More mundanely:<p>Sajid Javid, the current home secretary, clearly has ambitions to lead the country. Within the purview of his ministry, he is attempting to position himself as a decisive strong-man, in contrast to the weak and ineffectual prime minister. His ability to actually reduce crime is hamstrung by years of austerity, which have led to a substantial reduction in the number of police officers and other law enforcement resources. He wants more money, but he doesn't really have the influence to get it. He needs to look tough on crime, but he can't do anything that costs money.<p>Silly legislation is practically free, even if it doesn't achieve much. We've had a worrying increase in knife crime over the past few years. How should the government respond? More police patrols in violence hot spots? Better intelligence on gang-related disputes that might lead to violence? Social work interventions to work with troubled young people who are at risk of becoming involved in violent crime? No, because all of those things would cost money.<p>The government's only substantive policy has been the creation of "knife crime prevention orders", which restrict the civil liberties of people who are suspected of carrying knives with violent intent. It's illiberal, there's no evidence that it'll work, but it looks tough and it doesn't really cost anything.<p><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/feb/24/sajid-javid-youth-knife-crime-orders-human-rights-fears" rel="nofollow">https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/feb/24/sajid-javid-...</a><p>The internet censorship agenda plays into this perfectly. It costs almost nothing to force foreign internet companies to censor their content, but it looks tough in the headlines. Terrorist attacks? Blame Facebook. Sex offences? Blame Google. Gang crime? Blame Snapchat. It's free, it distracts the newspapers for a couple of days and you get to make some vague but tough-sounding pronouncements without actually being accountable for anything.
The lesson of Brexit is that all attempts at asking difficult questions like "how will this work" and "will it achieve the stated purpose" have been abandoned, and we're governed by pure short-term sloganeering.<p>But the restriction of free speech in the UK in the name of anti-terrorism has a long history. I'm old enough to remember when the Sinn Fein MPs were prohibited from speaking on television: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1988%E2%80%9394_British_broadcasting_voice_restrictions" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1988%E2%80%9394_British_broadc...</a><p>It's not clear how best to campaign against this, since the legacy print media know that no matter how bad their hate content gets the law is unlikely to inconvenience them, so they're happy to campaign against free speech for their enemies.
>The ambitions of the UK government are bold. They want the UK “to be the safest place in the world to go online, and the best place to start and grow a digital business.”<p>Pick one.
Given the UK government's terrible record of really awful legislation, much of it illegal itself (e.g. the recent attempts to whitewash [pollution][0]) it seems the outcome will be more rubbish legislation, if anything at all.<p>[0]: <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/feb/21/high-court-rules-uk-air-pollution-plans-unlawful" rel="nofollow">https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/feb/21/high-cou...</a>
I'm really conflicted at this. I do not want the internet to be censored, but at the same time, I think that big internet companies are making the world worse through inaction.<p>Even if a user or $/yr minimum is implemented in law, then what happens as distributed and federated technology becomes more common? What does Mastadon or Scuttlebutt count as?
They can (at least for individuals & orgs in the UK), and they can decide one day they don't want the media reporting on their censorship.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempora" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempora</a>
I'm still angry about the face-sitting ban: <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/30454773/why-are-people-face-sitting-outside-parliament" rel="nofollow">http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/30454773/why-are-peopl...</a>