Hacker News Reader

Comment by gizzlon | Hacker News Reader

I live in Scandinavia and I don't think most people here see the US in the same light as China and Russia.

But, OTOTH, I do think most people see Europe as more open than the US. It's not like it's a unique and magical "land of the free" like some people seem to believe.

View on HN

My overall, fact-less impression is that the UK has already cast a pretty wide public surveillance net. They don't seem to be actually using it for enforcing anything, however. I don't think I would blink twice if it turns out they have a PRISM-like operation going on.

CCTV runs like mad across the UK. Well at least London. Almost every street corner here has a CCTV vid cam on it.

The vast majority of CCTV in the UK is privately owned, not networked and most of it is not watched live, or ever unless something actually happens. The police often ignores CCTV because figuring out who controls which cameras and whether or not they were working, and if so how to get the footage can be too time consuming to be worth it.

So while I can't say I like the amount of CCTV here, it's a lot less sinister than portrayed.

Now, some parts of central London is very well covered by live, monitored CCTV, though.

Right: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bansky_one_nation_un...

Any country that requires identity cards (such as France) has already lost its claim to be more free.

Right. Much worse to have identity cards (e.g. SS card) than to actually, you know, massively spy on all your citizens and anyone else you can.

We have lots of identity cards: birth certificate, voter registration card, draft card (seriously, why doesn't this one upset more people? The government literally claims that it can send you to die anytime it likes between the ages of 18-25).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com