It's [edit] certainly not the place to be if you want privacy.

RIPA (regulation of investigatory powers act) has been abused by local council staff spying on public to see if they live within a school catchment area or within an area qualifying for cheap parking. There are other abuses too.

We're bringing in a "snooper's charter" - this is just traffic data and not content of calls, but still, it's pretty unpleasant.

We had / have "Phorm" - deep packet inspection of customer internet traffic in order to serve ads.

The idea of national ID cards had a small number of opponents, but was mostly met with "meh". The thing that actually killed it was the cost to the individual. I'm sure that if they had kept the cost to £30 per person we'd all have ID cards today.

In theory GCHQ have strict regulatory oversight. I do know people who work for GCHQ. I never talk to them about work, and they never talk to me about work, but they do say that regulatory oversight is real and true.

But we don't have the US concept of "fruit of the poisoned tree" - in the US a wiretap needs a court order, and without that any evidence gained cannot be used in court. That forces cops to actually get the court order, or risk losing cases. In the UK we allow spies to gather this stuff, and police to take action on it, but we don't want it used in court because then it's a matter of public record and thus subject to scrutiny and we leak information about capabilities. I see the benefit in both approaches, but I can appreciate that some people would be horrified with the English approach.

We were complicit in torture of innocent, untried, uncharged, soldiers / terrorists / combatants.

We have detention without charge (http://www.liberty-human-rights.org.uk/human-rights/terroris...).

The UK has about 1% of the world population, but about 20% of the installed CCTV base.

Cheshire has a population of 700,000 people (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheshire) but has over 12,000 CCTV cameras, of which about 500 - 600 are run by public authorities.

(http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/mar/02/cctv-cameras-watchi...)

We happily ship people to the US under our unbalanced extradition treaty.

tl;dr: He'd be nuts to want to come here.

{EDIT: Strikethrough [a horrible place to live, and] in response to people below}

I live in the UK and am utterly disgusted at the pieces of shit that act in our name.

You can't vote them out as it's a bipartisan system with two sets of the same ideals.

You can't revolt because everyone is too busy staring at Simon Cowel's nefarious trash pumped through our telescreens.

You can't speak up because it's illegal.

Sit, obey, conform.

I am starting to think the people on the other side of "the public doesn't need to know" enjoy their little fantasy world a little too much.

Says it all really. Don't waste your time reading this hypey article.

1. Get from the building to a diplomatically immune car and out of the EU. Not going to happen: the fuzz will snag him the moment he steps out of the door.

2. Wait for a politically sympathetic party is voted in and the extradition rules are changed. Not going to happen: people are too stupid to vote for anything other than "the big two" and if they did, they won't change policy or America will go all "Fuck Yeah" on our arses.

3. Wait for the whole thing to be uncovered publicly as a fucking massive international political scam and he is pardoned.

4. Hope that Kurzweil was right, upload his conscious mind to a machine with OpenSSH and SCP himself overseas.

I reckon (3) is most likely.