Masked protesters could soon face arrest, says Home Office
www.theguardian.com"Protesters who wear masks could face arrest, up to a month in jail and a £1,000 fine under proposed measures that human rights campaigners claim are pandering to “culture war nonsense”.
Police in England and Wales will be given the power to arrest people if they are wearing face coverings at specific demonstrations, the Home Office has said."
Been a bad 18 months or so for privacy in the UK. Online Safety Bill passed, the right to take strike action curtailed, people in receipt of benefits (including disabled people) will soon (as from 2025) have their bank accounts open to the government, the right to protest curtailed and now this.
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I wonder where that energy was in the 852nd month of “two weeks to flatten the curve”. 🤔
deleted by creator
Americans with disabilities act in England? How does that work?
Yeah, I skimmed it, and read UK as US.
Sorry, I have dual citizenship and sometimes conflate the two. Deleted my comment as erroneous.
Antifa ain’t happy about that.
Does it apply to FFP2 respirators?
Are they going to arrest Muslim women with face coverings?
Burka-ban has already been introduced in Austria. Didn’t really work because that was just before covid but they sure as shit tried.
Yeah lol of course, they would absolutely love any excuse to do that
But they already made protest illegal.
Fuck this country. I’m moving out.
You know what I hate about it? I’ve always been quite the anglophile, but never saw the chance to move there because I was uneducated. Now they might even want me to come and I don’t think I want to anymore :(
They need the facial recognition software to do it’s thing so they can make sure life gets difficult for anyone conscious of their actions.
Hmm… I may be mistaken but can they not already arrest troublemakers, arsonists, violent/aggressive individuals and other sort of rioters/agitators with preexisting laws/bylaws/regulations ?
On the other hand, I’m trying to see the silver lining here… perhaps this new law will make it difficult for agent provocateur¹ from operating without repercussions and anonymity unless the law specifically has a carve out for them (I wouldn’t be too surprised, but it would be another major blow to the resiliency of democracy in the United Kingdom).
Source: Pentney, K. (2021). Licensed to kill…discourse? agents provocateurs and a purposive right to freedom of expression. Netherlands Quarterly of Human Rights, 39(3), 241-257
Police discretion will already make an exception for them even it’s not explicitly carved out, there is no silver lining, it’s just more police state shit
I’m sure there’ll be a carve-out to the mask prohibition. I mean, what if there’s protest action a minister/police department dislikes? They need a way for their agents to don confiscated Nazi paraphernalia before joining the event to poison its media coverage, while remaining unidentifiable as state actors.
They don’t need a carve out for that, police discretion will do
Genocide Island going back to its roots.
it will be interesting to see if we ever get to a point during the next inevitable global pandemic where masks are compulsory in some places and illegal in others
The last one hasn’t ended yet
They want it to be illegal to both wear and not to wear a mask so that they can selectivity enforce arbitrary laws against whomever they wish.
This is like when online community moderators ban discussion of politics.
Everything is political. If you ban politics, you can take action against anyone
Like that traffic light on a rural Russian intersection that is always red
or like in America, where if the cops want to kick your door in all they have to do is say they smelled something and then it’s on you to prove they didn’t
that has been forbidden in Germany for years
Because Germany is here to set a good example right?
Of course it is, it’s fucking Germany.
What did they do during covid ? Arrest both mask wearers and nonmaskers ?
To police, that’s a feature, not a bug.
What if you’re feeling unwell?
JAIL!
I would do it anyway in mass. I want 100 people to show up somewhere with masks.
100,000 people. With 100, they’ll just take as many as they can. With 100k, they just have to let the sea wash over them and hope they aren’t swept out with it.