Above all, the LLM panopticon will watch us all.
Technology will not save us. Nothing will save us but ourselves and we're busy making rent and doomscrolling.
The information asymmetry between individuals and the powerful is permanently reversed.
Thinking about it in terms of the monopoly of violence being the root of power negotiations; typically a resistance movement has more information about the state/colonizer than vice versa, because power has to be visible - guerilla warfare thrives on this.
That's gone. The powerful will have complete detailed information and automatic analysis.
The medium is the message.
What's different is that, for a while, the early Internet age (and a little bit earlier - Usenet etc) made that underground very accessible. Now we're reverting back to the original situation where it was very much shunned and criminalized.
What is it you mean by this?
I see so many offhand comments about the dystopian UK here but AFAICT there’s a lot of noise and very little meat. The only thing I can think you mean is the UK is currently debating a bill to limit jury trials to more serious offences. While I do find that pretty offensive, there’s nothing fast track about any of its justice system at the moment.
On the contrary, people are waiting years for trial, which is bad for the accused because they have it hanging over them, and bad for victims who get no swift resolution.
For example:
>Courts will sit for 24 hours to fast-track sentencing under government plans to crack down on far-Right riots that swept Britain on Saturday.[1]
[1]https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/08/03/courts-open-24-h...
There is also this:
>Only Australia arrested climate and environmental protesters at a higher rate than UK police. One in five Australian eco-protests led to arrests, compared with about 17% in the UK. The global average rate is 6.7%.
>The UK’s Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2021 and the Public Order Act 2022 transformed the relationship between protesters and the state, handing police extensive new powers to curtail protests and criminalising a range of protest activities. [2]
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/dec/11/britain-...
Boot, face, forever, etc
And given the Southport riots were, well riots, it’s unsurprising they were dealt with harshly.
That said, I agree that what’s happening with protest in both the UK and Australia is deeply wrong. New South Wales in particular seems to be awful on this front.
It’s a shame that guardian article doesn’t link to the actual study.
It’s not especially surprising that there is a high rate of arrests in the subcategory of protests they picked - environmental (not climate) protests often involve things like blockading mine sites and blocking roads here in Aus. In some of the countries mentioned in the article you may just be physically moved, beaten or even shot for that behaviour. Which is not to say that the higher arrests aren’t concerning, but the picture isn’t exactly clear after reading the article, particularly as it mentions over 2000 environmental protestors were killed during that period, I’d hope none in the UK or Aus, which to me that even though the arrests aren’t rates are higher in these countries, to imply that they are the worst in their treatment of protest is probably wrong.
Or perhaps our current Home Sec in 2014 declaring "Rioters face years in prison as Home Secretary Yvette Cooper promises ‘swift justice’" [1]
[0] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/8695988/London...
[1] https://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/riots-prison-justice-l...
It's all part of making effective protesting illegal. You can justify each little step as you clutch your pearls (even me, to an extent if I don't think of the bigger picture), but then when you realise that the sum of all that is permitted is standing alone creating no disturbance for anyone, effecting no change, and you realise effective protesting is banned.
And the second article is about people setting fire to cars and buildings.
This is not “effective protest”, it’s criminal damage and arson and would be prosecuted as such in any western nation.
Are you seriously arguing you should be able to get away with setting fire to a community library because you reckon you’ve got a legit grievance?
Yeah nah, no thanks.
