UK Government Body Kept Files on People Criticizing Prevent Program | Hacker News Reader

UK Government Body Kept Files on People Criticizing Prevent Program

reclaimthenet.org

70 pointslatein28 comments

There is a sibling comment that makes some valid points, which are unfortunately undermined by the commenter's decision to wrap them in bizarre far-right dogwhistles.

I am as critical of the British government as anyone, and think Prevent is a civil rights-assaulting boondoggle that does a rather poor job of preventing anything.[0]

At the same time, this article is clearly some pretty thin gruel. The contention is that the body responsible for handling complaints about the programme also took it upon itself to consider 'open source' complaints, which were published openly either online or in print.

The only real complaint here seems to be that this amounts to the government putting critics on 'a list'. Yes, it does, but those same critics (along with everybody else) are also on government lists for taxation, healthcare, etc.; this RSI group will now be on a list of FoI requests. The issue is not the presence of a name inside a data structure (without which no function of government would be possible), but what the government does with those names. There is no indication that private complaints were monitored, or even that those who complained publicly were contacted, surveilled or pursued in any way.

Absent any additional evidence of misdeeds, this seems like an organ of state self-scrutiny performing its task in an admirably proactive way.

[0]: https://bylinetimes.com/2026/09/11/from-9-11-to-southport-th...

> There is a sibling comment that makes some valid points, which are unfortunately undermined by the commenter's decision to wrap them in bizarre far-right dogwhistles.

curious how only the far-left dogwhistles are always downplayed, but the far-right ones are always called out.

Because far left dogwhistles are like “lets give everyone healthcare” while far right dogwhistles might be about genocide.

Is anyone surprised?

Now you’re on the list too

I mean we're all probably on some list somewhere for any reason at this point unless you practice some serious opsec

the uk is a walking dead of a nation, and it's sad.

once the beacon of freedom, now an orwellian nation. so sad, so so sad.

Beacon of freedom? When? It's a dying empire that feasted on the wider world for centuries and is now slowly dying in irrelevance because it cannot hold the territories it occupied once.

The territories in question were a net drain most of the time, and losing them was a blessing.

Well I am on the list as are millions. The prevent program was and only ever will be a citizen tracking program in disguise. Won't somebody think of the children or think of the what the "terrorists" may do. (Terrorists being anyone who disagrees with us).

The Yookay Government has become an atrocious far left dystopia over the past ten years so a lot of people no longer trust anything they say, but this particular thing seems to be a non-event. The complaints were being collected by a department that is supposed to be supervising Prevent, and they came from public internet comments with no apparent attempt to de-anonymize them.

OK - how is the supervisor supposed to know what people think of Prevent or why they hate it if they aren't going out there and collecting feedback? Did the people criticizing it online not want the government to take notice of their complaints, and maybe even act on them?

The ReclaimTheNet article relies heavily on blurring the lines between Prevent and the "Prevent Standards and Compliance Unit". Now, cynical people might argue that there can't be any real difference between these two parts of the government and the whole civil service marches to one agenda. And sure, there's plenty of evidence for that point of view. But if there was to be a difference, and there were people in the civil service who knew Prevent needed to be reigned in, then collecting evidence for that point of view would make a lot of sense.

For this to be a sign of the times would require them to be going to X and Reddit saying give us the IP addresses of these complaints. But there's no evidence they did that.

Yes those terrible far left people such as Theresa May and Boris Johnson.

No wonder famous right wing groups like "Hope Not Hate" are on this list as "enemies of the loony left"

You're as deluded as the fringe saying that Starmer and Burnham are on the extreme right wing

? If a conservative prime minister oversees a large scale imigration event, he is no longer conservative. You might not realize it, but by demonstrating how much the whole political spectrum shifted to the left, you are arguing GPs point.

I find it quite horrendous how easy the left got manipulated into reviving the right by importing extremists and dhijhadis and waging warfare on the economic basis of western wealth.

Mass migration is a core Conservative policy. Even Reform made up of ex-Conservatives has agreed to mass migration in talks with their donors.

Importing people rather than investing in the locals is a core right wing belief in the UK.

> far left

What the fuck are you talking about?

The UK was governed by the Tories for 14 years, and then by Labour for a couple of years.

And if you followed anything during the time Kier Starmer was the PM, it was more or less a tory-light government.

I'm not exactly tuned into UK politics but haven't you guys had a conservative government for eight of the last ten years? And even then I don't think I've ever seen Labour called far left before so I assume that isn't it. Is there some far left throughline in your government that isn't obvious?

Yes, you're right. No doubt Theresa May, who was criticised massively for US style deportation policies, is the far left. There are people online who thing Nigel Farage is "far left".

OP thinks that a "far left" government are against groups like "Hope Not Hate"

Not sure if these people really exist, but if they do its a sad indictment of the damage the internet does

Theresa May never attempted anything close to US style deportations. She did the reverse! Under the Conservatives immigration spiked to never before seen levels.

Labour has some internal splits: there are elements which are fairly left-wing and there are elements which are hard to distinguish from the Tories. There's almost always some degree of power struggle between the two happening inside the party, and the paradox the party is faced with is that the left wing part represents their members better but the right wing part is what wins elections. As such I would say that the UK leans pretty right wing and we've essentially never had a far-left government, and only occasionally flirted with some really left-wing policies.

This was all done under right wing governments of the Conservative Party.

Is this any surprise from a government that arrests people over non-threatening social media posts?

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