Suddenly Brexit doesn't seem to have been such a bad idea after all.
In fact, the EU is currently making the UK’s investigatory powers act less extreme, as they’ve ruled that state-surveillance of the population at that scale, is incompatible with the human right to privacy.
I’m not the biggest fan of the EU, but they are a moderating force on the UK’s repressive tendencies.
"Borders are the worst invention ever made by politicians."
Doesn't really get clearer than that.
The UK government is unfortunately keen on surveillance partly because people are keen on it, and it is ultimately a democracy. Opinion polls pretty consistently show that terrorism is one of the top two concerns citizens have, across the whole of Europe. The EU ignores these concerns completely; this may seem superficially beneficially democratic but as the cookie law, GDPR, copyright, hate speech, link tax laws etc show, this is not due to lack of desire for control over the internet.