United Kingdom

6708 readers

280 users here now

General community for news/discussion in the UK.

Less serious posts should go in !casualuk@feddit.uk or !andfinally@feddit.uk
More serious politics should go in !uk_politics@feddit.uk.

Try not to spam the same link to multiple feddit.uk communities.
Pick the most appropriate, and put it there.

Posts should be related to UK-centric news, and should be either a link to a reputable source, or a text post on this community.

Opinion pieces are also allowed, provided they are not misleading/misrepresented/drivel, and have proper sources.

If you think "reputable news source" needs some definition, by all means start a meta thread.

Posts should be manually submitted, not by bot. Link titles should not be editorialised.

Disappointing comments will generally be left to fester in ratio, outright horrible comments will be removed.
Message the mods if you feel something really should be removed, or if a user seems to have a pattern of awful comments.

founded 3 years ago

MODERATORS

tom@feddit.uk

GreatAlbatross@feddit.uk

frankPodmore@slrpnk.net

London's police asked Big Tech for private communications data over 700,000 times last year (www.theregister.com)

submitted 2 days ago by beep@piefed.world to c/unitedkingdom@feddit.uk

15 comments fedilink hide all child comments

cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/tech/p/1142161/london-s-police-asked-big-tech-for-private-communications-data-over-700000-times-last-ye

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] Aria@lemmygrad.ml 1 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Most of them can’t even save a word document as a PDF.

What does it matter what real people can or can't do? The article and topic is about police abusing innocent people by spying on them. The fact that they aren't able to do the things you're justifying them getting accused of only makes it worse, to the degree it's relevant at all.

As for the first bit? No idea, I’m not from London. But 700,000 requests potentially represent 700,000 complaints from people about alleged criminal activity.

The total number of offences in London for 2024 was 951803. Do you find it reasonable if 70% of those have an anonymous online component to them that is still clearly linked to the same crime?

But I can tell you now, no cop in the land has the time or inclination to start searching for this stuff unless its a crime thats been reported to them.

What about the 106 times they did it to "specifically identify journalists’ sources"? Did someone make a report for each of the 93527 LycaMobile users, which the article pretty convincingly suggests were targeted because they're largely migrant workers?

Even if it was all legitimate, why does police need the power to search people's communication without evidence? Why don't they need warrants for communications data? Why don't "intelligence and security spies" need warrants for communications content? Why are they allowed to do cavity searches for communication equipment without evidence of a crime?

if you become a victim how would you feel if the police simply responded “yeah we don’t know whos doing it and we aren’t gonna bother trying to find out, good luck”?

You're loading the question with the assumption that no investigation can be done without reading the communications of 700000 Londoners, and that the rights of innocents should be at my discretion if I've been victimised in any way.