European liberalism is the wellspring of American liberalism, but Europe has - for obvious, historical reasons - much better organised reactionary elites. The equilibrium between the European publics and elites does indeed wax and wane.

In the 1990s a whole bunch of elite shibboleths were encoded into supranational law (so that no elected government is able to repeal them) as incredibly vaguely defined "human rights", which in turn have given rise to a vast class of bureaucrats (often the children of elites). This apparatus has since been used as a cudgel to chip away at basic liberties - lots of abstract, ill-defined communitarian rights (eg "safety") that are used to sweep aside actual, tangible individual rights (eg speech, privacy).

Since the 90s, as a result of horrendous misgovernance by its incompetent elites, Europe has been in decline by almost every metric. In the past ten years or so, the European publics are increasingly in an open revolt about this. A bunch of populist opportunists have seized on this revolt to offer various alleged alternatives, but been unable to deliver any sort of tangible change. There is no reason to believe any change will come from this group, since they are basically just the second-rate members of the existing elite, who have gambled on populism as their ticket to the top.

Europe tells itself fairy tales about how it's some kind of post-historical "human rights superpower" as an adaptive mechanism for its decline in prosperity, freedom, and relevance.

Europeans deserve so much better than this sad, managed decline.

Will the last European please turn out the lights?

What in the world are you talking about? The US has all of this internally. If on the one narrow point you want to claim that EU has open-borders to the rest of the world, no you don't and that's not something that's good to have anyways. Both US and European citizens are fighting their own governments to decrease immigration as polling shows large opposition to current immigration levels for many years now. A big part of the crackdown on speech in the UK is to restrict criticism of immigration policy.

The more disruption there is in society, the more people seem willing to accept increased control by authorities. I'm not necessarily saying this is part of some grand plan, but it does seem convenient for politicians when circumstances justify stronger control measures.

I do believe certain parcels of the society need to be restrained.

Having said that, I don't think the surveillance state they're setting up even has the intent to change any of that.

I don't think its fair for someone to say, "well, its all scare mongering by the Daily Mail". They certainly have an interest in making the world seem scary, but the perception of danger is very strong regardless of what a tabloid rag says.

"Broken windows" policing, as tried under Mike Bloomberg in New York, is unfashionable in the US and the UK, and has led to abuses, but there's a kernel of truth in there somewhere.

The EU courts have sometimes been helpful, but the EU lawmakers have been atleast as bad as the UK: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Retention_Directive

As other comments have pointed out the EU has also pushed a lot of other privacy invasive legislation.

And also the excuse included: “not China”, but even this doesn’t come as cause for concern anymore.

Have a look at the latest US “country report on human rights practices 2025”. Germany is flagged as unsafe so to say.

It is as you can only hope that the NSA has some way to spy on your data when EU gets more on more anti privacy and data protection means EU only storage is mandatory.

Dire times. Double standards are in full effect.

And yet they are still pushing [0]

[0] https://edri.org/our-work/despite-warning-from-lawyers-eu-go...

I don't know if you're awaee, but the number of arrests for terrorism has skyrocketed in recent months, in the UK.

Sounds terrifying, until you realise people were arrested as terrorists for holding placards. (That fact is of course terrifying, but in a chilling way).

By the way, do anybody care what would happen (at least psychologically) in case of a massive blackout or cyber-incident?

Just imagine something akin to what happened to the Iberian peninsula a few months ago, the country goes into flame quickly preventing recovery and then it's on. Most of the systems the UK has to control its population are inoperable.

I am pretty sure it is in the back of the mind of the UK leaders when they negotiate with Russia and China....

Per-capita it’s less than the US.

This sort of thing, deploying facial recognition systems in the street in the hope of finding someone, is much more insidious. Technically you can choose to bypass it, or pull something over your face, but that's more or less guaranteeing that you'll be stopped and questioned as to why you're concerned about it.

Sadly the UK never met an authoritarian they didn't like (apart from Hitler, so long as you're not as bad as Hitler himself you're good though). When surveyed the British public will call for banning basically anything they don't like, even if it doesn't impact them at all.

In the case of the UK they've often also been operating in collusion with state forces, see: Northern Ireland.

no. you cannot. ever.

even if you have perfect faith in current government, you're one election away from something different.

CCTV is also extremely ineffective in crime prevention in general, and actually catching criminals - one of few studies(back when i did write my thesis on subject related to it) used different areas of UK to measure crime fighting capability and effect of CCTV - by finding similar areas with and without CCTV and comparing crime statistics.

they only worked on parking lots, there was no measurable differences in plazas, alleys, roads, highstreets etc.

and a bit of anecdotal evidence - once cameras at my older workplace caught robbery to a place next door. With criminal looking directly at the camera, before bashing the window with a brick, jumping in, and hopping out with accomplice. They never got caught. This was quite decent camera, with face clearly visible - i know this because we directly cooperated with police.

The organized crime organizations just mostly focus on crime which mainly hurts immigrants and people racist police personal might not see as German even if they have a passport, and also mostly only crime which isn't publicly visible.

In turn a mixture of corrupt and racist police/politicians and having other more visible problems lead to there not being any large scale actions against them hence why they could grow to quite large size.

You need political will for this and for enforcement to take it seriously, since the technology to do so is almost trivial nowadays.

I'm 55 and pretty well travelled and I've noted similar levels of coverage in many EU countries and the US and CA and of course CN (to be fair, my experience of CN is only HK).

I don't know why people get so whizzed up about London's CCTV coverage. For me the scariest area is the M42 south of Birmingham. Every few 100 yards there is a high level camera at height and lots of ANPR.

It is quite a logical place to concentrate on. Look at a map of England - Brum is in the middle of England and the main roads run nearby. M1 from the southeast, M5 from the southwest, then M1 and M6 (takes over from M5) carry on to the northeast and west.

My own house has six HD cameras with Frigate to co-ordinate, analyse and record. My Reolinks never get to see the internet! Four are on the garden and two watch the front door, one is the door bell.

Now ... "since the '70s": I'm old enough to remember the seventies (I still have several mugs for the Queen's Silver Jubilee in 1977, when I was seven). Back then video (VHS) was not a thing, neither was CCTV. We had three TV channels FFS! A cutting edge TV camera at the time was a huge beast and certainly was not mounted on a building or street lamp.

Are you a local?

How absurd is this statement. China jails and disappears people for online statements at a rate several orders of magnitude larger than any western country.

It's borderline ridiculous to even make a comparison. Some quick examples:

1. https://thediplomat.com/2025/03/chinas-system-of-mass-arbitr...

2. https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/28/china/hong-kong-security-arre...

You can get arrested for "picking quarrels" online:

3. https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3146188/pic...

https://www.thenational.scot/news/24076378.just-17-per-cent-....

The only incentive governments ever have to not do bad shit is that the people will hate it so much that the government will wind up with less power than they started with.

But, decisions are ultimately made by individuals or small groups of them who have interest (profit, legacy, etc) in doing what the people wand and what is good for the people.

If enough people in government's personal interest is aligned with that of the people you get more outcomes that are aligned with the people.

I’ll let you figure out who’s quote that is

Is that true, or first world just became older, not exactly safer?

In the same way that moralizing karens create drug cartels rich off trafficking scared morons unable to think a few steps ahead create Peter Theils rich off building 1984.

not if the police cant be bothered to investigate. they dont bother with anything non-violent.

I'm confused as to how that isn't also "surveillance".

Being able to know where someone is on your city sure seems like it fits the bill to me, unless you're considering it "enforcement" (and different from surveillance)?

I live in an incorporated area whose population is less than 10,000. The police have mounted Flock license plate cameras pointing both directions at every road leading out. Every shopping center is adding them too.

Also: not being subject to pervasive surveillance when you're in the middle of nowhere hundreds of miles from another person or human settlement is a pretty low bar.

This makes it seem like the entire UK is an urban sprawl, evenly monitored, which it isn’t.

In London you’re likely to be on someone’s camera pretty much all the time, much less so in suburbs and smaller towns. There is plenty of countryside, woodland, rural land and villages where there is no CCTV coverage at all.

Thanks to flock that's increasingly untrue. Most rural areas only have a few ways in and out. I've even seen roads closed off to force traffic past flock cameras.

It's not particularly desired, but it happens anyways.

These seem meaningfully different than UK's facial recognition vans. The government has to request the footage from Waymo for a specific place/time. I don't think they can put in requests like "analyze all Waymo video data for this particular face and tell me where they were and when". It's much narrower in scope.

This perverse desire for commercialization is almost comical. It is so effective that I feel like America will be the first country to implement a form of communism once they figure out the business model and produce profit charts showing promising growth expectations.

The American businesses are already coming up with stuff like "sharing economy", billionaires re-invent the metro and call it hyperloop or communal housing and call it AirBnB, public transport and call it Uber :) Publicly traded corporations that are not making any profits from the services they provide and yet providing value for the customers which are often also the owners through stock trading.

What a fascinating country. Being free of baggage and tradition and hacking around a few principles is so cool and terrifying at the same time. Nothing is sacred, there are no taboos and everything is possible.

The government structure seems to be setup in such a way that any meaningful change is rejected.

> There isn't a one size fits all party.

Seems to be a non-sequitur, there isn't a one-size fits all policy, either.

I can't exaggerate the collective despair that I witnessed. Young or old, black or white, Labour or Tory, every single person I spoke to without exception had something negative to say about the state of the country. No matter what their politics, no-one was optimistic, and why would they be?

In recent weeks we've seeing unprecedented protests against migrant hotels, but opposition to immigration is just part of the picture. Brits are giving up on normal politics in ways I wouldn't have imagined even two years ago.

Dark times are ahead.

And somehow, the countries where it is a problem are never discussed. All muslim countries, for example, almost like not all religions are equal ... if you read hrw or amnesty you'll find that even the most moderate muslim countries like Morocco or Turkey deal violently with sexuality (all forms, really, yes, being trans drag will, of course, attract immediate attention. But let's not pretend they leave public displays of straight sexuality (including subtle and tasteful) alone). And Morocco and Turkey are absolutely nothing like something like Afghanistan or even Iran.

But in the UK the line is drawn pretty damn far. Are you seriously complaining about that?

During the interview he explained how many people in the government essentially wanted to please their own, which includes their own class of people (city people essentially) and the media. He said that ministers were much more worried about how media was covering them, than anything else.

The same people essentially see see the normal general public and people like myself as criminal. They see us a criminal because by in large much of the general public and people like myself don't agree with them.

This sort of statement is very "on brand" if what he said is true.

I like the irony of it, and doubt that "real" protesters give much of a fuck what kinds of boundaries the protested try to put around protesting.

These kinds of things are just another data point documenting "the general decline".

And this is a cursed choice because empires need resources (as they will find themselves in a war with just about everyone else at some point, so imports don't work). Those resources are only available in far away mines. So you need to have the huge area and borders, and infrastructure everywhere..

But you can't have the huge area and borders, and infrastructure because you can't defend it, you can't build, you can't pay for it.

So ... no empires. Or at least, no permanent ones. People keep trying though.

Also if someone is overdosing, they are probably possessing.

People should do it at home or somewhere else, not on the streets. I don't care if someone is consuming inside their home.

Replacing police officers is about removing a human decision element from lower class suppression.

Rotherham alone, a town of ~250k people, had an estimated 1,400 victims.

Then there's Rochdale, Oxford, Telford, Huddersfield, Derby...

This is because most of the public don't care about those rights either, and are entirely happy with surveillance. You've got nothing to hide right? If you don't the government to know what you're looking at its probably because you're a paedo, or maybe a terrorist. Maybe even both.

Its not the government who need to be convinced on this, it's the general public, and currently there's not really anyone out there explaining how you can't have a backdoor that only the government and good guys will be able to use.

Apple made the change to advanced security in advance of the bill being finalised, now the government has gone in another direction.

All the online safety act does is implement online the law as it stands IRL. British folk have been using the same ID verification systems to validate identity for nightclub admission, passport applications, driving licence applications, benefits claims, state pension claims, disclosure and barring checks, tax filings, mortgage deeds, security clearances, job applications, and court filings since 2016.

All the reaction is just pearl clutching - 5 million checks a day are being performed, the law itself is wildly popular with 70% support amongst adults after implementation.

There are three levels of checks - IAL1 (self-asserted, low confidence), IAL2 (remote or physical proof of identity), and IAL3 (rigorous proof with biometric and physical presence requirements).

IPA 2016 affords police access to your domain history, not content history, provided police can obtain a warrant from a senior High Court Judge. The box which stores the data is at ISP level and is easily circumvented with a VPN, or simply not using your ISP's DNS servers.

IPA 2016 doesn't exempt politicians from surveillance. It includes specific provisions for heightened safeguards when intercepting their communications. The Act establishes a "triple-lock" system for warrants targeting members of a relevant legislature, requiring approval from the Secretary of State, a Judicial Commissioner, and the Prime Minister. This heightened scrutiny is in recognition of the sensitivity involved in surveilling politicians, particularly given the surveillance of Northern Irish politicians and others in the 1950s, 60s, 70s, and 80s.

Part III of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (in force 1 October 2007), and Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000 provides powers over encryption keys/passwords etc. Section 49, RIPA can be used to force decryption, Section 51 to supply keys or passwords. These are identical to powers the police have IRL over safes, deposit boxes etcetera, and the penalty for non-compliance is identical.

You cannot use encryption or passwords to evade legal searches with a scope determined by a court on the basis of evidence of probable cause shown to the court by the entity requesting the search. A warrant from the High Court is required for each use.

Notable cases:-

- Blue chip hacking scandal - corrupt private investigators were illegally obtaining private information on behalf of blue chip companies.

- Phone hacking scandal - corrupt private investigators were illegally hacking voice mail on behalf of newspapers.

- Founder of an ISP using his position to illegally intercept communications and use them for blackmail.

> "In the UK you don't have to provide ID when asked"

Well if you are suspected of a crime they can arrest you if you refuse to identify yourself. I 'suspect' that being flagged by this system counts as such if you match someone who is wanted or similar.

In the eyes of the law you will be innocent but you'll still be treated like a criminal.

The same could accidentally happen for a minor offence too.

West Yorkshire, West Mids, The Met and Great Manchester Police have all made admin "mistakes"[1] where they failed to delete DNA evidence since the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 came into force.

No one has been sanctioned or fined for those mistakes.

You might not think being on that list matters but during the good ol' days of the 1980s innocent trades union activists were placed on a secret list by the Met's Special Branch and that list passed potential empoyers to bar them from getting jobs.

Again, no one punished for that and if it's happend once it can happen again.

See the Scott Inquiry for details.

1. These scare quotes are because I don't beleive this always happens through incompetence. I'm not saying it's always the case but some of the time the police are just ignoring the rules because the rules have no teeth.

On arrest, you're required to provide your name and address, not proof. For the absolute majority of UK adults, it takes exactly 2 minutes to verify that data against public records - passport, driving licence, council tax, voter registration.

Lying in that situation is a separate criminal offence all of its own.

>satisfy some shit algorithm that misidentified you as some known threat

Matches with a confidence rating of <0.64 are automatically deleted >0.7 is considered reliable enough to present to a human operator, and before any action is taken a serving police officer must verify the match, and upon arrest verify the match against the human.

>What if your child falls victim to a false identification

The age of criminal responsibility is 10, and absent any personal identification parental identification is the standard everywhere.

>15-year-old Child Q

The good old slippery slope fallacy. Both the officers who strip searched that child were fired for gross misconduct. North of 50,000 children are arrested each year and this happened once.

>Do you really want more unnecessary interactions with the police for yourself or those you care about when your "suspicious behaviour" was having an algorithm judge that your face looked like someone else's?

Thing is 12 months on, 1035 arrests, over 700 charges, and that hasn't happened because the point of testing the scheme thoroughly was to stop that from happening.

What proof do you have that it doesn't work.

This is nothing new. It is all about what is reasonable in the circumstances.