The Snowden Revelations showed that the UK had even more pervasive Civil Society Surveillance than the US, literally levels of surveillance of the public that would make the Stasi in East Germany green with envy.
Further, whilst in the US they walked it back a bit after those revelations, in the UK they just passed a law to retroactivelly make all of it legal, newspapers got a bunch of D-Notices (the UK’s censorship mechanism) to shut up and the editor of the newspaper who brought it all out was canned.
Even if you know nothing about all the other scandals that have come out over the years around that in the UK (such as Green Party MEPs being under surveillance or Environmentalist groups having been infiltrated by coppers), one’s perspective on why those controlling power in Britan would want to “validate” and gatekeep where people go and what people do online, should at least be informed by what Snowden revealed and how those holder power in Britain dealt with it.
The Snowden Revelations showed that the UK had even more pervasive Civil Society Surveillance than the US, literally levels of surveillance of the public that would make the Stasi in East Germany green with envy.
Further, whilst in the US they walked it back a bit after those revelations, in the UK they just passed a law to retroactivelly make all of it legal, newspapers got a bunch of D-Notices (the UK’s censorship mechanism) to shut up and the editor of the newspaper who brought it all out was canned.
Even if you know nothing about all the other scandals that have come out over the years around that in the UK (such as Green Party MEPs being under surveillance or Environmentalist groups having been infiltrated by coppers), one’s perspective on why those controlling power in Britan would want to “validate” and gatekeep where people go and what people do online, should at least be informed by what Snowden revealed and how those holder power in Britain dealt with it.