UKs ‘For the Children’ Innerwebs Control Grab Runs Into US Heart of Stone – HotAir

As if your government paying to support polygamous households based on how many wives were in residence wasn’t depressing enough, now the average resident of that increasingly dreary island known as the United Kingdom will have to absorb more intrusive, authoritarian insult to injury, all in the name of public safety.





Of course it is.

SMILE – YOU’RE ON BIG BROTHER’S CANDID CAMERA

Live facial recognition cameras planned for every town centre

Labour proposals would allow police to compare photos of crime suspects against images of 45 million Britons in the passport database

Police could be given access to Britain’s passport database to catch criminals under an expansion of facial recognition technology that could be deployed in every city, town and village.

Labour is proposing that police be allowed to compare photos of crime suspects from CCTV, doorbells and dashcams against facial images on government databases, including the passports of 45 million Britons, and immigration records.

The plans are part of a Home Office consultation launched on Thursday to establish a legal framework for all police forces to use facial recognition technology to catch wanted criminals and crime suspects.

The proposals come alongside a drive for police to roll out “live” facial recognition cameras that scan for wanted suspects in crime hotspots across England and Wales.

Other public bodies, beyond police, and private companies, such as retailers, could be allowed to use facial recognition technology under the new legal framework.

Neat, huh? Naturally, it would never be used to track, like, say, political opponents in real time to, like, say, see who they’re talking to.

Nothing like that would ever be contemplated in a country where freedom is so jealously guarded.

A country where no one would think to send a dozen police officers (eleven males, one female) marching up the stairs and into a lady’s bathroom while she was naked in the tub over a foul word in a text.





Nah. 

Nothing like that.

Nor would they do anything like using the tremendous powers invested in law enforcement through the new and Orwellian but benignly named ‘Online Safety Act’ to interfere with the right to assemble and the freedom to speak your mind.

Nah.

Nothing like that, either.

Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour government likes to frame itself as more of a benevolent dictatorship, wrapping itself in cozy platitudes whilst yanking you out of your warm bathwater for your own good and to their own ends, making sure you know it was entirely your fault all along for disappointing them.

Which is fine, I suppose, if the British people want to continue to live like indentured servants and serfs at the mercy of mercurial feudal lords and insufferable AWFL ladies.

Where these elitists of the pasty-faced British snuffling class run into problems is when they assume they can exert the same malignant control beyond their tiny domain’s borders.

Back in the middle of October, I told you the story of a brave little hamster, Mr. Whiskers, whose name has become synonymous with the fight against innerwebs oppression. He lives with a feisty American lawyer named Preston Byrne, who seems to be singlehandedly taking on the British innerwebs Gestapo – aka ‘speech regulator’ – which is nicknamed the appropriately ominous Ofcom for ‘Office of Communications.’





As Ofcom got more and more into ‘regulating’ innerwebs users and, more importantly, providers in their supposed quest to protect the children, they ran short of homegrown companies to browbeat and started looking at the really popular ones that people actually use when browsing the web, like X, etc. Some companies have caved under the threat of horrific fines and other legal actions. Secure chat space Discord was one such firm, handing over every bit of the information on users and its operations. So naturally, Ofcom mishandled everything and, shortly thereafter, Discord had a huge data breach thanks to the Ofcom intrusion, which created vulnerabilities.

Naturally, this has given rise to some mistrust among the public.

Ofcom next set its sights on the irascible mutants and loveable but weaponised high-functioning autistics at 4chan. Being who they are to their bones, not to mention proudly waving an American flag at the British nagging them, 4chan got hold of Mr Byrne, who wrote one of those legal letters answering Ofcom’s demands with a polite ‘piss off.’

Incensed, Ofcom began fining the American company, which Mr Byrne pointed out to them was occurring in thin air, as British authorities have no power over American companies, especially those based in and operating from the United States.





He also noted that 4chan posters could say whatever the hell they wanted because of the ‘First Amendment,’ another foreign construct to wanna be fascists.

Ofcom sniffed and said 4chan was being ‘uncooperative’ along with some other whinging.

This is when Mr Whiskers stepped into the fray like the hamster he is.

What Ofcom didn’t know at the time was that Mr Byrne, besides firing off witty legal ripostes and educating the royalists on how the colonials won 250 years ago, was working hard on the draft of legislation to address this obstinacy once and for all.

WE WERE GOING TO GOAD THEM INTO DOING SOMETHING STUPID – INTO SAYING THAT THEY WERE GOING TO TAKE SOVEREIGN IMMUNITY AS A DEFENSE

And then they did it – Ofcom took the bait – and Byrne and his partners could get laws enacted.





What has happened in just a month and a half is nothing short of miraculous. Byrne’s draft has made it from his penning a blog post to being a proposed piece of legislation under consideration in Congress.

And how did he find out?

In London, GB News interviewed the newly arrived US Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy, Sarah Rogers, about the Online Safety Act and the tussle between American companies and the British government’s attempt to regulate and censor them.

While saying the Act was ‘misguided and unfortunate to apply that law in Britain (ouch!)’, Rogers made it quite clear that attempting to ‘apply that law extraterritorially, which means to speech that has nothing to do with Britain, does not occur in Britain, is on American platforms by American users on American political issues? Um, purporting to censor Americans in America is a deal breaker. It is a non-starter. It is a red line.’

And then she dropped the hammer when the interviewer asked if our government would then take legal action against Ofcom if they ‘try to overreach.’

…Well, there’s already formal action proposed. There is a bill before the House called The Granite Act that would amend an existing statute to clarify that, as a matter of American public policy, any penalties imposed by Ofcom are unenforceable





That’s Byrne’s bill.

Naturally, he and everyone involved were beside themselves.

And we have seen yet another member of Rubio’s State Department who is seriously bad-assed.

Folks fretting about Ofcom setting up a firewall should just watch Ofcom set itself up to look like the communist Chinese – hell, they’re halfway there already, no? 

As for 4chan payments, like one commenter dismissively said, ‘What payments?’ They’re a community board and crypto wizards. There’s no 4chan central payment processing.

Kudos to Byrne, Mr. Whiskers, and their whole tremendous team and the representatives who brought this to the House for moving so quickly to protect Americans from these intrusive and vindictive European authoritarians.

Get the Granite Act passed, stat.

The But the children! frustration in London has to be off the charts, and you’d have to have a heart of stone to laugh.





Luckily, in that department, I come well-equipped.

This is LMAO glorious.


At HotAir, we’ve been dealing with real government suppression of free speech for YEARS. Despite the threats and consequences, we refuse to go silent and remain committed to delivering the truth.

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