Theresa May to create new internet controlled and regulated by government

Yesterday's discussions:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14374533

It's crazy how much this country has changed since I moved in the UK in 2010. I originally moved here because London was a city encouraging tolerance, freedom and respect for each other. Technology wise, this city was also the heart of Europe with a great pool of companies and engineers to achieve big things and counterbalance the hegemony of the Silicon Valley and the US.

Every new proposal these days from the UK government is pushing an authoritarian government, and the Brexit has given them an excuse for more populism and isolationism.

As a French man, I moved here because of all these reasons. I had a job in France, a good situation, but I wanted to discover, meet new people, enlarge my horizon. Today, I am not sure that London and the UK are the right places for that.

This is one of the most overtly authoritarian proposals for internet regulation I've ever heard from a democratic, Western nation. How in the hell are the people of the UK supporting something like this? As an American who cherishes liberty and freedom, I'm shocked that anyone could support these laws in the UK. They are straight up Orwellian...

I live in London and am looking for anyone in the UK willing to take part in demonstrations (real and virtual) against these plans (and the UK gov's hostility towards the internet in general).

I've set up a quick a Facebook page[1] to organize things. Send me a message through there and I'll respond soon.

Thanks!

[1] https://www.facebook.com/Protest-against-Theresa-Mays-plan-t...

I've noticed something about the UK: it's the most "compliant" country I've been to. This isn't always a bad thing: it means that when the rude person in the movie theater is told off they'll shut up and sit down. But it also means that when the government tells the population "we're going to surveil you and control what you read" the vast majority of people don't raise a fuss.

One example of this was when I was photographing some buildings in the UK. I was stopped by a police officer, and knew my UK rights, and he was shocked that I refused to stop photographing the buildings (which I was doing legally.) He eventually conceded, but another time a UK officer did not concede and threatened to arrest me (again, both times were fully within the law.)

There's something in the national DNA, I feel. Like I said, being compliant isn't inherently a good thing or a bad thing: but it does mean that stuff like this, which is pretty horrifying, will probably pass. I type this comment less than 100 miles from the UK, but even here in the Netherlands (although our government is occasionally very disrespectful of privacy) people are more likely to raise a fuss and stop something like this.

Even in the US, politicians have to be a little bit more careful about their support of egregious surveillance methods: hide it in an agriculture bill, disguise it, publicly denounce the surveillance state, etc etc. But Theresa May literally said "we want to put huge restrictions on what people can post, share, and publish online" - direct quote - and nobody's protesting (except a handful of noble British anti-surveillance organizations fighting a losing battle.)

This reads like an April Fool's prank.

They say that people should be protected from "harmful content", which somehow includes pornography? Is it the 80s again?

The rhetoric here sounds like it's coming from the distant past, when government officials were completely out of touch with the way ordinary people use new technology. Now it just looks like a blatant attempt to score "anti-terrorism" points and regulate the shit out of an industry in draconian ways, just for the sake of regulating it (what are the possible motives, besides the laughable "we don't want to provide safe space for terrorists to communicate" claim?)

Are people actually supporting this kind of thinking?

This will neither work nor result in the expected results. The lines stating that online would be governed the same way as offline life, and access to 'bad' materials would be 'just as hard' shows how disconnected from reality that idea is. Access to violence, hate, porn etc. isn't "harder" offline, and bullying on playgrounds isn't actually getting "fixed" at the moment, just it it won't be online.

The whole irony is that if the online rules would be implemented and resulting in the same things as offline life, the internet would pretty much remain as-is. Of course, the law and the rules would be allowing for more legal spying and detaining, as well as controlling official narrative, which would have nothing to do with online or offline life and is a whole new thing added on top of the current policy.

I hope that if we can just hold off on the crazy orwellian plans and ideas long enough for the old cluster of people in high places to die (of old age), we might actually be able to get the good stuff we created online to actually start fixing the offline problems in governing. That will never happen with the old style people in place, and only time will fix that, since they won't go freely as power is addictive and corrupting (as always).

I'd be curious to see what would happen if Mindgeek (owners of pornhub, etc) put a banner at the top of their websites for British visitors saying "your access to pornography is under threat" or similar. I wonder what effect they would/could have on British voters, based on the sheer amount of traffic they get (and the fact that a considerable amount of people enjoy how easy it is to look at porn, whether they admit it or not).

While I can understand some of the arguments in favour of regulating internet content, it amazes me people are still talking about pornography like some ancient demon from which our children must be protected at all costs. Does anybody still buy that rhetoric in this day and age?

I've always thought that Theresa May should have more of a say in what I do online. Who else than Theresa would know what's best for me.

This is horrendous - the entire point of the Internet is that it doesn't care, it's an inter-network, and it's only goal is to keep the packets flowing, at least when our dear leaders STFU. As someone in and out of machine learning - here's an example - I can litter the downtown with cameras, feed them into an ML cluster and if a child wanders off, it's mere seconds to find them again. Or, as in the great state of Connecticut, I can be so goddamn deranged that I want to put guns on drones, and believe semi-autonomous is a fine opening position. The problem is no matter how impressive the feat in ML, the systems involved have zero understanding of the outcome as a value judgement and they aren't going to gain one for a very long time. Do not teach machines to kill because they have absolutely no understanding of the difference between a beneficial act and a hostile act, they just reduce the error between where they're at and where you told them to be at. Going back to the internet you do not ever ever do this, because then what you are creating is a global censor. Happily for the moment such efforts are both localized and porous but this gaggle of idiots shrieking about terrorists and pedophiles need to SFTU and learn something, before they hatch something much worse.

It's funny when people that do not have any idea about technology wants to regulate Internet. Someone can just use application developed in other country, what they will do ? block the site on ISP level? People will link to thousands other sites that will have binaries of this application on facebook/twitter/any other site.

They can't even handle piracy and they think that they can control whole Internet? When I hear that kind of proposals I always have this picture in my mind:

https://torrentfreak.com/images/blocktpb1.jpg

As much as I'd like to say "hey Brits, come on and move to Germany as long as you still can", our own government is going way down the authoritarian route, too.

Not that extreme as in the UK, yes, but still - our secret services and the police got awarded the right to automatically access our ID card photography. What this means is that e.g. at demonstrations they can pull up a camera van and have everyone identified in real time - as any form of masking is forbidden by law since the RAF days.

When you're on social support, government may access your entire bank account data including transactions, at will and use everything they find to make your life even more miserable than it already is.

When you're a refugee, immigration offices are now allowed and equipped to forensically examine your cell phone to determine "if you tell the truth", plus you have your fingerprints and biometric photos taken.

First they came for the jobless, then the refugees, ... the path which many countries these days are going is a very dark one and I am not sure if democratic processes will allow a push back or if it will need massive civil unrest.

Step 1. Make a new, secure internet so that terrorists can't operate secretly.

Step 2. Make terrorists use that internet.

Hmm... I'm detecting a problem with this plan...

> If elected, Theresa May will "take steps to protect the reliability and objectivity of information that is essential to our democracy"

> The plans will allow Britain to become "the global leader in the regulation of the use of personal data and the internet", the manifesto claims.

> The manifesto also proposes that internet companies will have to pay a levy, like the one currently paid by gambling firms. Just like with gambling, that money will be used to pay for advertising schemes to tell people about the dangers of the internet, in particular being used to "support awareness and preventative activity to counter internet harms", according to the manifesto.

Terrorists have also been known to hide weapons underneath their clothes. Does this mean it should be law that everyone walk around naked so that terrorists have "no safe place" to hide things underneath their garments?

I'm thankful Hong Kong is now part of China so they can keep their fair and open Internet.

What a weird world we live in.

The Internet is a global public resource that must remain open and accessible. https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/manifesto/#

I know this is the independent, but is this for real? It sounds like a prank, straight out of the movie Brazil especially with the whole terrorist motivation. And in the U.K.?!

How do these proposals compare with the regulations imposed on print and television media in the UK?

Regulations imposed by a well meaning government can presumably be used for good. Hate speech is already banned in the UK, has that been abused by the organisations that enforce those rules?

It seems conceivable to me that while tighter regulations on the Internet could be abused by a malicious government, they might not be. The govt might just use the powers to stamp out a bit of extremist material here and there.

Most people - 90%+ didn't have access to a free internet until early 2000's (for practical purposes), encryption was hardly ever used by private citizens until GSM came in in the 80's, and then it was totally back doored - by law and standard.

Did we live in a dictatorship?

Democracy and a free society seemed to exist then, and before. Perhaps they were healthier in the 1990's than in the last few years?

Makes me giggle when people try to enforce policies about the internet without knowing anything about internet.

What could they possibly be thinking?

Nobody wants this, except the gov't.

US citizens should contact their representatives to indicate that this is not ok:

Facebook.com/townhall

If you'd like a bit of boilerplate, here's a message I sent to my senator in Georgia:

"Senator Perdue. I came across a troubling proposal by our U.K. allies to censor internet communications. This reminds me of our own net neutrality debate here in the US. What is your stance on regulating the internet?

For your reference: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/new...

I'm also open to any constructive comments that could make this message more effective.

If you want to make an impact, consider donating to The Open Rights Group: https://www.openrightsgroup.org/donate/

The laws would also force technology companies to delete anything that a person posted when they were under 18.

What? I can't believe this thinking finds some voters! Don't they see how impossible that is to achieve?

How about a government controlled and regulated by the intenet?

Can't see the scandal, we are being eaten alive daily by big corps for profit and surrendering them our entire national and supranational infrstructures, so govs should really try and get control back. Do you really think Zuckerberg, Brin, Bezos, Microsoft and Cook are better than May & co.? That said, the other extreme is North Korea, so we know what to expect, eventually.

I quite don't understand what's going on in UK. How is this downward spiral possible in this day and age? In UK of all places.

Now let us see how much the Western world truly believes in its own professed creed of openness, or whether its people have merely been cowardly hypocrites taking comfort in the privilege of never having to confront the true diversity of the human world.

As a someone who lived in abusive relationship with a control freak this manifesto scares me.

If anyone was still under the impression that Brexit was going to lead to a more international Britain rather than be carte blanche for every dumb idea a politician has might want to start paying attention.

This is one reason why I oppose multiculturalism.

Incompatible cultures in close proximity inevitably create civil conflict (e.g. terrorism, etc). This gives authorities an excuse to take more and more control over individuals' interactions with the excuse of trying to prevent that conflict.

In a culturally-unified Britain, May would have no excuse at all to try this Orwellian crap. See also: Patriot Act.

>"The plans are in keeping with the Tories' commitment that the online world must be regulated as strongly as the offline one, and that the same rules should apply in both."

I agree! It should be regulated the same way. Since the online world is pure speech, it should barely be regulated at all aside from direct threats and incitement to violence.

Too bad this headline doesn't say "Create a New Government, controlled & regulated by the Internet". Transpose two words & it really reads better.

Is anyone really surprised that pro-brexit politicians would want something like this?

Its like these are the first steps before V for Vendetta's plot...

Theresa May is very basic and very prude. Colour me unsurprised.

What the actual fuck.

This is legitimately worse than SOPA.

It's actually disgusting to me the people like Theresa May can come to these conclusions and think "this seems like a good idea"

Thanks for making us look good, UK.

- united statesians

The headline sounds sensationalised. Below are the relevant sections from the Conservative Party Manifesto (https://s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/manifesto2017/Manifesto20...).

"The safest place to be online

In harnessing the digital revolution, we must take steps to protect the vulnerable and give people confidence to use the internet without fear of abuse, criminality or exposure to horrific content. Our starting point is that online rules should reflect those that govern our lives offline. It should be as unacceptable to bully online as it is in the playground, as difficult to groom a young child on the internet as it is in a community, as hard for children to access violent and degrading pornography online as it is in the high street, and as difficult to commit a crime digitally as it is physically.

Where technology can find a solution, we will pursue it. We will work with industry to introduce new protections for minors, from images of pornography, violence, and other age-inappropriate content not just on social media but in app stores and content sites as well. We will put a responsibility on industry not to direct users – even unintentionally – to hate speech, pornography, or other sources of harm. We will make clear the responsibility of platforms to enable the reporting of inappropriate, bullying, harmful or illegal content, with take-down on a comply-or-explain basis.

We will continue to push the internet companies to deliver on their commitments to develop technical tools to identify and remove terrorist propaganda, to help smaller companies build their capabilities and to provide support for civil society organisations to promote alternative and counter-narratives. In addition, we do not believe that there should be a safe space for terrorists to be able to communicate online and will work to prevent them from having this capability.

We will educate today’s young people in the harms of the internet and how best to combat them, introducing comprehensive Relationships and Sex Education in all primary and secondary schools to ensure that children learn about the risks of the internet, including cyberbullying and online grooming.

Where we believe people need more protections to keep them safe, we will act to protect them. We will give people new rights to ensure they are in control of their own data, including the ability to require major social media platforms to delete information held about them at the age of 18, the ability to access and export personal data, and an expectation that personal data held should be stored in a secure way. To create a sound ethical framework for how data is used, we will institute an expert Data Use and Ethics Commission to advise regulators and parliament on the nature of data use and how best to prevent its abuse. The Commission will help us to develop the principles and rules that will give people confidence that their data is being handled properly. Alongside this commission, we will bring forward a new data protection law, fit for our new data age, to ensure the very best standards for the safe, flexible and dynamic use of data and enshrining our global leadership in the ethical and proportionate regulation of data. We will put the National Data Guardian for Health and Social Care on a statutory footing to ensure data security standards are properly enforced."

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I don't know how the data regulations mentioned at the end compare with the EU's Data Protection Directive (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Protection_Directive), which is already part of UK law.

It's also interesting to compare the comments in this thread with the recent thread about the EU's fines for Facebook (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13219828), where the EU was praised for protecting consumer rights.

I am genuinely undecided on this issue. I'm basically pro-freedom and pro-capitalist in politics, so Theresa's May's anti-market and authoritarian policies have made me much less likely to vote Conservative. Still, I think the right to privacy is an essential part of the right to liberty, so there's some justification for the government regulating the use of personal data.

What a waste of energy.

This is terrifying.

The UK leadership seems determined to follow the path laid out by Orwell in "1984". They already have the camera system. Now comes the Ministry of Truth.

The US has its own problems, but they're different ones.