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Comment by kypro | Hacker News Reader

> The scope and depth of this surveillance has led to growing skepticism about the Department’s priorities and resource allocation.

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.

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> 1. This will not make headlines in the UK.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/oct/21/uk-governme...

The thing is, it is much more confortable for government officials to run after low-level citizens than fighting actual crime. If you paint a scary enough picture ("encryption enables exploitation of children!"), the public might even be more afraid of people those "agitators" than gang wars or robbery.

I used to think that the general public is safer when there is a dangerous criminal element around because the state will focus it's policing on the criminal activity and leave most of the public alone. But if the state is just too risk averse to police hardened criminals then the general public is at risk.

> 1. This will not make headlines in the UK.

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.)

Yes, thank you. I probably should have been clearer.

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.

It will make headlines, in Private Eye. Which means it'll be forgotten in days because there's no searchable archive of them unless you are or know a hoarder with a spare few feet of shelf space or find and travel to a library with a back archive longer then a few months.

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.

"An Englishman's home is his castle" used to be a well known saying.

We once did, but it looks like times have changed for the worse.

Growing up, people used to respond to challenges to what they said with "it's a free country". I haven't heard that phrase in decades.

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