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Is the UK becoming a police state?

There is no generally accepted defintion of what makes a country a police state, but I will use this description:

An undesirable state of living characterised by the overbearing presence of the civil authorities

The aspects of a police state the UK currently has

Here are some of the things we expect of a police state and that the UK already does.

Arrest of protesters

Although the right to protest is a legal right, enshrined in UK law by the European Convention on Human Rights, the UK government has had the police arrest protesters when they did not want the protesters to be seen by visiting heads of state. Eaxmples include

Press censorship

The government uses DA notices prevent some stories from appearing in the news. The stated purpose of D notices is to prevent publication of miltary secrets. This reasonable enough. However, it has also been abused to try to prevent publications of the Edward Snowden revelations. The motive in this case was to conceal the illegal mass surveillance by the UK and USA governments. It impossible to know how many other illegal activites have been successfully hidden by using of DA notices.

Internet Censorship

The David Cameron government made all internet access via mobile phone or home internet consored by default. The government called this "filtered" instead of "censored". An uncensored internet has to be specifically requested, but by implying that only peole who want to access porn need uncensored internet access, they hope many people wont ask for it. They government claims that the censored connections only block porn, terrorist sites and those promoting hate, but we only have their word for whther this is the case. By all means protect chikdren from porn, but this was already possible for the minroty of households with children, either by asking their ISP to censor or adding censoring software to specific computers. The unecessary filtering by default must therfore have a deifferent purpose.

Mass surveillance

As revealed by Edward Snowden, the UK government carries out mass surveillance by recording:

Tracking of movement

The government tracks the movements of individuals by:

Freedom of speech

When people know their government records their emails and text messages they may longer feel free to say what they believe even to friends. When this happens free speach may not yet be dead but is certainly on the critical list. Imagine the following scenario:

You jokingly text a friend that the Prime Ministor should be shot because of some unpopular new policy. The government computer reads your text and flags this up as a potential terrorist threat and puts a flag againt your name. Ten years later you apply for a govenment job. A routine check shows you flagged as a potential terrorist and you are rejected.

This may seem unrealistic, but how free do feel to put "shoot David Cameron" in your next text message?

Political control of sentencing

Although it is the governemnt job to pass laws and set maximum sentances for breaking these laws, they should not interfere with sentencing for their own political motives. This is exactly what the David Cameron government is guilty of after the 2011 riots in the UK. The UK government desired that people covicted of offences during the riot were to be treated much more harshly than was the avarage for their crimes. Those arrested were much more likely to be denied bail. They were much more likely to be jailed. They were generally given significanlty longer sentences. While crimes committed were not a political protest and should certainly be punished according to the law, the government is guilty of pressuring judges to sentencing based on political goals and the the judges are guilty of complicity with these goals.

Recording what you buy

Mass surveillance already allows the government to record all you puchases over the internet. Shops also record what buy if you use:

We have no way of knowing how much of this information the government seccretly has access to.

What freedoms we still have

It is important to appreciate many important freedoms we still have.

Right to trial

People who arrested still have rights to:

Freedom from torture

The UK government forbids torture, although it has colaborated closely with countries like the USA that do use torture.

Freedom of movement

We can freely move to any part of the country without needing permission although our movements are tracked as decsribed above.

Freedom from identity cards

We still enjoy the right step outside our front door without any passing police officer being able to demand us to prove our identity and it being a offnce it you can't. However, we came dangerously close to this during the Tony Blaire government which tried to do just this.

Freedom to criticise government

While, as mentioned above, both the press and the internet are subject to government censorship, this does not yet extend to supressing crticism of the government itself. This is offers some hope that it is not yet too late to reverse the slide into a full police state.

So how much of police state is the UK?

In my opinion we are a long way down the road to becoming a full police state. When was growing up in the UK the government did NOT:

We had terrorist attacks by the IRA instead of Al Qaeda and Islamic State, but we still had more freedom than we do today. While the authorities have a genuine need to be able to carry out surveillance on those who they good reason to suspect of planning or committing crimes, they should not treat the entire population as suspects as the current mass does does.

What can be done ?

If we are not to loose more freedoms and reclaim those the government has taken from us, often in secret:

Some things you can do reclaim some of your freedoms are:

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