UK PM urged to enact ‘David’s law’ to end online anonymity after Amess’s death | Hacker News Reader

UK PM urged to enact ‘David’s law’ to end online anonymity after Amess’s death

theguardian.com

26 pointsintunderflow32 comments

Notwithstanding Hanoz's law, that all laws named after a victim of crime are bad laws, David Amess by all accounts received next to no online abuse, anonymous or otherwise, because he was the kind of politician that even people who usually hate politicians actually like.

Conversely, the politicians attempting to use his death to further their own pet agenda already, are the kind of politicians that even people who don't usually hate politicians do actually hate.

> A socially-conservative Catholic who opposed abortion and same-sex marriage

That's from his Wikipedia page because I had no idea who he was. That's the kind of stuff a lot of people don't "actually like".

While he had socially conservative political views, it doesn't seem that he spent an enormous amount of effort pushing them. From the coverage I've seen, I get the impression that he was a perpetual backbencher by choice, did not have large-scale political ambitions, and focused his efforts primarily on local topics, constituent concerns, and campaigning for relatively niche, less partisan political topics. His two largest legislative contributions were on animal welfare and fuel poverty, and he was known for his involvement in particular health topics, and his quixotic campaign to have Southend be given city status. In a speech of his on fuel poverty, he outright says of himself that ‘once one realises one's limitations, it is rather churlish to remain here and become bitter and twisted because no one notices the talent that one's relatives alone believe one to have‘, and also points out that, while he could have tried to bring a bill on his pro-life views, he felt it would be far less useful than bringing a bill on fuel poverty after a constituent brought up the matter to him.

He was also, of depressing relevance to the attack, known as an MP who was particularly accessible, responsive, and helpful to his constituents.

What is it about Commonwealth governments - the U.K. in particular - that makes them so extremely hostile towards privacy? There is always some push to monitor all [X], require registration to do [Y], or outlaw [Z] in the name of safety. Is there some cultural aspect to this that I as an American just don't grok? Yes, I know our government tries this B.S. too, but not nearly as eagerly and to the same degree.

I don't know if they are so much more hostile towards privacy - I moved from the UK to Germany, and while overt data collection is much more limited here, the tendency is still there for government agencies (especially the police) to collect every bit of data they can, and never delete it.

The UK has the disadvantage that there's no constitution and a weak court system, so there's no opposition other than pure political opposition. That makes anti-privacy laws pretty easy to pass, since they tend to be generally popular amongst voters.

Ultimately though, any country where big tech is allowed to operate has essentially unlimited access to the private lives of their citizens, through subpoenas. Until that particular barn door is closed, the UK's panoply of CCTV cameras vs Germany's proudly blanked-out google streetviews are much of a muchness.

Let's be real though. If the UK decided to create a constitution it would probably be stupid stuff like "Guarantee of safety" (24/7 surveillance, most outdoor hobbies banned, more powers for the British Board of Film Censors) and "Freedom from hate" (Criticism of politicians and media empires illegal)

Oh hang on a minute, I'm not so sure. The right to not be offended by anything could have its perks.

I'm offended that people responsible for or complicit in wars and intervention and destruction of Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, etc. have not been found guilty and imprisoned for life, while we're being preached at by these same criminals about how the collective good is our paramount responsibility.

I'm offended people are being told their freedom must be sacrificed so their hospital systems can remain as gutted and fragile as ever, years after fairly gradual pandemic with relatively low hospitalization and death rates almost caused health systems to collapse, while allowing the ruling class and multinational corporations to get away with obscene tax loopholes that could be helping to pay for an actual robust health system.

Yes I think we could make some real progress here.

> The UK has the disadvantage that there's no constitution and a weak court system

That doesn't change much. The psychopaths in power never needs laws to apply power, as exemplified by laws which state cops are not supposed to kill "random" people. But as we well know all across the globe, it happens and the establishment will protect the murderers.

Laws are the tools of the powerful to protect themselves from the weak, not the other way around. That's the same reason for which a baker who tries to hide 1000€ from taxes collectors will be severely fined, while politicians and corporations who hide millions or even billions will never face any sort of consequences.

https://www.parliament.uk/globalassets/documents/commons-com...

Do you really think the entire system has no set of written rules?

While the UK does have a sort-of constitution as a mashup of laws and conventions it can be amended by the government of the day by simply convincing their majority in the commons to vote for it in the form of a new bill, so it's considerably weaker than constitutions in other states that require significantly more consensus to amend (such as the USA).

Can you show me a situation where a UK government has done this? When have they enacted constitutional changes simply because it restricted their ability to enact policies?

EDIT: Lloyd George comes to mind. That was over 100 years ago.

One that comes to mind recently is the Irish-sea border as part of Northern Ireland Protocol spanning from Brexit.

This was challenged as being in violation of the Acts of Union 1800 (particularly Article 6, which establishes an all-UK Customs Union) but the High Court ruled that the relevant parts of the Acts of Union are "impliedly repealed" by the Withdrawal Agreement Act.

There's a BBC article covering this here: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-57666255

I don’t see that as being distinct from Brexit - which was absolutely a constitutional change.

With Brexit, the UK deeply and seriously considered constitutional change and decided to go through with it.

It wasn’t like they had some nefarious end in mind, realized the EU was getting in the way, and decided to withdraw to pursue this nefarious end.

They left the EU because they wanted to leave the EU.

Edit: I suppose it’s not really about Brexit, but about making trade agreements with the EU.

What? Of course the UK has a constitution. It is simply not codified into a single document.

I thought there was no constitution in the sense of a legal restriction against Parliament passing certain classes of laws, the way the US prevents Congress from passing certain laws. There are instead two conflicting strong traditions: 1) Parliament shouldn't do certain things; 2) acts of the current Parliament are never binding on later Parliaments. Any law the current one passes can be undone by a later one, things like Brexit notwithstanding since those are entangled with international treaties.

So Parliament might attempt to pass a "prohibited" law, trigger some level of public outcry or even intervention from the Crown, but at the end of the day, getting it through (or not) is just a political contest.

Is that wrong?

Has the US constitution ever been respected? There's plenty of human rights abuses in the history of the USA, most (not all) of which have been approved by congress.

What's a piece of paper to protect people from institutions? If you want human rights for real, you want popular (armed) self-defense against the people in power and their police.

I think the US is the outlier here. Not just Commonwealth governments but pretty much any non-US government will put a higher priority on safety and avoidance of harm than the US does in pretty much any domain of public life.

If the UK or Germany had the road or gun deaths of the US you'd see the same reaction, or Australia after Port Arthur.

The US had some strong reactions against guns, but not because of violent deaths. They only started restricting gun ownership when they were used by militant groups to oppose the tyranny of US imperialism and its white-supremacist police.

The first anti-gun laws in the US (under Raegan i believe?) were precisely designed to disarm the Black Panther and other militant organizations, who were patrolling the streets of popular neighborhoods to prevent the police from murdering "random" people. Their self-defense technique worked, and that's precisely why it was banned, and to this day we still have the police shooting killing peaceful people.

It's not just the Commonwealth. It's the majority of Nation States across the planet, because fascism lies in the roots of liberal "democracy": it's the next stage of any "republic" when the people want to have rights and refuse to be exploited for the governing/abusive minority (see also: "Fascism Inc" doumentary). The political systems of France and USA (who have famously inspired others) have precisely been built to avoid and prevent democracy, whose rule of the mob were seen as dangerous by the wealthy elites. Likewise, most public school systems have been designed to destroy people's cultures and form mindless wage-slaves for the industry.

WWII was won on the premise of Freedom and Equality for all. But as history has shown (eg. post-WWII anticolonial struggles and invention of modern "counter-insurrection" playbooks) liberalism was never about freedom or equality, but always about engineering consent for mass exploitation. See also Naomi Klein, Noam Chomsky... Across history, humanity as a whole has never been less free & equal. Even in the middle ages there were tons of free communes beyond the reach of kingdoms. Nowadays, where's a place you can live and your State is not going to be able to find and repress you with drones and satellites and helicopters and whatnot?

Nation States are tyranny. Vive la Commune!

Why do governments always try to weaponize tragedies to pass disgusting, authoritarian laws? It's like they don't even hide that they're enemies of freedom under the color of legitimacy

Because government is tyranny, and is fundamentally incompatible with freedom. Some may have a nice colorful "human rights" coating, but that's just a facade that never holds scrutiny.

The problem itself is human. We like to label things for discussion, but sometimes that removes the human agency from the situation. Humanity has a large percentage of people who have zero compassion for others. They're only in the game for what they can get out of it, and fuck everyone else. You hear this sentiment, in various wordings, from all levels of humanity - the poorest of the poor, and the richest of the rich.

> You hear this sentiment, in various wordings, from all levels of humanity - the poorest of the poor, and the richest of the rich.

This is true and false at the same time. In capitalist culture, that's the norm and you find this sentiment at all levels. However, most cultures across human history were not similar.

Compassion and mutual aid are cornerstones of human life (if not of the entire animal realm). If a bit outdated, i would strongly recommend to read Kropotkin's "Mutual Aid" on the topic. Also related: "The Trap", a TV series by Adam Curtis which explains the origins of modern individualism and neoliberal game theory applied to every field of life...

You may be surprised to learn in this documentary that at the time those theories were developed, only economists and psychopaths played by the "rational" (self-serving) strategy, while other people chose cooperation. Results done today after decades of brainwashing would of course be very different, but i'm still betting a lot of regions/cultures would not abide by the psychic laws of capitalism (fuck everybody before they fuck you).

How is there even a connection between this murder and online anonymity?

I thought they had arrested the suspect already.

My understanding is that not only was there no connection with anonymity, but the suspect was not anonymous even before the murder, having booked an appointment for the surgery.

Possibly the argument here is with regards to being able to track a particular person's discussions to see whether they are radicalizing? Yet the suspect had already been referred to a deradicalization program. Possibly it is to track people making radicalization efforts online? But are those people actually trying to be anonymous?

exactly said, it’s a terrible approach it seems like a false excuse to push an ever more so intruding government (no matter the country this scenario is true), even the term deradicalization is an issue, it implies that the person is already outside of society, that is further pushing these people into making it a persona. isolation for some, can be extremely toxic mentally, it’s like gangs, some kids in the states feel left out, they don’t have any friends or family. they have no way of surviving so they cling to the first sign of acceptance from a group. it’s the same thing, there’s a deeper issue, that’s NOT being addressed and this type of rhetoric coming from a politician does nothing to address that issue. it actually makes things worse.

Exactly - I don’t even see an argument being made that there is a connection.

What a surprise that the solution is the thing they've been trying to do for a while already.

How funny, Australia is trying to bring in the same bullshit.

Wonder what the useless, transparent argument for it will be here.

It's so hurtful when online bullies comment on politicians pants falling down again. They need to make that illegal. /s

And this stabbing is connected to online privacy exactly how? I always wonder if the next thing the UK government is going to do, is install a CCTV camera into everyone's toilet for 'protection'. Who's protection? Yours? The royal family's? Against whom? Against radicalized people from countries which the UK helped destabilize?

Mods: Title from article was too long to fit, feel free to adjust as you see appropriate

you know what is interesting? us not doing a better job at having constructive dialogue. we have a genuine opportunity to work things out with people we otherwise would have been told what to and how to think about someone. obviously this attack is a horrible event, but how many events that happen to normal people like us?

i had family members who had been murdered in broad daylight. this was before high speed internet, even before 56k and shotgun modems. the attackers didn’t even know them. over 20$ dollars.

anyways, not sure where exactly i am going with this but i think we need stronger leadership and not the iron fist type, like why are people doing this type of stuff? is it extremism based on religious ideologies or do people turn to extremism due to some underlying non-addressed societal issue that could be negated had we had programs been set in place to mitigate a festering issue before it becomes an infectious debilitating disease.

forcing people to behave by watching every action never solves the root of an issue, if anything it drives the infection deeper into society, in the shadows more so, you may not hear about it anymore, until it strikes. that’s an issue, it’s better for people to talk about things so others can lead them out of the group psychosis that they are marinated in. i am no expert on the subject, but my dad had a huge temper growing up, he would blow his top whenever his kids didn’t do exactly what he said. there was no dialog, no warning or reasons why rules were set in place, nothing.

so people in my family learned to just never tell him anything. when something bad happened and needed an adults advice, we would never tell him out of fear of him getting mad.

do you think that is the best way to live? to put people in a place where they just hid things even more so? not trying to sound weird or anything it just seems like the whole authoritarian thing does not work. maybe if there were campaigns, advertising directed at making a difference we could actually pull people out of these terrible mindsets. but listen, i am all for some form of accountability, but to monitor a whole society based on a few bad actors seems like you are punishing everyone which two wrongs don’t make a right.

tldr; don’t imprison a society because of a prison minded acted horrifically, you are just letting that ideology win.

anyways, i digress

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