based on two separate social media posts,” he said. “One was the photo of myself with the shotgun, [...] And the second one was my LinkedIn banner at the top of the page.”
> “I used the photo my business partner took on his premises as a header photo on LinkedIn with the intention he would look at that and go, ‘Why’s this guy posting that? I’d better call him and find out rather than dodging me’ as it had done for months,” he said.
EDIT 2: for avoidance of doubt, he did three days in a row of LinkedIn blog posts, where
1) his PFP at the time (shown in the top-right corner) was a picture of the business premises
2) the text of the post talked about the "delinquent client"
3) the post ended with a no-context-given picture of him posing with guns
Example: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jonrichelieu-booth_jonthehash...
EDIT: and your second example is also dangerously misleading. Jason Arday (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jason_Arday) and/or his university reported 2 professors and 1 journalist to the police, pretending their requests for comment on his plagiarism were harrassment. For all three reports, police chose to take no action (nonetheless it still had a chilling effect on speech). What spiked the story is that Jason Arday and/or his university got very expensive reputation lawyers Carter-Fuck to send a C&D to the journalist's newspaper, promising expensive litigation if they published the story. That is what spiked the story, not intimidation via false harassment claims. Expensive lawyers making baseless threats work equally well in the US and UK to chill legal speech, it's not a policy issue.
From your own link, this was from 2 separate posts. I don't know man, this sounds like an excuse from the company to cause trouble and avoid having to pay the owed money.
Now imagine you owe this guy money, he's admitted in public that he put a picture of your business premises at the top of every blog post he makes on LinkedIn in order to get your attention, and his latest blog posts on the LinkedIn website therefore shows YOUR WORKPLACE and HIM SHOOTING GUNS.
Juxtaposition that he admits he wants you to see.
You can read all three blogposts. Note he has switched out the picture of the workplace (top-right PFP):
1. https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jonrichelieu-booth_jonthehash...
> Top of my agenda Today is getting a follow-up email to the Secretary of State for Business and Trade regarding my delinquent Client
"delinquent client" and no mention of why there's a picture of him with guns or where it was taken
2. https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jonrichelieu-booth_jonthehash...
> I am disappointed that absolutely nothing has come back from the Secretary of State for Business and Trade (OR his Department) regarding my delinquent Client.. this is concerning as despite continuing to owe me
"delinquent client" who "owes" him and once again, picture of him shooting guns apropos of nothing, nothing explaining where he is, whose guns they are, just him shooting guns. Guess he just likes to shoot guns while talking about his "delinquent client" who "owes" him and he's put a picture of the delinquent client's premises as his PFP.
3. https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jonrichelieu-booth_jonthehash...
> Today I'll be following up on my message to the Yorkshire Post by calling the Secretary of State for Business and Trade regarding my delinquent Client.. it's become necessary given what the Owner of said Client is currently doing. I'm also going to escalate my concerns to North Yorkshire Police, then I'll grab the Popcorn and see where this goes.
And again no-context gun photo to add to the blog post about his delinquent client
Hopefully you can understand why the guy who owes him money would feel intimidated and call the police, and you can see why there appears to be enough evidence to charge the guy for harrassing the ower, and to arrest him so you can establish if he possesses the guns he has posted himself shooting.
The photos are obviously target shooting. This is a common sport in many countries.
Your argument is that because he wrote long daily updates about what he was doing and included two unrelated things, that he's implying that the guns are for those offhand remarks?
We get getting farther and farther from the real problem, which is that the UK police have been weaponized to respond to people's social media posts about how they make others feel. That's a ridiculously low bar.
From https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/consultant-arrested-posi...
> However, he said that a police officer later visited his home to warn him that concerns had been raised about the post.
> "I was told to be careful what I say online and I need to understand how it makes people feel," he said.
No, I don't understand why he would.
Nothing there was intimidation. Pretending it is intimidation is stretching crudility. The fact that he got arrested over this is straight up nonsense, IMO.
All the posts read like blog-style posts, and there wasn't any aggressive language used there at all. He also mentioned he was meeting with people to resolve the issue through legal means in the posts.
I suspect the owner who owed him money was acting maliciously.
If you're buying that, I've got a bridge to sell you.
This is one of three days worth of posts where he talks about his "delinquent client" and ends with a picture of him and guns (with no explanation of why, where or how him and the guns are related to the body text). He put an image of the business owner's premises as his PFP in the top-right corner, which is now a picture of some people sitting in chairs. The business premises, "delinquent client" body text and gun photos appear on the same page.
Further details: https://www.snopes.com/news/2025/12/01/uk-police-arrest-gun-...
> Today I'll be following up on my message to the Yorkshire Post by calling the Secretary of State for Business and Trade regarding my delinquent Client.. it's become necessary given what the Owner of said Client is currently doing. I'm also going to escalate my concerns to North Yorkshire Police, then I'll grab the Popcorn and see where this goes.
Wait, this is the threat?
I'm bewildered this could be grounds for an arrest. That's pretty scary.
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jonrichelieu-booth_jonthehash...
It's the combination of the paragraph about the 'delinquent client' and the picture of him pointing a gun which could be construed as an implied threat. I don't know if that would hold up legally, but in any case, no charges were brought in the end.
As to why the police did anything at all, the most likely explanation is that once the 'delinquent client' reported the LinkedIn posts, the Police saw a photo of someone using a shotgun who didn't have a shotgun license. Unaware that the photo was taken outside the UK, they probably decided that the combination of an unlicensed firearm and a possible implied threat was worth investigating.
In the second case, the person involved was weaponizing the police against a journalist who had uncovered something about a completely unqualified university professor who had a fraudulent background story. The police didn’t do it “randomly”. The professor knew how to use the laws to intimidate and silence his critics (when even the GP comment admits).
Even the police later admitted they should not have gone as far as they did.
But I agree that the law is being weaponised by bad actors, but irrespective of that the police are duty bound to investigate. They take the blame too. It's one of the few jobs everyone else knows how to do better than the people doing it.
In the second case, once again you repeat your nonsense. The chilling effect the police had, a wrong in and of itself, did not put the journalist off publishing.
You can read the journalist's own words right here: https://www.timeshighereducation.com/opinion/i-was-reported-...
> Despite the thoroughness of my investigation, THE did not run the story. While I was personally disappointed, I understood; by this point, Arday’s solicitors had been in touch with THE and it was clear that the story could tie the publication up in months of expensive litigation. Even if we were right – and I stand by my reporting – it would have been ruinously expensive.
You want to say POLICE POLICE POLICE were chilling speech here. Bullshit. It was LAWYERS LAWYERS LAWYERS suppressing the story.
You're the only person in this thread using the phrase "chilling speech" and you keep admitting that they did.
Let me quote you on this topic:
> The chilling effect the police had, a wrong in and of itself,
> In the case of the journalist Arday reported in 2025, police again did not arrest or charge him, but they (wrongly, in my opinion) phoned him and asked him not to contact Arday. This had a chilling effect
> For all three reports, police chose to take no action (nonetheless it still had a chilling effect on speech).
These are all three your own quotes from this thread. The last quote isn't even accurate because the police DID take action in the form of contacting the journalist and telling him to desist.
You're trying to argue that Jason Arday held journalists at bay by reporting them for harrassment, therefore the UK speech laws are bad because they let wrongdoers avoid scrutiny by making harrassment claims against their scrutinisers. That is incorrect. There was only one journalist, and Arday held him off by engaging private lawyers. The harrassment reporting did not stop the journalist.
Arday falsely reported two people for harrassment to the Metropolitan Police, one professor in 2023 and one journalist in 2025. The (Devon and Cornwall) police declined to pursue the 2023 case. The (Metropolitan) police investigated the 2025 case for four months, then decided to take no action (no charge, arrest or caution). The investigating officer phoned the journalist to tell him the case was closed (they can do that). The fact that there had even been an investigation caused a chilling effect:
https://www.timeshighereducation.com/opinion/i-was-reported-...
> But were my enquiries grounds for a criminal complaint? That was hugely troubling to me as a reporter who specialises in examining issues of research integrity and ethics.
I'd say that even in the professor's case, it could've had a chilling effect. If the police had interviewed anyone related to the professor, there could've been leaks and/or career-stunting rumours.
The officer requested the journalist not contact Arday. That's overreach, and shouldn't have happened.
The head of the Metropolitan police admitted the investigation should not have even been started. That's not the law at fault, that's shoddy policing: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0rd9y99grzo
But ultimately, it did not "spike the story". That was 100% on the lawsuit. Both things are bad
Exactly.
Every time I hear a story of "horrible abuses in UK where people get arrested for talking on the internet" it turns our they intimidated or scammed or bullied someone.
I wonder why people keep lying about it.
> A week later, on August 23, the officers returned and arrested him on suspicion of possessing a firearm with intent to cause fear of violence and another allegation of stalking related to a photograph of a house that appeared on his social media.
You’re trying hard to link the two as “textbook intimidation” but the firearm post that triggered this was just a vacation photo and post about his vacation.
You’re being misleading by saying he “posted them to a website” without explaining that what you mean by “website” is that he posted them on his personal social media.
> For all three reports, police chose to take no action (nonetheless it still had a chilling effect on speech).
Incorrect to say the police “took no action”. They contacted the journalist and instructed him to desist. The police later admitted it was a mistake to pursue the case. It says all of this in the link you used:
> Arday made a complaint about Grove to the Metropolitan Police, alleging harassment that was affecting his mental health; the police asked Grove to desist from further contact with Arday.[80] Mark Rowley, Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, later said that the complaint about Grove should not have been taken forward.[81]
It’s confusing that you’re trying to claim the police “took no action” when they admitted fault for following through with the complaint and they told the reporter to desist.
> Expensive lawyers making baseless threats work equally well in the US and UK to chill legal speech, it's not a policy issue.
If the expensive lawyers are equal in the UK and US, then that’s not the important point of this story. It’s the part about him engaging the police and the police following through with it.
I also strongly disagree that it’s equivalent in the US. That expensive legal firm would be utilizing the maximum extent of the laws available to them in the UK, which includes the very harassment laws we’re talking about!
You can’t say it’s “not a policy issue” by pointing to literal lawyers who are using the law.
It's not a UK speech policing policy issue, the topic of your post. The criminal law doesn't support Arday using false claims of harrassment to deter journalists.
You could say it's a worldwide civil law policy issue in terms of barratry / SLAPPs / cost of litigation / etc. No country, certainly not the US, has sufficient protection for whistleblowers against well-resourced litigants, and it is they (not the UK criminal law) who are successfully chilling speech.
It's the thing we're talking about.
The UK law was used to get police involved and the police told the journalist to desist.
> You could say it's a worldwide civil law policy issue
The fact that lawsuits exist everywhere does not make it equal everywhere.
We're talking about the UK's specific laws.
> There was also the tragic story of the Cambridge professor who was completely unqualified and had a fake life story. When journalists would get close to the story he would report them to the police for harassment to spike the stories.
You don't mention the threat that civil lawsuits pose to speech at all. And yet it was the threat of a civil lawsuit that actually quelled speech here.
You have no evidence that action A ("he would report them to the police for harassment") led to outcome B ("to spike the stories").
Jason Arday did not spike any journalist's story by reporting them for harrassment. He, or his universty, did spike the story by engaging reputation lawyers. He could do that in almost any country, including the US, despite its stronger free speech laws. Unless a US state has an effective anti-SLAPP law, it is very likely all that is needed to shut people up is to threaten a lawsuit they can't afford.
The thing you want to be mad about -- the police unlawfully instructing a journalist not to contact someone -- is a bad thing, is not even legal (i.e. the UK state doesn't actually allow it, let alone condone it), and it had no effect on the journalist. They still wanted their story published. It was the private threat of a lawsuit that spiked it.
As a result getting the police involved is often little more than a slightly awkward chat at the front door where the officers politely ask you to stop being arsehole, but everyone knows the police are a bit limited in what they can actual do. Either because no crime has actually been committed, or because they don’t really have the time to properly investigate even if a crime had been committed.
Actually getting arrested takes some effort. The police really don’t want to deal with all the paperwork and mess that comes afterwards if they can avoid it.
That's not how it works. You get arrested on suspicion, the cops figure out if you actually did it or not, once they know you did it they charge you with counts of actual offences (not suspicions).
> That's not how it works. You get arrested on suspicion, the cops figure out if you actually did it or not, once they know you did it they charge you with counts of actual offences (not suspicions).
Isn’t that literally what the quote, which was from the article, says? It didn’t contain the word “count”. You added that. The quote says he was arrested on suspicion.
This is the quote from the article:
> > A week later, on August 23, the officers returned and arrested him on suspicion of possessing a firearm
You falsely added "[count]" to the quote and then argued about the count, which isn't in the quote.
> The article I linked clearly says he was arrested for one count of stalking and another account of suspicion of possession of a firearm:
OP appears to claim that involving the police is the way to get journalists off your tail. It isn't, and it didn't deter either the professors or the journalist. The much more effective way to get journalists off your tail, which OP didn't even mention, is lawyers. But that doesn't let OP rage against UK laws so he went with the bullshit claim instead.
There was absolutely zero media attention at the time police processed Arday's complaint against professor David Harris, in 2023. They closed the complaint without taking action. The professor didn't even know he was being investigated. His colleague Martyn Hammersley then went over Arday's head straight to the faculty. So much for the police getting people off your case!
In the case of the journalist Arday reported in 2025, police again did not arrest or charge him, but they (wrongly, in my opinion) phoned him and asked him not to contact Arday. This had a chilling effect and the police had no legal basis to direct him so. Again, this was long before any 2026 media attention.
It wasn't media attention that saved these people, it was that what they did wasn't illegal. The police shouldn't have given Arday's claims as much merit as they did, but no matter what Arday said, there was no evidence of crime there, it was never going any further than that.
Only once the deets about Arday were leaked by Cambridge faculty to Cofnas and he published them, and the media firestorm begain, did the details of the police phoning the journalist become known, and in reaction to that, the head of the police said that was clearly wrong and should not have happened: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0rd9y99grzo
Especially rich to talk about habitual liars when it's a bunch of British press outlets and activists accusing others of being liars.
> 1 The Racism Of It All: It is not news when white men commit academic misconduct. It gets reported in a handful of stories, there’s a bit of media attention, but everyone quickly forgets about the problems.
> 2 Arday Was Definitely Guilty: The second point is somehow even more frustrating. Yes, Jason Arday was hounded by a society that demands different standards for young Black men than white guys. Yes, the amount of scrutiny he received was obviously connected to the colour of his skin. But also, he definitely did plagiarize. And not just a little bit. His work is riddled with clear, obvious, and extensive theft from other published academic papers.
> You do not need to trust race realists or other unpleasant people. Just download the thesis and check for yourself. It is clear that a significant portion of the thesis was copied directly from other people’s work. This is not in doubt, it’s not in question, and the fact that so many people online are arguing that the plagiarism charges are false because a university said so is deeply depressing. It’s arguably the worst case of plagiarism I’ve ever seen.
> Whatever your thoughts on plagiarism, it’s clear that Arday’s work harmed very few people. As he himself said, “I didn't murder somebody”. If he hadn’t been a Black academic and a poster child for diversity at Cambridge university, we’d probably have never known his name.
You sound like one of the Arday Truthers:
https://archive.is/KkqkY
> For some of Arday’s supporters, acknowledging that any of the media scrutiny was justified has become tantamount to siding with his “killers.” He is instead a martyr—the victim of a “lynching”—and the inconvenient fact of his fabulism must be tidied away from the virtual shrine. This is an emotional position rather than a rational one, and its very indefensibility makes it a greater demonstration of tribal loyalty. Insisting that the academic was completely innocent, in the face of all the evidence, sends a strong social signal that you hate the right-wing media and care about racism.
> The postmortem airbrushing of Arday’s story also ignores how that story twisted and turned while he was alive. When The Guardian confronted him with the implausibility of some of his tall tales, Arday responded by editing them in real time: Yes, he had once claimed to have run 600 miles in six days, an exceptional feat for an endurance athlete, but what he actually meant was that he took daylong rest breaks in between. Yes, he had claimed to have raised more than £5 million for charity, but actually this was with the help of “many fundraising collectives” whose participants he could not name because they had signed nondisclosure agreements.
As they might say on Reddit, "Everybody Sucks Here". Arday the fabulist and plagiarist, the academic institutions who didn't vet him because they were razzle-dazzled by his bullshit lifestory (then drop him like a stone when their attempts to keep his plagiarism hidden don't work any more), the popular press who are happy to amp up a public shaming for clicks and views, the anti-woke and the racists who say this just confirms what they thought about DEI, and the anti-anti-woke and anti-racists who will deny the bleeding obvious if it makes them appear virtuous to their peers.
Step 1: put out the suggestion that the lies weren't lies
Step 2: don't read the responses
Job done!
EDIT: I'll give you one set of lies. Is it "exaggerated versions of statements" or you just didn't see them?
If I say I won the Nobel Peace Prize for inventing a cure for cancer, and I have no evidence of either, but I insist I did both and make up a lame excuse as to why you can't see my prize (it's away being washed today) or why you can't find my cure (the journal pretended someone else wrote the article because they're all against me, but trust me mate it was really me who wrote it) am I just making "exaggerated versions of statements" in your view?
https://www.theguardian.com/education/ng-interactive/2026/au...
> In a subsequent interview with the Guardian, Arday claimed to have been confronted at his faculty building on two separate occasions by a masked man threatening to harm him if he did not resign, and evading detection both times. On the second occasion Arday said the intruder produced a knife and threatened him with it.
> The Guardian understands that after Arday reported the first intrusion to the university, enhanced CCTV was placed in the faculty and a panic alarm was installed in his office. The professor said he hit the panic alarm during the second confrontation, but that no one responded. It should have triggered an alarm alerting the faculty’s security team, all of whom were present at the time of the alleged incident.
> The intruder was not picked up by CCTV on either occasion and no one in the faculty reported seeing anyone suspicious. Arday did not report either intrusion at the time, telling the Guardian that after the second incident he continued his working day and even conducted a PhD viva for a student less than two hours later.
> He did not inform colleagues that a masked man with a knife was in the faculty building.
> Arday confirmed in an interview with the Guardian that the “mutilated animals sent to his family home” mentioned in the open letter was a severed pig’s head, delivered in a large cardboard box to his parents’ home address in south London. He claimed to have intercepted the package and immediately thrown it away, only telling the police several months later.
> In a subsequent interview he claimed the police investigated, checking with butchers in south London if they had sold a pig, eventually finding one that had sold a “whole hog” on the morning the head was left outside the family home.
> When the Guardian checked those details with the local butchers Arday named, they said no police officer had come in to ask them about a pig. When asked if they were sure, the butcher said “that’s the kind of thing we’d remember”.
> When the details Arday gave about the pig’s head investigation were checked by London’s Metropolitan police, the Guardian was told they were “categorically” incorrect and no investigation had taken place.
> Arday had contacted the Met to lodge a complaint of harassment against Harris after his plagiarism allegations and, because he was based in Plymouth, the case was handed over to Devon and Cornwall police. Correspondence seen by the Guardian confirmed that the force declined to pursue a case against Harris.
> Arday took no photographs of the bullet, the banana, the corrosive substance or the pig’s head. The only other people who saw any of the items were close family members, who told the Guardian Arday had shown them the bullet and the “poison”. Arday could produce no messages from the time in which he discussed any of the items with friends, family, colleagues or the police.
> There are many examples of prominent black figures being intimidated [...] But the abuse and harassment Arday has outlined would be some of the most extreme any academic has been subjected to in the UK. When Arday was asked about his claims by the Guardian, he stood by them. “To be honest with you, I thought you’d just believe me,” he said. “Why would I lie?” He would be jeopardising his career.
- We just changed our PM, despite his party having a historic majority.
- Parliament routinely rebels against the government, and backbenchers have a lot of say about the business of government.
- We have a number of upstart parties; they might be populist, but at least it's not a two-party-forever system.
- We had a coalition government just a few years ago.
- We changed our constitution a few months ago (abolishing hereditary peers) and it was just another news among many.
- We ejected one of the previous PMs for having a party during a lockdown, with a massive scandal before that when the PM accepted a gift of some wallpaper.
Compare and contrast to the ossified and corrupt American system, where the president is openly enriching himself and his family and friends, and there's nothing threatening the presidency. The last amendment was passed half a century ago, and there's zero hope for reform.
Democracy is a living, breathing system of government, not a number of checkboxes like "can I shoot a gun for fun" or "can I call someone N-word online". It's important to see the forest for the trees.
Weirdly that never happened, but that's how many people remember it.
He was ejected because he lost the support of his ministers (most of who resigned over a period of a few weeks) after he had made them to go out and lie to the public on his behalf in the case of Chris Pincher MP.
The point still stands though. A populist PM who did a tiny bit of mismanagement and corruption (relative to his current peer in the US) was forced to resign. Trump isn't.
non-democratically. there was no election. the ruling party simply made a decision itself. Just like in China.
The ruling party has changed just two years ago. Hardly China, is it
In this country, the government with a vast majority couldn't even withdraw a small cash payment from better off pensioners without a rebellion from their own MPs.
Those generalising takes are entirely disconnected from the political reality of the UK outside of twitter.
- We can't beat off to porn anymore without a VPN, because our nanny government has blocked it.
- Our government sends hilarious fines to foreign websites when it disapproves of their moderation.
Well yes. Precisely because the government was "doing nothing" while issues that plagued the voting population like migration, wealth disparity and affordability crisis were constantly growing for the past ~15 years until it reached breaking point.
Hence why people affected by this are now voting to give the new extremist parties a chance at the helm, because just voting more "doing nothing" by the parties who stood by and enabled this, just guarantees the same issues aggravating. So then what else do you expect to happen at the elections?
A lot of voters disliked the effects migration had on their country, being also one of the reason why they voted for Brexit, and why the vote far right parties right now.
And how is Berlin planning to seize the wealth of billionaires?
Because I've seen this play out before, where every supposed promise to tax the billionaires, just ends up as another tax burden on the working class high earners and entrepreneurs who already pay the highest tax rates and are the furthest thing possible from billionaires, but still gets political support from the unwashed masses since it's entirely envy driven.
33% of the vote is a historically low majority, so I guess you're technically correct.
https://electionresults.parliament.uk/general-elections/6
The electoral college would throw up equally weird results if the US didn't have a fully two-party system. (How's that working out?)
Both the UK and the US fail in rule of law regarding "all citizens and leaders must be equal before the law, supported by strong anti-corruption measures."
UK has stated separation of powers but the crown reportedly nudged Starmer to step down. The king is the one that can formally appoint government following elections.
Prince Andrew had and other royals have control over military forces in the UK, canada, australia, nz, ect. You can hem and haw all you want but the crown has constitutional and ceremonial control over the armed forces.
The King gives 'the kings speech' which is used to set the governments legislative agenda to parliment.
The king also gives royal assent to bills passed by parliment.
Black spider memos
The king also steers diplomatic efforts abroad.
every single aspect of UKs democracy can be cut by the King whenever he wants.
Yes, the monarch can in theory override the government by blocking legislation, but won't because one time a monarch did that, he ended up with his head cut off. If a monarch ever did that in modern times, Britain would quickly be a republic.
Everyone follows convention and stays in their lane and doesn't rock the boat. The last time a bill didn't get royal assent was in 1708. It simply hasn't happened since.
'The kings speech' is written by the government usually based on the manifesto they were elected on. The monarch just reads it. The monarch's role in modern times is to advise the prime minister and act as continuity advisor across governments. While the monarch may offer commentary on legislation, they won't block it, and the government is free to ignore it.
Same with the armed forces. It's ministers that control the army not the monarch. In modern Britain, the monarch's role is purely ceremonial. The monarch cannot order the armed forces into conflict.
Usually legislation gets blocked in the House Of Lords (the unelected chamber) which is why a lot constitutional reform is focused on cleaning that up, but it's game of inches because neither party wants to lose influence.
While the constitutional system may make it seem like the monarch has a lot of hard power, in reality they have none, and since the civil war can't do anything without the approval of Parliament.
This is an alright use of a monarch IMO.
The UK example would be if the UK government lost a vote of confidence, the monarch might ask the opposition parties to see if they could form a government that could pass a vote of confidence to avoid a general election. Although parliamentary math makes such a scenario unlikely in practice.
On the UK end I don't think the monarch can sack the Prime Minister. While the UK monarch could strongly suggest to a Prime Minister that it's time to resign. Usually when a Prime Minister gets to that point, it's usually the end of the road and they won't last much longer anyway even if they pushed forward.
The monarch has a lot of soft power which under the modern system is usually deployed to ensure continuity of government rather than in a controlling manner.
(The Australia, Canada, etc constitutions gives the monarch different powers than the UK and it's usually delegated to whoever is the governor for that nation)
There are some oddities, but the idea that the crown could actually exercise any of their powers, without causing a constitutional crisis, and UK rapidly becoming a republic, is farcical.
> The King gives 'the kings speech' which is used to set the governments legislative agenda to parliment.
You’re aware that the kings speech is written by the government, not the crown. It’s how the government lays out its parliamentary agenda to parliament, the civil service and the country at large. Heck there’s a whole ritual around the crown having to beg permission to enter the commons etc to emphasise the point that crown enters and speaks at the pleasure of the commons.
> The king also steers diplomatic efforts abroad.
No, the king is given instructions by the foreign office on what he’s expected to help with. Every trip and meeting the king does is checked and cleared by the uk government, and they can and have vetoed trips before.
> every single aspect of UKs democracy can be cut by the King whenever he wants.
You should watch the Jonny English movies, they’re a great documentary on how this could happen.
If it's the former, then indeed the US has more of it.
If it's the latter, the UK has three new major parties with very different policies that openly and vocally oppose Labour, Conservatives, and Libdems. Mainstream media regularly broadcasts their views. I might strongly disagree with those views, but these parties are clearly freely operating political organisations. How is the US doing with viable non-Dem and non-Republican parties?
I won't comment on your Crown conspiracy theories.
What is the difference between the two? Because you're going to make a cultural argument and NOT a legal one. The C-word is one you throw around (and the Aussies to) but would cause an American woman be pretty upset. You seem perfectly fine with its use, but we frown on both terms socially but they are strictly legal.
Defamation VS political speech would be a better comparison, and I could make the argument that Americans being more lenient are better off with our freedoms.
- swear words
- slurs
- speech enabling political organising
…which is not a matter of "upset".
In the US, in contrast, you can say pretty much anything, as long as it plausibly enough true that the plaintiff can't prove you don't believe it. "Donald Trump is a child rapist" is an example of speech that would not be protected in UK courts. Sure, I can point at all his visits to Epstein's Island, and his running child pageant shows, and complaints made against him to establish that it's not unreasonable to believe it, but I cannot prove in a court of law that he did it. So in the UK, he would win a defamation suit against me. On the flip side, here in the States that is quite safe to say in a public forum. It's quite difficult to prove a negative, and even if they passed that bar, they would then need to prove to a court that I did not believe that statement.
Here's the reality: https://x.com/flying_rodent/status/2102527889556291773
And also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Wilson_plot_allegations
The result is substantially more democratic, as per the list above.
The result seems substantially more chaotic.
And then there is the fact that the entire legal frame work is based on The Crown. If the king or queen killed someone they would have to prosecute themselves. This is the exact opposite of democracy.
It's entirely mad to me that I can make a list of easily verifiable, massively important examples of democratic processes in this country in the last few years and someone would just come up with a hypothetical like "but what if King kills someone" like it's somehow not just equal but has more weight than the list. Mad
Anne Boleyn, Catherine Howard would like a word.
But processes that exist to preserve democracy that arent governed by that democracy are problematic. Saying the "king would never do..." when a king has makes the argument silly.
The UK is not alone in this - a great example is the filibuster in the us (a senate rule).
Queen Elizabeth used Queen's Consent many many times to prevent or modify laws she didn't like. An investigation by The Guardian revealed that more than 1,000 parliamentary bills were subjected to Queen's Consent or Prince's Consent during Queen Elizabeth II's reign.
The British government feels like a delicate standoff between Parliament and the crown.
Yeah? The country got to vote for the PM? I don't recall there being a national election. Having a bunch of party insiders replace the leader who won an election with an unelected one is the opposite of democracy.
I invite you to consider the rest of the points, too.
"In democracy, one side always wins and makes its opponents illegal."
“The claim to legality renders every rebellion and counter-measure an injustice and a legal violation or ‘illegality.’ If legality and illegality can be arbitrarily at the disposal of the majority, then the majority can, above all, declare their domestic competitors illegal, that is, hors-la-loi… Whoever controls 51 percent would be able legally to render the remaining 49 percent illegal… and to treat partisan opponents like common criminals, who are then perhaps reduced to kicking their boots against the locked door.”
Carl Schmitt, Legality and Legitimacy
https://x.com/Tool_Being/status/2102495046260150596
as is often said with a sigh, "democracy is the worst form of government, except for every other."
to me, democracy is really about giving the masses enough feeling of agency, because the alternatives are either revolution and/or disengagement / low productivity / low creativity, and both are "bad for business" i.e. cannot compete with democracies.
China will be an interesting test of this theory. Notably, in China they have a terrific education system and the government is able to attract/retain smart ambitious people.
Another test will be the power of governments to thwart revolutions using digital and kinetic assymmetry. The masses have individual hackers and pea shooters and the government has digital armies and autonomous drone swarms. In turn, since revolution is off the table, governments don't need the overhead of democracy. In the US, we see this with the rise of Executive Orders for example.
I'll pick this one because it is the easiest to refute (but the others are wrong, too). What form of government was predominant during the most creative and productive periods in recent history, namely the industrial revolution and the Italian Rennaissance?
You even mention China yourself, but do not update your priors.
The tides will turn in china, once that positive notion gets suffocated by misaligned elites.
Most functioning democracies require more than 51% of a senate and six justices and a criminal head of state to completely unravel.
We are currently witnessing the dismantling of this illusion. The reason western governments increasingly engage in lawfare against the opposition is that for the first time since the post-WWII order, they are threatened by a real regime change.
It's only new if you are blind to post-WWII history.
In the western world alone, there was no shortage of incredibly vicious fights with communist/socialist groups in in post-war Europe (Most prominently in Italy and Greece), to say nothing of the various domestic decolonisation movements (The British and French governments were scared shitless of them), secessionist movements in Quebec, Spain, that entire thing in North Ireland (the understatement of the century), the Civil Rights and universal suffrage movement in the US, collapse of prominent dictatorships in Portugal and Spain...
State-threatening social upheaval is nothing new, we just have a particularly shitty flavour of it right now, as fascism and fascist-adjacent movements are currently waxing.
What is "the Civil Rights and universal suffrage movement in the US" if not a continuation of the leftist politics that Roosevelt started? What has the authoritarian Franco regime got to do with "democracy"?
None of this makes any sense.
> What is "the Civil Rights and universal suffrage movement in the US" if not a continuation of the leftist politics that Roosevelt started
The CRM was bottom-up, with personalities like Malcolm X and MLK both scaring the shit out of the government, due to their ability to mobilize millions of people.
Did they win and make the other side illegal? No.
Did the dipshits they fought win and make them illegal? I'd say no to that, as well.
People know the laws and yet they still do it thinking they're some sort of Catholic Batman. You want to change the law, do what we all do; write to your fucking MP, join a political party, campaign, donate. Don't harass someone vulnerable in a difficult state of mind and impose your morality upon them. Respect their choice and their agency.
In the US you can be arrested for the following speech:
* true threats of violence
* incitement to break the law specifically
* crimes of speech: soliciting crime, fraudulent representations, lying under oath
* stalking/cyberstalking
So lets quit this idea that its some abstract of "political orthodoxy". Stop framing crime as "difference of opinion". Hate speech and incitement to racial/religious hatred or violence are crimes here. People publishing hate speech online and then being all Pikachu face when they get arrested for breaking the law are not victims. The highest profile pretend victim was the wife of a Conservative Councillor who posted a message online that hundreds of thousands of people saw that encouraged people to set fire to hotels where asylum seekers were staying. The judges sentencing remarks were particularly eye opening given she demonstrated a relative lack of respect for the court ("If I get in trouble then I'll play the mental health card").
Who decides what is hate speech? Apparently the current UK government has decided these things (among others) are so hateful their perpetrators must be arrested:
- private WhatsApp chats between friends
- standing still in public with hands folded in prayer
Be careful when you give sharp tools to the golem.
I don't appreciate this thin end of the wedge argument. Policy is more pragmatic. Read up on what most of mainland Europe had to do in order to suppress all the Hitler Youth children after the second world war. They oppressed their free speech and it was the right thing to do.
> Who decides what is hate speech?
The rules are there for everyone to read[0]. If you want a rule of thumb, don't discriminate based on any aspect of the Equalities Act 2010 and you'll be fine.
[0] https://www.cps.gov.uk/prosecution-guidance/racist-and-relig...
> standing still in public with hands folded in prayer
Don't whitewash this shit. You know full well what we're talking about is specifically going to a place that you know you're not allowed to be in, doing a protest you're not allowed to do. Playing with the line is still taking the piss and the UK believe in the spirit of the law to avoid all this mucking about with the specification. Otherwise I can block traffic all day and make up some bullshit excuse as to how I'm somehow innocent. These are feeble excuses that Palestine in Action would be proud of.
> private WhatsApp chats between friends
As far as I'm aware the only case of this being the primary cause of a conviction was when police officers were arrested for grossly offensive messages. However they weren't charged with hate speech but rather: improper use of a public electronic communications network. 12 weeks in jail. They were discovered because it was the same group chat that Wayne Couzens (also a police officer at the time) was in, who is currently serving a life sentence for the kidnap, rape and murder of Sarah Everard.
As usual, the written law only gives a vague outline, so people like you can defend it with motte-and-bailey. In practice, stickers with slogans such as "It's OK to be white" and "Natives losing jobs; migrants pouring in" get you sent to jail [1,2]. But I'm sure you're okay with banning "race hate" or "incitement", so here's a question for you - do you think "Black People!" by the poet laureate of New Jersey, Amiri Baraka, should be banned? Maybe even is already banned in the UK, since I'm sure their anti-hate laws are enforced evenly? Here are the lyrics:
You can’t steal nothin’ from a white man. He’s already stole it. He owes you anything you want, even his life. All the stores will open if you will say the magic words. The magic words are: Up against the wall M-Fer, this is a stick up! [..] Run up and down Broad Street, Negroes, take the shit you want. Take their lives if need be, but get what you what, what you need.
> we're talking about is specifically going to a place that you know you're not allowed to be in, doing a protest you're not allowed to do.
"The law is good because you know you're not allowed to break the law." - yes, thank you, we know how laws work. That doesn't mean we agree with all of them. If she's not intimidating or obstructing anyone, she should be allowed.
> However they weren't charged with hate speech but rather: improper use of a public electronic communications network.
"Impropriety" is an even lower and vaguer standard than "hate".
> They were discovered because it was the same group chat that Wayne Couzens (also a police officer at the time) was in, who is currently serving a life sentence for the kidnap, rape and murder of Sarah Everard.
But he did not discuss or organize that murder on the chat, so this is just a sleazy attempt at guilt by association. Want to apply that standard evenly? Do you think everyone that shared group chats (where "improprieties" were spoken) with e.g. Tyler James Robinson, or Bryanna Dutcher, or Shannon Brandt, should go to jail? "Should" here refers to a moral, not legal standard - we're discussing what the law should be, not what it is, so don't bother with "laws in USA are different" counterarguments.
[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c51zn2l33r9o
[2] https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/03/04/the-tyrannical-jail...
> so here's a question for you - do you think "Black People!" by the poet laureate of New Jersey, Amiri Baraka, should be banned?
Yeah understanding the UK in 2027 based on a poem written in 1967 New Jersey USA is a great idea. Keep them coming squire, what's next: should I write a paper on volcanism based on the lasagne I cooked last night? It was quite hot.
> That doesn't mean we agree with all of them
that's fine. Just don't wutface when you get arrested and roll around on the floor like some kid in social acting all wounded.
> But he did not discuss or organize that murder on the chat, so this is just a sleazy attempt at guilt by association.
Is this really the hill you want to die on? Protecting a bunch of people who were good mates with a rapist murderer cop and participated in his group chat. Lets dig further, I wonder what they talked about:
* sexually assaulting women
* blaming domestic abuse victims for repeated abuse
oh yeah. Huh.
> you're still so soft that you've managed to think that Neo-Nazism is ok
Just make sure next time you defend censorship, that you open with "It's OK to be white" is Nazism and jailable, instead of hiding behind "don't discriminate and you'll be fine!"
* Britons Build Britain
* Equality or Quality – you can only have one
* Natives losing jobs; migrants pouring in
* We will be a minority in our homeland by 2066
* Diversity – designed to fail, built to replace
* Mass immigration is white genocide
* They seek conquest not asylum
* There is a war on whites
* Second-generation? Third? Fourth? You have to go back
* Stop immigration, start repatriation.
Ofc many of these are in violation of the Equalities Act 2010.
Idk wtf is going on in the US. Maybe you've conveniently forgotten WW2 but this shit is a thousand times more destructive then the thing it fears. If this shit isn't stamped on it gets us all killed. Nazism should always be illegal due to the tolerance paradox. It seeks to strip away people's rights, dehumanise them and murder them by initially claiming there is a specific filter that you're safe from. It then takes that same standard and applies it internally to any opposition without the filter. My grandparents were both part of that war. I haven't forgotten, you clearly have.
* What if; the problems in my society are not caused by people like me, but some external force?
Its extraordinarily tempting to humans, especially those who find self-reflection uncomfortable. So instead of property prices being a consequence of decades of NIMBYism and failure to build social housing for decades (uh-oh that sounds like something I might have voted for), it's reframed as an issue directly linked to immigration (ahhhh, very calming, I never wanted that!).
The problem is that its a mental health issue pretending to be a political movement. When a politician decides to discard all scruples and exploit this comforting lie in politics, they build a self-consuming state. By definition this state cannot be wrong and therefore everyone else is to blame. So when it makes mistakes, as all states do; it finds a scapegoat and once its done with the first scapegoat, it moves onto another, then another, then another, then another. We're all on this list, its just a case of order. If you try to push this then you'll get us all fucking killed you muppet.
Nazis need therapy, not politics. Alternatively go first wave and find yourselves early victims like the brown shirts. There's no loyalty in these movements.
Isn't it great how the judge didn't clarify which ones were illegal? Even when they send you to jail, they won't tell you exactly what is and isn't illegal to say! Meanwhile newspapers and academics and employers can disparage and discriminate against whites as much as they want, and it's never "hate":
Images of whiteness: can we imagine a world without white eyes? - https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2019/dec/11/images-...
The Psychosis of Whiteness by Kehinde Andrews review – provocative but problematic - https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/sep/17/the-psychosis-...
'Abolish whiteness' academic calls for Cambridge support - https://www.theguardian.com/education/2020/jun/25/abolish-wh...
How white women use strategic tears to silence women of colour - https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/may/08/how-wh...
The invention of whiteness: the long history of a dangerous idea - https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/apr/20/the-invention-o...
UK Gov Welcomes in Muslim Who Urged “White Genocide” - https://www.frontpagemag.com/uk-gov-welcomes-in-muslim-who-u...
The Labour Party candidate for Clacton, who is standing against Reform Party leader Nigel Farage, once described white man tears as his “favourite drink.” - https://www.thepublica.com/uk-labour-party-runs-anti-white-w...
* Wanting to hire ‘fewer white men’ for a job is not discrimination; An employment tribunal dismissed an unsuccessful jobseeker’s claim that he was rejected because he was a white man* - https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/12/19/wanting-to-hire-...
> We will be a minority in our homeland by 2066
I'm not sure why you included this one. I don't think any of them should be banned, especially in the wake of the estimated 250k predominantly-British victims of predominantly-Muslim rape gangs, but this one is a simple statement of fact, the best estimate given current trends: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/white-briton...
> Maybe you've conveniently forgotten WW2
We fought WW2 so that we could continue to exist as a people. It's the lessons of WW2 (not that they should be needed) that teach us how dangerous such censorship is.
And the men who fought in WW2 for the Allies were pro-segregation and against interracial marriage, maybe you should have talked to your grandparents instead of getting your history from Hollywood:
https://www.afhra.af.mil/Research/Military-Integration/
How do I feel about the country today? My two uncle’s gave their lives for this country, my father’s health was broken from gas in WW1. I did my little bit, my brother did his national service in the Canal Zone in Egypt. What has been our reward? EVERYTHING we fought for has been taken from us and given to foreigners, we are now third rate citizens in our own country. Our enemies rule us from Brussels and we are being colonized by ** and *** in this country. There is not one political party that is prepared to stand up and fight for our country and indigenous population. The holocaust is now being carried out on us. What are my main regrets? That I didn’t fight for Hitler, at least he was for his own people.* - https://archive.org/details/the-unknown-warriors (out of all the testimonies in that book, only about two are positive)
‘Greatest Generation’ runs counter to its wholesome image in survey on race, sex and combat during World War II - https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2021/12/20/greatest-g...
How many times do I have to reference the Equalities Act 2010 before you actually bother to read it?
> Meanwhile newspapers and academics and employers can disparage and discriminate against whites as much as they want, and it's never "hate"
It's not my fault you don't know what the definition of "whiteness" actually is. I appreciate its not a useful choice of word to use in the modern era, but you need to appreciate it was coined in the 1920s. I trust I don't need to explain to you how that world looked. That a segregated underclass might choose language to describe their oppression that doesn't take into account the feelings of their oppression.
However I do believe that children today use these concepts in a more malicious fashion. The most ugly of which is misunderstanding the sociological idea that "racism without power isn't relevant" and failing to understand it ONLY applies to structural racism and not interpersonal racism. But hey, racist ideas are tempting to everyone I guess, which only goes to show how alike we all actually are.
> I'm not sure why you included this one.
Cos its bullshit and shows people can't count I guess. Also I love how "plurality" is an alien concept that is lost on everyone that talks like that.
> I don't think any of them should be banned
Well tough shit, they are banned because this is a European country and we're not as soft as the yanks are on this, we thankfully still have dread for the spectre of Nazism.
> And the men who fought in WW2 for the Allies were pro-segregation and against interracial marriage, maybe you should have talked to your grandparents instead of getting your history from Hollywood:
Hollywood, do you realise I'm British? Here's[0] the relevant part of history that you clearly have no understanding of. Its an informational film shown to American soldiers when they came over to the UK to prepare for Normandy. I've timestamped the relevant section for you. There's also the "Battle of Bamber Bridge"[1] which shows it play out in real life. There was a stark difference between the US and the UK at that time around the subject of segregation that you are entirely blind to.
What's laughable about Americans is that they're weird about race. Like _really_ weird and they have zero self awareness about it. Nazism is a scourge and if you understood European history and its post war cultural context you'd appreciate that the lessons we took from the war are very different from the ones you've seemed to fixate upon.
Freedom is about not being killed because you're different, not about being free to harass and abuse minority groups.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SyYSBBE1DFw&t=1520s
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Bamber_Bridge
I don't think you know what happened. At least one case was a person standing quietly outside on a public sidewalk while not impeding traffic or people walking.
At best you can say it is loitering.
Isabel Vaughan-Spruce is the campaign director of 40 Days for Life Birmingham, which organises prayer vigils near abortion clinics, and a leader of March for Life UK.
She wasn't just "standing and praying". There's significant context.
Second, if it was a legitimate arrest why was she was paid out by the government for a settlement?
Also, this has happened to multiple people who haven't organized prayer vigils in the past, not that it would matter if they had.
DON'T PROTEST ABORTION NEAR OR OUTSIDE ABORTION CLINICS. Its that simple. If you're an anti-abortion campaigner, don't do your shit near abortion clinics.
I think the prosecution failed as it transpired the clinic had actually closed. Which demonstrates the issue. She was trying to get arrested so it didn't even matter that the clinic was operational.
We have such a fundamental difference of an opinion on the thought crime issue that focusing on this specific case isn't going to go anywhere so continuing this conversation is just going to be a waste.
I hope your thoughts don't get you arrested.
Its not a thought crime, its a crime crime.
Unless it's hate speech against "Zionists" and/or Jews , then it's tolerated, often celebrated. Not all hate speech is created equal.
* 19 May 2026 - John Haynes - Arrested after incidents of threatening behaviour; convicted of racially aggravated harassment involving antisemitic abuse and threats.
* 9 May 2026 - Dylan Ossei - Arrested after shouting threats at Jewish people in Enfield and assaulting a man; pleaded guilty to aggravated assault, fear of violence, and harassment.
* 7 May 2026 - Adam Bedoui - Arrested after filming and verbally abusing a Jewish man in Hackney for social media; pleaded guilty.
* 7 May 2026 - Abdelkader Bousloub - Arrested in the same Hackney incident; pleaded guilty to a religiously aggravated public order offence.
* 6 May 2026 - Wayne Kelly - Arrested after shouting antisemitic abuse and threats at Jewish men walking to a synagogue in Salford; pleaded guilty.
* 1 May 2026 - Unnamed 57-year-old man - Arrested on suspicion of threatening a Jewish man while using racially offensive language in London; police reported he was released on bail.
* 23 April 2026 - Shafiq Rahman - Arrested after shouting antisemitic abuse and threatening a Jewish man in Slough; pleaded guilty to offences involving words, assault, and damage.
* 5 April 2026 - Munir Saleh - Arrested after reports of shouting antisemitic abuse and spitting at people in London; charged with aggravated threatening behaviour and assault offences.
* 24 March 2026 - Jean Charles Tavius - Arrested after reports of shouting antisemitic abuse and throwing a rock at a moving car; charged with threatening behaviour and damage offences.
* By 23 December 2025 - Unnamed 28-year-old woman - Arrested on suspicion of an aggravated public order offence over alleged antisemitic comments in a Manchester protest speech. The police announcement did not report a conviction.
* 3 October 2025 - Aiden Stanley - Arrested over a social media post about Jewish people following the Manchester synagogue attack; pleaded guilty to sending a grossly offensive message.
* September 2025 - Thomas Webster - Arrested over social media posts that included antisemitic messages; pleaded guilty to offences involving material intended to stir up hatred.
* July 2024 - Lee Cole - Arrested after investigators found antisemitic and other hateful social media posts; pleaded guilty to inciting racial hatred offences.
* 3 April 2024 - Damion Bennett - Arrested over antisemitic videos posted on Gab; pleaded guilty to distributing recordings intended to stir up racial hatred.
* March 2024 - Zakir Hussain - Arrested after police linked him to an X account posting antisemitic comments and support for proscribed groups; pleaded guilty to public order and terrorism offences.
* November 2023 - Elliot Jackson - Arrested following reports of antisemitic social media messages; pleaded guilty to malicious communications.
* February 2023 - Robert Taylor - Arrested following an investigation involving verbal abuse of Jewish people, antisemitic material, and other conduct; pleaded guilty to public order and terrorism offences.
* February 2022 - Jaden Milne - Arrested over a conference speech containing antisemitic and other hateful material; pleaded guilty to public order and aggravated behaviour offences.
* 12 October 2021 - Oliver Riley - Arrested after posting extremist material, including antisemitic content, online; later admitted communications and terrorism offences.
> Not all hate speech is created equal.
This victim cosplay is rancid btw. It's painfully transparent. It's ugly to listen to two awful sides claiming the other is the _real_ problem and how their side is so victimised. These are the mannerisms of teenagers in social care. Please develop some level of responsibility and self-respect.
So this is normal in your eyes?
Please don't lock me up for saying you're dumb by the way. I know that's probably a serious hate crime in your eyes.
I've been extremely invested in the British press since around 1992, so this experience of having someone not-British with seemingly limited understanding of its press telling me "you're too dumb" when discussing it, is quite amusing.
I have long considered what people think is "intelligence" is simply an appreciation for understanding how wrong they might be about their first impressions and a willingness to check themselves. This conversation is quite the re-enforcement of this idea. The strength of your conviction is inversely proportional to your level of knowledge on this matter.
Find the same article on AP news, or Reuters or something.
This is completely false and comes from a commonly misrepresented statistic; '30 arrests a day' is plainly the arrests made under section 127 of the Communications Act 2003 and section 1 of the Malicious Communications Act 1988 which includes things like online stalking and harassment. I hope you're just mistaken and not willfully implying that those issues are merely offensive to the prevailing political orthodoxy.
You can argue it's highly improbable that all arrests are over 'hurty words online', definitely – but anyone claiming zero arrests seems improbable too.
I do also feel it's quite convenient that the lack of breakdown allows people to clap back with accusations of encouraging stalking and harassment.
Just very heavily implying it, thinking they're being clever
There is speech and there are consequences for speech.
If I incite or state that I am going to commit violence, stalking, rape or murder, should I face consequences? Yes. That's what is happening.
There are outlying cases which will be used to discredit this perspective but reality is there are a hell of a lot of very not nice people out there making active threats and inciting hatred and violence.
And everyone gets their day in court.
I think this is the link where the chap asks for legal advice: https://www.reddit.com/r/LegalAdviceUK/comments/1vxkcic/poli...
However, if you want hard evidence what that post was claiming, I can give you a real citation from 2018:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-46106224
> A house linked to an "offensive" video showing a model of Grenfell Tower being burned on a bonfire has been searched by police. Six men [...] were arrested on suspicion of a public order offence and have been released under investigation. A video shared on social media shows a cardboard model of the tower being set alight by a laughing crowd.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-46112026
> Can I be offensive in my own home?
> Basically, yes. [...] if you make offensive comments in your home and they are recorded and posted online, it might be possible that you could be prosecuted.
However, the CPS appealed against his acquittal, and it was quashed in 2021: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-58054431
He was retried in 2022, where this time he pled guilty and was given ultimately a minor slap on the wrist: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-61160971
Ultimately, everyone is happy:
- people who saw the video and were offended by it are happy "something was done"
- the CPS is happy because they gott'im
- the courts are happy because they got paid double
- the guy accused of offending people is happy this multi-year ordeal where the CPS won't stop hounding him until he confesses his guilt is finally over
- MPs are happy they didn't need to change any laws no matter how unreasonable they were
All good, right?
Are we also going to spend years prosecuting someone who mockingly reenacts the sinking of the Titanic? Or is that somehow water under the bridge?
----
Police have arrested and questioned 3 of my mates from our private WhatsApp group chat. They're asking to speak to me too, but I'm working abroad.
They've all been arrested and had interviews under s127 of the Communications Act.
There's 4 of us in a group chat on WhatsApp where we chat and also make some edgy jokes and stuff. We're two white, an Indian and a black guy who studied at uni together.
All three of them have been arrested and interviewed today. I don't know anyrhing more than this. This info comes from their gf and fiance.
I'm working abroad but I have received a WhatsApp message and attempted call from a UK officer who identified himself wanting to speak to me about an ongoing enquiry into a reported issue.
My mate's fiance says it was reported by another guy's ex who he dumped 4 weeks ago. I'm inclined to believe that as the officer's message said he was acting on a report.
The thing is, we shared a lot of edgy jokes beteen us - but it was literally just the 4 of us in a private fucking chat. Some of the jokes we made were racisr, but they were all banter directed at each other. Others were just taking the piss out of the major news events like saying "Who needs people flying planes when our own shitty buildings just burn themselves down?" about Grenfell.
It's crass, but it's literally just us talking shit in private. These messages arent public or anything.
I can't get through to any of the guys. Is this something the police are actually going to try and prosecute?!
At this point should I just not come home? I'm dual Austrian-British and Austria doesn't extradite to the UK.
How so? Since Austria doesn't (typically) allow dual citizenship.
> Austria doesn't extradite to the UK.
With what guarantee? In 2013 Austria forced the landing of the plane of the Bolivian president on orders from the US because they had intelligence Snowden might be on board.
So if you think Austria will hesitate to ship your ass to the UK if you piss off the wrong elites, just because there's no official bi-lateral extradition agreement, you're kidding yourself. If needed, they'll just make up a spin story that you're some major child molester or something, to justify their actions in the media and reassure the public on why the violation of your rights was justified and they'll never ever do it again to anyone else as long as they behave, pinky promise wink-wink. In short, the people with guns can break the rules at will with little to no accountability.
This is part of what started the death of BBM and proliferation of news via social media. You’d go on Twitter and see all the reports or riots and burning buildings then go to the BBC and… nothing.
All of this is to say that successive British governments, over a span of decades, have been actively destroying freedom of speech and a right to privacy for its citizens.
With AI and the rise of populism combined with the absolute decimation of the average person’s attention span it is going to get a lot worse.
What we have is a lot of people changing the narrative since to discredit the BBC and divide everyone further.
The point at which the BBC started reporting was the same as all other major news outlets: after the point that they just looked daft for not reporting it.
I know this as my videos of the riots took my little blog from 50 - 100 views a day to thousands per minute…
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1ydQg9NbsQ
> The wife of a conservative politician was sentenced to 31 months in prison for what police said was an unacceptable post.
What did she say? The article does not elucidate.
Inciting violence for example is not legal. I believe spaces around abortion clinics are also to be free from demonstrations. US free speech absolutists seem to vehemently disagree until you say something unkind about Charlie Kirk or ICE.
The low point might be quoting Elon Musk. This is true in any context, but in particular here. The scandal is real, but none of it is about people being arrested for non-politically-correct speech.
There’s plenty of otherwise real stuff to poke the UK about.
> Mass deportation now, set fire to all the fucking hotels full of the bastards for all I care, while you’re at it take the treacherous government and politicians with them. I feel physically sick knowing what these families will now have to endure. If that makes me racist so be it
[0] https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Connolly...
> “Kill those motherfuckers. Let the streets soak in their red, capitalist blood, dude.” - Hasan Piker on landlords
I don't think that statement would go down too well here, but even then context is very important for incitement to violence. Considering people were and did set fire to hotels I think it was worthwhile investigating.
A guy Hasan didn't like got shot in the neck during a public debate. A pair of Jewish embassy workers were gunned down while walking to a museum. A health insurance company CEO was shot outside of a hotel. I could go on.
In the UK there was an attempted murder when someone attacked a protestor burning a Koran, but luckily the UK authorities convicted the victim of the attack with "asking for it"[1] so justice was served.
[1] https://www.gbnews.com/news/london-muslim-man-spared-jail-tu...
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2910vrrygo
1. Holding up a sign offering help to any women being coerced into an abortion is illegal. 2. Standing silently on the road near one can be illegal. 3. parking a car with a bumper sticker near one can be illegal.
The whole paragraph about Musk and rape gangs is nonsense, of course. The biggest rape gang ever convicted in the UK was entirely white. Musk and his ilk only care about rape when the rapists are not white. On average immigrants are slightly less likely to commit sexual assaults (obviously averaging across many different groups).
> What did she say? The article does not elucidate.
She called for hotels housing asylum seekers to be burned. I think she is a nasty racist but I also think the sentence was excessive and I am not convinced it was a serious incitement to violence (and that was not what she was convicted of).
> US free speech absolutists seem to vehemently disagree until you say something unkind about Charlie Kirk or ICE.
Not American, and I entirely support the right of anyone to make unkind comments about anyone else. You are right that many people apply different standards to their own side, but right wing Americans are are from alone in that.
[0] https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/R-v-Lucy...
The emphasis on 'rape gangs', 'immigrants' and 'asylum seekers' isn't just objectively untrue, it's cynically manipulative. It's fundamentally a toxic and calculated form of marketing and branding.
And also a cynical distraction from - for example - the Epstein story and Musk's appearances in it.
There was a lot of this around Brexit. Many supporters voted to 'stop them coming over here'.
The government then ramped up immigration - a lot. For some reason the press failed to report this.
They only care when the rapists are coming from outside the UK, and being protected by the authorities.
>>On average immigrants are slightly less likely to commit sexual assaults (obviously averaging across many different groups).
I think that is called picking your sample carefully. No-one is worried about EG the Chinese or the French.
Recently I saw a clip on GB News where one of their analyst said that anyone that opposes a war and/or conscription with Russia will need to put in prison. The show host, Jacob Rees Mogg and Lord Redwood saw nothing wrong with the statements.
None of these people have been in the armed forces and are too old to be called up for conscription.
319 years, 4 months, 3 weeks, 2 days to be exact.
Generally this applies to all governments anyway. The British state is just the most blatant at it currently, as they are losing control.
Pretty sure she called for the murder, by arson, of asylum seekers although the article missed that bit out.
https://lordslibrary.parliament.uk/select-communications-off...
My opinion is that free-speech absolutism is a policy position that causes much more harm than good, and which erodes social cohesion. There should be perpetual debate about where we as a society accept where the line is between speech which is allowed and that which is disallowed.
And to wit, on the tea party analogy: how's that working for the US now?
You gotta stay on-topic. You keep coming up with random things to compare to that make no sense to anybody but you. Who said it was legal to say "kill the king"?
But I dislike even more that we decide that the solution to it is to pass laws prohibiting speech, and even more that the ones in charge of passing those laws are very incentivised to prohibiting criticism to themselves or their policies or their ideologies.
It’s why the US has such a problem with gun control and laws.
I could argue everyone should have guns, and it’s just bad people, right?
Let me give it a go; Switzerland has higher gun homicides than the UK.
Citation please.
(EDIT: Citation of an arrest just for saying that, not an arrest for incitement.)
I'll take that as confirmation that it happens all the time though - since this was evidently not an isolated case, as you have pointed out.
That includes your right to support Hamas or Israel, your right to support abortion, your right to support defensive gun use, your right... well actually your right to support a lot of things given how readily innocuous things are described by opponents as "violence" or "assault".
Fortunately in the U.S. this is recognized under Brandenburg v. Ohio.
Can we please stop using a country you clearly have limited understanding of, as a prop in your morality play for your own activism?
Bear in mind that these "takes" are often sensationalised with useful context removed in order to better sell the message to yank markets.
If you're gonna chat shit about my nation, please afford it some level of respect in doing some research of conflicting views instead of parroting whatever twaddle the demagogue du jour is bleating.
> please afford it some level of respect in doing some research of conflicting views
There are no "conflicting views" to research. You're just upset that reality doesn't align with your dogma.
> Considering they arrest people for saying "there are only two genders"
I invite you to come try that out. You'll be fine unless you're a complete penis about it. What you should probably clock is that Graham Linehan doxxes and harasses people online with his followers brigading. If you recall the bail conditions when he got arrested was that he had to stop posting on twitter for its duration. THAT'S the headline issue, he's a publisher with a big audience. He's not just saying it at the back of a pub, and he's one of those obsessives that posts about it all the time.
Do you see the difference between what you said and what he gets in trouble for? Reducing it to just saying "there are only two genders" is taking harassment, brigading and doxxing and putting it in a nice frock so you can pretend its a victim.
I've lived in my country for decades and have added nuance to this subject. What gives you the confidence that makes you think you're better informed about my nation that I am?
https://www.foxnews.com/world/blogger-arrested-sharing-anti-...
Do you think someone should be arrested for sharing a meme that says f** Hamas? Or did you not know about this?
It's common knowledge that the UK is arresting people on the daily for harmless things that no one actually cares about. Should someone go to jail for saying "fuck serial killers"? Is that a hate crime too?
If you had an idea about our laws you'd realise that's not the problematic part. The issue is under the Equalities Act 2010 religion and ethnicity are protected characteristics. So its the "fuck Islam" and "fuck off to a Muslim country..." that is problematic here.
FYI using Fox News to try to understand the UK is like trying to run air traffic control with a Fischer-Price chatter telephone. Stating that I am ill-informed or blinded by bias when citing a yank source (who by their own definition are "entertainment news") as opposed to a serious broadcaster from the UK is quite the look.
Do you not know how media works in the 21st century? They're republishing from UK sources. It was just the first hit on the SERPs because they have better SEO. Go find the original sources if you really want to. The point is that your country is putting people in prison for the dumbest reasons, and you apparently see no issue with it.
Maybe don't use a source from the 1960s then. Victim cosplay is gross, so its no surprise I don't respond to it. Find me a contemporary source if you want to compare apples to apples. You want me to respond with some mostly irrelevant reference to ancient Greece or something? Cleon probably has a couple of tangential quotes we could explore.
Yeah I know the source. Its the Torygraph. Once a mighty broadsheet but these days they print any old shit to get those boomer clicks and make them all upset. Tell them the world is falling apart to soften the blow of impending death. You're treating hospice fare as actual news you spanner.
Anybody that is worth listening to doesn't focus on the Hamas part like that source does. They focus on the parts that violate the Equalities Act 2010 because they know what they're talking about.
They're dragging grannies off to prison just for holding up signs, and literally accusing them of supporting terrorism.
For example, the USA maintains a list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations, and penalities for providing support to those organisations are rather more severe than the in the UK.
Whether or not Palestine Action should be proscribed is a different matter - their most serious action to date has been simply damaging military aircraft. Personally, I'd tend to say that proscription is too harsh a response for property damage with no violence against a person.
I guess in the US that anyone doing something similar would simply have been killed, rather than their organisation being banned. That's not exactly great either!
"
Unfortunately this first phrase is not strictly true in the sense that UK customers have their e2ee secrets exposed under common use cases, without requiring a passcode. My copresenter and I published some research at DEF CON 34 this year showing how the e2ee data is particularly vulnerable when ADP is off. Overall, people that do not work with extraction capabilities are currently over-estimating the strength of apple's e2ee and encryption in general. The platform security whitepaper documentation is insufficient on transparency and there are a number of best practices Apple is not following to better meet the e2ee claims they currently advertise.
Maybe Apple should withdraw all encryption support from all UK government accounts? The Prime Minister can use a Huawei or some chunky thing from a military contractor.
Apple should withdraw from the UK until the UK government learns to respect encryption and privacy.
Especially since big tech is steaming ahead to mandating passkeys that only they are allowed to control/backup. Not long until all governments could intercept your passwords to all services.
I would hope to see Apple pull out of the UK market over this, and certainly to stop selling Apple devices to the UK government and to remove the UK government entities from Apple services.
Think different.
Don't be Evil.
Works better. Plays better
Where did that all go? Same place as the Christmas bonus and empathy above middle management.
It's almost as wild as when during the pandemic "lockdown", planes had to take off, burn tonnes of fuel and land empty some minutes later at the same airport, because there's some fucking law about landing spots and how they'd be lost if that bullshit wasn't done.
Before the COVID restrictions, airlines were required to use their allotted spots at least 80% of the time.[6] During the pandemic, the European Commission temporarily suspended Europe's airport slot rule for a short period.[citation needed] Due to travel restrictions, many flights were cancelled or had limited capacity, which made it difficult for airlines to fulfill all the requirements for possessing an airport slot. The suspension of the slot rule was reinstated in October 2021. After the slot rule was reinstated, the rule only required European airlines to use 75% of their flight slots for the winter season.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_flight_%28commercial_avi...
Also if you do revert account to UK you will get a warning that you either need to disable ADP or lose access to iCloud features.
Unlike Android there are way more hassle in installing iOS apps under different accounts with different regions. On Android I just have 5 diffetent accounts with different billing countries and it just work.
Also AFAIK iCloud family features dont work cross-region.
From what I remember it uses a combination of things like your current GPS location, your SIM cards reported country and more to determine what country you're really in to restrict certain features.
So it's not as simple as swapping your location in settings, or even traveling to somewhere in the EU, theres a certain sticky-ness to what your device thinks is your current country.
Edit: bit more info on eligibilityd here https://theapplewiki.com/wiki/Eligibility#eligibilityd
PS: If you think the British gov is authoritarian.. well, you might not know what the term means and/or anything about the spectrum of governments operating today or in the past.
The British government is certainly not as authoritarian as those in China or Russia, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s still terrible and restricts people’s rights. For example, you can be detained for as long as they want if you refuse to unlock your encrypted device.
Supose you live in USA, your chickens have a list of laws, those laws apply to USA. If you try to sell those chickens in UK or Europe you'll find that your company will not be allowed to operate, and if you continue someone will go to jail.
Maybe digital products have an easy way out, but apple is not digital and they may need to find a way to comply.
We don't want it the other way around; companies placed outside the borders doing and selling whatever they want without a care. So we end up in a negotiation.
Apple choose to maliciously comply; subtly revealing the TCN, giving all UK users notices about what their government demanded of them to encourage public outrage, and push on the correct parts of the UK government that has their interest in mind.
They can do both of things. There's no law against leaving a country for not respecting human rights like privacy and encryption.
This is not one. Nobody (within 2%) gives a stuff.
Used to live there now I don't even want to visit.
Only disadvantage that you will need to pay fot services via US gift cards as you need US bank cards otherwise.
crypto has a lot of theoretical value, but in practice people only really think of crypto when they want to tap into shadow economy.
I do not deny that this technology will be instrumental to network communities, provided we are ever allowed to form such. I do not deny that offline POSes and fully offline tap-to-pay may become a possibility if an existing fiat currency adopts crypto as one "interface" among traditional banking, Apple/Google Pay, and cash. (this, by the way, would be incredible in Ukraine - right now it's power off, and you can't use your bank for offline purchases.)
in practice it's only really shadow economy. at this point it's not even a speculative asset of some notable value
Ah, just like that.
Of course something that is just possible in the public eye, after a lot of public scrutiny and for all accounts at once.
A single account, in secret? IMPOSSIBLE!
They never needed to build a backdoor....
Yeah I read the next few paragraphs and I've seen the turn off button....
Has the UK started attacking any open source E2EE projects yet?
Apple's control over iOS is the main reason I prefer GrapheneOS so much over it. You get amazing privacy and security without sacrificing control. GrapheneOS has said they won't introduce age verification and a backdoor they obviously won't implement.
Some delusional "save the children" anti-privacy extremist doesn't have the political capital or the technical insight to convince the government to create a law to issue secret gag orders.
People with good civil intention don't just propose the idea, or get the momentum, to institutionalize such mechanisms.
So who are the major influencers, and their thoughts, for pushing this?
For the last 25 years certain western governments (especially the US and UK/5 eyes) have focused on control over democracy. They've sold it as protections, defense, safety, etc. It's the opposite. Control, power, abuse, and the votes/$$$ to ignore their constituents. This is usually lead by conservative or far right parties who have zero history with abusing power and control (ex McCarthyism in the US).
We live in a world of surveillance. Even if most of that is to market you ads and extract capital it's still degrading and less safe for anyone but the core in group(s).
I think you can just start with:
1. Campaigning on behalf of a worthy victim, or against a terrible enemy, is a good way to become more socially powerful. Most people are less willing to disagree with you when you do this because it risks introducing motive uncertainty - are you criticising the means because you truly object to the means, or are you criticising the means because you don't support the worthy victim or oppose the terrible enemy? This is a socially disadvantageous position to argue from.
2. Exploited children are worthy victims, and drug traffickers and terrorists are terrible enemies.
3. Therefore, policies that nominally protect children or oppose drug traffickers and terrorists are socially advantageous, and arguing for them is likely to increase your social power.
The means here are disproportionately likely to be done in a concealed way if the underlying policy is not broadly popular, independently of the effects it has on localised politcal arguments. Many people, myself included, don't support every political cause that helps a worthy victim or opposes a terrible enemy.
Social pressure is harder to apply at a distance, so the reality-warping effects of motive uncertainty are less powerful, so it makes sense that it's kept to private pressure groups and lobbying.
You won't be criticizing your boss/mayor/president/local politician/whoever, if you have to do it from an account tied to your own name. Having everyine install a digital ID on their phones (to prove they're old enough to jerk off to pornhub) is the first step, the "real name" policy is the next. The encryption ... well, one of the separate steps inbetween those two.
the governments themselves. left, right, or center, their number one priority is to maintain their power.
it amuses me immeasurably when the useful idiots in the West cheer on the policies of China and Russia. think of the children, think of the terrorists, think of the racists, think of the disinformation, blah blah blah. there are a myriad excuses but only one true goal -- suppression of dissent.
the UK establishment in particular primarily feels threatened by unredacted coverage of the consequences of its immigration policy, which they know gives voters to Reform. not because Reform would reverse that policy -- every "far-right fascist racist nazi" party in Europe had at best slowed the influx, not halted or reversed it -- but simply because someone else would be receiving lobbyists' money, favors, and sinecures after retirement.
Jeff Gray is a man who regularly gets arrested and/or trespassed from public places for holding up a sign saying "God bless the homeless vets". Seems to happen nearly every time he does it at various locations.
Oh, and flock cameras and ICE aren't exactly a sign that America is this beacon of freedom that it likes to portray.
You also don't have the right to a lawyer to be in a room with you and you are compelled to answer all their questions and they do not need to tell you why they stopped you.
Then if you are lucky they return your devices 7 days later after they have been through everything.
This guy went through it last year and talks bout what happens when they stop you: https://youtu.be/991kRp8KUmo?si=-5S1uLE7K9KG_gNj
That is something that can happen at nearly every international border crossing. Before posting I tried to find a list of countries that require a warrant to search your stuff and the only place that came up was Hong Kong. New Zealand requires some suspicion, but that's effectively the same as they can simply state "they were acting suspiciously to my eye."
>Oh, and flock cameras and ICE aren't exactly a sign that America is this beacon of freedom that it likes to portray.
The US never said that you won't be observed in public nor that you can enter, remain, and travel freely around the country forever without permission.
This reads like Soviet-era whataboutism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes
But keep in mind you have to disable all subscriptions first and also your family group if you have one must also switch their accounts to US.
So yeah pretending you're US customer is no brainer with Apple and unlike Google they dont have automatic detection that will move your account to other region.
Beware you can only change account region once a year or something.
After spending 8-12 years in a single gmail account I learned my lesson. Don't get entrenched or you can't be flexible.
I thought they at least used something complex to attempt to prevent non-EU users using third-party app stores. I also recall a legitimate EU user is not allowed to travel abroad too long before losing access to those stores.
What Google does is completely different - they enforce local regulations on your accounts just if you keep using them within specific region for too long. Though Google dont actually change billing region or Google Play region.
That angry’s up the blood of libertarians, but ultimately from the point of view of the State it has to be able to do its job of detecting and prosecuting serious crime, and it will redraw privacy lines whenever that is substantially impeded by new technology.
In reality the secret police did not care about laws or constitution, so private mail correspondence was intercepted and opened, read, then closed again with care, trying to make this undetectable, and the telephone lines of persons of interest were tapped.
Nonetheless, it was understood that this surveillance is actually illegal, so it was hidden as much as possible.
Nowadays, the government institutions of most "free" states, like USA and UK have granted themselves far more rights to do surveillance of their citizens than the dictators of the past.
Detecting and prosecuting serious crime does not need any such general surveillance. The general surveillance just makes much cheaper the detecting of serious crimes, but in exchange it gives the means to the government employees to commit more serious crimes themselves.
It relays my main concern which is that while current governments may use this in moderation and under judicial oversight, future ones may not. And we should build tools for the future not just for now.
There’s a general regression towards fascist and right wing ideologies in the last few years and I don’t want to be up against a wall one day because someone did something with ignorant best intent.
The “fascist” part (authoritarian/totalitarian tendencies) came long before the resurgence of the right, but most people seem to approve of those methods as long as they target those they dislike, so I won’t be shedding any tears for them when it’s their turn at last.
It is self-evidently written by AI. You can tell from both tropes such as “To bring this into sharper focus” and the fact that it is entirely without an opinion or argument for most of the piece.
The whole "Apple won't do what the USG wants" story is farce, engineered specifically to protect Apple's brand image. Following the Snowden drop when we all learned that the USG has unfettered realtime access to everything in iCloud without a warrant via FAA702, Apple had a major fucking crisis on its hands, along with a lot of other companies. (If you think the CIA can't read any object in S3, you simply don't understand how the world works. Note also that AWS has built a custom, one-off, airgapped AWS region ON PREM for the CIA. https://aws.amazon.com/federal/us-intelligence-community/ )
Those CEOs all went to DC and sat down with Obama and talked it out. The official cover story was something like "Obama wants help with healthcare.gov".
> The top leaders from the world’s biggest technology companies pressed their case for reform of the National Security Agency’s controversial surveillance operations at a meeting with President Obama on Tuesday, resisting attempts by the White House to portray the encounter as a wide-ranging discussion of broader priorities.
https://www.businessinsider.com/tech-ceo-meeting-with-obama-... (includes photo)
It is very likely that this media plan was discussed and agreed upon in those meetings. Otherwise, nobody sane in any government in Europe would ever buy an iPhone (or let their citizens do same), given that the USG can read all their photos and messages and emails and contacts in iCloud instantly and without a warrant.
(China of course requires Apple run the iCloud servers for Chinese users in China via a joint venture with a CCP-operated company, which preserves the same realtime full access to all iCloud/iMessage data in China for the CCP as PRISM does for the USG.)
Don't believe the marketing hype.
Further reading:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM
The Snowden releases support very plainly the direct realtime access of the US intelligence community to tech company servers without search warrants (just FISA orders).
It is the single most used data source by the US intelligence community.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Prism_slide_5.jpg
Apple began providing such data in October 2012.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:PRISM_Collection_Det...
https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/new-slides-reveal-gr...
https://www.reuters.com/technology/cybersecurity/governments...
These aren't conspiracy theories, these types of secret agreements happen all the time.
EDIT: it seems the original poster I was replying to has deleted their post, and so this may not make as much sense in the thread now.
Getting really tired of the UK govs incompetence/maliciousness around digital law making
I guess if I lose my phone on a trip, I wanna be able to walk into an Apple store and restore it from their cloud copy that the feds have backed up & pored over by LLMs too. (not sure that’s done in realtime for 100% of the population, but tokens will be cheap enough eventually - they have their pre-LLM solution too)
I think I keep Signal data mostly out of the cloud though, declining to use their latest features. Hidden notifications too. Is it only personal family updates, yes, but the principle makes me feel good.