Revealed: plan to brand anyone ‘undermining’ UK as extremist
www.theguardian.com
Leaked documents spark furious backlash from groups who fear freedom of expression could be suppressed

I don’t know if this is 100% strictly privacy related but I think it does fall in the sphere of protecting one’s right to express oneself privately.

"Government officials have drawn up deeply controversial proposals to broaden the definition of extremism to include anyone who “undermines” the country’s institutions and its values, according to documents seen by the Observer.

The new definition, prepared by civil servants working for cabinet minister Michael Gove, is fiercely opposed by a cohort of officials who fear legitimate groups and individuals will be branded extremists.

The proposals have provoked a furious response from civil rights groups with some warning it risks “criminalising dissent”, and would significantly suppress freedom of expression."

    • nodsocket@lemmy.world
      733·
      1 year ago

      It’s incredible how many people think the UK is better than the US when it clearly is not.

      • arymandias@feddit.de
        653·
        1 year ago

        Not having healthcare is kind of a big deal. It’s easy for us Europeans to forget the implications, but for a significant portion of the US populous, if they get sick they’ll either go bankrupt or they’ll simply just die. Which is insane.

      • floofloof@lemmy.caEnglish
        391·
        1 year ago

        “Better than the US” is a bit too unspecific to judge. If you mean for privacy, the UK is certainly on the bad end of things.

      • Phanatik@kbin.social
        25·
        1 year ago

        This is one I’d say is comparing apples to oranges. They each are good and bad in different ways. The unfortunate thing is that our current government wants the UK to be more like the US which will be a net negative to everyone in the UK. For example, they’ve been gutting the NHS for years to pave the way for a privatised hellscape.

      • Igloojoe@lemm.ee
        8·
        1 year ago

        I dont care to compare. I dont need to lord over people on whose country is turning more shit. Just do what you can to stop this current worldwide rise in fascism. VOTE (if you can).

      • bdonvr@thelemmy.club
        7·
        1 year ago

        These things are multifaceted.

        Privacy? Hell no.

        Healthcare? Absolutely (though trending the wrong direction)

        Public transport? Better, though again heading the wrong way.

      • Not_mikey@lemmy.world
        7·
        1 year ago

        It’s not as if the u.s. doesn’t have anti-bds laws. Also if the conservatives/Republicans were in power in the u.s. like in the u.k. they definitely would be trying something similar to this

    • ShadowRam@kbin.social
      30·
      1 year ago

      UK has always been slowly moving towards 1984.

      They shear amount of CCTV is extremely unsettling for foreigners visiting.

      • ThenThreeMore@startrek.websiteEnglish
        4·
        1 year ago

        Oh yeah, because authoritarianism doesn’t give large chunks of the labour party massive hard ons too.

        If they’d had their way all our biometrics would be on a database and we’d have to have our id cards with us at all times.

        • floofloof@lemmy.caEnglish
          4·
          1 year ago

          Yes, that’s true. Recently though, the ones responsible have been Tories. But I agree. There’s a general tendency in the governing culture of the UK to override basic rights in the name of expediency or convenience for the government.

          • ThenThreeMore@startrek.websiteEnglish
            2·
            1 year ago

            Oh absolutely. I just think that there’s a danger that people will think if the Tories are out of power all of these kinds of proposals will just disappear.

    • Aceticon@lemmy.world
      25·
      1 year ago

      Having lived in various countries in Europe including over a decade in the UK, my theory is three fold:

      • It already started with a system were power is dynastic (not just because of the monarchy and an unelected 2nd chamber were many members inherit their position but also because it has a well-entrenched system of private schools which tie to elite universites and from there to political, media, corporate and judiciary to positions) were there used to be some level of noblesse oblige (the duty of the upper classes toward “their lessers”) which is now completelly gone: the UK copied the “everybody for themselves” spirit from the US (but not the “go getter spirit”) into a system which was already incredibly stratified into classes and riddled with priviledge, so it basically ended up just being used by the rich scions of the rich to tell themselves their wealth is due to personal merit and from which it “logically” follows that the poverty of the poor is due to them being lazy and the rest of of the population should just do as they’re told by such clearly superior people.
      • Starting in the Thatcher years the Press in the UK was bough by a handfull of very rich people who don’t pay tax in the UK, most noteably Murdoch. That fully privatised and Press whose ownership was then heavilly concentrated, was then used for propagand purposes, pushing anything and everything to make the power of the state subservient to the power of money, mainly by removal of regulation and lowering of effective corporate taxes and taxes for the wealthy (though the UK already had unique legal frameworks to allow the very wealthy to avoid all tax, most noteably the Non-Resident Tax Status) as well as views such as the above mentioned one that poverty is caused by laziness and being wealthy comes from merit.
      • Being a de facto Two Party System due to a First Past The Post representative allocation system that makes it extremelly hard for a third option to rise to power (and on the rare occasions when they get close - about once every half a century - they’re quickly “put back in their place”), the extreme right in the UK, rather than try and gain power through the popular vote (as you see, for example in The Netherlands, where they float around the 15% mark) were they would require millions of votes to get power, have instead just infiltrated one of the power duopoly parties and thus only needed about 50k votes to take power (by outvoting other factions inside that party to elect their people as leaders). Once they dominated the Tory party, the First Past The Post system makes it extremelly hard to dislodge the party even though it has massivelly changed, and you even get effects like the other mainstream party of the Party Duopoly shifting its policies more towards the agenda that’s being set by the far right now in power.
      • SokathHisEyesOpen@lemmy.mlEnglish
        41·
        1 year ago

        They’re not a monarchy though, and haven’t been for a long time. They’re a parliamentary democracy, or at least they have been. They’re definitely edging dictatorship.