Technology

There are hundreds of arrests with their new law and basically all of them sre activists or people sharing information the genocide in Gaza. They then took fingerprints and DNA samples from them to enter into a database and they locked them up in jail for days.

... He never had to give fingerprints or DNA and never spent any time in a cell.

Erm, what?

Those hundreds of people have been arrested for offences under the Terrorism Act, protesting about the genocide in Gaza, and because they used the name of a (currently) proscribed terrorist group. Fingerprinting for arrests is default, DNA is a new one on me, but probably because they are under arrest for charges loosely related to terrorism, then that's procedure. They weren't arrested for other Public Order offences like Dankula would have likely been charged under. Although I am surprised Dankula didn't have to give fingerprints at a minimum. I did when I got caught shoplifting (40-odd years ago).

TBH people are thick. For example, some of the protestors crying about being held for 14 days. Well, that's standard for terrorism-related offences (including referring to proscribed groups like these people were):

You can be held without charge for up to 14 days if you’re arrested under the Terrorism Act. (https://www.gov.uk/arrested-your-rights/how-long-you-can-be-held-in-custody)

The police have the right to:

• take photographs of you
• take fingerprints
• take a DNA sample, such as from a mouth swab or head hair root
• swab the skin surface of your hands and arms

They do not need your permission to do this. (https://www.gov.uk/arrested-your-rights/giving-fingerprints-photographs-and-samples)

The charges, of which only 10 of the 221 people arrested are referred to here: https://www.counterterrorism.police.uk/statement-on-palestine-action/.

Do I, as a UK citizen, agree with this action to arrest en masses? No.

Do I think that the group in question should be proscribed? I don't know - some sources point to the fact they are/were planning other actions, some seem to think not. They certainly aren't in the league of the IRA back when I was a kid, and we heard about them very often on the news in the evenings. I've even seen the aftermath of some of their work back when I was travelling through London (at the same time as the Square Mile Bombing).

Do I think the UK Government are overstepping their bounds and exerting tighter and tighter control over the UK populace? Definitely. Sadly, too many people are either blase or ignorant and think "it doesn't affect me m8" and so do nothing about it, because we have been conditioned into looking out for number one only, and not considering the needs of the society at large.

The UK Govt has made some dangerously vague laws surrounding the right to protest, which makes it so much easier for police to decide that a protest is illegal (a knee-jerk idiotic piece of legislation in reaction to Just Stop Oil gluing themselves to roads or throwing soup at art). The culmination of the Investigatory Powers Act 2016 (aka Snoopers Charter), Police, Crime, Sentencing & Courts Act 2022, Public Order Act and now the Online Safety Act are all cumulative cuts and restrictions slowly being placed on the UK populace at large.

We are going to reap a whirlwind of pain from these laws being passed. Look at the shitshow of Apple vs UK Govt. That "request" for a backdoor to encrypted data (for worldwide Apple users btw) was secret, it was deemed illegal in UK law for Apple to reveal it, confirm it etc (destroying the warrant canary concept some places use) and only because a newspaper revealed it were Apple able to do anything about it. Getting the UK Govt to back down after their failure to keep it under wraps with a hidden tribunal (meaning us joe bloggs on the street would never know the outcome) and forcing them to put it into a public court means the UK Govt have egg on their face.

But it hasn't done shit about the actual law. That law still stands, and we still have no recourse to find out if Google, Facebook, or even that little car forum have had similar requests from the UK Gov. Because it's illegal to know.

The whole thing is fucking stupid.