The real target: journalists, activists and whistleblowers

This isn't true on the whole in this context. How does the UK's OSA target journalists, activists and whistleblowers?

I think this conspiratorial view of these laws is doing more harm than good and ignores the entire issues that these laws are designed to address.

The problem is we create overly broad laws because:

- There is a problem with child predation / terrorism - There is a lack of understanding on how technology works - There is faith that the system works and won't ever be abused - There are too few people in community self policing these issues.

Addressing any one of these in a different way will negate the need for laws like the UK were trying to implement.

Creating broad gives the police more ability to enforce their spirit. I think that's generally a bad thing when the laws are to do with civil liberties. But maybe a good thing when dealing with, for example, domestic abuse.

>How does the UK's OSA target journalists, activists and whistleblowers?

The general context is it targets "anyone who angers the government". Being able to ban your entire internet if this becomes widespread becomes a very powerful deterrent to opposition. \

>Creating broad gives the police more ability to enforce their spirit. I think that's generally a bad thing when the laws are to do with civil liberties.

Given the histories of "enforcing spirits" for both the US and the UK police forces, I'm not sure how or why you'd have faith in their interpretations.

The police can bring up your info themselves without needing the ability to cut off someone's entire digitial landscape.

The article is talking about the UK's RIPA and demanding backdoors into encryption. My comment was not in response to anyone else's, and I never mentioned OSA, although that is also problematic as a censorship vector.

As an aside, all this demonstrates the UK's lack of a Bill of Rights. And no, the ECHR is not one due to the pernicious doctrine of Parliamentary as opposed to popular sovereignty, and the lack of independence of the Judiciary. No Parliament can bind future Parliaments, which could abolish the Human Rights Act 1998 with a single vote, and indeed many UK politicians are calling for precisely this, versus the complex and deliberately cumbersome procedure the US Constitution has to amend itself. Any Bill of Rights that is subject to the forbearance of the legislative body it is supposed to protect you from is not worth the paper it is written on.

Obviously, if journalists cannot have encrypted conversations with their sources and whistleblowers don't have anonymous channels to blow the whistle, considering the draconian penalties of the Official Secrets Act (another OSA, coincidence much?) neither will happen, which is exactly by design. Ironically, when the boot was on the other foot like revelations about Boris Johnson or Rishi Sunak's own illegal use of WhatsApp to hide activities covered by public records laws, they backed off.