Lords Sneak UK Internet Snooping Law into Bill | Hacker News Reader

Lords Sneak UK Internet Snooping Law into Bill

ispreview.co.uk

188 pointsrwmj80 comments

Bills like this worry me greatly as an advocate for internet freedoms and because of a desire to a right to privacy.

When I discuss government plans for the internet with non-technical people it worries me even more that they aren't at all concerned about it. I hear arguments like 'I have nothing to hide' and 'If it stops terrorism, why not'.

I try to tell people that they should demand a right to privacy from the state, but I find it hard to not come across as a tin foil hat wearing goverment-skeptic. What arguments do you use with people that don't understand the web all that well to get them to care about this stuff?

If they have nothing to hide, why not live with all doors and windows unlocked and wide open, round the clock? Why not permanently leave their keys in the ignition of their vehicles? Why not post their login info on their homepages or walls or whatever?

I tell people nothing is free, and the freer something appears, the greater the inevitable cost. And when the cost involves rights, being innocent while being on the defensive is never ever a fun ordeal.

They mean they have nothing to hide from the government. That can be reconciled with locking their doors because they might trust the government more than their neighbors.

Let's not extrapolate what we think they mean from what they actually say. Most people don't challenge their own opinions so even the 'locking your door' argument helps them begin to articulate more precisely. From there it's possible to have a discussion. You might arrive at a point where people understand the nuances of privacy and I still consider that a win (eg "I don't care if the police know about my affair but I don't want the neighbourhood to know")

First, if you ask someone about government surveillance, you have to assume that context in evaluating their response. People don't parrot back context that's already part of the conversation.

Second, I think you have to apply the principle of charity. Instead of assuming that people mindlessly parrot an opinion, think about what sorts of reasonable assumptions might render their positions self-consistent.

One of the most powerful ways to persuade is to figure out someone else's reasoning to the point you can articulately argue their position, and then to refocus the disagreement on the assumptions underlying that reasoning.

I understand your points but I think you're being far too charitable. You assume that most people's views are self-consistent but I don't think that's necessarily the case. People parrot opinions all the time (cf during every political campaign ever). I'm merely suggesting that you probe to find out if the viewpoint is consistent at all. If so, then congratulations, you can have an adult discussion. If not, then I suggest a different approach is more helpful. To be clear, I'm not suggesting anything antagonistic.

It's tricky because people find it hard to see the big systematic picture, and "respectable" people like to assume that the police are the good guys and anyone they oppose must be a bad guy. Your best bet is to find something where they disagree with the government or officialdom and build out from there. The "council uses RIPA surveillance to catch woman sending child to school in different catchment area" story is a good one here; almost everyone thinks that councils are officious busybodies.

Health records privacy is another good one. "Do you think the government should track all your alcohol purchases?"

(I wrote in a previous comment with a US context:

- legal. It's against the law; there are strong 1st and 4th arguments against surveillance, and 5th and 6th amendment arguments as well. Some people have even tried to argue that if encryption is a munition the 2nd amendment applies. The "we could stop bad people" argument applies especially to the 4th.

Similar legal protections exist in Europe, although not generally as strong (article 8).

- practical: either a system is secure or it isn't. Handing it over to anyone increases the risk of compromise. Bans on effective encryption are self-defeating.

- collateral damage: US intelligence agencies have a track record of killing innocent people themselves (e.g. drone strikes), supporting murderous governments (CIA in south america), funding terrorism and failing to prosecute the guilty (Iran-contra), use of intelligence for domestic immoral politics (Watergate, FBI vs MLK). Handing over data about your e.g. Chilean users to the CIA may result in them being murdered.

- international hypocrisy: saying that mass surveillance is OK says it's OK for other governments too. Do you support Chinese interception against their adversaries? Are you happy to turn over your entire email history on entering a country?

- finally, I'm going to question how much it does help. The Paris terrorists were known to the police, as was the killer of Lee Rigby. Intercept evidence is generally not used in trials. Nobody is presenting a cache of encrypted emails found on a computer used by the Parisian terrorists and saying "if we'd decrypted this we could have prevented it".

The last point is the strongest in this context.

The others are a bit too straw-man (Do you support Chinese interception against their adversaries? Are you happy to turn over your entire email history on entering a country?)

Not that I'm saying you're wrong, you're completely right. It's just that we need non-emotive and cool heads when we argue this.

Why are those straw men? They're questions of universal applicability and jurisdiction, and both based on real things that have happened.

For example, the proposition that "MI5 should have access to the full communications history of everyone in the country" implies that as people enter the country MI5 should acquire their entire email history.

You're dealing with 'could' and 'what if'.

For example, you state that handing over data about Chilean users may result in them being murdered. I could just as easily argue that if you didn't hand over the data, Chilean users may be murdered. I'm not saying they will be or anything like that, obviously.

Compared to your last point, which is rooted in solid fact (They were both monitored, it did nothing to prevent the attack) and can't be argued with, the other two are a bit.. flimsy.

All I'm saying is if I was arguing against you (Which I'm not), it'd be easy to call you hysterical when you go on about murder and the Chinese.

For clarity, ignored your first point because not US and second point is sound, so I left that out as well :)

Ah I see - the inherent hypotheticalness of statements about the future. But as you say, the pro-surveillance case also rests on forward-looking statements about what the security services are going to do with the data.

In that case we have to go backwards. The National reminded me today of this incident: http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2507&dat=19860903&id=F... (Leon Brittan's involvment in politically motivated surveillance of CND). There's also the long and ugly history of Northern Ireland, and the more recent business of planting police informers in environmental groups.

The problem with trying to use recent history to prove a point is that everyone's already made up their mind which side they're on for things like extraordinary rendition, "School of the Americas", torture, Iran-Contra, arms-to-Iraq (Matrix Churchill), etc.

Matrix Churchill might be a good example, tbh. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Report : MI5 instructed and secured secret permission for exports to Iraq, but then tried to protect the secrecy of this at the cost of not just allowing Matrix Churchill directors to be jailed but censoring their only legal defence and getting ministers to lie to parliament.

I agree about the already-known argument. The Charlie Hebdo murderers, the Boston marathon murderer, Lee Rigby's murderer, they've all been known to the police and/or intelligence services.

In which case, a pertinent question to ask is if the aim is to stop such attacks, is it appropriate to spend this much time and effort building a bigger haystack on top of the needles they already have?

The problem is that you are talking about the US constitution to prove your point but the article is about the UK. There might some differences in the constitutions which make your arguments wrong.

Yes, the second half of that comment was lazily repurposed from another thread.

The UK constitutional equivalent is the Human Rights Act. The ECJ already ruled the data retention directive unlawful: https://edri.org/ecj-data-retention-directive-contravenes-eu...

But there are two problems. Article 8 has a massive disclaimer: "There shall be no interference by a public authority with the exercise of this right except such as is in accordance with the law and is necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security, public safety or the economic well-being of the country, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others"

And ECHR is not popular in the UK due to an aggressive propaganda campaign in the tabloid press.

> Do you support Chinese interception against their adversaries? Are you happy to turn over your entire email history on entering a country?

You put these two adjunct phrases in the same paragraph. Are you inferring entering China requires turning over one's email archive when entering China?

Not necessarily, no. The second phrase comes from a bunch of stories which I don't have sources for right now about people having their laptops searched at various customs posts around the world, including some where people have been asked to log into their email.

However, if you log in to your gmail while in China you should assume there is a risk of it being compromised, such as by SSL MITM or targeted exploit.

And theoretically in the future entering the UK might require turning over your entire email archive. The proposition that "MI5 should have access to the full communications history of everyone in the country" implies that as people enter the country MI5 should acquire their entire email history. Otherwise there are people in the UK whose communications MI5 cannot read; and that's what Cameron was saying was "unacceptable". Not that this is directly likely - it's more likely that MI5 will pass all PNR data to the NSA and ask them to check their copy of everyone's email instead.

You could make an Angry Birds or Candy Crush saga add-on with an Internet security theme.

See http://beta.datadealer.com

Oh great. A new way to waste my time at work.

Ontopic though, this could actually be a good way to educate people on the dangers of sharing. Only 5 mins in myself so far though.

"It fundamentally changes the relationship between people and state." is the most ironclad argument I've heard. Albeit a bit of a cliché these days.

There's some advantage to the tin foil hat, too. It's probably fine for now if you're not Muslim, but if you are then your associations and visited websites could be used to put you somewhere very uncomfortable without a trial. Say if libertarians or socialists or christian conservatives started carrying out attacks, your political and personal affiliations could make life very uncomfortable.

Maybe you're being subtle, i agree with your point.

>> christian conservatives started carrying out attacks

The Centennial Olympic Park bombing in Atlanta was such a thing, the KKK and anti-abortion terrorism is supposedly radicalized Christian.

But because The Establishment is generally Conservative Christian, it's treated differently. I wish we could drop the affiliation and just call them Radicalized people. I'd hate to be associated with Radical Atheists if ever a violent act of terrorism was performed by non-believers.

>> libertarians or socialists

Occupy? Though Guy (the face of Occupy/Anon) was a Catholic.

I believe that many different groups including vegans, conservative Christians, extreme right-libertarian militia organisations and various anarchist/communist groups have carried out attacks that have been characterised as terrorist in the past - and therefore that they could plausibly carry out attacks again, implicating 'fellow travelers' as they did so. I'm not sure about Occupy I'm afraid, as it didn't really take off in the UK.

I also think that the general demographics of the people who make up the establishment are pretty important when you consider who ends up being imprisoned without trial.

I think that we understand each other, but you've added some interesting points and examples that I hadn't thought of.

I usually go with "The problem isn't the current government, the problem is what might be in the future. The Netherlands stored data about their citizens' religious affiliation. The Nazis really appreciated that when they came and rounded up the Jews."

That's normally my go to example, however I often wonder, if this bad government did come into power, wouldn't they just pass a load of laws to snoop anyway? The only disadvantage is they wouldn't have as much historical data.

Unless there is a coup or revolution, a bad government is elected and as is common in most democracies will hold as little as 30% of the vote for a while.

A law that already exists does not require further discussion or vote and can be perverted immediately.

So in addition of the benefit of not having historical data, it also delay or prevent its introduction.

What if this bad government is already in power and are inching their way towards their full potential badness.

1. Do something somewhat unacceptable.

2. Wait for it to become the accepted norm.

3. GOTO 1

This is why issues like this have to be nipped in the bud. Toxic ideas need to be stopped before they gain too much inertia, otherwise it won't be possible or practical to stop them playing out. I guess it's like a game of chess. Moving a pawn might seem innocuous, but it's just one move in a larger strategy.

I think people find arguments involving Nazis easy to dismiss as hyperbole. Especially in the UK when we weren't invaded. Also people who are accepting or supportive of mass surveillance usually imagine themselves firmly in the safe majority not the oppressed minority.

I say what if you had a 'sex dissorder' and lived in Russia. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-30735673

That is apparently not true[1].

The Health Ministry has denied widespread reports that transvestites and transsexuals could lose their rights to drive in Russia based on a new road safety decree.

Although the decree provides for the disqualification of driving rights for certain individuals with psychological or behavioral disorders, the mere fact that a person has a "sexual disorder" does not mean that person cannot drive, Health Ministry spokesman Oleg Salagai explained Tuesday in comments carried by Interfax.

[1] http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/health-ministry-s...

Governments deny a lot of things in public.

Everybody in the Western world that supports increased surveillance says "I don't have a 'sex disorder', and we're no more likely to elect Vladimir Putin or his local equivalent than Adolf Hitler"...

Arguments against surveillance are on much better footing when based on actual misuse of power by authorities and their employees in the UK and similar countries than hypothetical scenarios involving the election of autocrats. Frankly, if the UK elects an avowedly anti-democratic ex-spy chief with a fondness for populist social conservatism in the next decade, we'll get a much worse version of the Communications Data Bill, and ISPs already holding records of my browsing habits is going to be the least of my problems.

Me too, but in the back of my mind is always the knowledge that it's a slippery slope argument and therefore technically invalid.

re technically: https://xkcd.com/1475/ :-)

As for being a slippery slope argument, people might have dismissed this story in .nl in the 1920s for the same reason, yet it happened.

This argument refuses to take sides. I'm not "for the terrorists" with this argument (nor am I against them), I'm not "against the government" (nor am I a clear supporter), I might be slightly paranoid (which makes for a better discussion than being a paranoid who looks out for black helicopters).

With this argument I'm all for being careful, and it even leaves a door open for discussion how surveillance and data mining could be built in a way that such catastrophic effects won't happen - who would argue against that?

But suddenly, it's about the practical issues of surveillance and data mining.

A slippery slope argument is not necessarily a fallacy

There's nothing in a "slippery slope argument" that makes it technically invalid. Improper use may make it fallacious, but there are also real slippery slopes and ways to deal with them (e.g. Schelling fences).

I like to remind people that they do not decide themselves if what they do is ok or not, it's the people interpreting the collected data. In that regard, I read a good illustration (invented I guess): imagine a guy that does to a shop buy an alarm clock, then going to buy a barrel, and after that going to buy chemicals in a third shop. Wouldn't this guy seem suspect from the data collected? It was a teacher preparing a chemistry lesson, buying a barrel to collect rain water in his garden, and replacing his old alarm clock. He might have nothing to hide, but that's not a reason why his acts can't be misinterpreted....

Those arguments often represent a symptom of an underlying belief about "the government". I find that many people view "the government" as this monolithic, do-gooding entity. One useful approach is to redefine it - government isn't a benevolent entity, it's a huge group of people with varying goals and beliefs, who wield lots of power over your life. Do you want those people to have that sort of access?

Well seeing as I don't have time in my life as is to run a government, to protect us from ourselves, and to make sure our system continues to run - I see no other alternative.

The Lords should never abuse procedure. This is infamy and they just lost another fan.

A conservative friend of mine was really bothered by the recent IRS targeting of conservative groups' applications for tax-exempt status. I think this is a great example of how even our modern day, relatively ethical governments can and do abuse their power and discriminate along political lines - and against a groups you would normally think have some protections higher up.

I always found it odd that people seem to consider the national census as an invasive nuisance but have no problem with much more insidious micro-snooping in to their everyday lives. It makes me sad, after they inevitably discontinue it, that there won't be any reliable historical record of families living in the UK.

It's been taken every 10 years, recording the names of occupants since 1841. Access is protected for 100 years to give people a chance to die off. It's the only record you're required to be on in the UK and I don't really have a problem with that.

The fundamental reason is that most people see the state as a protective entity. People don't give their information to someone they don't trust (at least not for free). But they fundamentally trust the government as a whole, even if they may mistrust individual parts of it [1].

This is a hard notion to combat because the government is a protective entity. It's arguably the most important function of any government: protecting its citizens. Even corrupt and dysfunctional governments can still protect their citizens from external threats.

In Western nations, one of the biggest threats to the average citizen, particularly his or her rights, is the government itself. Separation of powers is supposed to keep it in check, but at least in the U.S., the slow and steady increase in the power of the executive branch in the past century combined with technological developments has meant that it now has the potential to exercise tyrannical levels of power over virtually any person or class of person.

People don't need to understand the web or even how the technology of mass surveillance works. Citizens as a whole don't make political decisions based on detailed information anyway. Surveillance reform can only be accomplished by getting a large enough people to distrust the government itself. Skepticism won't be enough--fear of being vulnerable to terrorists (or any of the other usual fears like child pornographers and such) will trump skepticism.

In the U.S., the constitution is a document which gives limited powers to the federal government and justifies each of them. People today generally think of government power in opposite terms: it gets power by default and only has to give it up if that power later proves to be unnecessary. This is the real change that needs to be made, one of mentality not just of laws. The laws will follow if the mentality of the citizenry as a whole changes. The great deal of skepticism that younger Americans show towards government compared to their elders is encouraging, but that will only lead to change in the long run. I'm not sure what the sitution in the UK is like.

The basic problem with the main media narratives surrounding surveillance is that most (but not all) look at mass surveillance by the government and only conclude (correctly) that mass surveillance is bad and that the government better have very good reasons for doing it. Government fearmongering follows, placating the skepticism.

Mass surveillance needs to be seen for what it really is: the signature of an embryonic tyranny. Even if we presently have saint-like politicians who will only use such power for good, our government was set up so that we would not, and indeed should not, need to trust it.

[1] The surveys that regularly show high public disapproval of Congress come to mind.

If you are in the UK you can remind them that the current anti terrorist law is used to go after people who watch television.

I focus the argument on chilling effects, as in http://www.dbms2.com/2013/07/29/very-chilling-effects/ To quote:

I’ve worried for years about a terrible and under-appreciated danger of privacy intrusion, which in a recent post I characterized as a chilling effect upon the exercise of ordinary freedoms. When government — or an organization such as your employer, your insurer, etc. — watches you closely, it can be dangerous to deviate from the norm. Even the slightest non-conformity could have serious consequences. I wish that were an exaggeration; let’s explore why it isn’t.

Your obtrusive and underhanded domestic spying law gets shot down by a democratic procedure? No problem! Just tack it onto a bill already being considered by the House of Lords and sidestep the whole pesky review process.

Happens in the US all the time, too. It's the very thing that makes the line-item veto so controversial. I want someone to be able to knock down pork (or worse, like this) added to non-related bills, at the last minute, in the middle of the night, with no debate. But do I want that power to always exist?

Edit: happened like 5 times just last month and could have shut down the government. Now Dodd-Frank is all but dead, campaign donation limits are up from $92k to $777k, the EPA is further defunded, and more - all last minute riders with almost zero debate.

http://www.newsweek.com/what-did-congress-sneak-last-minute-...

I would say veto the entire bill until people stop doing this. Make it a matter of policy.

You're proposing holding good governance hostage. You assume those people care about good governance.

Actually an even worse thing in our "democracy" is how a single person in congress can put a hold on a bill and bury it - while remaining completely anonymous.

How the hell is that even possible

Line item veto would be incredibly dangerous. We'd end up with 100% corporate welfare while the entire foodstamp program would be canceled.

You're right - line-item veto could be very dangerous, especially if it's exercised by the person you voted against.

I think a modified version of a line-item veto, where the president would be able to cross out the offending lines, and then send it back to congress for them to vote on the modified version of the bill could be useful. I think it would be significantly less dangerous than having a normal line-item veto.

Wouldn't getting rid of last minute riders or unrelated riders be a more effective way?

The Lords are actually more often known for stopping the passing of bills that sail through Parliament and really, really shouldn't have.

Is this a deliberate attempt by the Lords to sabotage the passing of the main bill, by putting in something they know the coalition partners the Lib Dems already voted down? Seeing who tabled it, maybe not, but we need to be alert that the latest fight for our liberties won't just start at the next election.

Better make sure the Lib Dems know. Ugh.

One of the lords responsible is Ian Blair, the former Met Police commissioner. The one in charge at the time of the De Menezes shooting. The one who was a close friend of the News of the World at the time all the hacking was going on.

This guy:

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2008/aug/20/ian.blair.pr... http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/aug/26/lord-blair-la...

The one who was forced out by the new Conservative Mayor of London, Boris Johnson?

Yes. Presumably for being too Blairite.

Democracy at work here - an unelected group of bureaucrats, mostly party donors (i.e. people who have bribed government for the privilege of being made a Lord) definitely seem like the right people to be making these calls on liberty and having the ability to change the law.

This could happen in the U.S. as well. Our esteemed politicians and federal police have proposed a new law with exactly the same approach. I disclosed some of these efforts in this 2012 article:

"The FBI general counsel's office has drafted a proposed law...requiring that social-networking Web sites and providers of VoIP, instant messaging, and Web e-mail alter their code to ensure their products are wiretap-friendly. 'If you create a service, product, or app that allows a user to communicate, you get the privilege of adding that extra coding'" http://www.cnet.com/news/fbi-we-need-wiretap-ready-web-sites...

Here's another article from 2006 talking about Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colorado). She had originally proposed legislation imposing data retention requirements on ISPs, but then wanted to extend it to Facebook, Xanga, MySpace, etc. (to be fair, Rs have made similar proposals): http://news.cnet.com/Congress-targets-social-networking-site...

I can't easily find the link to another piece I wrote, but DOJ/FBI reps have also talked about including photo-sharing sites. This is in addition to the FBI wanting to force ISPs to keep track of every web site that customers visit (not just IPs assigned): http://www.cnet.com/news/fbi-wants-records-kept-of-web-sites...

So far these proposals have not become law, meaning that the types of companies well-represented here on HN don't have to keep records of their users' activities for future police access. I've been critical of AT&T/VZ/Comcast/etc. over surveillance here before, but I'll give them credit for this: Those of us working on social/email/etc. startups aren't targeted by all these regulations today because of ISPs' defensive DC efforts over many years. They're doing it because of self-interest, true, but the spillover effect is real.

The west has pursued an industrialisation path that allows for the privatisation of wealth from the commons, along with the criminalisation of commons rights of the public, as well as the externalisation of all true costs. [...] Our entire commercial, diplomatic, and informational systems are now cancerous. - Robert David Steele, The Guardian, 2014-06-19

Mod: s/sneek/sneak/ please.

For every action, there is an equal an opposite reaction.

I hope if something like this gets passed, there will be a massive protest, not just in the streets, but everyone starting to use Tor, TextSecure and other such apps they are most worried about.

I doubt that very much. Masses don't care about privacy, the dominating view is still that of "I have nothing to hide" and "let police do their job -- think of a children/terrorism" or any other mantra that's popular at the time. Look at Snowden story, only tech sector and human right activists care, there were no widespread protest, no political action, and since then surveillance only broadens. Especially in UK, which is has CCTVs on every corner (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/10172298/One-surveilla...).

Looks like we need version control for bills.

Why does the UK still have the house of the Lords? The elites don't control enough of the government?

> Why does the UK still have the house of the Lords

Why would the House of Lords stop existing? Not changing things is a tradition.

Because it's appointed elites deciding how the government should be run?

The standard argument is that it turns out appointed elites doing this works fairly well (they quite often block bad legislation), in principle partly because they don't have to pander directly to the electorate. I don't think it's an optimal system, but I can't deny it does have some advantages of this sort.

The concern with changing it is that you could simply make things worse, even if on the surface more meritocratic. For instance, if it just ended up filled with the same career politicians as the commons and just agreed with everything they said. Of course it could end up better as well, in principle, but I'm not sure the government could be trusted to implement things that way.

Well, at least they could rename them!!!! House of Lords really sounds like they are supposed to be above everyone else.

And while you are at it, remove commons as well, as it sounds really degrading. Suggestions for new names anyone?

There's already a term, and we (the UK) uses it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upper_house

Edit: And the Commons is called the Lower House<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lower_house>. In a parliamentary system, the lower house actually has more power.

You could call them appointed elites, or you could call them a distinguished technocracy, many of whom are not career politicians, but instead respected scientists, military officers, artists, composers, former heads of public bodies, business leaders, sportspeople etc. They bring an insight to government that many politicians cannot.

When you look at it from that angle I think it makes a lot of sense and is actually rather progressive.

respected scientists, artists, composers

I can't actually think of anyone in that category in the Lords. There's Doreen Lawrence, Baroness Lawrence of Clarendon, though. I do wonder how she gets on with Lord Blair.

Surprise yourself: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Members_of_the_House_of_Lords.

There's at least two composers on there I recognise, I can't actually see artists at the moment, but there are several people from the art world, and several scientists.

Also: people from human rights organisations, nature conservation organisations, farmers, medics, bishops, atheists, lawyers, spies, bankers, people who work in child protection, housing for low income people, people from elite sports, people from popular sports, social workers, and lots more people without the notes to immediately say what they do.

(Yes there's also quite a lot of retired career politicians).

I'm never been a Lib Dem voter but I can hardly grudge the likes of Paddy Ashdown a place in the House of Lords.

Marine, SBS, MI6, parliament, helping sort out Bosnia... quite an incredible CV.

> I can't actually think of anyone in that category in the Lords.

The two that immediately spring to mind are Lord Robert Winston and Lord Andrew Lloyd-Webber.

> I think it makes a lot of sense and is actually rather progressive.

I don't think that the House of Lords is "progressive". Put it this way: In only two countries do senior clergymen automatically get a seat in a house of Legislature: Iran and the United Kingdom.

It's not progressive company to keep.

Yeah it's not perfect.

> Put it this way: In only two countries do senior clergymen automatically get a seat in a house of Legislature: Iran and the United Kingdom.

Well, there's at least one other sovereign state in which people hold legislative office by virtue of holding particular senior religious office -- and which goes further in that there are no other legislators -- Vatican City.

But that's a bit different...

> Because it's appointed elites deciding how the government should be run?

Yes, and?

I agree; but you asked "Why does the UK still have the house of the Lords?" - why would that make the House of Lords vanish?

The point that I am making is that the British establishment has a very strong bias in favour of the status quo; i.e against change. Especially change that doesn't benefit them.

Something that has existed for centuries doesn't just stop existing even if you and I don't like it. Adhering to tradition is a tradition. Something has to happen to make it stop, and that thing has to be strong enough to overcome the establishment's inertia.

Sadly there have been times recently, especially under the Blair government, when the Lords stopped the Commons for doing illiberal things. Including watering down some of the previous surveillance bills.

Obviously it's a system that nobody would design, but the fact that they're still there is more of a symptom of inegalitarianism running deep than a cause of it.

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