This is why I've been saying from day one that an Y Combinator focus on UK was the wrong move, because I expected the authoritarian mentality to only increase there over the next few years. The focus should've been on Germany, which at least has a strong Constitution (UK has none) and judges tend to be pro-privacy (although I imagine some data-mining/advertising startups would hate that).

Perhaps even more importantly, it's the people that care deeply about privacy there, too, and would protest obvious authoritarian moves by the government, while in the UK they seem to care almost as little about it as the Americans do.