Fantastic article, and a real concern for UK Citizens.

Interesting, the government can demand creating a backdoor and doesn't let anyone tell about it. Basically, outlawing E2EE.

It's crazy SimpleX is fine being based there. I mean, everything is open, the clients have reproducible builds, but it seems like it may end up being a hassle.

Has the UK started attacking any open source E2EE projects yet?

Apple's control over iOS is the main reason I prefer GrapheneOS so much over it. You get amazing privacy and security without sacrificing control. GrapheneOS has said they won't introduce age verification and a backdoor they obviously won't implement.

If Bill left the UK temporarily would the ability to turn on ADP come back? Or is a device from the UK that’s not able to enroll somehow prevented forever? Not saying that this makes it OK, just curious

I think country is associated with the iCloud/Apple ID account, not the physical device.

You can switch your Apple ID's region to another country, enable ADP then revert your account's region back to the United Kingdom. You've got to leave Family Sharing first and may also need to adjust/cancel subscriptions - I don't think it's totally straightforward.

What a crazy answer you've written. In the sense of: it's wild that the procedure is like that.

It's almost as wild as when during the pandemic "lockdown", planes had to take off, burn tonnes of fuel and land empty some minutes later at the same airport, because there's some fucking law about landing spots and how they'd be lost if that bullshit wasn't done.

I changed countries a few months ago. It took me about two months with all the roadblocks, while I already had government issued proofs from both countries about the change and new address.

Why did it take 2 months and proofs to change your country on a private platform? Could you have created a new account and avoided that headache?

AFAIK reverting region to UK wont work. First of all you cant change regions more often than a year (or close to it).

Also if you do revert account to UK you will get a warning that you either need to disable ADP or lose access to iCloud features.

What does the region even do? why not just stay in france mode?

The Apple-vs-FBI narrative is constructed fiction. Sure, they didn't make a custom firmware to dump the phone's contents, but that's irrelevant. Everything relevant to the investigation on that phone was in the non-E2EE iCloud Backup, which the FBI got from Apple long before, via normal search warrant means. Apple likely either got an FAA702 order (aka PRISM, aka the "backdoor" that Tim Apple says doesn't exist - it allows the USG to access anyone's iCloud data immediately, with no warrant (it's not an encryption backdoor, just an access backdoor)) or a standard search warrant and most probably turned over everything they had in iCloud instantly, just as they do constantly when receiving a search warrant or FAA702 order. (As I mentioned, the FAA702 order fulfillment is likely instantaneous/automated, which amounts to direct access to the storage servers.)

The whole "Apple won't do what the USG wants" story is farce, engineered specifically to protect Apple's brand image. Following the Snowden drop when we all learned that the USG has unfettered realtime access to everything in iCloud without a warrant via FAA702, Apple had a major fucking crisis on its hands, along with a lot of other companies. (If you think the CIA can't read any object in S3, you simply don't understand how the world works. Note also that AWS has built a custom, one-off, airgapped AWS region ON PREM for the CIA. https://aws.amazon.com/federal/us-intelligence-community/ )

Those CEOs all went to DC and sat down with Obama and talked it out. The official cover story was something like "Obama wants help with healthcare.gov".

The top leaders from the world’s biggest technology companies pressed their case for reform of the National Security Agency’s controversial surveillance operations at a meeting with President Obama on Tuesday, resisting attempts by the White House to portray the encounter as a wide-ranging discussion of broader priorities.

https://www.businessinsider.com/tech-ceo-meeting-with-obama-... (includes photo)

It is very likely that this media plan was discussed and agreed upon in those meetings. Otherwise, nobody sane in any government in Europe would ever buy an iPhone (or let their citizens do same), given that the USG can read all their photos and messages and emails and contacts in iCloud instantly and without a warrant.

(China of course requires Apple run the iCloud servers for Chinese users in China via a joint venture with a CCP-operated company, which preserves the same realtime full access to all iCloud/iMessage data in China for the CCP as PRISM does for the USG.)

Don't believe the marketing hype.

Further reading:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM

The Snowden releases support very plainly the direct realtime access of the US intelligence community to tech company servers without search warrants (just FISA orders).

It is the single most used data source by the US intelligence community.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Prism_slide_5.jpg

Apple began providing such data in October 2012.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:PRISM_Collection_Det...

https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/new-slides-reveal-gr...

If it was irrelevant then why did the FBI make such a big deal about it? Are you saying the FBI did that just to make Apple look good? Why would they care about Apple's reputation?

The UK is becoming 1984.

Border agents in America can search your phone or laptop without a warrant or sufficient suspicion at the border.

Jeff Gray is a man who regularly gets arrested and/or trespassed from public places for holding up a sign saying "God bless the homeless vets". Seems to happen nearly every time he does it at various locations.

Oh, and flock cameras and ICE aren't exactly a sign that America is this beacon of freedom that it likes to portray.

What does the comment you’re replying to have to do with the US?

This reads like Soviet-era whataboutism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes

I think he's just suggesting this isn't isolated to the UK and is a trending global issue.

Back in the early 00s the UK seemed to go all in on mass surveillance, with massive amount of cameras in public places and all that. I still remember how shocking it all looked even from Canada. So these 1984 parallels are certainly not a new development.

US has Flock, ICE, PRISM and many other privacy horrors. I would much rather live in the UK than in the land of orange.

Very well written article.

It relays my main concern which is that while current governments may use this in moderation and under judicial oversight, future ones may not. And we should build tools for the future not just for now.

There’s a general regression towards fascist and right wing ideologies in the last few years and I don’t want to be up against a wall one day because someone did something with ignorant best intent.

Very well written article

It is self-evidently written by AI. You can tell from both tropes such as “To bring this into sharper focus” and the fact that it is entirely without an opinion or argument for most of the piece.

No need to speculate that the UK government "might" one day become the bad guys: they already arrest over 30 people a day for speech that offends the prevailing political orthodoxy.

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/steveforbes/2025/09/09/people-a...

How many of those 30 are unarguably "bad" posts though? Threats of violence and so forth.

250 years ago some people made some bad posts about throwing some tea into the harbor. Calling for revolution isn't a bad post.

Big fucking difference between saying you want to throw some tea into a harbor vs inciting that hotels containing asylum seekers should be burnt down.

That's charitable to say that nobody was saying anything except for "let's drown that tea".

Weird that you think it was legal for people to say "kill the king" back then.

Diffrence being state did not have control to stop disgruntled people from organizing. And it might be that preventing such formations is actually detrimental long run.

The state did everything they could to prevent it back then, just as they do right now.

I'd argue that nothing is "inarguable"

And I'd argue that human dignity shall be inviolable

The chronically online anti-uk folks like to turn a blind eye to anything that’s justifiable for matter of principal.

It’s why the US has such a problem with gun control and laws.

I could argue everyone should have guns, and it’s just bad people, right?

Right. Switzerland has 100x guns per capita than UK and 2x less intentional homicides than UK.

I don't know, but the UK has criminalized expressions of support for Palestine Action.

They're dragging grannies off to prison just for holding up signs, and literally accusing them of supporting terrorism.

Well they proscribed PA, and showing support for a proscribed organisation _is_ a crime.

But should that be possible?

I dislike harassing, threats, hate speech and everything wrong that people yell to other people.

But I dislike even more that we decide that the solution to it is to pass laws prohibiting speech, and even more that the ones in charge of passing those laws are very incentivised to prohibiting criticism to themselves or their policies or their ideologies.

Why is speech a specific, precise red line? Yelling "fire" in a crowded theatre (and I'm aware that the case which coined this phrase was completely stupid, but the phrase itself stands) should probably not be legal, even though it is speech.

I’d say it is a very low quality article. There is very little detail about what the offending speech actually includes. For example:

The wife of a conservative politician was sentenced to 31 months in prison for what police said was an unacceptable post.

What did she say? The article does not elucidate.

Inciting violence for example is not legal. I believe spaces around abortion clinics are also to be free from demonstrations. US free speech absolutists seem to vehemently disagree until you say something unkind about Charlie Kirk or ICE.

The low point might be quoting Elon Musk. This is true in any context, but in particular here. The scandal is real, but none of it is about people being arrested for non-politically-correct speech.

There’s plenty of otherwise real stuff to poke the UK about.

I don't have time to dig up her post - but she was calling on people to set fire to hotels housing asylum seekers - she had around 10,000 followers, and her post was read 300,000 times: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5yl7p4l11po

I am disappointed in most reporting on this case. I wish they would include what she actually said. Here is the full tweet:

Mass deportation now, set fire to all the fucking hotels full of the bastards for all I care, while you’re at it take the treacherous government and politicians with them. I feel physically sick knowing what these families will now have to endure. If that makes me racist so be it

[0] https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Connolly...

31 months for that is ridiculously low, especially with the rising prevalence of stochastic terrorism.

"Stochastic terrorism" accusations and charges only seem to flow in one direction.

“Kill those motherfuckers. Let the streets soak in their red, capitalist blood, dude.” - Hasan Piker on landlords

That Hasan guy is American right? Unsurprisingly British laws need not apply.

I don't think that statement would go down too well here, but even then context is very important for incitement to violence. Considering people were and did set fire to hotels I think it was worthwhile investigating.

UK abortion clinic laws go a lot further than banning demonstrations.

1. Holding up a sign offering help to any women being coerced into an abortion is illegal. 2. Standing silently on the road near one can be illegal. 3. parking a car with a bumper sticker near one can be illegal.

The whole paragraph about Musk and rape gangs is nonsense, of course. The biggest rape gang ever convicted in the UK was entirely white. Musk and his ilk only care about rape when the rapists are not white. On average immigrants are slightly less likely to commit sexual assaults (obviously averaging across many different groups).

What did she say? The article does not elucidate.

She called for hotels housing asylum seekers to be burned. I think she is a nasty racist but I also think the sentence was excessive and I am not convinced it was a serious incitement to violence (and that was not what she was convicted of).

US free speech absolutists seem to vehemently disagree until you say something unkind about Charlie Kirk or ICE.

Not American, and I entirely support the right of anyone to make unkind comments about anyone else. You are right that many people apply different standards to their own side, but right wing Americans are are from alone in that.

Musk and his ilk care about dog whistle topics that can be used to trigger people into supporting them.

The emphasis on 'rape gangs', 'immigrants' and 'asylum seekers' isn't just objectively untrue, it's cynically manipulative. It's fundamentally a toxic and calculated form of marketing and branding.

And also a cynical distraction from - for example - the Epstein story and Musk's appearances in it.

There was a lot of this around Brexit. Many supporters voted to 'stop them coming over here'.

The government then ramped up immigration - a lot. For some reason the press failed to report this.

Everyone should read the case of the IT consultant getting arrested in the UK because he posted a photo of him doing some target shooting during a trip to the US: https://www.lbc.co.uk/article/consultant-arrested-linkedin-s...

Stories like this quickly put to rest the idea that everyone who gets arrested must actually deserve it. The bar for posting content that violates the law is very low.

There was also the tragic story of the Cambridge professor who was completely unqualified and had a fake life story. When journalists would get close to the story he would report them to the police for harassment to spike the stories.

In this particular case, the IT consultant was owed money by a failing business, and he put 1) a picture of the business premises, and 2) pictures of him firing guns, on a website where he was sure the business owner would see it.

That's textbook intimidation, which in certain cases is a crime in the UK, and even some US states. You can also do it offline, for example, by sending a letter to the victim containing a photograph of the front of their house, and a photograph of you firing guns. The implication is pretty straightforward and doesn't even need to be stated: "I have guns and I know where you live. Pay me that money you owe me or I might use them." That implication is still there, for the victim, even if you add surface text like "Hey everyone look at these cool things!"

Only _after_ he was arrested, and the police went looking around his house for guns... did he admit that the pictures were taken overseas, he doesn't actually own the guns. And yet that's what the article leads with, like it was a known fact from the get-go and those silly-billy police knew that but went looking for them in the UK anyway.

This article is a great lesson in how to mislead without saying anything untrue.

His own words in a different article make the reason for the arrest clear:

https://nypost.com/2025/12/04/us-news/british-man-says-he-wa...

“The arrest was based on two separate social media posts,” he said. “One was the photo of myself with the shotgun, [...] And the second one was my LinkedIn banner at the top of the page.”

“I used the photo my business partner took on his premises as a header photo on LinkedIn with the intention he would look at that and go, ‘Why’s this guy posting that? I’d better call him and find out rather than dodging me’ as it had done for months,” he said.

EDIT 2: for avoidance of doubt, he did three days in a row of LinkedIn blog posts, where

1) his PFP at the time (shown in the top-right corner) was a picture of the business premises

2) the text of the post talked about the "delinquent client"

3) the post ended with a no-context-given picture of him posing with guns

Example: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jonrichelieu-booth_jonthehash...

EDIT: and your second example is also dangerously misleading. Jason Arday (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jason_Arday) and/or his university reported 2 professors and 1 journalist to the police, pretending their requests for comment on his plagiarism were harrassment. For all three reports, police chose to take no action (nonetheless it still had a chilling effect on speech). What spiked the story is that Jason Arday and/or his university got very expensive reputation lawyers Carter-Fuck to send a C&D to the journalist's newspaper, promising expensive litigation if they published the story. That is what spiked the story, not intimidation via false harassment claims. Expensive lawyers making baseless threats work equally well in the US and UK to chill legal speech, it's not a policy issue.

Your own quote clearly says it was “two separate social media posts”. The article I linked clearly says he was arrested for one count of stalking and another account of suspicion of possession of a firearm:

A week later, on August 23, the officers returned and arrested him on suspicion of possessing a firearm with intent to cause fear of violence and another allegation of stalking related to a photograph of a house that appeared on his social media.

You’re trying hard to link the two as “textbook intimidation” but the firearm post that triggered this was just a vacation photo and post about his vacation.

You’re being misleading by saying he “posted them to a website” without explaining that what you mean by “website” is that he posted them on his personal social media.

For all three reports, police chose to take no action (nonetheless it still had a chilling effect on speech).

Incorrect to say the police “took no action”. They contacted the journalist and instructed him to desist. The police later admitted it was a mistake to pursue the case. It says all of this in the link you used:

Arday made a complaint about Grove to the Metropolitan Police, alleging harassment that was affecting his mental health; the police asked Grove to desist from further contact with Arday.[80] Mark Rowley, Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, later said that the complaint about Grove should not have been taken forward.[81]

It’s confusing that you’re trying to claim the police “took no action” when they admitted fault for following through with the complaint and they told the reporter to desist.

Expensive lawyers making baseless threats work equally well in the US and UK to chill legal speech, it's not a policy issue.

If the expensive lawyers are equal in the UK and US, then that’s not the important point of this story. It’s the part about him engaging the police and the police following through with it.

I also strongly disagree that it’s equivalent in the US. That expensive legal firm would be utilizing the maximum extent of the laws available to them in the UK, which includes the very harassment laws we’re talking about!

You can’t say it’s “not a policy issue” by pointing to literal lawyers who are using the law.

arrested on... another [count] of suspicion of possession of a firearm:

That's not how it works. You get arrested on suspicion, the cops figure out if you actually did it or not, once they know you did it they charge you with counts of actual offences (not suspicions).

> arrested on... another [count] of suspicion of possession of a firearm:

That's not how it works. You get arrested on suspicion, the cops figure out if you actually did it or not, once they know you did it they charge you with counts of actual offences (not suspicions).

Isn’t that literally what the quote, which was from the article, says? It didn’t contain the word “count”. You added that. The quote says he was arrested on suspicion.

"account" appears to be a simple autocorrect typo of "count" since the other half of the sentence is about "count"

No, I'm saying the word "count" doesn't appear in the quote in the article.

This is the quote from the article:

> A week later, on August 23, the officers returned and arrested him on suspicion of possessing a firearm

You falsely added "[count]" to the quote and then argued about the count, which isn't in the quote.

You can’t say it’s “not a policy issue” by pointing to literal lawyers who are using the law.

It's not a UK speech policing policy issue, the topic of your post. The criminal law doesn't support Arday using false claims of harrassment to deter journalists.

You could say it's a worldwide civil law policy issue in terms of barratry / SLAPPs / cost of litigation / etc. No country, certainly not the US, has sufficient protection for whistleblowers against well-resourced litigants, and it is they (not the UK criminal law) who are successfully chilling speech.

It's not a UK speech policing policy issue

It's the thing we're talking about.

The UK law was used to get police involved and the police told the journalist to desist.

You could say it's a worldwide civil law policy issue

The fact that lawsuits exist everywhere does not make it equal everywhere.

We're talking about the UK's specific laws.

Are you really defending Arday harassing journalists through the police and being overjoyed because just this time the police was not overzealous enough to arrest them (very likely they were fine only thanks to the huge media attention)? Unbelievable.

Well he's dead now in no small part because he was 100% correct that partisan activists amplified by friendly "journalists' would follow the usual playbook of creating a reality distortion field by repeatedly lying and republishing each others half truths and outright lies into a massive gish gallop.

He is dead because he killed himself because his web of lies was unraveling.

Same question as always. What were the lies? Because all the ones I've seen were either found to be true or they were exaggerated versions of statements and then attacking that as a lie.

Especially rich to talk about habitual liars when it's a bunch of British press outlets and activists accusing others of being liars.

https://gidmk.substack.com/p/the-jason-arday-saga-is-terribl...

1 The Racism Of It All: It is not news when white men commit academic misconduct. It gets reported in a handful of stories, there’s a bit of media attention, but everyone quickly forgets about the problems.

2 Arday Was Definitely Guilty: The second point is somehow even more frustrating. Yes, Jason Arday was hounded by a society that demands different standards for young Black men than white guys. Yes, the amount of scrutiny he received was obviously connected to the colour of his skin. But also, he definitely did plagiarize. And not just a little bit. His work is riddled with clear, obvious, and extensive theft from other published academic papers.

You do not need to trust race realists or other unpleasant people. Just download the thesis and check for yourself. It is clear that a significant portion of the thesis was copied directly from other people’s work. This is not in doubt, it’s not in question, and the fact that so many people online are arguing that the plagiarism charges are false because a university said so is deeply depressing. It’s arguably the worst case of plagiarism I’ve ever seen.

Whatever your thoughts on plagiarism, it’s clear that Arday’s work harmed very few people. As he himself said, “I didn't murder somebody”. If he hadn’t been a Black academic and a poster child for diversity at Cambridge university, we’d probably have never known his name.

You sound like one of the Arday Truthers:

https://archive.is/KkqkY

For some of Arday’s supporters, acknowledging that any of the media scrutiny was justified has become tantamount to siding with his “killers.” He is instead a martyr—the victim of a “lynching”—and the inconvenient fact of his fabulism must be tidied away from the virtual shrine. This is an emotional position rather than a rational one, and its very indefensibility makes it a greater demonstration of tribal loyalty. Insisting that the academic was completely innocent, in the face of all the evidence, sends a strong social signal that you hate the right-wing media and care about racism.

The postmortem airbrushing of Arday’s story also ignores how that story twisted and turned while he was alive. When The Guardian confronted him with the implausibility of some of his tall tales, Arday responded by editing them in real time: Yes, he had once claimed to have run 600 miles in six days, an exceptional feat for an endurance athlete, but what he actually meant was that he took daylong rest breaks in between. Yes, he had claimed to have raised more than £5 million for charity, but actually this was with the help of “many fundraising collectives” whose participants he could not name because they had signed nondisclosure agreements.

As they might say on Reddit, "Everybody Sucks Here". Arday the fabulist and plagiarist, the academic institutions who didn't vet him because they were razzle-dazzled by his bullshit lifestory (then drop him like a stone when their attempts to keep his plagiarism hidden don't work any more), the popular press who are happy to amp up a public shaming for clicks and views, the anti-woke and the racists who say this just confirms what they thought about DEI, and the anti-anti-woke and anti-racists who will deny the bleeding obvious if it makes them appear virtuous to their peers.

Argh yes, context. I was wondering why the police were doing what they were doing. Police don't randomly do that to someone, there had to be a reason. Context is king.

Read the actual articles the person linked. The comment you’re replying to uses weasel words like saying “put them on a website” to conceal the fact that the “website” was the guy posting different unrelated things on his social media feed.

In the second case, the person involved was weaponizing the police against a journalist who had uncovered something about a completely unqualified university professor who had a fraudulent background story. The police didn’t do it “randomly”. The professor knew how to use the laws to intimidate and silence his critics (when even the GP comment admits).

Even the police later admitted they should not have gone as far as they did.

The website, which is also his social media feed, is LinkedIn. Both the header image (of the ower's premises) and pictures of the owee shooting guns are on the same site. Hence the complaint of intimidation from the ower.

In the second case, once again you repeat your nonsense. The chilling effect the police had, a wrong in and of itself, did not put the journalist off publishing.

You can read the journalist's own words right here: https://www.timeshighereducation.com/opinion/i-was-reported-...

Despite the thoroughness of my investigation, THE did not run the story. While I was personally disappointed, I understood; by this point, Arday’s solicitors had been in touch with THE and it was clear that the story could tie the publication up in months of expensive litigation. Even if we were right – and I stand by my reporting – it would have been ruinously expensive.

You want to say POLICE POLICE POLICE were chilling speech here. Bullshit. It was LAWYERS LAWYERS LAWYERS suppressing the story.

You want to say POLICE POLICE POLICE were chilling speech here. Bullshit.

You're the only person in this thread using the phrase "chilling speech" and you keep admitting that they did.

Let me quote you on this topic:

The chilling effect the police had, a wrong in and of itself,

In the case of the journalist Arday reported in 2025, police again did not arrest or charge him, but they (wrongly, in my opinion) phoned him and asked him not to contact Arday. This had a chilling effect

For all three reports, police chose to take no action (nonetheless it still had a chilling effect on speech).

These are all three your own quotes from this thread. The last quote isn't even accurate because the police DID take action in the form of contacting the journalist and telling him to desist.

In this particular case, the IT consultant was owed money by a failing business, and he put 1) a picture of the business premises, and 2) pictures of him firing guns, on a website where he was sure the business owner would see it.

From your own link, this was from 2 separate posts. I don't know man, this sounds like an excuse from the company to cause trouble and avoid having to pay the owed money.

Also the “website where he was sure the business owner would see it” is a cheap way to hide the fact that he posted on his on LinkedIn, which he used as his social media network. You can just say LinkedIn. We know what LinkedIn is.

I'm glad you know what LinkedIn is.

Now imagine you owe this guy money, he's admitted in public that he put a picture of your business premises at the top of every blog post he makes on LinkedIn in order to get your attention, and his latest blog posts on the LinkedIn website therefore shows YOUR WORKPLACE and HIM SHOOTING GUNS.

Juxtaposition that he admits he wants you to see.

You can read all three blogposts. Note he has switched out the picture of the workplace (top-right PFP):

1. https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jonrichelieu-booth_jonthehash...

Top of my agenda Today is getting a follow-up email to the Secretary of State for Business and Trade regarding my delinquent Client

"delinquent client" and no mention of why there's a picture of him with guns or where it was taken

2. https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jonrichelieu-booth_jonthehash...

I am disappointed that absolutely nothing has come back from the Secretary of State for Business and Trade (OR his Department) regarding my delinquent Client.. this is concerning as despite continuing to owe me

"delinquent client" who "owes" him and once again, picture of him shooting guns apropos of nothing, nothing explaining where he is, whose guns they are, just him shooting guns. Guess he just likes to shoot guns while talking about his "delinquent client" who "owes" him and he's put a picture of the delinquent client's premises as his PFP.

3. https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jonrichelieu-booth_jonthehash...

Today I'll be following up on my message to the Yorkshire Post by calling the Secretary of State for Business and Trade regarding my delinquent Client.. it's become necessary given what the Owner of said Client is currently doing. I'm also going to escalate my concerns to North Yorkshire Police, then I'll grab the Popcorn and see where this goes.

And again no-context gun photo to add to the blog post about his delinquent client

Hopefully you can understand why the guy who owes him money would feel intimidated and call the police, and you can see why there appears to be enough evidence to charge the guy for harrassing the ower, and to arrest him so you can establish if he possesses the guns he has posted himself shooting.

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jonrichelieu-booth_jonthehash...

Today I'll be following up on my message to the Yorkshire Post by calling the Secretary of State for Business and Trade regarding my delinquent Client.. it's become necessary given what the Owner of said Client is currently doing. I'm also going to escalate my concerns to North Yorkshire Police, then I'll grab the Popcorn and see where this goes.

Wait, this is the threat?

I'm bewildered this could be grounds for an arrest. That's pretty scary.

I don't know about that case, but the bar is as low as it can be anyways. Hapless UK police are willing to play attack dog for nearly anyone.

Someone got arrested and intimidated by police because they criticized someone with even only a modicom of authority: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/mar/29/parents-arre...

Imagine getting six police officers sent to your house and spending 11 hours at a police station for causing "disharmony" by disagreeing with how your daughter's school operates in a WhatsApp group. In a sensible country that might've been a phone call or a single officer stopping to chat and defusing the situation if police decided to get involved at all.

they already arrest over 30 people a day for speech that offends the prevailing political orthodoxy.

This is completely false and comes from a commonly misrepresented statistic; '30 arrests a day' is plainly the arrests made under section 127 of the Communications Act 2003 and section 1 of the Malicious Communications Act 1988 which includes things like online stalking and harassment. I hope you're just mistaken and not willfully implying that those issues are merely offensive to the prevailing political orthodoxy.

You can't argue with data that doesn't exist, either. The arrests are not broken down, so nobody really knows. Both sides can argue their opinion

You can argue it's highly improbable that all arrests are over 'hurty words online', definitely – but anyone claiming zero arrests seems improbable too.

I do also feel it's quite convenient that the lack of breakdown allows people to clap back with accusations of encouraging stalking and harassment.

If they'd wanted the data, they could have submitted an FOI and asked for it, but the journalists far preferred to just run "30 people a day arrested for hurty words" rather than "this is quite complicated but potentially problematic and we should dig into it"

No one is encouraging you to argue with data that doesn't exist and no one is claiming that no arrests are being made over political speech online. I don't disagree with your third paragraph but it seems clear to me that my original statement stands and it's quite suspicious that you responded it to with these strawmen.

no one is claiming that no arrests are being made over political speech online

Just very heavily implying it, thinking they're being clever

You can get arrested for making a joke that might offend someone in a private whatsapp group. Doesn't even have to be political.

I think this is the link where the chap asks for legal advice: https://www.reddit.com/r/LegalAdviceUK/comments/1vxkcic/poli...

Since Reddit is now login-walled, can you share what it says?

Does this work?

----

Police have arrested and questioned 3 of my mates from our private WhatsApp group chat. They're asking to speak to me too, but I'm working abroad.

They've all been arrested and had interviews under s127 of the Communications Act.

There's 4 of us in a group chat on WhatsApp where we chat and also make some edgy jokes and stuff. We're two white, an Indian and a black guy who studied at uni together.

All three of them have been arrested and interviewed today. I don't know anyrhing more than this. This info comes from their gf and fiance.

I'm working abroad but I have received a WhatsApp message and attempted call from a UK officer who identified himself wanting to speak to me about an ongoing enquiry into a reported issue.

My mate's fiance says it was reported by another guy's ex who he dumped 4 weeks ago. I'm inclined to believe that as the officer's message said he was acting on a report.

The thing is, we shared a lot of edgy jokes beteen us - but it was literally just the 4 of us in a private fucking chat. Some of the jokes we made were racisr, but they were all banter directed at each other. Others were just taking the piss out of the major news events like saying "Who needs people flying planes when our own shitty buildings just burn themselves down?" about Grenfell.

It's crass, but it's literally just us talking shit in private. These messages arent public or anything.

I can't get through to any of the guys. Is this something the police are actually going to try and prosecute?!

At this point should I just not come home? I'm dual Austrian-British and Austria doesn't extradite to the UK.

Reddit often contains completely made up but believeable bullshit, so I wouldn't cite anything you see there. Every single post or comment could be a creative writing exercise to gain karma or sow discord.

However, if you want hard evidence what that post was claiming, I can give you a real citation from 2018:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-46106224

A house linked to an "offensive" video showing a model of Grenfell Tower being burned on a bonfire has been searched by police. Six men [...] were arrested on suspicion of a public order offence and have been released under investigation. A video shared on social media shows a cardboard model of the tower being set alight by a laughing crowd.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-46112026

Can I be offensive in my own home?

Basically, yes. [...] if you make offensive comments in your home and they are recorded and posted online, it might be possible that you could be prosecuted.

Subjects, not citizens.

The British Government has be consistently violating people's rights for decades and probably well before that.

Recently I saw a clip on GB News where one of their analyst said that anyone that opposes a war and/or conscription with Russia will need to put in prison. The show host, Jacob Rees Mogg and Lord Redwood saw nothing wrong with the statements.

None of these people have been in the armed forces and are too old to be called up for conscription.

and probably well before that.

319 years, 4 months, 3 weeks, 2 days to be exact.

What was the speech? I can't read beyond the paywall.

https://archive.is/TOKiC

Anyone old enough to remember the London riots should remember the fact that the acting government issued a D notice to all broadcasters, preventing them from reporting the issue.

This is part of what started the death of BBM and proliferation of news via social media. You’d go on Twitter and see all the reports or riots and burning buildings then go to the BBC and… nothing.

All of this is to say that successive British governments, over a span of decades, have been actively destroying freedom of speech and a right to privacy for its citizens.

With AI and the rise of populism combined with the absolute decimation of the average person’s attention span it is going to get a lot worse.

This is wrong. The BBC were reporting on it in detail both online and on TV news. I know this because I was actually working on contract for them at the time.

What we have is a lot of people changing the narrative since to discredit the BBC and divide everyone further.

yes, its not legal to harass women getting an abortion. That includes being in a given range of an abortion clinic and making a political statement. What part of that is hard to understand?

People know the laws and yet they still do it thinking they're some sort of Catholic Batman. You want to change the law, do what we all do; write to your fucking MP, join a political party, campaign, donate. Don't harass someone vulnerable in a difficult state of mind and impose your morality upon them. Respect their choice and their agency.

In the US you can be arrested for the following speech:

* true threats of violence

* incitement to break the law specifically

* crimes of speech: soliciting crime, fraudulent representations, lying under oath

* stalking/cyberstalking

So lets quit this idea that its some abstract of "political orthodoxy". Stop framing crime as "difference of opinion". Hate speech and incitement to racial/religious hatred or violence are crimes here. People publishing hate speech online and then being all Pikachu face when they get arrested for breaking the law are not victims. The highest profile pretend victim was the wife of a Conservative Councillor who posted a message online that hundreds of thousands of people saw that encouraged people to set fire to hotels where asylum seekers were staying. The judges sentencing remarks were particularly eye opening given she demonstrated a relative lack of respect for the court ("If I get in trouble then I'll play the mental health card").

Do you worry that if your worst enemies were in power, something that you or a friend might say would lead to an arrest?

Who decides what is hate speech? Apparently the current UK government has decided these things (among others) are so hateful their perpetrators must be arrested:

- private WhatsApp chats between friends

- standing still in public with hands folded in prayer

Be careful when you give sharp tools to the golem.

Do you worry that if your worst enemies were in power, something that you or a friend might say would lead to an arrest?

I don't appreciate this thin end of the wedge argument. Policy is more pragmatic. Read up on what most of mainland Europe had to do in order to suppress all the Hitler Youth children after the second world war. They oppressed their free speech and it was the right thing to do.

Who decides what is hate speech?

The rules are there for everyone to read[0]. If you want a rule of thumb, don't discriminate based on any aspect of the Equalities Act 2010 and you'll be fine.

[0] https://www.cps.gov.uk/prosecution-guidance/racist-and-relig...

standing still in public with hands folded in prayer

Don't whitewash this shit. You know full well what we're talking about is specifically going to a place that you know you're not allowed to be in, doing a protest you're not allowed to do. Playing with the line is still taking the piss and the UK believe in the spirit of the law to avoid all this mucking about with the specification. Otherwise I can block traffic all day and make up some bullshit excuse as to how I'm somehow innocent. These are feeble excuses that Palestine in Action would be proud of.

private WhatsApp chats between friends

As far as I'm aware the only case of this being the primary cause of a conviction was when police officers were arrested for grossly offensive messages. However they weren't charged with hate speech but rather: improper use of a public electronic communications network. 12 weeks in jail. They were discovered because it was the same group chat that Wayne Couzens (also a police officer at the time) was in, who is currently serving a life sentence for the kidnap, rape and murder of Sarah Everard.

Don't whitewash this shit. You know full well what we're talking about is specifically going to a place that you know you're not allowed to be in, doing a protest you're not allowed to do. Playing with the line is still taking the piss and the UK believe in the spirit of the law to avoid all this mucking about with the specification. Otherwise I can block traffic all day and make up some bullshit excuse as to how I'm somehow innocent. These are feeble excuses that Palestine in Action would be proud of.

I don't think you know what happened. At least one case was a person standing quietly outside on a public sidewalk while not impeding traffic or people walking.

At best you can say it is loitering.

within the range of an abortion clinic. The UK has the spirit of the law. We don't tolerate people dicking about with the definition.

Isabel Vaughan-Spruce is the campaign director of 40 Days for Life Birmingham, which organises prayer vigils near abortion clinics, and a leader of March for Life UK.

She wasn't just "standing and praying". There's significant context.

First, she was not, at the time of arrest, holding a prayer vigil. She was by herself.

Second, if it was a legitimate arrest why was she was paid out by the government for a settlement?

Also, this has happened to multiple people who haven't organized prayer vigils in the past, not that it would matter if they had.

Isabel Vaughan-Spruce is an anti-abortion campaigner who is playing with the line that intends to prohibit what she does. This is theatre, its artificial news. Its someone intentionally going out into the world to play victim. Focusing on people like this is not a healthy way to understand the world.

DON'T PROTEST ABORTION NEAR OR OUTSIDE ABORTION CLINICS. Its that simple. If you're an anti-abortion campaigner, don't do your shit near abortion clinics.

I think the prosecution failed as it transpired the clinic had actually closed. Which demonstrates the issue. She was trying to get arrested so it didn't even matter that the clinic was operational.

The rules are there for everyone to read[0]. If you want a rule of thumb, don't discriminate based on any aspect of the Equalities Act 2010 and you'll be fine.

As usual, the written law only gives a vague outline, so people like you can defend it with motte-and-bailey. In practice, stickers with slogans such as "It's OK to be white" and "Natives losing jobs; migrants pouring in" get you sent to jail [1,2]. But I'm sure you're okay with banning "race hate" or "incitement", so here's a question for you - do you think "Black People!" by the poet laureate of New Jersey, Amiri Baraka, should be banned? Maybe even is already banned in the UK, since I'm sure their anti-hate laws are enforced evenly? Here are the lyrics:

You can’t steal nothin’ from a white man. He’s already stole it. He owes you anything you want, even his life. All the stores will open if you will say the magic words. The magic words are: Up against the wall M-Fer, this is a stick up! [..] Run up and down Broad Street, Negroes, take the shit you want. Take their lives if need be, but get what you what, what you need.

we're talking about is specifically going to a place that you know you're not allowed to be in, doing a protest you're not allowed to do.

"The law is good because you know you're not allowed to break the law." - yes, thank you, we know how laws work. That doesn't mean we agree with all of them. If she's not intimidating or obstructing anyone, she should be allowed.

However they weren't charged with hate speech but rather: improper use of a public electronic communications network.

"Impropriety" is an even lower and vaguer standard than "hate".

They were discovered because it was the same group chat that Wayne Couzens (also a police officer at the time) was in, who is currently serving a life sentence for the kidnap, rape and murder of Sarah Everard.

But he did not discuss or organize that murder on the chat, so this is just a sleazy attempt at guilt by association. Want to apply that standard evenly? Do you think everyone that shared group chats (where "improprieties" were spoken) with e.g. Tyler James Robinson, or Bryanna Dutcher, or Shannon Brandt, should go to jail? "Should" here refers to a moral, not legal standard - we're discussing what the law should be, not what it is, so don't bother with "laws in USA are different" counterarguments.

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c51zn2l33r9o

[2] https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/03/04/the-tyrannical-jail...

Sorry, how is [1] problematic exactly? Is this some yank shit where you're still so soft that you've managed to think that Neo-Nazism is ok?

so here's a question for you - do you think "Black People!" by the poet laureate of New Jersey, Amiri Baraka, should be banned?

Yeah understanding the UK in 2027 based on a poem written in 1967 New Jersey USA is a great idea. Keep them coming squire, what's next: should I write a paper on volcanism based on the lasagne I cooked last night? It was quite hot.

That doesn't mean we agree with all of them

that's fine. Just don't wutface when you get arrested and roll around on the floor like some kid in social acting all wounded.

But he did not discuss or organize that murder on the chat, so this is just a sleazy attempt at guilt by association.

Is this really the hill you want to die on? Protecting a bunch of people who were good mates with a rapist murderer cop and participated in his group chat. Lets dig further, I wonder what they talked about:

* sexually assaulting women

* blaming domestic abuse victims for repeated abuse

oh yeah. Huh.

Good job dodging all my questions.

you're still so soft that you've managed to think that Neo-Nazism is ok

Just make sure next time you defend censorship, that you open with "It's OK to be white" is Nazism and jailable, instead of hiding behind "don't discriminate and you'll be fine!"

Ofc you lead with the softest one:

* Britons Build Britain

* Equality or Quality – you can only have one

* Natives losing jobs; migrants pouring in

* We will be a minority in our homeland by 2066

* Diversity – designed to fail, built to replace

* Mass immigration is white genocide

* They seek conquest not asylum

* There is a war on whites

* Second-generation? Third? Fourth? You have to go back

* Stop immigration, start repatriation.

Ofc many of these are in violation of the Equalities Act 2010.

Idk wtf is going on in the US. Maybe you've conveniently forgotten WW2 but this shit is a thousand times more destructive then the thing it fears. If this shit isn't stamped on it gets us all killed. Nazism should always be illegal due to the tolerance paradox. It seeks to strip away people's rights, dehumanise them and murder them by initially claiming there is a specific filter that you're safe from. It then takes that same standard and applies it internally to any opposition without the filter. My grandparents were both part of that war. I haven't forgotten, you clearly have.

Hate speech and incitement to racial/religious hatred or violence are crimes here

Unless it's hate speech against "Zionists" and/or Jews , then it's tolerated, often celebrated. Not all hate speech is created equal.

https://www.foxnews.com/world/blogger-arrested-sharing-anti-...

So this is normal in your eyes?

reading fox news to understand the uk is not normal at all. You should seek help or better sources than "entertainment news".

You're too dumb to understand how media works in the year 2026, and I'm the one who needs to seek help. Hilarious. Fox News didn't break this story bud, the entire internet reshared it from UK sources.

Please don't lock me up for saying you're dumb by the way. I know that's probably a serious hate crime in your eyes.

Just checked - I’m on the lower tier. FFS

Getting really tired of the UK govs incompetence/maliciousness around digital law making

If you didn't want it before, you probably never will. It comes with a convenience cost and the risk you may permanently lose access to your iCloud stuff if you lose your password. With the normal level of privacy, Apple is there to help you or your loved ones get access to your stuff. Most people need that much more than they need inviolable privacy.

This’ll go down well (/s) but if you accept that the State has the right to be able to surveil public communications infrastructure (which it has been doing since paper mail was invented, through: radio, telegraph, telex, telephone, fax, email, and mobile telephony) then it’s not surprising certain commoditised public data handling services might be required to provide government access on demand or be restricted from implementing features that can effectively deny that access.

That angry’s up the blood of libertarians, but ultimately from the point of view of the State it has to be able to do its job of detecting and prosecuting serious crime, and it will redraw privacy lines whenever that is substantially impeded by new technology.

I genuinely believe that in 2015 Apple had the balls to resist and today they don't.

I am judging by a simple fact, that "please confirm your age" screen is now mandatory during the iPhone setup in all countries, and in some it's behind a KYC. I have a strong opinion that this is insane. And once they let the foot in the door - there is no closing it.

They never did. they had the balls to resist against western governments, where it was politically adventagous to do so. They folded to China real quick, because they wanted to make sales. All "icloud storage" in china has been on another storage platform, that follows all the local laws.

The only thing where they tried to push back very hard was the EU's DMA, beyond that they folded quickly to absolutely everything else.

Folding before China in China is not the same as folding before totalitarian western demands.

Why? They only disabled ADP in the UK, how is it different?

It isn't.

Except for where Western governments pearl clutch about freedom and how free and open they are unlike big, bad China and all that.

It is not like their HQ is in China. They chose to enter the Chinese market.

Every iPhone sold everywhere is manufactured in China. They make 34,000 iOS devices every hour, 24/7. That’s not possible anywhere else.

Apple is, from a purely practical standpoint, more a Chinese operation than an American one.

They could manufacture them in China, but not sell the phones there?

"please confirm your age" screen is now mandatory during the iPhone setup in all countries

Not quite.

The request to confirm age is there, but actually completing it isn't mandatory (though granted, it does leave an 'alert' thingy on your phone settings saying you haven't finished setting it up).

Apple routinely removes VPNs and other apps from App Store in Russia even though they supposedly left the market in 2022.

They obvioualy never ever resisted anything except its a good PR stunt.

Apple doesn't KYC in Russia though

We are quickly heading to a world where governments want us to KYC everything, and we saw with the Revolut breach what happens when very, very bad people gain access to our private data.

Is it required to KYC in those countries?

I'm generally okay with "how old are you?" without KYC and changeable later. It just allows apps and websites to display age-appropriate content.

I'm generally okay with "how old are you?"

It's a foot in the door. Once this question exists, the next logical one is "prove it".

Ok but my phone already asks me for my name, isn't that bad too?

Does it require you to prove your legal name?

Same with digital IDs (for example the EU one), where you'll have to install it to provide a "zero knowledge" proof today, and since you already have everything in your phone, it'll be easy to implement the "real name" policy when registering/commenting/etc.

I'm not aware of any EU project to make a smartphone literally mandatory (instead of just convenient). If they do, I'll buy a separate smartphone just to hold my ID.

Even in 2015 Apple put in backdoors. They have been really good at making people believe things that are not true. E.g. from the linked post:

iCloud already protects sensitive categories of data (like Passwords, Health data, Messages in iCloud, etc) with end-to-end encryption by default.

Except that there is a footnote in Apple's security document where they confirm that Messages in iCloud is not end-to-end encrypted if you don't enable ADP and have iCloud Backup enabled (which is probably most users):

Standard data protection: When iCloud Backup is enabled, the keys to your backups are secured in Apple data centers. If you use both iCloud Backup and Messages in iCloud, your backup includes a copy of the Messages in iCloud encryption key to help you recover your data.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/102651

So, there is always a backup of Messages in iCloud accessible to Apple and thus (US?) law enforcement, unless you enable ADP and the people you communicate with also use ADP.

WhatsApp is similar by the way. Unless you enable E2E backups, they end up in iCloud/Google Drive backups and are only encrypted at rest. Of the major messengers, I think only Signal completely opts out of iCloud backups and have their own real E2E-encrypted backups.

Even most technical people I talk to do not know this and don't have ADP enabled.

There are a lot of weak defaults like that.

I never had to confirm my age because my account is old enough to prove I must be old enough

A non-trivial reason I bought a fairly closed device (macbook) was that Tim Cook, at least publicly, told the FBI to get bent when asked to create a backdoor. Exactly what I want to see, a fight in court.

I would hope to see Apple pull out of the UK market over this, and certainly to stop selling Apple devices to the UK government and to remove the UK government entities from Apple services.

I love this. Apple aren't going to pull out of a market. They aren't pulling out of China for example.

oh, I know, but I wish they would. You can see what this looks like when someone like CMMG refuses to sell to specific law enforcement agencies based on local law.

Faced with a legal order that would have required it to change the security architecture on which ADP depended, Apple found a third option: stop offering the feature that made this dilemma exist in the first place. It reverted affected UK iCloud data to Standard Data Protection, where Apple does hold the keys and can respond to lawful legal procress (except the baseline categories that stay end-to-end encrypted either way). This satisfied the underlying legal requirement without ever building a ‘backdoor’.

Maybe Apple should withdraw all encryption support from all UK government accounts? The Prime Minister can use a Huawei or some chunky thing from a military contractor.

How are they allowed to even offer e2ee Keychain/iCloud Passwords for example? Isnt that subject to lawful access too?

Strange and hypothetical thought: could Bill purchase a US or international model of the iPhone with US or international iCloud account capable of ADP to activate ADP? Would this allow somebody living or working in the UK the ability to use ADP?

You can just register US Apple account or switch region to US and not bother with UK regulations.

Only disadvantage that you will need to pay fot services via US gift cards as you need US bank cards otherwise.

Anyone have any steps on how I can enable this in the UK? I guess I need to update my billing details to a non UK address and hop on a VPN or something?

You can change billing details to US and then activate US gift card that you can buy of Amazon.com.

But keep in mind you have to disable all subscriptions first and also your family group if you have one must also switch their accounts to US.

So yeah pretending you're US customer is no brainer with Apple and unlike Google they dont have automatic detection that will move your account to other region.

Beware you can only change account region once a year or something.

they dont have automatic detection

I thought they at least used something complex to attempt to prevent non-EU users using third-party app stores. I also recall a legitimate EU user is not allowed to travel abroad too long before losing access to those stores.

What I don't understand, or what I can only guess at, is the cabal & likely global network of interests that are behind the push for this kind of legislation to exists in the first place.

Some delusional "save the children" anti-privacy extremist doesn't have the political capital or the technical insight to convince the government to create a law to issue secret gag orders.

People with good civil intention don't just propose the idea, or get the momentum, to institutionalize such mechanisms.

So who are the major influencers, and their thoughts, for pushing this?

I don't think you need a huge, wide-ranging conspiracy to end up with a strong anti-privacy movement, even in a state which otherwise tries to defend consumer rights (in varying degrees of competency) for the most part.

I think you can just start with:

1. Campaigning on behalf of a worthy victim, or against a terrible enemy, is a good way to become more socially powerful. Most people are less willing to disagree with you when you do this because it risks introducing motive uncertainty - are you criticising the means because you truly object to the means, or are you criticising the means because you don't support the worthy victim or oppose the terrible enemy? This is a socially disadvantageous position to argue from.

2. Exploited children are worthy victims, and drug traffickers and terrorists are terrible enemies.

3. Therefore, policies that nominally protect children or oppose drug traffickers and terrorists are socially advantageous, and arguing for them is likely to increase your social power.

The means here are disproportionately likely to be done in a concealed way if the underlying policy is not broadly popular, independently of the effects it has on localised politcal arguments. Many people, myself included, don't support every political cause that helps a worthy victim or opposes a terrible enemy.

Social pressure is harder to apply at a distance, so the reality-warping effects of motive uncertainty are less powerful, so it makes sense that it's kept to private pressure groups and lobbying.

If ensuring digital devices can be accessed by law enforcement (are not "beyond the law") is so important where are the task forces shutting down crypto and networks using unregulated and anonymous currency? Literally follow the money, as they say. The current admin has 'made' millions if not more off his own fraudulent coin. Take down crypto and you stop crime instead of destroying privacy.

Did your bot malfunction and post in the wrong thread? "The current admin", this is a thread about the UK lmao.

What I don't understand is why Apple is even responding to this absurd demand. Completely banning Apple products in the UK isn't a realistic option for the government, so Apple could simply state openly that it does not cooperate with authoritarian regimes and actively prompt British users via a pop-up to enable ADP to protect themselves from the government.

It seems you are suggesting that if a private corporation (a foreign one at that) is large enough it should ignore the law of the country its operating in. I don't think you will like the consequences of such a situation, and will charitably assume you have just not thought your message through for even a second before posting it.

PS: If you think the British gov is authoritarian.. well, you might not know what the term means and/or anything about the spectrum of governments operating today or in the past.

If laws aren't transparent and reasonable, you shouldn't necessarily follow them. If I were to sell encryption software that's banned in Kazakhstan, you wouldn't expect me to stop selling to customers there, would you? I see no reason why the United Kingdom should be treated any differently than Kazakhstan in this case.

The British government is certainly not as authoritarian as those in China or Russia, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s still terrible and restricts people’s rights. For example, you can be detained for as long as they want if you refuse to unlock your encrypted device.

But apple also cannot just stop selling or supporting their product in the UK either. So that card is dropped from both sides. As long as apple is beholden to a few million costumers and subscribers to their services in the UK; UK law is able to pressure them, fine them and restrict them because of those users.

We don't want it the other way around; companies placed outside the borders doing and selling whatever they want without a care. So we end up in a negotiation.

Apple choose to maliciously comply; subtly revealing the TCN, giving all UK users notices about what their government demanded of them to encourage public outrage, and push on the correct parts of the UK government that has their interest in mind.

What happens if someone buys their iphone in the UK, sets their region to UK, then sets the region to USA? Can they then enable advanced data protection?