I always remember Pink Floyd’s Another Brick in the Wall Part 2 [0] and the story of how authoritarian British schools were. I guess there some sort of contingent for making lots of rules and demanding adherence.
There’s a pretty great book called Albion’s Seed [1] by Fischer that goes into the four groups of British people that founded America. The “border” peoples of Scotland/north England were pretty anarchistic and moved to the colonies fleeing British rule. And I think there was quite a bit of rule that resulted in the people who don’t follow rules leaving Britain for the US/Australia/other colonies. So after a few hundred years, that perhaps had an effect on the type of people who stayed.
And they ended up in Appalachia because even the other colonies couldn't stand them and kicked them out.
Also, here's one of my favorite fairly relevant quotes:
> "We operate under the rule of law and are accountable for it. In some countries secret intelligence is used to control their people. In ours, it only exists to protect their freedoms."
- William Hague (UK Politician)
Edit: I wrote UK government... I was mistaken and thought of Northern Ireland instead of the Republic of Ireland.
Unelected global institutions are rising, and their vision of the future is not promising.
https://mises.org/wire/no-privacy-no-property-world-2030-acc...
0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_of_Investigatory_Po...
If I had to guess, police has a hard time accessing anything on smartphones and PCs - which probably is a major holdback for them - and hardly anybody involved in the making of the legislature has enough technical understanding and/or political stake to defend the privacy side of things.
[0] https://www.heise.de/news/Cyberbunker-Klausel-in-StPO-Durchs...
I also don't think it is that unique to the UK. It was a multi-national attack that broke EncroChat and the Australians breaking An0m (maybe with US help). Some countries love privacy at all costs like Germany and Scandinavia, some don't even assume they have privacy like Iran and China and those in the middle, like the UK, want to pretend they have privacy and are principled until they need to solve a crime and then it goes out the window!
Aside from sensitivity around the (technically correct but the status quo should always be open to question) term "British Isles", even accepting that term geographically, conflating the islands culturally demonstrates a certain level of ignorance on the subject.
What's used in public discourse and what's at large are two different groups.
>The British Isles are a group of islands in the North Atlantic off the north-western coast of continental Europe, consisting of the islands of Great Britain, Ireland, the Isle of Man, the Hebrides and over six thousand smaller islands.
It'd be hard to find any person using a smartphone whos phone is not "encrypted".
I don't consider Ireland to be a "British Isle" -- 26 counties out of 32 on the island are Irish.
How and ever -- we see the US in the same light. You're so hostile to privacy laws like GDPR and we aren't etc.
"British Isles" is the widely accepted term internationally in large part due to the historical dominance of the British Empire, coupled with the ongoing influence of the British state internationally (particularly in the anglosphere). It is however not a generally preferred term within Ireland, which is worth noting alongside any technical facts about geography.
Besides, to us 'English Channel' is a geographic term; in France it's La Manche ('the sleeve'). (Having said that we do say 'Irish Sea'.)
No one for a moment is suggesting that because of that you have to drink tea or invent the computer or anything else that is considered British.
You're arguing about an entirely different context. One involves private corporations, one involves the powers of the government. It's critical to make a distinction between those things, they are not the same issue at all.
Facebook, fortunately, doesn't have taxing authority, regulatory authority, law-passing authority or a private militia. I can banish Facebook from my existence, I can choose never to use their services, and I can legally use numerous options for blocking their ability to track me (and do so quite easily). Try doing that with a government that passes a very invasive law, just tell them to right piss off with their laws, refuse to obey their laws.
It's fine to argue for restrictions on privacy invasion re private corporations. However these are two separate matters to be argued, what should be allowed in the private sphere vs the public/government sphere.