I've been involved peripherally in working with anti-radicalisation programmes in UK schools. I imagine that the issue that authorities are bumping up against are the situations, where you know someone has been radicalised, but there is nothing effectively you can do because no law has been broken until there's evidence that they start assembling the components for the bomb or whatever.
This is a hard problem and leads to all those 'the bomber was described as being on the intelligence services radar' lines in news stories.
The benevolent reading of these kinds of moves is that it at least gives the authorities to intervene, though I recognise the risks to liberty.
Then they should create a program where specific individuals can placed on a deradicalization program and be banned from extremist material. And then make it a crime to view the material while you are on that program.
> you generally can't put adults in "programs" without their consent, unless they already committed a crime.
Sure you can - there's plenty of precedent for e.g. sectioning people into mental hospitals for their own safety or removing people's driving licenses when they might be a danger (without committing a crime - bad eyesight, bad motor control, drug regimen, etc.)
A driving license is a privilege that comes with rules, taking it away is not the same as imposing unilateral restrictions.
Sending people to mental hospitals is a fair example, but that's why I wrote "generally", acknowledging the existence of exceptions. In that case, it's accepted that consent is an oxymoron, which doesn't really apply here.
I agree it's a hard problem, but getting it wrong is going to lead to the Northern Ireland situation: overreaction by authorities creating political prisoners who will be martyrs to their cause. Bobby Sands is still a hero to many.
> there is nothing effectively you can do because no law has been broken until there's evidence that they start assembling the components for the bomb or whatever
Sure, but that is basically where we as a society have agreed the line is drawn for decades. Otherwise you start prosecuting people for "sedition". And it'll inevitably get used against peaceful leftwing groups and not against radical xenophobes, etc.
Thanks for broadening the discussion, authorities are a construct of our society that have come about usually in response to a need, they are mostly funded using our taxes and the output of the state's productivity, directed by our politicians, administered by our civil service and executed by employees of the state, they are not separate to society, they are within society, we made them and we influence the authorities behaviour by our actions. Trust is the glue that holds this together and transparency is the mechanism by which trust can be earnt. I'd like to see some strong progress in tools to visualise and inspect these systems, a way for me to connect the dots, the better these systems are, the more support they can be in demonstrating where transparency is lacking, open big data is helping, and it's exciting to imagine that a community led project could create a more complete picture of the systems we live in than we've ever had, if we can do that then perhaps there would be a better understanding of the constraints under which the authorities operate and the actions they take would have context.
2017: when mean words can land you in jail, wrongthink is about to be a crime, free speech and the ACLU is white supremacy(1), and possibly the first time in history when a man breaking a woman's skull with his fist is OK(2).
Well, through Five Eyes and other partnerships, this would be enforced with the US's cooperation and support.
That said, politics in the West, and even globally, have become increasingly interconnected. These trends and topics I mentioned are not isolated to the US at all.
Meanwhile we are lobbying for net neutrality legislation which gives out own government (famous for freedoms like the patriot act) additional power over ISPs by reclassifying them as common carriers.
Do you really want your government deciding what is and is not neutral content delivery? No one sees any way in which it can go wrong?
Do you mean legislation abolishing net neutrality? Because AFAIA the point of net neutrality is that only the delivery of _all_ content is neutral. (Note that it's not the content that's supposed to be neutral, whatever that would mean, but the delivery.)
How are people so niave as to not understand that such a broad concept like "neutrality" can easily be abused? Legislation is slow to change and adapt as is, you want to give government further power to apply law to an industry which has already been captured? Never mind the quickness with which tech like the internet changes.
I feel like I'm the only sane person on HN. How are people so oblivious to the downsides of broad, sweeping regulation?
It sounds like you mean that people can redefine the word neutral to suit their use case? Because "net neutrality" is pretty well defined, and basically means "nobody should have the power to interfere with our communications". The government already has the power to apply law - what we're supposed to care about is what law they're applying, and whether those are good laws.
I think the reason people are "oblivious" is basically because they're also (i.e. not only) aware of the downside of the absence of regulation, and feel that those downsides outweigh those of regulation.
Can we not just make a worm that does this thereby rendering everyone guilty?
Better: target devices in Westminster exclusively so their own names turn up on the list.
I personally like how they've attempted to distinguish downloading and reading as if when you browse to a website it doesn't download the HTML and store it in a temp cache on your local disk.
This suggests that today the difference between innocent and guilty is the directory path of an illicit file. :D
the temp cache still exists offline.
This means that if I wanted to store "illicit" files I'd just store them in my temp cache under a plausibly temp-cachy sounding file name.
Effectively the crime is distinguished by the directory path. In both cases the effect on your machine is identical. It loads the content to disk, then into memory and then displays it in your viewer/browser.
Okay. So what's wrong with that? It's like saying the difference between protected and unprotected speech can be the location of the speech in question. Yeah, it very much can be. What's wrong with that?
its not reliable? It can easily be forged/hidden/framed?
Again it confers power to those that understand how systems work. I'm not complaining, it benefits me but we continue to drift toward a class-based system where the technical class gains ever increasing benefits over the rest of the plebs.
We're sleepwalking into an increasingly stratified society.
Because path of the file is not determined by the user in all cases. This means the prosecutor will have to prove that the user deliberately stored it for later consumption.
For example, if a web browser has a semi-permanent cache by default for all pdf files, and the browser downloads a pdf to this cache, it's not possible to determine if the user "downloaded" it (ie. deliberately, to access later or repeatedly) or "streamed" it (ie. accidentally accessed it and closed it after viewing the content)
The fundamental issue is that politicians and the general public do not understand how software works. Many applications access and store data by default which the user has not implicitly asked them to do. If the law is determined so broadly, it can put any user with an application that accesses content without somehow validating that it is legal (how you do that without accessing it I do not know) into a grey area which the state can choose to exploit/prosecute with if needed.
Unfortunately quite a bit more complicated on the back end of things when you need to report on it. Both loading a webpage and downloading it have a similar request pattern. Take, for example, a PDF file which loads seamlessly in Chrome.
If this is something you can currently distinguish, I’d be very interested in hearing more!
(a) Why do you need to identify it on the backend? Wouldn't someone who's arrested presumably have their laptop confiscated?
(b) Why does something being illegal imply that you have to be able to distinguish it from something legal in every instance? They could just only apply it when they can make a case that it was done in an illegal manner. It's not like we don't already have laws where intention makes a strong difference, despite the fact that you can't always establish intentions.
The UK has a very effective check and balance in the Crown Prosecution Service, who can simply decide it's not in the public interest to prosecute a crime. Compare and contrast to elected and political prosecutors in the US trying to make a career.
Not that they're universally defined, but I think the Tories would be left-of-centre in the US context even though they're considered right-wrong in the UK.
If you're referring to this proposal by the UK government, you should know that the Tories are a right-wing party. Your rants about "the left" are misguided.
It's not just the UK, this is the case for just about every western government, the US political system is definitely the eccentric here, if we are trying to find a global political centre, which is as close to an absolute as you are going to get.
This often comes up in these discussions. You need to realise that the far-right spawns much more violence (against individuals; against groups; against the state) than the far left.
In the UK we recently saw an MP being murdered by a far right extremist; we've seen an increase in racially motivated violence against Muslims and Jews; we've seen small but violent demonstrations by far right organisations.
This kind of stuff just isn't happening from the far left.
In these times it is not happening from the far left much but there are still exceptions (eg. Antifa). However, this can be explained by the prevalence of leftist views. It is mostly the right that feels compelled to use violence.
We've also seen an increase in racially motivated violence by Muslims such as the Ariana Grande concert and the London Bridge attack.
There have also been plenty of violent demonstration by left wing groups, so much so that a BBC reporter had to have a bodyguard at the Labour conference.
Finally, anti-semitism seems to be as much a thing on the left as the extreme right these days, as shown by the anti-Semitism at the Labour conference.
Around 20% of UK murders are committed by migrants who comprise some 10% of the population (FOI data). Are these migrants mostly on the far right? The rule seems to be that they suffer some mental disability unlike of course the nutcase who murdered the MP.
On May 22, 2017, Hodgkinson wrote "Trump is a Traitor. Trump Has Destroyed Our Democracy. It's Time to Destroy Trump & Co." above his repost of a Change.org petition demanding "the legal removal" of Trump and Vice President Mike Pence for "treason". He belonged to numerous politically-oriented Facebook groups, including those named "Terminate the Republican Party," "The Road To Hell Is Paved With Republicans," and "Donald Trump is not my President."
When the media normalizes that "punching Nazis" is A-OK, this violence from very unhinged, disturbed individuals is the result.
Ignoring for the moment this article is about a UK politician wanting to make changes to UK law - you might want to look at THE FBI lists. They haven't featured left wing groups since the 70s. They still regularly feature extreme right wing groups.
Most "lone wolf" mass shooters are on the far right; we've seen far right activists shooting into crowds of demonstrators, or driving vehicles into crowds of demonstrators.
For all the talk of "punching Nazis" it's not the left wing who are perpetrating violence in the US.
Is BLM a right-wing group? What's more astonishing here is that the media is A-OK with left-wing violence. They try to portray them as some kind of freedom fighters.
It’s happening here in France. A report in the free commuter newspaper in Lyon this morning recounted the arrest of a guy who had watched videos of decapitations (I presume ISIS-produced). Perhaps he downloaded the video, but likely he just viewed it online.
People often say 'downloading' and 'viewing online' are the same because technologically there isn't much to differentiate the two. We could start saying 'he saved the files on his computer' vs 'watched it online'. That way the difference in intent is more clear. Saving the files on your harddisk so you can look at them later and building up a collection of ISIS videos should be considered different from looking at the same videos online.
this article is wrong. reading extremist material is already illegal in the UK.
the changes are to increase the sentence for repeated visits to 15 years.
since reading extremist material is already illegal the article could point to all the miscarriages of justice caused by people convicted for mere possession of a chemistry textbook or for journalistic research into terrorist organisations.
Except if they invest a whole $0 in a letsencrypt cert or any service with one.... or have they persuaded the services to allow them to MITM their own citizens?
Amber Rudd (current home secretary) made a speech at the conservative party conference announcing the intention to criminalise viewing material online, as well as the existing criminalisation of downloading material.
It's incoherent nonsense, but that hasn't stopped them making laws before.
There's no text, it's just a Conservative party conference speech. It may not even happen given that the legislative timetable ought to be full of Brexit-related material.
I wish we had a constition in this country; if a Donald Trump ever got in here he would have literally limitless power to lock up journalist or anyone he didn’t like really.
The intent of the original creators was, among other things, vehement anti-Catholicism. That's what the line "That the Subjects which are Protestants may have Arms for their Defence suitable to their Conditions and as allowed by Law." is doing in the original text.
No I don't; what happens is politicians do whatever will keep them in parliament even if it's immoral or illegal (see the Iraq war or The Great Repeal bill or The Regulatory Powers Act). Really there are any number of actions by parliament eroding our freedoms over the past 20 years or so.
If it wasn't obvious from my original statement; I was talking about a Donald Trump character with the backing of his party (on either the far Left or far Right).
> Britain has long relied on the
> presumed benevolence of the
> government
Yes. That's what parliamentary sovereignty actually means. We don't have an actual constitution. In fairness, we've been at it for 90 years longer than the US has had a constitution, and so far it works.
Most of the worst excesses of US politics seem to go back to deep mistrust of government and people taking about their "rights".
Every month goes by and the hood in Chicago kills more people than died in Las Vegas, and no one says anything about gun control. Probably because most of the people in the hood already have illegal guns.
Anyways it is very rare to die by illegitimate gunfire (not from the state). You are more likely to die in falls, slips, choking, drowning, cars, motorcycles... The list is never ending.
In the West we are conditioned to be terrified of guns and terrorists, but it is incredibly rare to die of either, especially if you stay out the hood.
Why not campaign against something that kills more people but which doesn't serve an arguably necessary purpose? Why try to jump for one of the highest and most questionable fruits on the tree?
Tyrants always will seek to consolidate power. If your intention is altruism, try to save lives by an easier means.
I think it would be a struggle to argue that the US's positions towards health care, free speech, guns and policing compare favourably to those of the majority of other rich Western democracies.
In practice, are Americans better off for having the US idea of free speech than Western Europeans whose rights generally aren't as well guaranteed?
It's a right that Americans are very proud of, but the edge cases when contrasted to what other countries have in practice seem to all be net negatives.
First of all, I have literally never heard a critique about the negatives of american free speech. Could you help me understand the negatives?
Second, I do think americans are majorly better off than western europeans for free speech. Consider efforts to ban wearing clothing: that is not how you build a healthy, supportive, productive society, though it is perhaps how you let a culture stagnate. Or, perhaps consider this very article: it is not illegal to read something. (Possesion and distribution are another thing entirely.)
Finally, for better or worse, american free speech has plenty of bounds. Critically, those bounds are typically nowhere near politics or morals, except perhaps reflected in hate speech.
> I have literally never heard a critique
> about the negatives of american free
> speech
Off the top of my head, I consider Citizens United, marketing of pharmaceuticals directly to consumers, and unregulated TV news to be negatives.
> I do think americans are etc
It remains legal to read this article in all Western European countries. As to banning clothing, there are plenty of places in the US where you can't cover your face. What are actual examples in practice of how us Euros are worse off?
I gave you examples. :) Europeans who wish to wear a hijab may be abused based on where they are; that simple! It is not illegal to cover your face in public in America, and even if it were, the Hijab covers hair; the burkha might cover a face. This article is not what I would be worried about—rather, the anarchist handbook, for instance, or an explanation of encryption, or how to fool facial recognition in public.
Nonetheless, you are extraordinarily correct about citizens united, though I would more finger the blame there on corporate personhood, not free speech. The protections still make sense for individual; corporations do not make sense of individuals.
Mostly, yes America is better off, although I agree with peteretp's examples that we're seeing the worst side of "freedom to lie" and "money as speech" come to fruition.
But there are all sorts of weird exceptions and the practicality of free speech has different contours. Extremely prudish but pro-violence film ratings, for example. "Ag-gag" laws (which were eventually struck down).
>The free speech worst case scenario is not American but Rwandan:
I agree that was horrendous; however why is it the worst case? The US military also funds and sponsors media, and lies to create war. Why were the Rwandan government's provocations worse than the US's? More people have died in The War on Terror. Both wars were unjust, for power and profit, and targeted specific ethnic groups.
Rwanda's genocide itself does have a particularly evil nature. I'm just trying to show that it is difficult to say which is more evil.
Free speech isn't perfect; it is just better than the alternative.
>the worst side of "freedom to lie"
There are already laws against false accusations and lying. So in theory, if someone slanders a rape-survivor group by saying they have no right to be upset, etc., because they were not raped, the accuser can be held liable for those false accusations, which is a good thing. I support free speech strongly, but I don't think people have the right to deliberately lie about individuals, groups or businesses, without consequences.
I think this is a misinterpretation: we do have a constitution, it's just not all in one place and not regularly invoked by laypersons. This makes it difficult to work out how constitutional crises will play out. Is the Sewel Convention legally binding for example? More importantly, does the ECHR function as a constitutional guarantee of rights above Parliament? For the past couple of decades the answer has been yes, which has mostly greatly improved UK law.
Most of the weirdness of US politics goes back to slavery, and the contortions invoked in order to give rights only to certain people.
> we do have a constitution, it's
> just not all in one place and not
> regularly invoked by laypersons
I remain comfortable describing that as not an "actual" constitution as most people would understand it.
> This makes it difficult to work
> out how constitutional crises will
> play out
That's circular. By definition a constitutional crisis is difficult to predict the outcome of, or it wouldn't be a crisis. The Americans also seem to have plenty of difficulty working out the application of their constitution.
> Is the Sewel Convention legally
> binding for example?
The UK parliament retains ultimate authority, and I've not seen any sensible argument to suggest otherwise...
> does the ECHR function as a
> constitutional guarantee of rights
> above Parliament
Ah, an excellent and interesting question, but in practice: parliament is able to withdraw from the jurisdiction of ECHR. Because it's sovereign. I will happily agree ECHR has been a massive win for the UK, but it's easily argued that in practice parliament has simply chosen to delegate some of its power to ECHR, as they maintain the authority to withdraw from it.
Exactly, a very good point. You could make websites that start out with:
"Once upon a time there was a girl who always wore a red riding hood...grand ma was sick... wolf... 'We should just have a big genocide' screamed grandma as she pointed her right arm in the air."
Yep, and what was extremist one year is not the next. It wasn't really that long ago McCarthyism made commmunism a thought crime. How can we seem to so easily forget that lesson?
Can the Conservative Party of the UK be far right? Many would say that at times they are, and around now is one of those times.
I'm not just talking about this proposal, there's a long list of things from Theresa May's "Racist van" initiative through to her "citizen of nowhere" comment.
Gay marriage: David Cameron introduced that, but more Conservative MPs voted against it than voted for it. It passed because of 90% of the Labour MPs supporting it
My opinion is that the Conservative party currently does not "support" the NHS, but would not dare move openly against it, that would cost far to many votes. Rather they follow, the model of "defund, induce crisis, introduce a privatised solution"
>>> Gay marriage: David Cameron introduced that, but more Conservative MPs voted against it than voted for it. It passed because of 90% of the Labour MPs supporting it
And how does that contradict anything I said? Did Labour, with all that aparent gay marriage support, actually do it? No, they didn't.
>>> Conservative party currently does not "support" the NHS, but would not dare move openly against it, that would cost far to many votes.
That's like complaining companies only do things "for money". Well of course they do what the people want, that's what they're there for.
>>> Rather they follow, the model of "defund, induce crisis, introduce a privatised solution"
I would believe it if the NHS actually got less funds year over year. But they don't.
But has the conservative party moved to the right after Cameron resigned? Cameron formed a coalition with a centrist Party (LibDems), but May courted the voters of one extreme right-wing party (UKIP) quite successfully and formed an alliance with another (DUP).
And May's instincts, as pointed out in her actions above, are nowhere near as liberal as Cameron's.
If you can be arrested and imprisoned for what appears in your browser, this is going to take rickrolling to a whole new level.
Also since this would be inspected from the ISP's end of the pipe, it's easy to simulate the network traffic of a lot of page views without the user ever seeing anything. See also "curl".
Amber Rudd also said this week that techies were ‘patronising’ and she doesn’t need to understand encryption. She wants them to give her access to terrorist messages on WhatsApp etc. - but she’s not asking for a backdoor.
I don't much get the point - you 're making sure that journalists and ordinary people cannot use this material to extract information and in general find ways to deal with this plague. If anything you should find the people who read this material and send them to school.
you're making sure that journalists and ordinary people cannot use this material to extract information and in general find ways to deal with this plague.
According to the official statement they're still going to allow a "reasonable excuse" defense for journalists, academics and others who can convince the courts that they're nice people really.
Sometimes it seems to me that the British government is intent on making V for Vendetta or 1984 happen in real life. The things they are doing are so scary and openly oppressive that I can only hope that they are trying to be a parody of themselves.
Instead of writing laws to 'protect' people from 'hate preachers' it would be a lot more effective if we use information and education to teach people, from a young age, to be critical and confident thinkers.
One time in the streets of New York there was some racist shouting things at people of a certain ethnicity, picking them out from the crowd and calling them 'baby rapers'. Several people of different races shouted at him to "shut the fuck up". Those people obviously weren't swayed into thinking that all people of that specific race were indeed 'baby rapers'.
I would rather live in a society where people are allowed to say that the holocaust didn't happen and have them be judged as the idiots they are, than a society where saying things that are deemed as 'extreme' by the government is illegal.
Is there a chance that the reason terrorism is so minor a threat is because of the restrictions in liberty?
I'm not saying I like it, but just saying "well terrorism isn't a threat" makes as much sense as saying "no one's every robbed our bank, so we can stop locking the door and having a guard posted outside" without giving further context.
I find it a little strange that people don't look into the reasons why terrorism exist. Wouldn't it be more efficient in trying to stamp out the root causes of terrorism?
People don't just wake up one morning and go, "Ah. Such a beautiful morning. I think I'll start terrorising people today."
In a society where violent acts fuelled by extremism are actually being carried out, you have to have the top down approach as well.
However, I don't agree with massive loss of liberty like this one being proposed (as well as the snoopers charter, etc), and am wary of the potential for the laws to be misused by malevolent governments.
New laws have to be proportional and have minimal scope for misuse, IMO.
> Wouldn't it be more efficient in trying to stamp out the root causes of terrorism?
Is it means, to forbid mass media to speak about terrorism? The root cause of terrorism is his direct goals, the fear is the cause. Without information about terrorism the would be no fear, so terrorism would become pointless.
Its far harder for western societies to contend with the fact that they are creating the terrorist threat by their own actions, than it is to just "blame religion" for the problem.
But the truth of the matter is, we are creating the conditions for terrorists, every single day - by delivering our own form of terror: the (Imperial) Coalition forces currently demolishing Syria/Iraq/Afghanistan/Yemen are, indeed, terrorising entire populations in the rush to be the most efficient war-fighting machines on the planet.
If you want to stop terrorism, its quite simple: stop letting your governments get away with murder. The way they do it, is couch everything in secrecy, while we the citizens decide that ignorance of the war our societies are waging is worth the luxury and decadence those wars provide.
POP QUIZ: do you know how many people the state killed, in your name, today? Yesterday? Last week? Until you start paying attention to this statistic, citizen, you cannot cry when the terror comes home to roost.
I mean, World War II happened, because (some) Germans wanted to conquer more land to have room for the Aryan race to grow. Not to mention wanted to kill anyone who didn't fit their ideal. (Or think of, e.g., the inquisition, if you want a non-Godwin's-law breaking example).
I'm not saying it's necessarily happening in this case, but yeah, it's possible for people to just really, genuinely believe that other people who aren't the same race as you, or who don't believe the same things as you do, should be killed.
Hell, 60 years ago much of the US population thought it made sense that people who had darker skin than they did should be segregated.
We can certainly look for root causes, but you really, truly have to accept that some root causes might be religious in nature, not rational, not what most people growing up in a Western society might consider normal. It's not always a case of "well there must be valid reasons for their actions", unless you choose to completely ignore history.
"The real oppression is terrorist attacks that leave people in fear of their safety."
What does this have to do with terrorism? It might be a stated excuse for implementing laws like this, but the intent does not equal actual result. Also, I have not been killed by a terrorist, but if a law like this is passed where I live I will have been limited in my freedoms by my government. I am not scared of terrorists as of yet, so the net result is that I am not oppressed by terrorists, but I am oppressed by the government.
News agencies and governments spread the fear of 'terrorist' attacks. Most of the time there are loners who carry out their 'attacks'. Calling them 'terrorists' makes them more scary, while in fact they are most often troubled individuals who choose to label their insanity with 'ISIS' so that the fear they spread is bigger. News agencies, eager to make money selling advertisement, use these mentally ill people by calling them 'terrorists' and sensationalising the events in order to get more viewers.
"Not oppression: arresting some radicalised extremist for preparing themselves with terrorist training manuals and suchlike."
This has nothing to do with what is happening. The article talks about making it illegal to read extremist websites. Intent and effect do not go hand in hand. On top of this stated intent and true intent do not go hand in hand either. Governments cannot be trusted with the authority to decide who gets access to which information, very recent example:
What happens when all extremist websites move to TOR at least now governments can monitor them. But with these extreme laws they are just going to start to use more secure communication channels
Where do you even start. Firstly, this is just a law Amber Rudd wants to make, it's not anywhere close to being made into actual law, it's very unlikely it will be. It's probably more a bit of signalling/posturing by Amber Rudd to appear as the "Tough on extremists" candidate in the forthcoming Tory leadership (and hence Prime Ministerial) election.
Secondly, even if this law was passed, it would never be actively used against the public. It would be used to throw more charges at people they have arrested already, or to have some charges to throw at people who they have arrested but can't charge. It's a handy catch-all (along with vague bans on pornography) that criminalises many normal people who have internet-connected devices. It means they can haul you over at Heathrow, search your device and say "Ah! You've looked at this naughty thing! Too bad!", for example - giving the state an easy way to reject people they don't like much more easily.
A lot of this approach stems from Theresa May herself, who spent many years as Home Secretary struggling to deport Anjem Choudary.
Sorry for not being clearer, I'm trying to distinguish between active and passive use of the law. Active implying trying to track down those who are breaking it vs. passive implying using it against those who have been reprimanded already.
So your argument is that the law is not likely to pass and if it does pass it will be selectively enforced?
Selective enforcement of laws are terrible in the sense that they don't actually dissuade anyone from breaking them.
So if it isn't about preventing crimes, but rather about piling this charge ontop of other ones, isn't that missing the point a bit?
You seem to think your second point means people should be less concerned? Creating laws that criminalize "normal" people and let the government punish people "they don't like" is literally the stuff of Orwell and Kafka.
Amber Rudd is a lightweight. She almost lost her seat at the snap general election - she's deluded if she thinks the CCHQ would let her become the PM whilst in her "unsafe seat".
This is the same minister who was talking about the "necessary hashtags" a few months ago. She's certainly not a _digital native_, or indeed even competent.
> Speaking about preventing the upload of objectionable content, Home Secretary Amber Rudd said the government needs to get people who "understand the necessary hashtags" talking.
> That was of course in addition to Rudd's widely criticised remarks that encryption has no place in citizens' hands, in the wake of revelations that Westminster attacker Khalid Masood was using WhatsApp shortly before murdering pedestrians with his car.
If someone is repeating watching beheading videos, engaging in terrorism forums, reading bomb-making instructions, and other such material, then I would rather prefer the police and the justice system to get involved. Better that than another terrorist attack that could have been stopped.
It saddens me that a rational move to prevent terrorism in its formative stages leads to such a knee-jerk negative reaction, with commenters ranting about "1984" and "infringing our civil liberties" and "leftist censorship" and other such overreacting nonsense.
What counts as bomb-making instructions? You could probably acquire enough knowledge from chemistry books (stocked in every good government library) and common sense (please correct me if I am wrong).
Unless the chemistry book has a chapter titled "how to make a bomb to kill lots of people" with full instructions on how to assemble and detonate one using readily sourced materials, then I'm sure such books will be entirely unaffected by police investigations.
I was concerned by the lack of technical expertise in the home office when Theresa May was Home Sec. Now with Amber Rudd I am terrified. Here is a person who admits she doesn't understand that which she is attempting to regulate, and doesn't care either
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[ 2.3 ms ] story [ 156 ms ] threadThis is a hard problem and leads to all those 'the bomber was described as being on the intelligence services radar' lines in news stories.
The benevolent reading of these kinds of moves is that it at least gives the authorities to intervene, though I recognise the risks to liberty.
Sure you can - there's plenty of precedent for e.g. sectioning people into mental hospitals for their own safety or removing people's driving licenses when they might be a danger (without committing a crime - bad eyesight, bad motor control, drug regimen, etc.)
Sending people to mental hospitals is a fair example, but that's why I wrote "generally", acknowledging the existence of exceptions. In that case, it's accepted that consent is an oxymoron, which doesn't really apply here.
I agree it's a hard problem, but getting it wrong is going to lead to the Northern Ireland situation: overreaction by authorities creating political prisoners who will be martyrs to their cause. Bobby Sands is still a hero to many.
> there is nothing effectively you can do because no law has been broken until there's evidence that they start assembling the components for the bomb or whatever
Sure, but that is basically where we as a society have agreed the line is drawn for decades. Otherwise you start prosecuting people for "sedition". And it'll inevitably get used against peaceful leftwing groups and not against radical xenophobes, etc.
1-https://reason.com/blog/2017/10/04/black-lives-matter-studen...
2-https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yAAlFya89aw
That said, politics in the West, and even globally, have become increasingly interconnected. These trends and topics I mentioned are not isolated to the US at all.
You have a point though, so I edited my comment.
Do you really want your government deciding what is and is not neutral content delivery? No one sees any way in which it can go wrong?
I feel like I'm the only sane person on HN. How are people so oblivious to the downsides of broad, sweeping regulation?
I think the reason people are "oblivious" is basically because they're also (i.e. not only) aware of the downside of the absence of regulation, and feel that those downsides outweigh those of regulation.
I personally like how they've attempted to distinguish downloading and reading as if when you browse to a website it doesn't download the HTML and store it in a temp cache on your local disk. This suggests that today the difference between innocent and guilty is the directory path of an illicit file. :D
Again it confers power to those that understand how systems work. I'm not complaining, it benefits me but we continue to drift toward a class-based system where the technical class gains ever increasing benefits over the rest of the plebs. We're sleepwalking into an increasingly stratified society.
For example, if a web browser has a semi-permanent cache by default for all pdf files, and the browser downloads a pdf to this cache, it's not possible to determine if the user "downloaded" it (ie. deliberately, to access later or repeatedly) or "streamed" it (ie. accidentally accessed it and closed it after viewing the content)
The fundamental issue is that politicians and the general public do not understand how software works. Many applications access and store data by default which the user has not implicitly asked them to do. If the law is determined so broadly, it can put any user with an application that accesses content without somehow validating that it is legal (how you do that without accessing it I do not know) into a grey area which the state can choose to exploit/prosecute with if needed.
If this is something you can currently distinguish, I’d be very interested in hearing more!
(b) Why does something being illegal imply that you have to be able to distinguish it from something legal in every instance? They could just only apply it when they can make a case that it was done in an illegal manner. It's not like we don't already have laws where intention makes a strong difference, despite the fact that you can't always establish intentions.
also will certain passages or holy books be deemed extremists or not.
what of movies that they don't like, will those be banned?
In the UK, centre-left or centre-right tends to be in terms of economic policy anyway. Nearly all UK parties have mostly centre-left social policies.
This often comes up in these discussions. You need to realise that the far-right spawns much more violence (against individuals; against groups; against the state) than the far left.
In the UK we recently saw an MP being murdered by a far right extremist; we've seen an increase in racially motivated violence against Muslims and Jews; we've seen small but violent demonstrations by far right organisations.
This kind of stuff just isn't happening from the far left.
There have also been plenty of violent demonstration by left wing groups, so much so that a BBC reporter had to have a bodyguard at the Labour conference.
Finally, anti-semitism seems to be as much a thing on the left as the extreme right these days, as shown by the anti-Semitism at the Labour conference.
In the UK perhaps.
The most recent attempt on a US Congressman's life:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Congressional_baseball_sh...
On May 22, 2017, Hodgkinson wrote "Trump is a Traitor. Trump Has Destroyed Our Democracy. It's Time to Destroy Trump & Co." above his repost of a Change.org petition demanding "the legal removal" of Trump and Vice President Mike Pence for "treason". He belonged to numerous politically-oriented Facebook groups, including those named "Terminate the Republican Party," "The Road To Hell Is Paved With Republicans," and "Donald Trump is not my President."
When the media normalizes that "punching Nazis" is A-OK, this violence from very unhinged, disturbed individuals is the result.
Most "lone wolf" mass shooters are on the far right; we've seen far right activists shooting into crowds of demonstrators, or driving vehicles into crowds of demonstrators.
For all the talk of "punching Nazis" it's not the left wing who are perpetrating violence in the US.
The Times They Are A-changin':
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/09/01/antifa-charlottesvi...
> Most "lone wolf" mass shooters are on the far right;
The former deadliest shooter, Omar Mateen was a registered Democrat.
> it's not the left wing who are perpetrating violence in the US.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/10/01/...
Is BLM a right-wing group? What's more astonishing here is that the media is A-OK with left-wing violence. They try to portray them as some kind of freedom fighters.
Do you think it should be illegal to save a collection of isis videos?
Distributing videos would be another matter.
the changes are to increase the sentence for repeated visits to 15 years.
since reading extremist material is already illegal the article could point to all the miscarriages of justice caused by people convicted for mere possession of a chemistry textbook or for journalistic research into terrorist organisations.
I cannot find the sources of that statement. Which law? Where is the text?
It's incoherent nonsense, but that hasn't stopped them making laws before.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-41479620
The PM does not have that power, but yes, parliament does (modulo EU Human Rights), and that's considered a feature not a bug.
But in determining if it's working how the creators wanted it to, and hence whether it's a feature or bug? No.
Sectarianism: bug or feature?
If it wasn't obvious from my original statement; I was talking about a Donald Trump character with the backing of his party (on either the far Left or far Right).
We need to discuss this as a society, not hiding it.
Most of the worst excesses of US politics seem to go back to deep mistrust of government and people taking about their "rights".
And what would those be?
Anyways it is very rare to die by illegitimate gunfire (not from the state). You are more likely to die in falls, slips, choking, drowning, cars, motorcycles... The list is never ending.
In the West we are conditioned to be terrified of guns and terrorists, but it is incredibly rare to die of either, especially if you stay out the hood.
Why not campaign against something that kills more people but which doesn't serve an arguably necessary purpose? Why try to jump for one of the highest and most questionable fruits on the tree?
Tyrants always will seek to consolidate power. If your intention is altruism, try to save lives by an easier means.
It's a right that Americans are very proud of, but the edge cases when contrasted to what other countries have in practice seem to all be net negatives.
Second, I do think americans are majorly better off than western europeans for free speech. Consider efforts to ban wearing clothing: that is not how you build a healthy, supportive, productive society, though it is perhaps how you let a culture stagnate. Or, perhaps consider this very article: it is not illegal to read something. (Possesion and distribution are another thing entirely.)
Finally, for better or worse, american free speech has plenty of bounds. Critically, those bounds are typically nowhere near politics or morals, except perhaps reflected in hate speech.
Off the top of my head: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-36055488
EDIT: Also this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A8se-majest%C3%A9#Europe
Nonetheless, you are extraordinarily correct about citizens united, though I would more finger the blame there on corporate personhood, not free speech. The protections still make sense for individual; corporations do not make sense of individuals.
But there are all sorts of weird exceptions and the practicality of free speech has different contours. Extremely prudish but pro-violence film ratings, for example. "Ag-gag" laws (which were eventually struck down).
The free speech worst case scenario is not American but Rwandan: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_T%C3%A9l%C3%A9vision_Lib...
I agree that was horrendous; however why is it the worst case? The US military also funds and sponsors media, and lies to create war. Why were the Rwandan government's provocations worse than the US's? More people have died in The War on Terror. Both wars were unjust, for power and profit, and targeted specific ethnic groups.
Rwanda's genocide itself does have a particularly evil nature. I'm just trying to show that it is difficult to say which is more evil.
Free speech isn't perfect; it is just better than the alternative.
>the worst side of "freedom to lie"
There are already laws against false accusations and lying. So in theory, if someone slanders a rape-survivor group by saying they have no right to be upset, etc., because they were not raped, the accuser can be held liable for those false accusations, which is a good thing. I support free speech strongly, but I don't think people have the right to deliberately lie about individuals, groups or businesses, without consequences.
Most of the weirdness of US politics goes back to slavery, and the contortions invoked in order to give rights only to certain people.
"Once upon a time there was a girl who always wore a red riding hood...grand ma was sick... wolf... 'We should just have a big genocide' screamed grandma as she pointed her right arm in the air."
(but yes exactly what you write, plus, its quite an extremist measure to say you can't read something of other extremists)
Will I be able to check my remaining allocation at far-right-views.direct.gov.uk ?
They labelled Le Penn and AFD as "far right extremists", can I only read their websites so many times ?
Is Islamofacism far-right ?
Can Jews be far-right ?
I'm not just talking about this proposal, there's a long list of things from Theresa May's "Racist van" initiative through to her "citizen of nowhere" comment.
here are the numbers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marriage_(Same_Sex_Couples)_Ac...
And if I'm specifically talking about Theresa May's tenure, then that's after David Cameron's leadership.
"support the NHS" is a much vaguer statement, but I don't think that's entirely true either, see e.g.
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=doctors+fight+jeremy+hunt https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=nhs+privatisation+virgin+c... https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=winter+hospital+crisis
My opinion is that the Conservative party currently does not "support" the NHS, but would not dare move openly against it, that would cost far to many votes. Rather they follow, the model of "defund, induce crisis, introduce a privatised solution"
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/06/27/government-delibe...
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/nhs-deficit-cr...
https://nhsreality.wordpress.com/2015/12/03/thats-the-standa...
And how does that contradict anything I said? Did Labour, with all that aparent gay marriage support, actually do it? No, they didn't.
>>> Conservative party currently does not "support" the NHS, but would not dare move openly against it, that would cost far to many votes.
That's like complaining companies only do things "for money". Well of course they do what the people want, that's what they're there for.
>>> Rather they follow, the model of "defund, induce crisis, introduce a privatised solution"
I would believe it if the NHS actually got less funds year over year. But they don't.
But has the conservative party moved to the right after Cameron resigned? Cameron formed a coalition with a centrist Party (LibDems), but May courted the voters of one extreme right-wing party (UKIP) quite successfully and formed an alliance with another (DUP).
And May's instincts, as pointed out in her actions above, are nowhere near as liberal as Cameron's.
Yeah probably, I don't know. But I'm not gonna trivialise what far right means.
>>> May courted the voters of one extreme right-wing party (UKIP) quite successfully.
By being anti-Brexit? How exactly did she court UKIP voters?
Labour gained more seats than the Conservatives lost, it's quite clear where UKIP voters went.
You, as well as the polls, assumed UKIP voters are all right wing. You're wrong.
Also since this would be inspected from the ISP's end of the pipe, it's easy to simulate the network traffic of a lot of page views without the user ever seeing anything. See also "curl".
According to the official statement they're still going to allow a "reasonable excuse" defense for journalists, academics and others who can convince the courts that they're nice people really.
Not oppression: arresting some radicalised extremist for preparing themselves with terrorist training manuals and suchlike.
Let's face it: Terrorism is really a minor threat to almost all people's safety, yet it's constantly evoked to further restrict people's liberties.
One time in the streets of New York there was some racist shouting things at people of a certain ethnicity, picking them out from the crowd and calling them 'baby rapers'. Several people of different races shouted at him to "shut the fuck up". Those people obviously weren't swayed into thinking that all people of that specific race were indeed 'baby rapers'.
I would rather live in a society where people are allowed to say that the holocaust didn't happen and have them be judged as the idiots they are, than a society where saying things that are deemed as 'extreme' by the government is illegal.
I'm not saying I like it, but just saying "well terrorism isn't a threat" makes as much sense as saying "no one's every robbed our bank, so we can stop locking the door and having a guard posted outside" without giving further context.
People don't just wake up one morning and go, "Ah. Such a beautiful morning. I think I'll start terrorising people today."
Do they?
However, I don't agree with massive loss of liberty like this one being proposed (as well as the snoopers charter, etc), and am wary of the potential for the laws to be misused by malevolent governments.
New laws have to be proportional and have minimal scope for misuse, IMO.
Is it means, to forbid mass media to speak about terrorism? The root cause of terrorism is his direct goals, the fear is the cause. Without information about terrorism the would be no fear, so terrorism would become pointless.
But the truth of the matter is, we are creating the conditions for terrorists, every single day - by delivering our own form of terror: the (Imperial) Coalition forces currently demolishing Syria/Iraq/Afghanistan/Yemen are, indeed, terrorising entire populations in the rush to be the most efficient war-fighting machines on the planet.
If you want to stop terrorism, its quite simple: stop letting your governments get away with murder. The way they do it, is couch everything in secrecy, while we the citizens decide that ignorance of the war our societies are waging is worth the luxury and decadence those wars provide.
POP QUIZ: do you know how many people the state killed, in your name, today? Yesterday? Last week? Until you start paying attention to this statistic, citizen, you cannot cry when the terror comes home to roost.
I mean, World War II happened, because (some) Germans wanted to conquer more land to have room for the Aryan race to grow. Not to mention wanted to kill anyone who didn't fit their ideal. (Or think of, e.g., the inquisition, if you want a non-Godwin's-law breaking example).
I'm not saying it's necessarily happening in this case, but yeah, it's possible for people to just really, genuinely believe that other people who aren't the same race as you, or who don't believe the same things as you do, should be killed.
Hell, 60 years ago much of the US population thought it made sense that people who had darker skin than they did should be segregated.
We can certainly look for root causes, but you really, truly have to accept that some root causes might be religious in nature, not rational, not what most people growing up in a Western society might consider normal. It's not always a case of "well there must be valid reasons for their actions", unless you choose to completely ignore history.
What does this have to do with terrorism? It might be a stated excuse for implementing laws like this, but the intent does not equal actual result. Also, I have not been killed by a terrorist, but if a law like this is passed where I live I will have been limited in my freedoms by my government. I am not scared of terrorists as of yet, so the net result is that I am not oppressed by terrorists, but I am oppressed by the government.
News agencies and governments spread the fear of 'terrorist' attacks. Most of the time there are loners who carry out their 'attacks'. Calling them 'terrorists' makes them more scary, while in fact they are most often troubled individuals who choose to label their insanity with 'ISIS' so that the fear they spread is bigger. News agencies, eager to make money selling advertisement, use these mentally ill people by calling them 'terrorists' and sensationalising the events in order to get more viewers.
"Not oppression: arresting some radicalised extremist for preparing themselves with terrorist training manuals and suchlike."
This has nothing to do with what is happening. The article talks about making it illegal to read extremist websites. Intent and effect do not go hand in hand. On top of this stated intent and true intent do not go hand in hand either. Governments cannot be trusted with the authority to decide who gets access to which information, very recent example:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/10/no-justification-spani...
> Most of the time there are loners who carry out their 'attacks'.
No. Some guy with a knife yeah, but for most of the other cases no
I'm not scared about attacks, but I'm deeply scared how we came to tolerate radical "religions"
First they came for the radicals ...
How about anything that goes against human rights?
Secondly, even if this law was passed, it would never be actively used against the public. It would be used to throw more charges at people they have arrested already, or to have some charges to throw at people who they have arrested but can't charge. It's a handy catch-all (along with vague bans on pornography) that criminalises many normal people who have internet-connected devices. It means they can haul you over at Heathrow, search your device and say "Ah! You've looked at this naughty thing! Too bad!", for example - giving the state an easy way to reject people they don't like much more easily.
A lot of this approach stems from Theresa May herself, who spent many years as Home Secretary struggling to deport Anjem Choudary.
> or to have some charges to throw at people who they have arrested but can't charge.
I don't understand who else it would be used against?
Selective enforcement of laws are terrible in the sense that they don't actually dissuade anyone from breaking them. So if it isn't about preventing crimes, but rather about piling this charge ontop of other ones, isn't that missing the point a bit?
> Speaking about preventing the upload of objectionable content, Home Secretary Amber Rudd said the government needs to get people who "understand the necessary hashtags" talking.
> That was of course in addition to Rudd's widely criticised remarks that encryption has no place in citizens' hands, in the wake of revelations that Westminster attacker Khalid Masood was using WhatsApp shortly before murdering pedestrians with his car.
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/04/03/uk_home_secretary_a...
It saddens me that a rational move to prevent terrorism in its formative stages leads to such a knee-jerk negative reaction, with commenters ranting about "1984" and "infringing our civil liberties" and "leftist censorship" and other such overreacting nonsense.