The UK government has blocked IPs(police.uk) |
The UK government has blocked IPs(police.uk) |
Edit: searching Google, there are recent reports that make me feel like this is their response to being too incompetent to process cyber crime reports. I’m genuinely curious if someone unilaterally decided that people not physically in the uk don’t matter.
Prank emergency calls from children have been a hassle since time immemorial, and I see these circumstances as entirely corresponding, merely at scale; I'd even express surprise if this is a first for online British police channels.
This is almost certainly an IT admin not bothering to read Cloudflare's documentation and leaving something on the wrong setting.
Number of customers who read documentation << number of customers, although it seems especially endemic in infosec.
This word just got added to my vocabulary for future use. Thanks stranger.
The UK is under some form of attack at the moment (probably mostly internally generated - no need to invoke bogeymen). We have seen quite a lot of anti racist activity recently and it is likely the nasty lot have been contained (hopefully).
The Commonwealth is always welcome here - that's why our mutual Queen (EIIR) created it. She got to grips with us proles rather well from around 1995 onwards when the Royal Family realised they have to engage with us lot.
Personally speaking, I've always thought of AU and NZ (SA etc) as mates. We might disagree about a few things and rugby and cricket and that. However we have more in common than not.
I have no doubt that the mood in AU and NZ is largely stirred with anti British sentiment (we see it here from Scotland, even though "modern Britain" was invented by a Scottish king - James 1 or VI).
NZ have often moved towards a silver fern on black flag. I say: why not - if that is your idea of your identity then crack on (it does look rather cool). Also, perhaps AU should rethink their flag - you go all in on gold and green. Ditch the blue thingie with the southern cross and the union flag in the top left - it doesn't suit you. ... or keep it because you can and proudly do whatever floats your boat. AU needs to sit down and take a really hard look at its flag and do what is best for AU.
The world is a messy place but let's keep it civil (and real).
In response to this the UK police are being trolled on their live chats (largely by Americans I believe). I did originally post a link to these (you can find them on X), but given the content I don't want to risk it.
I'm assuming they're now blocking IPs because of the abuse.
This started yesterday when the police said they have officers looking through social media for offences, https://x.com/ElijahKyama_/status/1821180825007763660/video/...
But heated up again today after a 55 year old women was arrested for posting inaccurate information to social media, https://www.cheshire.police.uk/news/cheshire/news/articles/2...
I'm currently waiting for a knock at my door along with 65 million of Brits who have posted inaccurate information online from time to time.
Legal note: if anything I have said here is inaccurate I was unaware of it at the time of posting.
Huh!
$ host www.police.uk
www.police.uk is an alias for fallback.soh.police.uk.
fallback.soh.police.uk has address 104.18.28.214
fallback.soh.police.uk has address 104.18.29.214
$ host police.uk
police.uk has address 51.104.28.64
Let's keep it real please!
(EDIT - formatting)
www.police.uk is an alias for fallback.soh.police.uk.
fallback.soh.police.uk has address 104.18.29.214
fallback.soh.police.uk has address 104.18.28.214
└─[0] < > ~ host police.uk 8:41 police.uk has address 51.104.28.64
I'm in southeast asia and the website is blocked
$ host www.police.uk www.police.uk is an alias for fallback.soh.police.uk. fallback.soh.police.uk has address 104.18.29.214 fallback.soh.police.uk has address 104.18.28.214
https://www.police.uk/ is a police force landing page
:~$ host police.uk
police.uk has address 51.104.28.64
:~$ host www.police.uk
www.police.uk is an alias for fallback.soh.police.uk.
fallback.soh.police.uk has address 104.18.28.214
fallback.soh.police.uk has address 104.18.29.214
"Your punishment for having a knife when they searched you would be very different from the thief’s. For him to have a knife was mere misbehavior, tradition, he didn’t know any better. But for you to have one was ‘terrorism."
Well, it's not simply "posting inaccurate information", it's "publishing written material to stir up racial hatred" (which it clearly was) and "false communications" (technically true because her information was completely wrong.)
This person was “arrested in relation to a post about the identity of the attacker in the Southport murders” and specifically “on suspicion of publishing written material to stir up racial hatred”.
Most police forces / services / departments no doubt mis-use the law for vexatious arrests but this does not seem like one of those cases.
I do think it’s valid to question whether it’s moral for the Lilliputian Police to criminalise anti Big-Endian rhetoric. If everyone’s doing it it is hard to claim the nationwide rhetoric is responsible for specific violent crimes. If only a few people are doing it then there might be a causal link from their speech to the other crimes, and those links and subsequent crimes are a vital part of the debate.
I cannot visit that link, lol. IP blocked.
how fucking funny. Everytime when something like this is getting discussed the only response is sarcasm and hybris. No acknowledgment of the problem, no ideas, just fucking bad one liners. It's a real problem and you can be glad that you haven't had to deal with it. Yeah, ofc what they are doing now is absolute shite but sometimes you could at least acknowledge the law in it's meaning and not the shitty execution of it and no I don't care about your sarcasm "disclaimer" you are not five.
The solution really is simple - write clearly defined and contained laws or don't write any at all. Most people wouldn't be comfortable with that, though, and in a world where news stories and political debates are forgotten in a matter of weeks people won't find it acceptable if legislators spend months or years writing laws that are easy to understand and don't come with a mountain of edge cases and loopholes.
The problem is that these powers have, can, and will be abused by petty bureaucrats, power-hungry law enforcement, the government itself and, as a result, enable actual tyranny.
> at the time of sending it, the person intended the message, or the information in it, to cause non-trivial psychological or physical harm to a likely audience, and
even announcing future legitimate policy direction by the government could be construed as causing non-trivial psychological harm.
It's definitely not a right if it disappears when it's inconvenient.
I live in a state that had a pre-Roe abortion ban on the books. After Roe was repealed. local prosecutors tried to use their prosecutorial veto to prevent enforcement.
It was pointed out that if they straight up said “we won’t enforce the law” Private citizens could enforce it.
Usually, a judge would throw the case out, but if a DA had publicly refused to do their job, judges would find it hard to simply defer to DA.
I suspect private criminal prosecutions are so rare because public prosecutors guard their monopoly.
It's a really poorly written act though. Compared to acts written by previous governments, this one has a pretty bad structure.
The latter was exactly the excuse that communist regimes used to silence any criticism
also 55 isn't old! but I realise I may be closer to it than you are.
I wouldn't expect a law to be absolutely 100% buttoned up but we're very, very far from that today.
It's just liberté and nothing else for you I guess.
To offer more detail on how far the Brandenburg case went in protecting free speech rights: it ruled that seditious speech – including speech that constitutes an incitement to violence – is protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution as long as it does not reach a level "where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action”.
PS: And technically, afaik, it isn't a crime to call for the assassination of the president of the US. It's illegal to attempt it, and to take actions that support those attempting it. But if you just post on Facebook about it... you'll get a call from the Secret Service and a recommendation that you don't do that, but no charge.
"We'll end up in a dystopian autocratic tyranny nightmare TOMORROW if we do anything against it. With the only conclusion let's do nothing at all."
Great input.
If you're making a practical argument, then we can trade exclusions 1-for-1 in the US vs UK, and the UK list will go on far after you've exhausted the US ones.
That's not the argument I'm making.
I'm noting that the US started from a right to free speech, and then carved out exclusions to that.
Whereas the UK came at it the other way and added to a list of types of speech that are free.
When it comes to separation of powers, that's a much bigger discussion but I have concerns over how our three branches operate in the US today. Our legislative branch has outsourced much of their power to the executive branch, though the overturn of Chevron may eventually help that. I wish it were as simply as voting, but I'm generally only offered one or two options for most elected positions and when it comes down to it neither party will allow anyone on the ballot that wants to actually reform anything meaningful about how the system works.
It isn't just about liberté for me. The law in discussion here may be pretty straight cut with regards to understanding what's on the page, but not with understanding what power the government is actually granted or when/how it will be enforced. The whole point in this thread was that the law is unclear as to how the government will define content posted online that may turn out to be inaccurate as illegal and worthy of leading to prosecution.
Consider it this way - if you handed said law to 10 people in the UK, would they all walk away with the same understanding of where the line is that they shouldn't cross?
With regards to this specific law being clear and understandable by those who must follow it, I'm proposing that asking 10 of those people to read it and they wouldn't agree what the law means and when it will be enforced. I don't see that being a straw man, though I could very well be missing something there.
Do you not see it as a problem for the average person to be unable to understand the laws they are meant to follow?
For me, that's a real problem. In the example of traffic laws, either the laws are important to keep us safe on the road and the fact that people can't understand the laws as written puts us all at risk. Alternatively, if we're happy enough with road safety despite the fact that people can't understand traffic laws then the laws aren't serving a purpose and aren't needed. On top of that, people will be at risk of being fined or imprisoned for breaking laws that they didn't realize they broke, even when they took the time to read and try to understand the laws.