London? Why does anyone have an anticipation of privacy in the UK? This is the city with police cameras on every block, surveillance vans, and a prime minister who literally called the privacy of encryption evil.
I'm now 38 years old and have seen little evidence to support your statement, either in the UK or elsewhere.
Most people seem _totally_ okay with members of their ruling class being drone-murdering, tax-thieving, law-breaking, crotch-grabbing assholes.
If only the subjects of the UK had a spine, as a people, and the willingness to confront the dire evil that has usurped their political infrastructure .. alas, they don't. A nation of cowards, really.
A nation of sheep perhaps but not a nation of cowards.
Not to mention a significant portion of the society appears to be perfectly aligned with the need for a total surveillance state, due to an endemic national fear that, perhaps, the imperial acts committed in their name will come home to roost..
Not sure how you arrived at that conclusion, most people I know don't know much about what we did during the age of empire and the rest broadly think Empire was a good thing for the countries we conquered.
I'm talking about here and now.
But you're right, nobody knows about that, either.
Virtually nobody is a British subject, we are citizens.
There are only two cases where you can be a British subject: if you were born in the Republic of Ireland before 1949 and claimed British subject status before 1983, or if you were born in a British colony that gained independence but you didn't become a citizen of the new country.
No, it is not. It is a city where tiny portions have police cameras. Somewhat larger areas have council-controlled cameras that it's fairly easy for police to gain access to. The vast majority of CCTV in London - and in the UK - is privately controlled, and most of it is not networked. Police can get access to it if/when something has happened, but most of them also either don't record or record only on a 24h loop, and access is often enough of a hassle that police does not even bother.
Certainly there is a lot of surveillance in London, and especially the central areas and around important buildings, but it's nowhere near as bad as you imply.
I live in London - I'd have about a 20 minutes walk to the nearest networked, police controlled camera, and about 10-15 minutes walk to any camera. In any direction.
> surveillance vans
Yes, but how many of them do you think there are? They are a rare sight, and they are obvious. I'm sure the Met would like more of them, but they don't have the budget to use them all over the place.
I see them often. But equally often I ask myself what the point is. What are the odds of catching a crime? Or do they work in tandem with dispatchers from the police, moving around in areas near reported crimes to try to capture footage?
Because article 8 of the ECHR guarantees it and the courts generally uphold it. I haven't researched beyond this article but it clearly says what the Met is/was doing is/was illegal.
Surveillance vans are a myth.
Police cameras? Sure there is plenty of CCTV but most of its is privately owned and operated.
I don't think they meant "block" in the usual American sense, but in the general sense, that is: "an area".
> Surveillance vans are a myth.
Simply Wrong.
Surveillance vans are not a myth, honestly. Maybe not in the what the police would call the "plebian" areas, but in the centre and Canary Wharf, you can see them every now and then, they even have their own WiFi you can try and connect to, which has like 3 password fields (I've tried when I was passing one in Canary Wharf).
> Sure there is plenty of CCTV but most of its is privately owned and operated
No evidence for this, and I think the parent comment meant "street-level" CCTV, not in buildings, and i'de be pushed to say it's more weighted towards public CCTV (govt.) rather than private.
City certainly is it's own little undemocratic (sure, you can vote, but so can nominees of corporations located in City), police-state fiefdom.
(for the non-Lononders, City of London is one of the financial districts of London, on the site of the historical site of the original settlement of London, and makes up a tiny portion of London; it's got its own police force, and a government that's entirely unlike anything else in the UK)
I was involved with a long trial that relied heavily on CCTV evidence and I'm interested to read how you think they are operated or owned.
* Safety
Pick one.
Also, plenty of police vans with ANPR systems to check on cars etc as they drive about.
As for the rest, sometimes I wonder if people on HN have forgotten what the real world is like. Is encryption evil? Clearly not. Does it being prevalent cause issues with intercepting terrorist/criminal communications? Probably. So, sure, the prime minister said something which doesn't stand up to scrutiny - as have most politicians and indeed people. Just because someone is wrong doesn't mean that they've ill intentions.