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Comment by da_n | Hacker News Reader

I am a British citizen. There will not be any significant public opposition to this, a few articles in The Guardian and a small mention on the news between Trump stories. I have only experienced apathy when I discuss mass surveillance with people in this country. "I have nothing to hide, why should I care?". There is a fundamental disconnect between real world privacy and online privacy to most people in this country. At this point it is too late anyway, May has gone full frontal assault on the internet and privacy advocates and security experts don't have a hope. I just want her to go full-on now and implement maximum surveillance, maximum snooping and maximum data retention and profiling. All of this can only blow up embarrassingly in her face. It is just a question of time. Sadly I have come to the conclusion this is the only way that such powers will ever be opposed by the public.

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The public also have very little recourse in fighting such creep.

It's not politicians of one particular party or another who have an 'EUREKA!' moment in the bath and rush into Parliament with ideas for new surveillance powers. They are persuaded / cajoled / wearied in backroom conversations and presentations by career civil servants who can outlast any uncooperative Government ministers.

Teresa May might have a front-line political career of 15 to 20 years. A senior civil servant is just starting his rise to power by then.

> "I have nothing to hide, why should I care?"

Alternatively "There's nothing I can do about it, why waste my energy fighting it?".

That reminds me to update my archive of crypto source-code.

The only real recourse is the Human Rights Act and the European Court of Human Rights.

Both of which, of course, Theresa May wants us to get rid of, so UK citizens will have /no/ constitutionally-entrenched rights.

> Teresa May might have a front-line political career of 15 to 20 years. A senior civil servant is just starting his rise to power by then.

I've suspected for years that Americans would understand our government better if we had a domestic version of Yes, Minister. Not House of Cards or The West Wing (though that came closer), but something that captures the petty pressures and intransigence of an entrenched civil service.

So much this. The only thing that would be able to move the needle on public perception on this issue is wall-to-wall coverage in the written and televised press, and endless nameless talking heads decrying it on cable news shows. Only then would public opinion shift enough to pressure elected government officials to NOT try to do such things. And that will never happen, because the news organizations -- ALL of them, I'm convinced -- are at least influenced by the governmental parties, if not bought outright. Most of the time, I pick on the US, because I'm American, but I don't think that this is particular to the States. The notion of a "free press" is largely obviated by simple economics these days, because of the need for favorable treatment at the hands of tax codes and regulations to compete in the world economy. "Don't bite the hand that feeds you."

> "I have nothing to hide, why should I care?"

The fact that so many people adhere to this statement indicates the point at which society currently is in its downward cycle:

Pretty much at the beginning.

Once the general statement turns into "I just can't take the pain anymore" it means that society will have reached the bottom of the cycle. From there on out, the real fight will begin and things will start to improve again.

Yes but it's harder to fight then than it's now. There is that poem, First they came.

this is why they've let terrorists that they've had on their watchlists slip through the net, it's to slowly increase surveillance.

The UK has been rather effective in preventing other terrorist attacks since the metro bombings. Just look at France. Ok, nobody expected terrorism by car until 2016 but there are also solutions to that one.

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