Hooray, yet another thing to add to the Year-That-Must-Not-Be-Named.
ThatFanficGuy This is the one I mentioned before.
Skipped over the article. You did have CCTV for quite some time now. Has it helped? Did crime fall? Were lives saved thanks to this immense surveillance machine? As a sidenote, fuck this website for having a 160 pixels-high header on scrolling - for an article.
No idea on CCTV stats as they have been employed in public spaces since as long as I can remember. From personal experience I can say that they don't prevent crime completely, but do seem effective at solving them. Never seen this site before just seemed decent enough for this news, no issues with display here either. As for the issue at hand: surveillance in public as by CCTV is completely different than surveillance at home as enacted by the security services and police. I think it's reasonable to assume little to no privacy in public (as that is what I'm used to), and certainly anything I was at home shouting out the window I would expect to be heard / intercepted, which is analogous to most interaction with the internet; but this is to the level of someone coming and sitting in my lounge, bedroom or bathroom, making notes and recording it. Maybe, maybe I'll mention my plans to destroy western civilisation... Or more likely they'll end up with boring footage that they really have no need for, except possibly blackmail over throwaway jokes or hyperbolic comments taken out of context.
Better yet, what if homosexuality or being transgender becomes illegal again? That's certainly the aim of some outspoken right wing politicians, Mike Pence in US for example. I don't trust the internet as anonymous anymore, it hasn't been for a long while, but now you can't even be yourself at home, because you never know if your smartphone is recording you dancing to Gloria Gaynor or crying over the arrest of your partner. It's surrendering liberty to gain security, and look how well that went for America and it's patriot act.
You are in a precarious situation. I wish you all the best, my friend. The world isn't over, even if it will take a while to turn for the better. We have fought to make the world a better place for as long as we've lived, and there's no stopping to it.
The timeline of LGBT history in the UK proved to be a fairly interesting short read... It's an issue I feel strongly about but it seems I may be jumping the gun on assuming it will be outlawed here, we DO seem to be making progress... But it's so easily un-done. The issue is... While something may not be illegal in the short term, the data captured will persist for a long time. We have no idea what could be made criminal in the future, hell look at the recent "Extreme porn law" which banned some ridiculous things, for which it is likely they have evidence of people viewing from years before the law was enacted. Can people be arrested for a crime committed after it became illegal? What law prevents that? When does that law get repealed? What specific combination of words let's them 'detain' / 'hold' / 'safeguard' with the current laws?