Creating apps like Signal could be 'hostile activity' claims UK watchdog

yes, and here is a fun fact, most of the push for mass surveillance comes from the European Council, the thing is that literally are "just" the locally elected leaders...

not some vague far away "the EU (personalized)" thing

which also mean you can locally enact pressure on them

furthermore the EU supreme court(s) might have more often hindered mass surveillance laws in member states then the council pushing for them...

and if we speak as of "now", not just the UK, but also the US and probably many other states have far more mass surveillance then the EU has "in general".

so year the whole "EU is at fault of everything" sentiment makes little sense. I guess in some cases it's an excuse for people having given up on politics. But given how often EU decisions are severely presented out of context I guess some degree of anti-EU propaganda is in there, too.

There's societal memory of monarchies and kings that held a lot of power that still impacts things to this day, sometimes unconsciously and sometimes consciously.

> blaming "the EU" instead of blaming your own elected leaders

The elected leaders like to blame the EU (or for those without an EU - any external body or even the mythical deep state) for everything adverse. The reality is these "failures" they blame on someone else are generally in alignment with their own policies goals and objectives.

And messages like these should be monitored. Who knows, we may need to lock all your bank accounts for "suspicious activity".

Indeed: https://metro.co.uk/2025/12/17/man-jailed-burning-migrant-ho...

“An X user who posted two anti-immigration tweets been handed a 18-month jail sentence.”

Edit to point out 1. That is a quote and 2. The UK considers this Ok though https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cjeykklwn7vo

What European Government?

> I don't understand why you got heavily downvoted.

Because his post contributes nothing to the discussion.

> Yes, there are governments that are worse than European, but the decline of European government is the fastest.

What makes it the fastest?

> You may be surprised that the UK is the world leader in the number of people arrested because of internet posts. And that Germany, which is still way behind the UK, has more people arrested for the same reason than Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, Belarus, Saudi Arabia, and a few others combined.

Don't know about you but I'd rather be arrested for posting something in EU then be disappeared in any of the countries that you mentioned.

> And many people still believe that those countries are beacons of democracy while the others are backward dictatorships.

That is because Germany and UK are beacons of democracy when compared to the countries that you listed.

The decline of the US government is the faster than "Europe", because it's been declining rapidly in a few months. The US government currently has a monthly quota for ICE arrests. ICE agents racially profile people and ignore non-white people telling them they are US citizens because they assume they are lying. Non-white US citizens need to have papers on them that prove their status (US citizen), or else might be disappeared. The US government now bans immigrants from a list of dark skin countries but fast-tracks White South Africans for immigration. It politically persecutes their political opponents and ignores the rule of law. It is preparing for war with Venezuela, which would conveniently tie up US resources as Russia positions itself for entering Europe.

The UK is rapidly declining as a close second, but calling it "European" (especially when UK citizens see themselves as non-European) is just a lazy generalization.

No one is getting 20 years for tweet content in the UK like they are in Saudi Arabia. No grandmother is being arrested for holding up a blank sign like in Russia. I can go on just with the reported stuff from memory for an hour wrt Iran, North Korea and China. I don't even know how many books it would take to read to learn of all the examples worse that aren't.

Look I think there are problems with the UK's policy here, but this comment is either disingenuous or naive.

The UK is not part of the EU, and its security services are barely affiliated with it. That all ended with Brexit.

It's absolutely hopeless at protecting citizens from foreign threats.

95% of the arrests aren't actually arrests. The police send you a polite letter, you write a polite response, and at least 90% of the time the case is dropped.

Compare with various authoritarian dictatorships where if the police turn up at your door you're unlikely to survive.

And - unlike the US - no one is hauling random British brown people off the streets and sending them to prison camps.

The UK does have a far-right party desperate to end judicial oversight and remove legal protections from torture, etc, by ending support for the ECHR.

There's currently a huge online campaign, funded in part with foreign money and supported by most of the British press (foreign billionaire owned...), to make their far-right dictatorship seem like a political inevitability.

It isn't. But they're trying really really hard to pretend otherwise.

Putin is also really, really pissed at the EU for taking Russian money and using it for defence and reparations.

But - you know - if you start a war because you're a grandiose psychopath, that's what happens.

>How many cases have there been of groups successfully finding and use private communication services?

Probably a lot, given how booming the illegal drug market is. Obviously you don't hear about the successful ones, you only hear about the incompetent ones that get caught.