The Surveillance State: UK Edition

In my last article, I went through various ways in which you can protect both your privacy and your personal data whilst online.

Since then, the UK's Online Safety Act (OSA) has come into force, and with it many websites are now forced to require UK users to verify their age. This is done by uploading one of several documents, a Passport, your bank details, or a scan/photograph of your face so that an age-verification service can estimate your age. If these uploads prove you're over 18 then you're sorted. Fine?

Hell no, not at all.

Dangers of the OSA & Age Verification

Only this week an online service for women, Tea, setup to share information about dangerous men that they've dated was hacked, and personally identifying information such as passports and facial scans were obtained. Documents that were uploaded for the express purpose of identity verification.

This was just one service. With the OSA, UK users are being systematically forced into sharing their private and personal information, such as the documents outlined above, with a huge swathe of age-verification services, none of which are regulated or have oversight into how they work or treat user data.

This is a minefield. UK users are having to verify their identities with potentially dozens of different age-verification services, because none of the affected platforms use the same services.

And don't get it wrong. It's not just platforms that host adult content, such as OnlyFans or porn websites that are forced into forcing their users to use these services, most social media platforms such as Reddit and Bluesky are forcing users to verify their identities via one of these services as well.

Of course there's also the fact that given that they're unregulated, these services have no legal barriers preventing them from either surreptitiously selling your private data to the highest bidder, or passing along information about which sites you're accessing to the government. I don't trust for one second that they wouldn't be.

As a result, VPN usage in the UK has predictably rocketed. Half of the top 10 apps in various app stores are VPNs. NordVPN reported that they've seen a 1000% increase in UK signups since the OSA went into effect, Proton reported a 1400% increase, and I'm sure a similar increase has been seen across most of the reputable VPN providers. Worryingly this is likely way higher among the "free" VPN services that litter the various OS-specific App Stores.

The thing is that most of these "free vpn" services are malicious in intent, and exist purely to harvest user data and broker it to the highest bidder. Far from a privacy protection, they're worse than just sending GCHQ all of your browsing data, as most of that data will end up in the hands of scammers and fraudsters, potentially including banking information, credit/debit card info and medical details.

VPN Bans

This is something that is now under serious consideration by the UK Government. Sarah Champion, who has advocated for banning VPNs since at least 2022, is pushing Keir Starmer to now ban them in response to users widely adopting their usage.

However VPNs are not only a legitimate and legal tool for privacy protection, but they're necessary for many home-workers in order to connect to internal corporate networks from home, either on their personal device or a work device such as a laptop. This is how I personally work from home in my IT job, and banning their use would mean I would no longer be able to work from home.

Not only is the OSA an egregious desecration of human rights to both privacy and security, but the mooted ban on VPNs puts people's jobs at risk. I'm lucky enough that if I have to, I can go back to working on-site 5 days a week. I don't want to, because right now my work-life balance is a good one, and I only work in the office 3 days out of 5 per week.

But there are plenty of people, even in my own workplace, who for medical reasons can't travel into the office. They're medically forced to work from home, and we have to support them in doing so. It's these people that will face a stark choice - between health or their job. They won't be able to have both.

If everyone's Right, who's left?

This situation is a complete bonfire of rights. As mentioned in other articles, these are draconian massacres of privacy rights that I expected would have come from a right-wing party such as the Conservatives, or god forbid they get into Government: Reform UK.

But Labour, an ostensibly left-wing party, who historically have championed the rights of the working-class, have taken a very sharp dive into full on authoritarian waters, and are seemingly determined to eviscerate the rights of the average person to live their digital lives in a manner suited to them. For some reason they have developed an utter fervour to monitor the habits and lives of the UK population, in a manner not even Donald Trump and the Republican Party in the US have dared to sink to.

Countries that have banned their citizens from using VPNs include China, Russia and North Korea. Hardly stellar company when it comes to privacy rights, and shows how far from the norm that UK Labour has fallen.

And it's not like any of the other parties in Parliament are likely to repeal these behaviours when Labour inevitably lose the next General Election. Which I assure you they will.

The danger here is that this leaves the door open for either a resurgent Tory party, hell bent on destroying the NHS, or worse, a Reform party who model themselves closely on the fascist tendencies of the Republican Party in the US, beholden to Trump as they are. Nigel Farage has openly stated that he will dismantle the NHS and transform it into a US-style insurance-based system of healthcare, where free treatment is a thing of the past, and people are bankrupting themselves to pay for even basic care.

He can fuck right off.

Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana have soft-launched a new political party, temporarily named Your Party, as a left-wing alternative to the now right-wing Labour party. They potentially have a higher public-membership than Labour or the Tories, but membership often doesn't equate to bums on seats in Parliament.

But we all know what happened the last time Corbyn got near 10 Downing Street - the antisemitism machinery cranked into gear in order to oust him from his leadership of Labour with numerous false allegations, which allowed Keir Starmer to assume the position.

And why did this happen? Because Corbyn supports the rights of the Palestinian people, and we couldn't have a leader in Downing Street who supports the rights of Gaza's remaining population to not eat a bullet for breakfast, while queuing for aid and food. Oh god no. Genocide should be cheered for, apparently.

Dark Days

The realistic alternatives to gain power at the 2029 General Election are unlikely to behave any differently, and the UK as a whole faces a very dark future for privacy rights.

My only personal hope is a United Ireland. As a resident of Northern Ireland I have dual-citizenship of both the UK and Ireland. And NI exists in a strange limbo between EU and UK laws.

We're still subject to the laws of the European Court of Human Rights, so hopefully something can be done there, at least for the residents of Northern Ireland.

But with no credible or viable party for government in the UK, perhaps it's time to look elsewhere.

But the EU have similarly taken a nosedive into surveillance statehood, and even Switzerland, a country infamously protective of citizen privacy, not least in banking, have stated that they are to begin mass-surveillance of their citizens. So much so that Proton have decided to move their infrastructure OUT of Switzerland to the EU.

The slipperiest of slopes

So if VPNs are banned, what comes next? Tor Browser? Linux? Encryption? These are all methods that regular, tech-savvy people use to protect their privacy and their human right to it.

If Adult content is effectively banned, what comes next? LGBTQIA+ content? Politically charged commentary and dissent? Free speech? Democratic discussion?

If content by and for gay creators is effectively banned, what comes next? Same-sex marriage? The ability to openly live as a gay/Bi person? Banning gender-affirming surgery?

If that happens, who's next? Other people who "diverge" from the typical? Autistic people? People suffering with mental health conditions? Disabled people? The homeless?

Oh come on Sar, I hear you cry, that's going a bit too far now. Be realistic man.

I would, but it's already happening in the US.

As you can see, it's a short philosophical hop from privacy rights to the right to live your life at all for certain portions of the population.

Right now, citizens of the UK are suffering under the most draconian and oppressive governmental regime in memory. A Labour party who should be championing the rights of the UK population have instead chosen to show just how devolved and divorced they have become from their traditional working-class values.

Couple all of this with the efforts of right-wing Christian groups to censor what people can even view, watch, read, see or play?

I fucking hate this. It feels cloying, suffocating and completely unnecessary. Instead of forcing parents to do their jobs, the government are using it as an excuse to force the rest of us into living lives according to right-wing diktat, putting human lives and what should be their inalienable rights into the wood-chipper.

I truly despair.