Every day we get closer to an Orwellian society. The United Kingdom may already be one.
https://chng.it/YtL2XwbwBc There is already a petition. I’m posting it here.
I am not aware of any western country that isn’t a police state.
The reason the police state gets worse and worse is simply that our glouriouss western countries shift closer and closer to fascism every day.
Unfortunately that doesn’t only impact privacy but also stuff like state repression or presence of state thugs.
To quote very smart people:
OOONEEE SOLLUTION
REEEVOLUTIONI hope for a revolution, but as for my country (Italy), too many people have been brainwashed by mainstream media’s pro-European and Atlanticist propaganda. We call them “euroinomani” (“euro “drug” addicts”)
I feel like at least in Germany privacy matters are alive and kicking thanks to GDPR / DSGVO
You literally have to provide identification when buying a SIM card for a mobile phone in Germany and it all gets registered.
Most of Europe doesn’t have any such thing and even the UK with all it’s authoritarian overreach doesn’t have this.
There is literally no other use for this other than for the state to be to know who calls who.
Germany is a lot more “papers please” than most of Europe in my personal experience.
Yeah I think it’s very subjective and this one anedcote is just that.
In Germany cash is preferred in most places, and that makes tracking payments difficult. This is not the case in most other european countries. That’s an another anecdote for you.
That’s a “people” preference.
Mandatory registration of who buys a SIM card is a “government” preference.
My point is that in Germany the Legislation favors privacy less than in other countries.
Your point seems to be that in Germany people favor privacy more than in other countries.
I made the point be about legislation because you mentioned GDPR / DSGVO, plus this post is about what governments are shoving down people’s throats when it comes to surveillance. I don’t expect that most people in Europe actually want governments snooping on their chats.
Still, it’s good to know that in Germany the people themselves favor privacy, even if so far they’ve been less successful at avoiding governmental overreach on surveillance than people in many other European nations (though compared with, say, Britain, Germany is veritable paradise in terms of state surveillance of the civil society).
German EU politicians are also pushing the chat control BS, it seems like it is only a matter of time until these psychos slip these invasive laws through.
There are also German EU politicians pushing against it. It’s not like there is a German consensus to it.
I didn’t say there was German consensus, but the fact that politicians in almost all member states are either pro or considering it is frightening.
You’ll always find someone fighting for something stupid. I guess in the EU it’s mostly the conservatives pushing for it, who are sadly a bit on the rise right now as it seems.
who is pushing against it? the pirate party did not get any seats in the EU parliament this round
For example the greens, the left, the SPD and even the FDP.
Edit: Even the right wing nuts from the AfD are against it.
What do you mean with chat control BS? Care to share a link?
That being said, there are a lot of worrying politicians out there.
Merz’s government should be overthrown just for the fact that that semi-human turd used to be a manager at BlackRock
I’m noticing a pattern on Lemmy for every time someone makes a general criticism of the EU, the West ™, Europe etc there’s someone in the comments specifically mentioning how Germany is good, actually, regardless of whether Germany was explicitly mentioned or whether it’s actually true that Germany is better than other places in the topic at hand. In all likelihood it’s just that there’s more Germans on Lemmy than people from smaller countries, but it’s starting to feel like some weird out of place patriotism is on the rise or something.
but it’s starting to feel like some weird out of place patriotism is on the rise or something.
Oh no, not again… I’ll go ahead and paint my Danish flag white in preperation of what’s to come.
Germany always had a different flavor of distopia, I think the people there similarly to America drink the state sanctioned cool aid so they can never have a Orwellian distopia.
I don’t understand what your article has to do with privacy. I understood that is the framework of this conversation. Yes, there’s a lot of scary rightwing policing in Germany, but can we stay on topic?
From the fact Britain produced Orwell, Huxley’s Brave New World, and Alan Moore’s V for Vendetta, I figure the UK has always been some shade of “Orwellian”.
Historically, the UK has always been very self assured in their goals and never looked for outside input while disregarding the people that they were upending. Anyone who wasn’t helping them was viewed as an enemy to be controlled, oppressed , or destroyed. If that isn’t a non-political explanation of rightwing authoritarianism, I’m not sure what is.
I’m quite curious to see how it will end in the UK with the porn filters because the people don’t seem to be inclined to use their IDs online, the system is brittle, and non-porn websites are being blocked too.
Sign ups for Swiss VPN providers from the UK are up massively, nobody will use their ID for porn.
Must be a great time to be in þe VPN market.
As a Brit who has seen the UK government’s ill thought through and unworkable attempts at police state bullshit go through the process a few times now, I’m going to predict: VPN use goes up massively, the government starts talking about banning VPNs without considering that this would break half the internet, then some wealthy business donor has a quiet word to them because businesses need VPNs to function, but they can’t publicly back down because they already called everyone who opposed it a pedo. So they pick one or two VPN companies (whichever ones have the most foreign-sounding names), have the tabloids run a propaganda campaign about how evil they are, then ban them even though they aren’t based in the UK and it makes no difference to anything, then they’ll claim they won and the laws will stay on the books forever but nobody will bother to enforce them and everything will carry on as before.
then some wealthy business donor has a quiet word to them because businesses need VPNs to function
A little credit here. They’d rephrase the law to only target VPNs whose purpose is offering as a service to the general public (as opposed to exclusively employees and contractors) the ability to connect to a private network with exit points / the ability to appear as if their traffic originates from outside of the UK.
On a related matter they could also require know your customer for all VPNs, require all VPNs keep logs available on request for police inspection and those who don’t are banned. All companies keep extensive logs for corporate VPNs so this wouldn’t present any additional burden to private enterprise but would be the end of anonymous VPN services.
I really don’t think this is more of the spectacle and move on. Not this time. I think Palestine has them spooked because they lost control of the narrative and the best way to seize control of the internet and clamp down on people conveying information they don’t like is starting with things like this.
Old enough to remember how Europeans smugly thought that they lived in some sort of an enlightened and free society.
Now do Russia and and china
Whataboutism
No… Just exposing bias of the commenter.
Russia and china good
Westoid regime bad
Imagine simping for some gereatric strong men as an adult 🤡
Lol. Incoherent
No one in those countries believes that they live in a free, enlightened society…
But the west always portrayed otself in such a light… Now everyone knows their politics are just as ugly as Chinas, Irans or Russias politics.
I don’t see anyone in US LARPing freedom bullshit since at least covid lol
Well besides regime whores on tv… But that’s a different story
But in us unlike china or russia, shit posters don’t get charges or at least not nearly as much for saying stupid shit online. People in russia peope get prison for being anti war.
lmfao people literally get arrested for social media posts in UK and Germany
It can happen in the US too… My comment above touches on this fact.
In china and russia people get disappeared in regular course of business.
My comment likewise touches on the fact that people living under western regimes are disappeared in regular course of business. In fact, there’s far more evidence for people disappearing without any reasonable grounds in the west than there are in China.
If this was true, half of Lemmy would be in Gitmo already
Does china have a place like reddit or fediverse?
Link it up!
On average, US security forces summarily execute three people a day.
someone here talking facts. this is true. prolly around 1k per year
A friend of mine travelled to China, to talk about politics with locals they used his phone because they were afraid of their govt listening in. So yeah maybe the EU/US ain’t so bad.
Having supposed freedumbs is literally what y’all have been braying made the West different from Russia and China.
So where is the distinction then
The distinction with China is in actual human rights like people being able to afford housing, food, and education. People not having to worry about losing their job and ending up on the street or being able to retire in dignity.
Have you already written to your members of parliament about chat control, and possibly other matters? Seriously, do it. There is very little you can do, but this might actually help. Slightly. Maybe.
US big tech is influencing europe to do the same as the us, and opening them up for absolute power.
the only way out is to stop being US vassals.
No. This is a very naive & dated way of thinking about the world of today. We don’t really have distinct borders distinguishing politicians at that level.
It’s more accurate to say the Davos group is ruling all western nations. What looks like separate world leaders and parties is actually one world-spanning organization of those with power. And what’s worse, they’re all Nazis and technocrats.
The Nazis learned from WW2. If you invade a country, the people fight back. If you groom and install/bribe your own people into leadership positions, the people just let it happen.
big capitalists rule western nations (and the third world, through neocolonialism).
i don’t think they are relying on a formal, yearly summit to do so though.
They don’t need their own tech companies. Europe has its own oligarchs. They’re the problem.
being independent is better, but oligarchs are a real problem aren’t they. we really gotta figure this shit out.
The olygarch’s have ruined everything again?
The tree of freedom must periodically be watered with the blood of tyrants.
Also the problem with wealth. No more overthrowing the rich happening.
zoinks
As a US citizen, pray for us 🙏
I’m not going to defend the US and it’s tech oligarchs, they are all shit, but the way things are going, the EU and the UK are currently in way worse shape than the US in terms of all this 1984 bullshit.
No country is safe from this anymore, and we may very well be looking at the worse time to be alive when it comes to privacy, regardless of where you live.
I highly doubt it’s the worse time. There used to be no concept of privacy you lived in a small town everyone knew everything and you lived in a one room house and familys had on bed for everything. There would have been no privacy at all.
That’s an opinion lol
We deff have it better now with corpo and goverment replacing family and the hood
my country doesn’t seem interested in doing stuff like this for the foreseeable future. of course the us tech oligarchs can impose it or whatever, but eh, maybe homegrown alternatives can come about finally.
Enjoy it. I’m honestly happy to read this. My country has the bad habit of copying all the crappy shit from the US, and none of the good
mine too, actually. we are currently copying some of the fascists, but this specific way of restricting us doesn’t seem to be on their minds for now.
I’m starting to think you’re Dominican too 🤣
The UK ain’t part of the EU mate
Not officially, but the same powerful monied interests control both.
It’s worse in Germany.
France is doing the exact same shit as the UK with age verification…
Not any more 😭
the EU is eyeing similar rules
how will this “client side scanning” be implemented?
it’s, not only worrying, but very confusing.
We are living in Orwellian society, it’s just the news catching up with reality.
The news has been trying to obfuscate this awareness for as long as possible.
It has been effective but every day more people take notice.
As an American it’s nice to see were not the only ones in a complete downward spiral.
As an American, no it’s not nice. Why would I want more of this shit elsewhere?
Misery loves company
Also, Americans are subject to supporting this bullshit. If any company in the us (or in the world really) owns or maintains data that the EU qualifies as adult-oriented, they have to either maintain a means of actively prevent EU users or support the filtering and tracking that the EU mandates. If not, they can be fined by the EU, and as long as there is a financial relationship between the us and EU, the fines will be enforced.
This has global impact.
I’m curious if more companies will move their hosting to countries that are non compliant with EU regulations and move to accepting payment from cryptocurrency only. I would not be surprised if x-rated content providers were to move to such places.
Wishing ill on people, eh?
Only on you ;)
Nice? I wish it was just the US so getting to another country would make it safe for us. This is awful.
Orwell never could have imagined society as it exists currently.
For the age verification is it possible to sign a petition? I think is not too late to join forces… or anything but not letting them go further… as of the chat control probably only contacting the representatives. I really hope lawyers and businessmen try to fight it…
The UK is owned by a different country. That country is Italy, where the Roman Catholic Church resides. Any Catholic-owned platform will shut down anything that goes against the RCC, or at best, they’ll just minimize the reach for those who have some things to say against the Jesuits and Catholic leadership.
That’s from what my producer, Neigsendoig, researched.
