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> I just hope internet companies stand up the UK and refuse to do business here

Honestly, as a techie my impulse is to go "fine, have your shitty internet" to legislators who repay the advances the tech revolution has given them this way, but -

The reality is that tech companies are all still businesses hungry for bigger marketshare and willing to follow the money. The "internet giants" have all bent over backwards for China (or just been supplanted by chinese alternatives); I wouldn't be surprised if they did the same here.

After all, not doing so means you're leaving money and mindshare on the table for your competitors. It sucks, but that's what'll ultimately drive corporate decisions. The "ethical choice" is usually just a deferral of the eventually "more profitable" choice.

While I agree this would also put a burden on tech companies to police their platforms more and, likely to build backdoors which could put their companies in jeopardy. It might be more financially viable long-term to fight.

The problem is that what they've written looks very reasonable. After all, who could disagree with a statement such as the quote below?

"It is in no-one’s interest for the foundations of strong societies and stable democracies – the rule of law, privacy and security – to be undermined."

The Internet is a dangerous place at times. As anyone who needed the NHS a few days ago is all too aware, modern technologies can be vulnerable to very damaging attacks. There are whole new variations of criminal activity, from bullying and harassment to fraud and identity theft, that have been enabled by our modern, highly connected lives, and these often do have serious consequences for the victims. None of this is seriously in dispute, and no-one would seriously suggest that it wouldn't be better if these problems were effectively addressed.

The real problem is that I suspect Theresa May and her government have a very different idea about what things like "effectively addressed" mean compared to most of us here. The biggest single step to undermining privacy and security online in our country may well have been the Internet surveillance laws passed recently by the current government, laws which started out as a personal goal of May herself from her time as Home Secretary.

In their haste to ensure that laws and principles can be applied online as well as offline, it appears that the Conservative leadership has forgotten that offline we also have rules about following due process and principles about being innocent until proven guilty and legal requirements for reasonable grounds for suspicion before doing various things that interfere with a private citizen's life.

"The Internet is a dangerous place at times. As anyone who needed the NHS a few days ago is all too aware, modern technologies can be vulnerable to very damaging attacks."

But this was a failure of the government to fund the required security for the NHS. It was dangerous because the government was complacent, they cut funding to the support that kept the data safe, they used outdated technologies. This incident was the governments fault. And after reading this manifesto, it wouldn't surprise me if they let it happen on purpose to help push this agenda.

But this was a failure of the government to fund the required security for the NHS.

Perhaps, though a lot of the later reporting I saw suggested that the situation was far less clear than it initially seemed. For example, the vast majority of the systems affected by the recent involuntary encryption problems were reportedly running Windows 7. An update had been made available on that platform but only a few weeks earlier, so in some cases it was still in review before being deployed by IT departments etc. For home users affected by similar attacks, there have also been various problems with getting Windows 7 updates deployed in timely fashion, not least because Microsoft borked the Windows 7 update mechanism for a lot of people a few months ago and even systems set to automatically install important updates may have been silently failing to do so.

In any case, this is all rather academic. You and I and no doubt many other people reading these comments on HN might understand the technical issues involved, and we might have reasonable discussions about different strategies for updating systems to mitigate such threats. The average non-geek reading the paper just sees "Your local hospital Emergency Department was closed this week, with ambulances rerouted to other hospitals 20 miles away, as a result of evil people doing bad stuff that made the computers stop working." If the government promises to stop the evil people doing bad stuff so hospitals can carry on helping people, that average non-geek is going to support them, blissfully unaware of either the prospects for success or the unintended (or, more cynically, unadvertised) side effects.

"I just hope internet companies stand up the UK and refuse to do business here."

I wouldn't bet my money on it, since UK ISP companies were quite happy following government's agenda (see porn filter and Internet history collection).

UK ISP's don't have much of a choice. There business would be over. US tech companies do (especially ones that aren't publicly traded) as they have a huge market outside the UK. Think the SOPA action but on a more impactful scale.

My current ISP (ask4) doesn't filter any of the sites that they're supposed to. I can't comment on the history collection, of course. This is not a recommendation of ask4 however - the connection is relatively unreliable and slow/oversubscribed.

There are others. Mine (idnet) doesn't filter and is very good. Andrews & Arnold is famously hacker-friendly and high quality and also doesn't.

Of course, when it becomes a legal requirement things might change.

There is currently no legal requirement for UK ISPs to enable content filtering however all the major ISPs have agreed to voluntarily implement this. Whilst in theory users have an option to 'opt out' in practice most users are unaware of this and the process varies considerably depending on ISP.

As far as court ordered blocking, IIRC only the top 5 ISPs are currently required to implement this. Not sure what impact this has had on subscription rates for smaller providers.

Whilst in theory users have an option to 'opt out' in practice most users are unaware of this and the process varies considerably depending on ISP.

Do you have any robust data you could share about that? I'd be interested to see it. The only reports I've seen were informal/anecdotal, but if anything they suggested the reverse usually happens, with not many customers opting into filter programmes and those who were signed up automatically generating a fair number of hostile calls to ISP customer support people about wanting to opt out (and quite a few of those in connection with sites being blocked inappropriately).

They weren't happy about it. Behind the scenes, this stuff costs them a lot of money and potentially increases their legal exposure. It also makes them look bad to their customers, though that's not really a competitive disadvantage if everyone is compelled to be customer-hostile in the same ways. However, since they're UK businesses and they're not above UK law, what other viable option do they have?

I'm registered but went through the registration process out of curiosity, very easy.

There's still time to get a postal vote registration. They email or post the form and you take/send it to your local council offices.

Which page are you referring to? I'd like to read but don't have time for the whole manifesto right now and I couldn't find it!

Page 82 of the document (the 2 pages before the conclusion paragraph).

PDF link: https://s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/manifesto2017/Manifesto20...

I like the idea of the digital land data at the top of that page! Thanks for the reference.

Just a clarification: while it's page 82 of the paper document, it is actually page 84 of the PDF file. The chapter titled "A FRAMEWORK FOR DATA AND THE DIGITAL ECONOMY".

Here is a link that should take you straight to page 84 of the PDF (tested on Firefox and Chrome only):

https://s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/manifesto2017/Manifesto20...

Text:

A FRAMEWORK FOR DATA AND THE DIGITAL ECONOMY

Some people say that it is not for government to regulate when it comes to technology and the internet. We disagree. While we cannot create this framework alone, it is for government, not private companies, to protect the security of people and ensure the fairness of the rules by which people and businesses abide. Nor do we agree that the risks of such an approach outweigh the potential benefits. It is in the interests of stable markets that consumers are protected from abusive behaviour, that money is able to flow freely and securely, and that competition between businesses takes place on a level playing field. It is in no-one’s interest for the foundations of strong societies and stable democracies – the rule of law, privacy and security – to be undermined.

So we will establish a regulatory framework in law to underpin our digital charter and to ensure that digital companies, social media platforms and content providers abide by these principles. We will introduce a sanctions regime to ensure compliance, giving regulators the ability to fine or prosecute those companies that fail in their legal duties, and to order the removal of content where it clearly breaches UK law. We will also create a power in law for government to introduce an industry-wide levy from social media companies and communication service providers to support awareness and preventative activity to counter internet harms, just as is already the case with the gambling industry.

Just as we led the world in regulating embryology thirty years ago, we know that if we create the right system of governance for the digital economy and use of data, we will attract the right businesses who want to become the global centre for data use and research.