- Joined
- Aug 25, 2021
- Messages
- 11,688
- Reaction score
- 28,692
Civil Liberties in the UK are under a triple threat:
(1) Anti-Strike Law
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/01/27/jvpd-j27.html
https://www.theguardian.com/comment...sunak-anti-strike-legislation-britain-economy
Britain’s new anti-strike laws are expected to be on the statute books by the summer. They are some of the most draconian in the world.
The next vote on the Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill takes place on January 30, before it proceeds to the House of Lords. The Bill will allow the government to impose Minimum Service Levels (MSLs) on six sectors of the workforce, public and private, covering key industries. The first to be brought under the legislation are the ambulance, fire/rescue and rail services. The legislation will then be imposed on the health and education services, border security and nuclear decommissioning.
This would mean a significant proportion of workers (around 20 percent) across vital sections of the economy would have to keep working during industrial action.
Striking ambulance service workers in Sheffield, January 23, 2023
The law is aimed at preventing millions of workers from taking effective strike action. It will cover all the countries of the United Kingdom except Northern Ireland.
The legislation will initially cover over 130,000 workers. But it will then be vastly extended to cover well over 5 million workers.
/
The new law not only allows a worker defying an instruction to work to be fired. It allows the mass firing of all workers involved in strike action if a union is deemed not to have taken reasonable steps to ensure the specified workers comply with work notices.
/
The new legislation could also threaten trade unions with bankruptcy. When workers walk off the job during industrial action, they are probably in breach of contract, and trade unions have been the cause of that breach. But if ballots are conducted according to the law, they can’t be sued for losses incurred due to strike action.
This sounds like a technicality but it is actually the basis of the right to strike in Britain. If this legislation passes, trade unions would be made liable for losses incurred by strike action that didn’t maintain a minimum service – and the sums of money involved could be astronomical.
2 Online Safety Bill
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_Safety_Bill
https://www.theguardian.com/technol...f-they-fail-to-stop-sexist-and-racist-content
...the Bill gives the relevant Secretary of State the power, subject to Parliamentary approval, to designate and address a wide range of potentially harmful content, which may include online trolling, illegal pornography and underage access to legal pornography, and some forms of internet fraud.
The Bill would create a new duty of care for online platforms towards their users, requiring them to take action against both illegal and legal but harmful content. Platforms failing this duty would be liable to fines of up to £18 million or 10% of their annual turnover, whichever is higher. It would also empower Ofcom to block access to particular websites. Additionally, the Bill would oblige large social media platforms not to remove, and to preserve access to, journalistic or "democratically important" content such as user comments on political parties and issues.
The bill has been heavily criticised for its proposals to restrain the publication of "lawful but harmful" speech, effectively creating a new form of censorship of otherwise legal speech. As a result, in November 2022, measures that were intended to force big technology platforms to take down "legal but harmful" materials were removed from the Online Safety Bill. Instead, tech platforms will be obliged to introduce systems that will allow the users to better filter out the harmful content they don't want to see.
/
The Bill would empower Ofcom, the national communications regulator, to block access to particular user-to-user services or search engines from the United Kingdom, including through interventions by internet access providers and app stores. The regulator will also be able to impose, through "service restriction orders", requirements on ancillary services which facilitate the provision of the regulated services.
/
Social media platforms that breach pledges to block sexist and racist content face the threat of substantial fines under government changes to the online safety bill announced on Monday.
Under the new approach, social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter must also give users the option of avoiding content that is harmful but does not constitute a criminal offence. This could include racism, misogyny or the glorification of eating disorders.
3 Enhanced Police Powers to Prevent and Stop Protests
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...o-shut-down-protests-before-disruption-begins
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/1/16/uk-government-to-make-it-easier-for-police-to-stop-protests
The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act, passed in April last year, introduced an offence of public nuisance, created powers for the police to place conditions on noisy protests, and increased the sentences for obstructing the highway.
/
Police in England and Wales are to be given powers to shut down protests before any disruption begins under Rishi Sunak’s plans for a public order crackdown, which aim to prevent tactics such as “slow marching”.
/
Sunak said the proposals would be tabled through an amendment to the public order bill, which will be debated in the House of Lords this week. The change would broaden and clarify the legal definition of “serious disruption” and allow police to consider protests by the same group on different days or in different places as part of the same wider action.
Just Stop Oil protesters in Parliament Square in December.
/
Shami Chakrabarti, the Labour peer and former director of Liberty, who is challenging some elements of the bill in the House of Lords, said the government’s attempt to get even more powers was “very troubling”.
“The definition of what counts as serious disruption is key to this bill because it is used as a justification for a whole range of new offences, stop and search powers and banning orders.
/
Last year, the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act placed onerous new restrictions on protest – granting, among other measures, the ability for the police to ban demonstrations that they believe will be too noisy.
The public order bill, for England and Wales, goes even further in creating new offences of “locking on”, where protesters attach themselves to things in order to cause disruption. It will also bring in new serious disruption prevention orders to place restrictions on individual activists and new stop and search powers for protest.
UK is a 3rd-Tier Country on Freedom of Expression
https://www.theguardian.com/politic...third-tier-in-global-index-of-free-expression
https://www.indexoncensorship.org/indexindex/
The UK has been ranked only in the third tier of a new global index of freedom of expression due to what was described as the “chilling effect” of government policies, policing and intimidation of journalists in the legal system.
Countries including Israel, Chile, Jamaica and virtually every other western European state were all ranked ahead of the UK in the measure compiled by the advocacy group Index on Censorship.
The UK was listed as only Partially Open in every key metric for the year 2021 – covering academic, digital and media freedom – based on modelling data from a range of sources including Reporters Without Borders’ World Press Freedom Index, and Unesco’s Observatory of Killed Journalists.
/
States with the highest ranking (named Open) in the overall measure are clustered around western Europe and Australasia. The UK and the US were ranked with countries including Moldova, Panama, Romania, and South Africa as Partially Open.
Key Restrictions of Civil Liberties in the 21st Century
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_liberties_in_the_United_Kingdom
Under the Terrorism Act 2006 people suspected of terrorism can be held without charge for 28 days (the government originally proposed 90).
The Terrorism Act 2000 allows groups deemed to be terrorist to be banned. As of July 2021 92 such groups had been proscribed. The stop and search without suspicion powers installed by this act have been ruled illegal by the ECHR.
The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000
The Civil Contingencies Act 2004 allows the government in an 'emergency' to deploy armed forces anywhere in the country during peacetime and for property to be sequestrated with or without compensation.
The Investigatory Powers Act 2016
Update Two
Update Three
Update Four
Update Five
Update Six
Update Seven
Update Eight
Update Nine
Update Ten
Update 11
Update 12
Update 13
Update 14
Update 15
(1) Anti-Strike Law
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/01/27/jvpd-j27.html
https://www.theguardian.com/comment...sunak-anti-strike-legislation-britain-economy
Britain’s new anti-strike laws are expected to be on the statute books by the summer. They are some of the most draconian in the world.
The next vote on the Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill takes place on January 30, before it proceeds to the House of Lords. The Bill will allow the government to impose Minimum Service Levels (MSLs) on six sectors of the workforce, public and private, covering key industries. The first to be brought under the legislation are the ambulance, fire/rescue and rail services. The legislation will then be imposed on the health and education services, border security and nuclear decommissioning.
This would mean a significant proportion of workers (around 20 percent) across vital sections of the economy would have to keep working during industrial action.
Striking ambulance service workers in Sheffield, January 23, 2023
The law is aimed at preventing millions of workers from taking effective strike action. It will cover all the countries of the United Kingdom except Northern Ireland.
The legislation will initially cover over 130,000 workers. But it will then be vastly extended to cover well over 5 million workers.
/
The new law not only allows a worker defying an instruction to work to be fired. It allows the mass firing of all workers involved in strike action if a union is deemed not to have taken reasonable steps to ensure the specified workers comply with work notices.
/
The new legislation could also threaten trade unions with bankruptcy. When workers walk off the job during industrial action, they are probably in breach of contract, and trade unions have been the cause of that breach. But if ballots are conducted according to the law, they can’t be sued for losses incurred due to strike action.
This sounds like a technicality but it is actually the basis of the right to strike in Britain. If this legislation passes, trade unions would be made liable for losses incurred by strike action that didn’t maintain a minimum service – and the sums of money involved could be astronomical.
2 Online Safety Bill
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_Safety_Bill
https://www.theguardian.com/technol...f-they-fail-to-stop-sexist-and-racist-content
...the Bill gives the relevant Secretary of State the power, subject to Parliamentary approval, to designate and address a wide range of potentially harmful content, which may include online trolling, illegal pornography and underage access to legal pornography, and some forms of internet fraud.
The Bill would create a new duty of care for online platforms towards their users, requiring them to take action against both illegal and legal but harmful content. Platforms failing this duty would be liable to fines of up to £18 million or 10% of their annual turnover, whichever is higher. It would also empower Ofcom to block access to particular websites. Additionally, the Bill would oblige large social media platforms not to remove, and to preserve access to, journalistic or "democratically important" content such as user comments on political parties and issues.
The bill has been heavily criticised for its proposals to restrain the publication of "lawful but harmful" speech, effectively creating a new form of censorship of otherwise legal speech. As a result, in November 2022, measures that were intended to force big technology platforms to take down "legal but harmful" materials were removed from the Online Safety Bill. Instead, tech platforms will be obliged to introduce systems that will allow the users to better filter out the harmful content they don't want to see.
/
The Bill would empower Ofcom, the national communications regulator, to block access to particular user-to-user services or search engines from the United Kingdom, including through interventions by internet access providers and app stores. The regulator will also be able to impose, through "service restriction orders", requirements on ancillary services which facilitate the provision of the regulated services.
/
Social media platforms that breach pledges to block sexist and racist content face the threat of substantial fines under government changes to the online safety bill announced on Monday.
Under the new approach, social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter must also give users the option of avoiding content that is harmful but does not constitute a criminal offence. This could include racism, misogyny or the glorification of eating disorders.
3 Enhanced Police Powers to Prevent and Stop Protests
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...o-shut-down-protests-before-disruption-begins
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/1/16/uk-government-to-make-it-easier-for-police-to-stop-protests
The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act, passed in April last year, introduced an offence of public nuisance, created powers for the police to place conditions on noisy protests, and increased the sentences for obstructing the highway.
/
Police in England and Wales are to be given powers to shut down protests before any disruption begins under Rishi Sunak’s plans for a public order crackdown, which aim to prevent tactics such as “slow marching”.
/
Sunak said the proposals would be tabled through an amendment to the public order bill, which will be debated in the House of Lords this week. The change would broaden and clarify the legal definition of “serious disruption” and allow police to consider protests by the same group on different days or in different places as part of the same wider action.
Just Stop Oil protesters in Parliament Square in December.
/
Shami Chakrabarti, the Labour peer and former director of Liberty, who is challenging some elements of the bill in the House of Lords, said the government’s attempt to get even more powers was “very troubling”.
“The definition of what counts as serious disruption is key to this bill because it is used as a justification for a whole range of new offences, stop and search powers and banning orders.
/
Last year, the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act placed onerous new restrictions on protest – granting, among other measures, the ability for the police to ban demonstrations that they believe will be too noisy.
The public order bill, for England and Wales, goes even further in creating new offences of “locking on”, where protesters attach themselves to things in order to cause disruption. It will also bring in new serious disruption prevention orders to place restrictions on individual activists and new stop and search powers for protest.
UK is a 3rd-Tier Country on Freedom of Expression
https://www.theguardian.com/politic...third-tier-in-global-index-of-free-expression
https://www.indexoncensorship.org/indexindex/
The UK has been ranked only in the third tier of a new global index of freedom of expression due to what was described as the “chilling effect” of government policies, policing and intimidation of journalists in the legal system.
Countries including Israel, Chile, Jamaica and virtually every other western European state were all ranked ahead of the UK in the measure compiled by the advocacy group Index on Censorship.
The UK was listed as only Partially Open in every key metric for the year 2021 – covering academic, digital and media freedom – based on modelling data from a range of sources including Reporters Without Borders’ World Press Freedom Index, and Unesco’s Observatory of Killed Journalists.
/
States with the highest ranking (named Open) in the overall measure are clustered around western Europe and Australasia. The UK and the US were ranked with countries including Moldova, Panama, Romania, and South Africa as Partially Open.
Key Restrictions of Civil Liberties in the 21st Century
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_liberties_in_the_United_Kingdom
Under the Terrorism Act 2006 people suspected of terrorism can be held without charge for 28 days (the government originally proposed 90).
The Terrorism Act 2000 allows groups deemed to be terrorist to be banned. As of July 2021 92 such groups had been proscribed. The stop and search without suspicion powers installed by this act have been ruled illegal by the ECHR.
The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000
- enables certain public bodies to demand that an ISP provide access to a customer's communications in secret;
- enables mass surveillance of communications in transit;
- enables certain public bodies to demand ISPs fit equipment to facilitate surveillance;
- enables certain public bodies to demand that someone hand over keys to protected information;
- allows certain public bodies to monitor people's Internet activities;
- prevents the existence of interception warrants and any data collected with them from being revealed in court.
The Civil Contingencies Act 2004 allows the government in an 'emergency' to deploy armed forces anywhere in the country during peacetime and for property to be sequestrated with or without compensation.
The Investigatory Powers Act 2016
- introduced new powers, and restated existing ones, for British intelligence agencies and law enforcement to carry out targeted interception of communications, bulk collection of communications data, and bulk interception of communications
- required communication service providers (CSPs) to retain British internet users' "Internet connection records" – which websites were visited but not the particular pages and not the full browsing history – for one year;
- allowed police, intelligence officers and other government department managers to see the Internet connection records, as part of a targeted and filtered investigation, without a warrant
- permitted the police and intelligence agencies to carry out targeted equipment interference, that is, hacking into computers or devices to access their data, and bulk equipment interference for national security matters related to foreign investigations
- placed a legal obligation on CSPs to assist with targeted interception of data, and communications and equipment interference in relation to an investigation; foreign companies are not required to engage in bulk collection of data or communications
- maintained an existing requirement on CSPs in the UK to have the ability to remove encryption applied by the CSP; foreign companies are not required to remove encryption
- created a new criminal offence for a CSP or someone who works for a CSP to reveal that data has been requested
Update Two
Update Three
Update Four
Update Five
Update Six
Update Seven
Update Eight
Update Nine
Update Ten
Update 11
Update 12
Update 13
Update 14
Update 15
Last edited:
