From age and ID restrictions on the Internet, to charging rappers with “terrorism,” the U.K. is demolishing the most basic civil liberties. If we let them, U.S. leaders may be close behind.

  • Mniot@programming.dev
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    25 days ago

    I think the US will be fine as long as we don’t repeatedly elect some kind of cabal of pedophile authoritarians.

  • mriswith@lemmy.world
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    25 days ago

    That was lost a while ago, but it’s nice more people are noticing that it’s getting worse.

  • monogram@feddit.nl
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    25 days ago

    Remember VPNs definitely don’t help here, definitely don’t try to skirt any protections using a VPN, definitely remember to have your ID with you at the ready for any website to show to.

    • DapperPenguin@programming.dev
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      25 days ago

      If you could project into the future, you might see that VPNs are a dwindling non-solution to the problem. As this unsettling trend makes waves across all jurisdictions in the world, every VPN’s IP will be subject to these new controls.* Eventually normies might need to understand technologies like Tor or I2P. Only problem is, if things get really bad they might ban the use of both outright. I’m not sure if I2P can be detected just as Tor, but I do know Tor users can be detected easily. Which is why if you’re in a “censorship” country you need to use some sort of special subset of entry guards. I2P might be better because every node in the network is like a router, none are specifically entry, middle, or exit nodes. Only thing I could think of, maybe some form of deep packet inspection? If everybody runs an I2P router, then simply making requests to other nodes is not enough to determine it’s an i2p communication?* It’s just distributed computing, the way the internet was intended!

      • CheeseNoodle@lemmy.world
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        25 days ago

        Any other useful info like this? Tryna snag as much of this stuff as possible (taking screenshots and offline copies of the pages) in the event it becomes unavailable and my existing methods fail on me.

        • DapperPenguin@programming.dev
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          25 days ago

          You can simply go to the official tor or i2p pages and read more about details, then do follow up research from there. With i2p there’s actually a few parallel implementations actively being developed. Original is in Java, there’s a C++ one, and then another one I can’t remember. Very new implementations are being made in Rust as well

        • DapperPenguin@programming.dev
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          25 days ago

          Thanks for volunteering to help the network in good faith! I think it is much easier for normal people to get an i2p router up and running and help the entire network, instead of setting up a tor node. And with the use of inbound/outbound unidirectional tunnels (which you can set up to 5 nodes each), you could theoretically have a 10 node round trip of intermediate tunnels between you and a server, as opposed to tor which uses a bidirectional tunnel.

          Some gracious users set up what is known as an “outbound proxy”, which acts like tor exit node to the clearnet. Personally I would never host one of these, as I am hesitant of having anonymous entities make clearnet requests and being held liable. But as an i2p router in somebody else’s tunnels, you can just imagine yourself as a road on a map that other roads connect to. The road isn’t responsible for what people are carrying on it, or what their destination might be. That would be an unreasonable expectation to place on any road. In fact, the router doesn’t have any idea of what the exact destination is, even if it’s the last node in the tunnel - simply because during the encryption/decryption process it only knows of the next address to hit!

          For example, say an i2p router hosts a git server. It could be the destination for packets, where clients are using it for version control, or it could act as a node in somebody’s tunnels to connect with other servers/clients. From the network view, I do not believe you can tell, and that is pretty neat.

          In the effort of being transparent and educating you, I do believe an outstanding problem is stream isolation. You should be able to do “soft resets” that reset your identity, although I forget the exact technical i2p term for this. This concern is for clients, not just leaving a router up. So if you intend on using that router to access the network yourself, it would be a good idea to do that soft or hard reset occasionally depending on your concerns. You can do it as often or never at all.

    • lad@programming.dev
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      25 days ago

      It’s a good thing there are no scammers that could try stealing IDs pretending to verify you 😌

  • Deflated0ne@lemmy.world
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    24 days ago

    Pretty much every company that matters decided to go full 1984 censorship and surveillance all at the same time. And the governments are more than happy to play along. UK, US, etc. Pretty much all of “the west”

  • Jhex@lemmy.world
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    23 days ago

    Could? go publicly criticize the Pedo in chief and watch what happens

    • ameancow@lemmy.world
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      23 days ago

      The idea that America EVER had free fucking speech is propaganda. There is no such thing, not in the US and not anywhere. Nations have to control their propaganda or they lose their power. Want an example? Just log into your favorite feed-site in another country and look how radically different every post, every comment and every news story is. Our perspective in the US is as cultivated as it is anywhere else.

      The only way we would ever have truly free speech in any capacity would be if we had a borderless world, and I don’t see that happening as long as we have money and classes.

      Short of some alien species descending and absorbing everyone into a hive-mind, this isn’t going to change for a thousand years at least.

  • Basic Glitch@sh.itjust.works
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    24 days ago

    I think it’s odd (and pretty terrifying) the U.K. and U.S. have been on such similar and almost coordinated authoritarian tracks over the last few years. It started with a lot of gradual steps and more recently they seem to be ramping things up (which also seems pretty common for authoritarianism/by the time most people notice something weird is happening it’s too late).

    Both ramping up A.I. to spy on, and control/micromanage their own civilians while refusing regulations or any public accountability for the A.I. they’re developing.

    April 2024: U.S., U.K. Announce Partnership to Safety Test AI Models

    Feb 2025: UK and US refuse to sign international AI declaration

    May 2025: Brexit’s Failures Could Foreshadow Trump’s. Just Not in the Way You Might Think.

  • Plebcouncilman@sh.itjust.works
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    25 days ago

    Hasn’t Britain always been like this? Are people generally upset about this or just a vocal online minority? I mean I would never support something like this but if the people support it well, it’s their will.

    • Lumisal@lemmy.world
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      25 days ago

      Yeah, the younger ones don’t remember all the dystopic shit under Thatcher. Sure analog cameras in every corner isn’t as effective as AI monitoring 24/7, but it’s not like the intention was different.

  • Dr. Moose@lemmy.world
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    24 days ago

    Britain never had free speech and always have been a absolute nanny state. It’s a prime example that government overreach does not result in any safety improvements.

    • nlgranger@lemmy.world
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      23 days ago

      Many people seem to ignore that british legislation is choke full of gag laws and restrictions on pretty fundamental rights.

  • x0x7@lemmy.world
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    25 days ago

    Don’t you guys cheer ending free speech anytime you are in power? I’m all for you joining the team, but please stop vilifying the people who got there before you.