UK government surveilling social media of teaching assistants
reclaimthenet.org
reclaimthenet.org
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/oct/21/uk-governme...
I mean, does this actually need to be said? Would anyone think TAs are the only citizens under surveillance?
> Cases have also surfaced of the Department attempting to silence voices critical of government policy. Early years specialists Ruth Swailes and Aaron Bradbury have previously faced attempts from the Department to cancel their conference due to their earlier critiques. Similarly, Dr. Mine Conkbayir, a renowned early childhood author, was allegedly threatened with funding withdrawal for a conference she was scheduled to keynote, due to her criticisms. As she recounts, the Department also attempted to curtail her talk duration and verify her speech contents, pulling the strings of academic dialogue.
... People here seem to think all this creepy data is just getting shipped into a box, rather than being deliberately acted upon.
But it's very clear that is not the case. The reality is far more disturbing. We're looking at primary school teachers suffering in their career (!!!) for the 'crime' of criticising policy. That's insane.
If OpenAI are scraping public tweets for their LLM then it's hard for me to believe this government isn't also scraping for their own power and control.
Perhaps unsurprisingly this seems to be about as high quality as the track & trace system that looted £37 billion from the tax payer [0].
It makes one think about the importance of anonymous donations to NGOs who are trying to hold the government accountable for fear of future targeted surveillance for valuing "freedom".
[0] https://committees.parliament.uk/committee/127/public-accoun...
Test & Trace.
Track & Trace is for parcels.
https://www.politico.eu/article/france-starts-scrapping-soci...
One NGO that fought this was la quadrature du net, here is there post about it (in french):
https://www.laquadrature.net/2019/11/05/le-parlement-doit-re...
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2023/sep/30/revealed-u...
None of the articles seem to have proof or clarity of the claims in the form of actual documents and direct quotes from them. Not to say they don't exist, it's clear they do from the witness statements, but there is no detail to support the claim of some policy of active monitoring.
This seems like a serious overreach of government so the lack of meat here is curious.
They're using this data to make sure people who criticise them can't acquire influence.
And it's all in secret, short of canny SAR's.
People can question if this is technically surveillance, but in context, that question is basically misdirection.
For ex. if these teachers had instead published their complaints in old-fashioned letters-to-the-editor in print newspapers, I don't think anyone would be complaining that the government reads the newspapers. You could still complain about the chilling of dissent and the waste of resources.
I would not feel "chilled" if someone (an employer, government, or whoever) trawled through my HN posts and made some kind of judgment or took action over what I post. I would expect it. It's public after all. I certainly moderate what I say here knowing this (maybe that's the chilling effect you mention?)
Yeah that is the chilling effect.
Yes, it's likely there are some things that are better to be "chilled". For instance if you were advocating for violence against public figures.
But imagine the day your credit rating gets dinged because you post online that you disagree with some new tax reform bill being proposed. This happens because the agency managing your credit score is also lobbying for this tax reform.
Or you criticize a government official online and the police show up at your door, which is something that absolutely has happened throughout history.
The fact they are watching your social media isn't the problem. It's how they can (and eventually probably will) abuse that surveillance. Or whoever replaces them next time there is an election.
Of course we understand that the only reason to watch and analyze all of this data is to be able to take actions based on it
I am definitely in favor of preventing the gathering to guarantee preventing the actions. No one should trust that data is being collected without any intention of using it.
Might not be too chilling.. as long as they get the right person. Best hope other Ryan just parties it up a bit and nothing more sinister if you want to become a teacher.
I think we can and should differentiate between what we say in casual conversation and way we state as a declaration of our public opinion to which we purposefully attach our name.
Surveillance is orthogonal to whether the subject is in public or in private.
It may be legal, it may be public information, but this is a government collecting information on its citizens: government surveillance.
Consider the effects:
> Government monitoring of social media can work to people’s detriment in at least four ways: (1) wrongly implicating an individual or group in criminal behavior based on their activity on social media; (2) misinterpreting the meaning of social media activity, sometimes with severe consequences; (3) suppressing people’s willingness to talk or connect openly online; and (4) invading individuals’ privacy.
Now if you’re cool with those effects, rock on. I’m not keen.
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/soci...
I can make my bed to some extent with a very few small, human-resource limited departments conducting surveillance. But we seem to be growing an entire public sector willing to recreate the Stasi and its wider influence. I'm not sure what the fix is, it isn't particularly a new phenomenon and it only ever seems to expand.
Search for 'Part III' and read the first item here: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1984/35/enacted
I have not heard any British person say the Queen was chosen by God.
I THINK people may have been talking about the value (or not) of written constitutional guarantees.
More seriously, more people should be concerned about the Conservative party's disdain for the Human Rights Act and suggested intention to withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights: https://www.theguardian.com/law/human-rights-act
(So you'll see the UK does have a list of rights, but like everything else it's a normal law that can be changed by Parliament in the usual way -- there's no special constitutional law requiring more effort to change, and/or a special court to uphold it.)
That is simply not the case in the US, where, in fact, a right wing populist did come to power, did try to subvert the election process, did try to (indirectly) eliminate congress, and failed on every front. And he failed so hard that people might re-elect him since they don't think he could succeed the second time around anyway. Yes, people shoot each other all the time, the violent crime rate per capita is incredibly high, and society in general is plagued by inequality and racial tension. But the chaos drives the country forward. The UK is quiet, calm, comfortable (workers schedule their strikes!) There is no room for real organized dissent. It would take the dissolution of the monarchy for real change to come about, but they aren't going to do that here. They aren't going to do anything.
However, down is not the only direction. The nation has been far more authoritarian in the past; we will be more liberal again in the future. Liberalism is not a spent force, and there is a sizeable constituency which values personal privacy.
In Blighty, sarcasm and piss taking are part of entry level conversation. I kindly suggest this is something you clearly missed when 'arguing with British people'.
(The American habit of writing "/s" to signal sarcasm looks distinctly odd to a Brit, as of course it is sarcasm, otherwise they would not have written something so obvious.)
I wish the UK would spend a bit less effort trying to provoke and fight Russia to the death and a bit more effort trying not to become Russia.
I also wish that wasn't a controversial opinion.
I frequently tell people we are becoming like Russia, and they get worked up. Then I ask them why the "Russia report' was supressed and they get even more worked up
Meanwhile in Canada: truckers honking is literally terrorism because it hurts my ears :(
I think his calculus was bang-on to avoid taking a Brexit position. He probably captures the anti-Brexit vote by default, whereas Brexit support was strong in the labour heartlands (and he can not afford to antagonise that base - they flipped improbably blue just to support Brexit). By doing nothing, he's made Brexit an albatross that the tories must wear.
Everything I've seen from him suggests that he's a canny operator. He's been very anodyne in his economics, because the only thing he can achieve by setting out his stall is to alienate. The voters he's already got aren't going to vote harder.
His strategy is to be "not tory" and his tactics are to not prevent the tories from making blunder after blunder. I think this is absolutely the right strategy and tactics. By contrast, the Lib Dems have much more work to do.
In a better system, it would be. But this is UK politics. If you don't win outright, you lose. Therefore, for most of us, we don't vote _for_ our preferred candidate, we vote _against_ our enemy. I haven't had the luxury of voting Lib Dem for years - I'd just be throwing my vote away.
Starmer only needs to present himself as the end of the tories. That's what the country wants more than anything else. They would vote for a sack of potatoes if it looked like the best chance of rooting out the tories.
No matter how credible, sane, fully costed or appealing his policy may be, the Mail and the Sun will use it to sow FUD, and his vote will decrease. Fuck, you think our electorate votes on policy? No, my friend. They vote based on emotive rhetoric.
If he remains anodyne, his enemies can only clutch mist. The plebs can project their desires onto him. He presents very little attack surface to the media.
Contrast with Corbyn. Out of context, when offered his manifesto policies, the plebs liked them far better than tory policy - yet he failed to win. Why? Because he was wide open to attack. The media painted him as a crank. They drowned him in FUD. Swing voters voted against him because they thought he'd crash the economy or disband the army or something. They didn't read his manifesto - they read Littlejohn lying about his manifesto. They read clickbait published by motivated liars in their Facebook feeds.
For clarity, Corbyn would have been a poor PM, but hopefully you now see that leadership quality is immaterial to the electoral process. If not, look outside.
No; Starmer must at all costs avoid throwing away his victory. He must stay mum except for occasionally - not too often - giving a little shove when the Tory self-destruction looks like slowing down. Keep the focus on them and win by default.
That said, I'd make an exception for Lib Dems purely because the party is full of awful people with no real principles who have and would turn on a dime for political advantage. It has been a vote in the bin for 24 years.
While we’re off focusing on encryption debates and the online safety bill, the UK government isn’t waiting around.
Just what is “accredited technology”? As defined in that bill, and how much does encryption play a role when monitoring policies in general cause a general chill in what people are willing to talk about online?
I wonder what other aspects of normal behavior are being tracked? It must be extensive.
In the US, "right-to-work state" likely refers to the opposite of what you mean. It's "right to not join a union and not pay dues".
The regional assemblies are limited in power and subordinate to Westminster. Resenting that fact would remain a fringe position if it weren't obvious to all that the double whammy of safe seats in FPTP and the cahoots of the media will keep the tories in power vastly more than out of it, despite electoral results that can credibly be interpreted as regularly expressing a national and multiple regional preferences for anyone-but-the-tories to govern; and also that the tories don't give even the slightest smear of shit about the other nations in the union.
But you can grift and shaft the populace indefinitely, in the normal run of things, and get nothing but grumbling. What has really lit the fuse is Brexit, which Scotland most assuredly did not want, and which was imposed on them by the English, and which the English then ballsed up like a classroom of problem children left unattended. Many Scots now see the cost/benefit proposition of the union shifting sharply away from remaining in it.
Northern Ireland is probably also feeling aggrieved about Brexit given the fact that Brexit, as implemented by the aforementioned children, trampled all over the Good Friday Agreement, which did more to reduce daily violence than anything since Cromwell; the open border with RoI was a prerequisite for the GFA that we all took for granted; but their will is much harder to read, given the sectarianism still endemic and the challenges of Irish reunification. What certainly doesn't help is the tories getting into bed with the DUP, which I would call a blot on their record if their record were not just blot after blot merging into a uniform superblot, against which unblotted fragments of record are too dim to make out, like stars observed through the smoulder of a recently-burnt-out house.
Wales voted for Brexit, the mugs.
If someone robs a corner gas station, you think “dang that’s a shame”.
If the military robs a gas station, you think “umm wtf?”
Having your human rights violated is not like stubbing your toe.
No middle ground is possible.
always funny when the free speech absolutist gets mad when people use free speech to cancel someone
Not really in the spirit of free speech.
The activist behaviour is close to blackmail - 'punish this person for us now, or we'll hurt your company'.
no one is getting canceled for saying something that isnt shameful
happy to help
Second is the question of where you draw the line. Mason Greenwood was cancelled after audio recording emerged of him raping his girlfriend. Kurt Zouma was not cancelled after recording emerged of him kicking his cat. Should he have been? Any answer you give is based on your personal values around punishment for crime and behaviour towards the defenceless. I'm anti-punishment but also anti-cruelty, so it's a head-scratcher for me. What about drink-driving? Parking tickets? You see the problem?
I'm fine with deplatforming the genuinely loathsome, given some consensus on what that is...
...but one of the early cancellation twitstorms was over some hapless male nerd making a sexual joke about USB sticks within earshot of (I'm doing my best to phrase this in a value-neutral way, and I mean no imputation beyond this specific individual) a tumblerina.
I stipulate that it's a horrible experience to be female at a very male tech conference, and that may have given her good reason to be sensitive, but AFAICT the joke in itself was merely unfunny and not inherently offensive to anyone who isn't already primed to explode. I presume that tumblerina received some genuinely bad behaviour previously at the conference, from men unnamed, but hapless nerd was the one she could name, so she did.
Aaanyway. Tech nerd got cancelled. Then tumblerina got cancelled; both of them, understandably, for becoming liabilities to their employers. And much heat was generated in twitter datacentres. The whole thing was a storm in a teacup.
So I refute your claim that "no-one is getting cancelled unless they're doing something shameful". I'd argue that neither of those two people should be ashamed - their sins are no more than common human failings that I hope Osiris would gloss over in his reckoning.
Stepping back, I'm concerned with your comment's assonance with "nothing to hide". I find that mentality deeply problematic. I accept authority only grudgingly, as I believe that organised crime is inevitable anyway, but it doesn't sit right to celebrate that some group that holds power over one, in which one has no representation, can use that power to harm one, using dogmatic justification and motivated reasoning. I really hate your position. Please soften it, so that we can have more forgiveness in the world.
"Shameful" is not objective. It's moral fashion, that can change very quickly.
In practice they can. The method they use isn't the force of law, but the result is the same.
How would a group of private citizens get a copy of all communications of an other private citizen?
Are there any documented cases of this ever happening?
A few months back the UK charged five retired police officers with hate crimes because they had a private WhatsApp group in which the police found content racist[1] comments about the Duchess of Sussex (Meghan Markle).
In the UK it is illegal to say something online that could be considered hateful. But the issue is that in most cases when people are saying hateful things they do so in private, so most of the time offenders like these retired police offers go unpunished.
People in the UK are very concerned about hate speech, and unlike these surveillance stories, this is something that UK media obsessively report on.
The issue is that although the government can arrest your kids for saying hateful things in public[2][3] they cannot do this when they're being hateful in private. If we genuinely believe we need to stop hate speech, then it follows that we also need to do something about the large amount of hate speech which occurs in private.
I suspect this is the primary reason why the government wants to know what content you have on your device and what you're saying to your friends because it's likely some of it is hateful, and if you have said something hateful in private then they want to know.
[1] 100,000 people were charged with racist hate crimes last year, and around 1 in every 400 people are charge with some form of hate crime each year. I'm providing this context because these are extremely unlikely to be highly racist messages on par with what you might hear from say a neo-Nazi. More often than not it's simply something negative which could be classed as hateful.
[2] Police arrest autistic child for commenting that an officer looked like her lesbian nana, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leeds-66462895
[3] 17 year old arrest for tweeting Olympic driver, "You let your dad down i hope you know that". It was deemed "malicious communications" because the divers dad died the year before, https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/336534/Teenager-arrested-o...
----
Legal note: I do not agree with hate speech in any form. My comment is not intended to downplay the seriousness of hate speech or question our need to enforce hate crimes, but simply to note that a lot of hate speech currently goes unpunished due to E2E encryption and the governments lack of visibility into what we do on our private devices.
Lol. That about sums it up.
Whenever a dystopian UK government surveillance thread makes it to the front page of HN I generally try to remind people of two things:
1. This will not make headlines in the UK.
2. People in the UK do not care about privacy.
The fact that the person they spoke to in this article was more concerned about how much the surveillance was costing is exactly the problem. No one will say, "I have a right to free speech", or "I have a right to privacy", because culturally we don't believe in free speech or privacy.
Do no feel sorry for us. This is largely what people here want. And I'm not saying that cynically, people here genuinely believe the government wants to (and should) protect us from our own dangerous opinions.
We once did, but it looks like times have changed for the worse.
Of all the publications with the power to string together a long-term narrative account of local and national government malfeasance, it's the one the most needs a historical index and least has one.
That probably needs some qualification since it was the Guardian which broke the story (and the prequel story two weeks prior) and that's two headlines right there.
If you check the front page of The Observer for 2023-10-01[1], the prequel ("Education ministry keeps secret files on critics of schools policy") is fully a third of the front page. Which is also a headline.
[1] https://www.tomorrowspapers.co.uk/observer-front-page-2023-1...
(Oddly, no-one seems to have The Guardian front page for 2023-09-30 that I can find.)
Normally these stories get a little attention here and there but there's rarely ever much mainstream interest. If I were to talk to people in the UK about this story I'd be surprised if anyone is aware of it, and if they are they certainly won't think much of it.
Contrast that with this community who really cares about stories like this, and even the average American who probably more concerned about mass surveillance in the UK than Brits.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/oct/21/uk-governme...
Seriously, what kind of dystopia are UK politicians trying to create?
Also, that's a lot of tax money that could, I dunno, be used to improve the schools?
> In 2020, the openDemocracy website published a report on the FOI Clearing House. The report described the Clearing House as "Orwellian" and found that it requires government departments to send it requests that are potentially sensitive or too expensive to answer. The report also found that the Clearing House sometimes requires departments to provide it with drafts of responses to FOI requests for vetting. According to the report, government ministers were hindering FOI requests in "disturbing" ways and the number of FOI requests granted by departments had decreased. The Cabinet Office said the Clearing House was designed to "ensur[e] there is a standard approach across government in the way we consider and respond to requests".
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/nov/24/orwellian-g...
One where they constantly talk about conservative values of freedom while creating the most oppressive anti-protest laws and government surveillance in the western world.
“Who Really Runs Britain?: The Private Companies Taking Control of Benefits, Prisons, Asylum, Deportation, Security, Social Care and the NHS”
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Who-Really-Runs-Britain-Deportation..."
Ok, then talk about the program as a whole.
The US and China have over twice as many CCTV cameras per person than the UK does.
https://www.precisesecurity.com/articles/top-10-countries-by...
In both countries, low-level bureaucrats have extensive access to information about individuals, as well as broad attributions on what they can do with it, unlike the much maligned US, where these powers are much more separated.
V's Speech To EnglandThe actual speech, from the comic:
⁂
Good evening, London. I though it time we had a little talk.
Are you sitting comfortably?
Then I’ll begin…
I suppose you’re wondering why I’ve called you here this evening.
Well, you see, I’m not entirely satisfied with your performance lately… I’m afraid your work’s been slipping, and…
…and, well, I’m afraid we’ve been thinking about letting you go.
Oh I know, I know. You’ve been with the company a long time now. Almost… let me see. Almost ten thousand years! My word, doesn’t the time fly?
It seems like only yesterday…
I remember the day you commenced your employment, swinging down from the trees, fresh-faced and nervous, a bone clasped in your bristling fist… “Where do I start, sir?” you asked, plaintively.
I recall my exact words: “There’s a pile of dinosaur eggs over there, youngster,” I said, smiling paternally the while.
“Get sucking.”
Well, we’ve come a long way since then, haven’t we? And yes, yes, you’re right, in all that time you haven’t missed a day.
Well done, thou good and faithful servant.
Also, please don’t think I’ve forgotten about your outstanding service record, or about all your of the invaluable contributions that you’ve made to the company…
Fire, the wheel, agriculture… It’s an impressive list, old-timer, a jolly impressive list. Don’t get me wrong.
But… Well, to be frank, we’ve had our problems, too. There’s no getting away from it.
Do you know what I think a lot of it stems from? I’ll tell you…
It’s your basic unwillingness to get on within the company. You don’t seem to want to face up to any real responsibility, or to be your own boss.
Lord knows, you’ve been given plenty of opportunities…
We’ve offered you promotion time and time again, and each time, you’ve turned us down.
“I couldn’t handle the work, guv’nor,” you wheedled. “I know my place.”
To be frank, you’re not trying, are you?
You see, you’ve been standing still for far too long, and it’s starting to show in your work…
And, I might add, in your general standard of behaviour.
The constant bickering on the factory floor has not escaped my attention…
…nor the recent bouts of rowdiness in the staff canteen.
Then of course there’s…
Hmm. Well, I didn’t really want to have to bring this up, but…
Well, you see, I’ve been hearing some disturbing rumours about your personal life.
No, never you mind who told me. No names, no pack drill…
I understand that you are unable to get on with your spouse. I hear that you argue. I am told that you shout. Violence has been mentioned.
I am reliably informed that you always hurt the one you love…
…the one you shouldn’t hurt at all.
And what about the children? It’s always the children who suffer, as you’re well aware.
Poor little mites. What are they to make of it?
What are they to make of your bullying, your despair, your cowardice and all your fondly nurtured bigotries?
Really, it’s not good enough, is it?
And it’s no good blaming the drop in work standards upon bad management, either…
…though, to be sure, the management is very bad.
In fact, let us not mince words… The management is terrible!
We’ve had a string of embezzlers, frauds, liars and lunatics making a string of catastrophic decisions. This is plain fact.
But who elected them?
It was you! You who appointed these people! You who gave them the power to make your decisions for you!
While I’ll admit that anyone can make a mistake once, to go on making the same lethal errors century after century seems to me nothing short of deliberate.
You have encouraged these malicious incompetents, who have made your working life a shambles.
You have accepted without question their senseless orders.
You have allowed them to fill your workspace with dangerous and unproven machines.
You could have stopped them.
All you had to say was “No.” You have no spine. You have no pride. You are no longer an asset to this company.
I will, however, be generous.
You will be granted two years to show me some improvement in your work. If at the end of that time you are still unwilling to make a go of it…
you’re fired.
That will be all. You may return to your labours.
Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche
Whike they may not tweet, we should involve investigators to catalog what words and babyspeech the children say, their tastes in toys, how they arrange their blocks and perhaps even their food preferences.
While tracking the food preferences of every toddler across the UK may be involved, we must remember this is for the safety of those children and the country as a whole and there can be no greater use of government employees time.
A social media movement sweeping though the education system could potentially be just as destructive to society as an economic cold war or a poor foreign policy.