We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
|
In May 2020, I wrote a piece called ‘Britain’s Covid Reich’. I commented:
One of the most remarkable aspects of the creation of Britain’s Covid Reich was that even in the middle of the Government’s witless, confused and ambivalent approach to the crisis it was able to rustle up overnight many of the key ingredients of totalitarianism. The ideology and the slogans, and the continual repetition of the message with the supine assistance of broadcast media all fell into place with frightening speed. The speed with which the Great British Public acquiesced was even more alarming.
One possibility I anticipated was:
In one direction lies the complete end of everything we have ever held dear and a life literally not worth living, a mere spectral existence in a paralysed and terrified surveillance state of agoraphobics queuing up like mendicant friars for government handouts.
I thought I was going over the top when I wrote that. But that’s exactly what’s happened – hasn’t it? Back then I thought there was a more optimistic possible alternative, but I was wrong.
Few politicians, few scientists and even worse few in the so-called free press seemed to be able to understand that the measures the Government was imposing were going to leave a legacy that would, and has, set Britain back by half a century and perhaps change it permanently. Anyone who dared to stray from the state propaganda line was shot down in flames.
So it is almost beyond belief to see that the confused and contradictory Covid Inquiry has continued to ignore the impact of lockdown…
– Guy de la Bédoyère
“Parents ‘vindicated’ after police admit unlawful arrest over WhatsApp row”, the Guardian reports. The subheading is “Hertfordshire police agree to pay £20,000 to Rosalind Levine and Maxie Allen, who were held for 11 hours after complaining about daughter’s school”.
I posted about this couple’s experience last April: Boiling frogs in Salem and Hertfordshire.
One aspect of the story that the Free Speech Union’s Frederick Attenborough highlighted at the time was that Hertfordshire Police didn’t just put the frighteners on Rosalind Levine and Maxie Allen, they also threatened – in writing – their local county councillor, Michelle Vince, that if she continued to advocate on their behalf she too might find herself “liable to being recorded as a suspect in a harassment investigation”. And they told Michelle Vince to pass on that warning to the local MP, Sir Oliver Dowden.
As Sir Oliver said in the Times, “Police risk ‘curtailing democracy’ by stopping MPs doing their job”.
Today’s Guardian article continues,
Allen claimed he and Levine were not abusive and were never told which communications were criminal, saying it was “completely Kafkaesque”.
A Hertfordshire police spokesperson said: “Whilst there are no issues of misconduct involving any officer in relation to this matter, Hertfordshire Constabulary has accepted liability solely on the basis that the legal test around necessity of arrest was not met in this instance.
“Therefore Mr Haddow-Allen and Ms Levine were wrongfully arrested and detained in January 2025. It would be inappropriate to make further comment at this stage.”
You wish. Further comment is both appropriate and necessary. There bloody well are issues of misconduct involving at least one officer in relation to this matter: whichever officer tried to frighten off both a local councillor and an MP from representing their constituents.
Macron insists he’s defending democracy from manipulation and hate. But that’s the excuse. His vision is of a Europe where free speech is tolerated only when it is traceable, and where platforms pre-emptively silence anything that might draw a regulator’s glare. He calls it a ‘resurgence of democracy’. It’s nothing of the kind. It’s the bureaucratisation of thought, and the beginning of a continent where debate survives only on licence. If Macron has his way, Europe’s public square will not just be regulated, it will be licensed.
– James Tidmarsh
Of course UK is no better.
The Guardian reports:
‘Reverse Midas touch’: Starmer plan prompts collapse in support for digital IDs
Public support for digital IDs has collapsed after Keir Starmer announced plans for their introduction, in what has been described as a symptom of the prime minister’s “reverse Midas touch”.
Net support for digital ID cards fell from 35% in the early summer to -14% at the weekend after Starmer’s announcement, according to polling by More in Common.
The findings suggest that the proposal has suffered considerably from its association with an unpopular government. In June, 53% of voters surveyed said they were in favour of digital ID cards for all Britons, while 19% were opposed.
In the UK right now, @X is performing the same function that Radio Free Europe did in the Eastern Bloc. Without this site, or if it still remained Twitter under the control of the American left, our government would be much more able to hide things they don’t want to discuss.
– Peter Hague
‘Fuck Palestine, Fuck Hamas, Fuck Islam. Want to protest? Fuck off to Muslim country and protest.’
– This got Pete North arrested
The Guardian has up a panel discussion with the title “Labour is in a mess. Is there anything Starmer can do to turn things around? Our panel responds”. One of the panellists is Ann Pettifor. She writes,
The Bank lacks tools and legitimacy to tackle inflation. Labour should transfer that role to a new Inflation Control Office, which could use taxes, price controls and even rationing to lower inflation. Then Reeves should change the Bank’s mandate, radically: to support the economic policy of the government, not the City.
As a means to “save” Keir Starmer’s government, I am not convinced by the rationing bit. True, price controls are nearly always popular – until tried. But the people’s cry of “We want an Inflation Control Office to stop us buying things!” is heard only in Ann Pettifor’s dreams. I would advise less rich food late at night.
DR, Denmark’s equivalent of the BBC, reports that:
The Danish presidency of the EU is currently working to gain support for the CSA regulation, which will open a backdoor to all Europeans’ phones in an attempt to trap and track down criminals who share sexual abuse material with children.
If the CSA regulation is voted through, police and judicial authorities will be able to access encrypted communication services such as WhatsApp and Signal – and thus the private communications of many millions of Europeans.
A leaked document from the European Council states that this will be done through client-side scanning . The technology works by scanning images, video and text on the user’s device before sending and encrypting them, including with the help of AI.
[…]
The CSA regulation was taken off the agenda of the EU Council of Ministers in June 2024 due to the risk of mass surveillance of EU citizens and a concern that the law could represent a setback for freedoms.
But two months later, the Minister of Justice [Peter Hummelgaard] stated to TV 2 that “we need to break with the completely erroneous perception that it is every man’s right to freedom to communicate on encrypted messaging services, which are used to facilitate many different serious forms of crime”.
Five, apparently. That’s five armed police officers, of course. Heaven knows how many unarmed officers it would take to bring down a mighty warrior like Graham Linehan.
– says former EU Commissioner Thierry Breton in a Guardian article called “The EU surrendered to Trump over trade tariffs – now it’s in danger of capitulating again”.
It is stirring stuff:
How long are we, citizens of the EU, going to tolerate these threats? Submit to those who want to impose their rules, their laws, their deadlines on us? Surrender to those who now presume to dictate our fundamental democratic and moral principles, our rules for how we live together and even how we protect our own children online? Why and in whose name would we agree to cast aside our twin digital regulations, the DSA and the Digital Markets Act (DMA), which were voted into law with clarity, courage and conviction by a landslide in the European parliament?
and
Because regulating the information space is not optional: it is a sine qua non for turning the narrow mercantile logic of a few into a genuine contribution towards human progress and the common good.
Throughout history, humanity has managed to regulate its territorial, maritime and airspace. This is the prerogative of sovereign states. It is the essence of sovereignty itself. To renounce, today, the task of regulating the fourth domain – the digital space – by leaving it to a handful of private actors would be a historic abdication of the public sphere, of political will, of the democratic promise.
Sorry, what promise was this? I’ve heard of “the social contract”. Discussion of that has been around for centuries. I’ve heard of “the military compact”, which in a British context is a phrase used to describe the obligations of the government towards soldiers in exchange for them risking their lives on its behalf. However my self-education in political theory did not include this apparently well-known promise made to its citizens by every democratic state worthy of the name that it would interpose itself between them and the horror of seeing Elon Musk interview Donald Trump on Twitter.
Regular readers will recall that Commissioner Breton was a leading promoter of the EU’s Digital Services Act, which has good reason to be described as “the single greatest threat to free speech in Europe”.
Ray Sanders has produced solid evidence that suggests the Met Office is inventing temperature data that it is using for political Net Zero purposes. Claiming his thorough, well documented investigations are “vexatious” will no longer wash. It must reply with realistic explanations and evidence of its own to retain public trust in its work.
– Chris Morrison
I used to say “Other than weather reports, don’t believe anything the media says without looking at multiple sources”… well even the weather reports are deeply suspect now.
A trade group representing companies that build age verification systems is now lobbying to extend these checks to anyone using a VPN in the UK. The Age Verification Providers Association (AVPA) wants online platforms that fall under the UK’s censorship law, the Online Safety Act, to not only detect VPN usage but also analyze user behavior to guess whether someone might be a minor in disguise.
If flagged, users would face a prompt: prove your age, or allow a one-time geolocation to confirm you’re outside the UK.
According to the AVPA, this process is necessary because VPNs can mask users’ actual locations, allowing them to appear as though they are in countries where age verification laws do not apply. The association points to data showing a dramatic increase in VPN use around the time the UK’s new internet rules were enforced, suggesting people are using these tools to bypass restrictions.
This approach treats privacy tools as a form of defiance. Here, VPNs, once considered sensible and essential for online security, are being rebranded as suspicious.
– Richard Eldred
|
Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
|
