I did see it coming, she’s always been a control freak and nobody liked her as home secretary. A very many people had nightmares of her one day becoming PM but we could all sleep easy knowing that was unlikely. Happy days.
That ship has sailed with the investigatory powers act. Equipment interference (hacking), requiring CSPs to retain connection records, bulk collection of data, forcing tech companies to backdoor their own products etc. and all under a nice gagging order gives them carte blanche to do whatever the fuck they like.
RIPA and everything else you mentioned are all travesties but they’re quite separate from the semi-regular indignant huff the Tories work themselves up into about encryption.
Every few months, Tory Cnut du Jour works themselves into a frothing lather about how Encryption Is Awful And Must Be Stopped, and every few months they have an awkward, silent climb-down after a policy official patiently explains to them that they’re being fucking idiots.
Cameron also railed against encryption but it was an equally futile gesture, designed to play to the Daily Mail crowd with no basis in reality.
They can shout about it as much as they like but until they convince WhatsApp et al (“et al” here includes every single foreign government in the world and every business with a vested interest in providing encryption to consumers) to drop encryption they are just pissing into the wind.
Even if they did somehow manage to persuade everyone in the world that encryption is A Bad Thing, what are they going to do about all the encrypted devices that already exist in the wild? They can pry my phone and my laptop out of my cold, dead fingers.
Looks like the Scots will get a second chance to escape for saner climes.
And what is this shit?
Government sources have briefed that a cut-off date at the end of the two years of talks would open the UK to a rush of EU citizens seeking to enter the country.
Bwahahahahahaha. I’m sure EU citizens are just queuing up to move to the UK right now.
This cartoon villain crap is really pissing me off. Yes, I know they’re Tories, but seriously, this kind of stuff is beyond the pale. It’s like they feel they’re in a competition with the Trump administration.
That’s the thing. Article 50 was never meant to be triggered, because it’s self-evidently stupid. You can’t negotiate anything until you leave, so you’re stuck in limbo from the moment it’s done, i.e., tomorrow, the day that my country ceases to exist. I don’t and won’t recognize Brexit Island (or half of Brexit island, as may be) as my home in any way.
I can only say that i agree with you, they can do all the pearl clutching they like regarding encryption but it’s just howling into the void when you have tech companies outside their jurisdiction. Not to mention the third party tools that will always remain outside corporate influence and are easily found on github or wherever. My worry is the vast majority of people who are non-techies and don’t even know what encryption is let alone why it’s important, it’s why i think the investigatory powers act sailed through parliament, there just wasn’t enough public opposition to it.
I would say though that RIPA is separate legislation to the investigatory powers act although they share similar powers, the latter being like RIPA on steroids.
and the rhetoric in place is - not unexpected - along the line “in dark times we have stand together as one nation”, a tested and proven vehicle to gag critics.
Hopefully this is the first sign of my country coming into existence. I’m not even a nationalist, it’s just that the UK is an embarrassment to everybody now.
Given that I know people (including myself) who think that the right deal is “we’ve made a mistake, lets stop this brexit bullshit”, that is going to be impossible.
Doesn’t gag me. She can fuck right off with that shit.
get the right deal for every person in this country The right deal for me is full retention of freedom of movement in both directions, can I have that?
It is time to come together, for this great national moment needs a great national effort No ta, I don’t come together with racists
will strengthen the union of the four nations will destroy…
will negotiate as one United Kingdom won’t
the choice we make defines the character of our nation the choice we made has already shown our lack thereof
Well, if a independent Wales or Cornwall comes into existence and joins the EU, I’ll be okay with that, I could probably get a new EU passport via those. That’s about the best I can hope for now.
But both those areas made bad choices.
Anyway. My home country is not Brexitland, whatever that ends up looking like, it isn’t my home. I can’t relate to this insular, isolationist viewpoint. And becoming a tax haven for businesses is not the same thing. Is that idea that we could privately pay for EU citizenship still a goer?
this seems … unlikely. the Maltese prime minister said it probably best, when Malta took over the EU presidency in january:
We want a fair deal for the UK but that fair deal has to be inferior to membership.
regarding “freedom of movement” - it makes me incredibly sad that the discussion about the EU was restricted to “stoopid Brussels eurocrats with the stoopid euregulations” (not only UK, same here).
The European unification project gave me so much, I would have missed out really excellent persons in my life without open borders and the fuzzy “We Europeans” idea.
But alas, the emotional and personal effects of the EU are not part of the media coverage, it’s only immigration (evil!), free market (good!) and bloated administration (evil!) [EU regulations are both good and evil, depending on the sponsoring lobbyist group…]
