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Is 4chan the perfect Pirate Bay poster child to justify wider UK site-blocking?

(torrentfreak.com)
361 points gloxkiqcza | 1 comments | 24 Aug 25 16:30 UTC | HN request time: 0.222s | source
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torginus ◴[25 Aug 25 08:26 UTC] No.45011561[source]▶
I genuinely do not understand where how the idea of building a total surveillance police state, where all speech is monitored, can even as much as seriously be considered by an allegedly pro-democracy, pro-human rights government, much less make it into law.

Also:

Step 1: Build mass surveillance to prevent the 'bad guys' from coming into political power (its ok, we're the good guys).

Step 2: Your political opponents capitalize on your genuinely horrific overreach, and legitimize themselves in the eyes of the public as fighting against tyranny (unfortunately for you they do have a point). They promise to dismantle the system if coming to power.

Step 3: They get elected.

Step 4: They don't dismantle the system, now the people you planned to use the system against are using it against you.

Sounds brilliant, lets do this.

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intalentive ◴[25 Aug 25 14:09 UTC] No.45014035[source]▶
A political establishment that builds a "total surveillance police state" is not going to allow itself to be displaced by "elections".
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1. michaelt ◴[25 Aug 25 16:51 UTC] No.45015885[source]▶
> A political establishment that builds a "total surveillance police state" is not going to allow itself to be displaced by "elections".

Kier Starmer may be a wildly unpopular leader, even within his own party, and may have declared inconvenient protest groups to be terrorists so they can be banned, and may support a porn ban and an encryption ban, and an expansion of police facial recognition, and may back jailing people for misinformation posted on twitter that lead to riots, and may happily play lapdog to the wildly unpopular Trump government for little benefit.

But he will not call off the next elections, or refuse to step down. He is nowhere near popular enough to succeed at that, even if he tried. He can't even get his own party to pass his government's flagship spending reductions.