Party members and supporters of the SPGB do not wear tinfoil hats. The complete opposite in fact, socialists are very aware of how capitalism operates and the lengths it goes to control the majority who run capitalism on behalf of the minority.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean to say their not out to get you but the SPGB has never worried about the buff file on a Whitehall desk, or wherever the spooks live. As a political party the SPGB has always been fully clear and open about its purpose and aims ever since 1904.
The naïve, it has to be said, stupid individual who thinks the state is there to benefit them, and who says, if you've nothing to hide you've nothing to fear, is dangerously wrong in that belief. Read the Martin Niemölle poem, First They Came.
They are too many examples to list of states and governments, historical and contemporary, attempting, or being successful, in coercion and clamping down on free speech.
Below are two penlights shining into the dark pit. News sites are reporting 'legally, the order notice cannot be made public.'
Did someone in the Labour government discover George Orwell?
From June 2024:
EU Commission is allegedly considering a major expansion of surveillance practices in the bloc that could potentially affect every single EU citizen, German news website t-online reported citing confidential draft recommendations it had seen.
A 28-page document, reportedly drawn up by a group of experts on behalf Brussels, lists a total of 42 suggestions of possible tighter surveillance measures in what the media outlet described as “unprecedented privacy limitation.”
The paper, titled: “Recommendations from the High-Level Group on Access to Data for Effective Law Enforcement” demands app developers create “backdoors” for the law enforcement agencies to get to any content they need.
The investigators should be able to circumvent end-to-end encryption in messenger services like WhatsApp or Telegram using some sort of a “general key” provided by the developers, t-online reported. Companies that would fail to meet such demands should face penalties, the document reportedly states.
The list of suggestions is not limited to messaging apps, though. The proposed changes also target the Internet of Things, calling for “greater standardization” of various home apps and devices, including “all forms of connectivity.” The measure is expected to particularly affect home assistants like Google Home, Alexa or the Apple assistant as well as anything up to smart refrigerators, allowing authorities to obtain data collected by such devices.
The paper also calls for the introduction of data retention, according to t-online. A data-retention regulation requires providers of telecommunications and Internet services to store the traffic data on all its users for a specified period of time and to be able to pass them to law enforcement if needed. Such data could include IP addresses, phone contacts or location data.
Germany’s Federal Administrative Court – the nation’s highest judicial body ruling on administrative law cases – had previously classified groundless and indiscriminate data retention to be a violation of EU law and banned it in Germany. Now, this may change if the EU Commission follows through on these recommendations, t-online warned.
The document reportedly justified the proposed mass surveillance approach with the need to “ensure effective prosecution” of cases related to organized crime and terrorism activities and in particular to identified terrorist-attack plots at an early stage.
A digital expert, Anja Hirschel, who is also a member of the German Pirate Party advocating digital privacy rights, warned that such plans represent “an unprecedented… leap right into a fully monitored society.” “Everything we do, where we go and who we communicate with, will be visible at any moment and without any barriers,” she told t-online.
Brussels has not commented on the report about the draft surveillance recommendations.
Last year, a Dutch MEP Sophie in ‘t Veld already warned that EU governments were using “totalitarian methods” to spy on journalists. She was commenting on allegations that some EU nations were using the Israeli Pegasus malware to surveil an editor of an EU-based Russian news site.'
From February 2025:
'The UK government has issued a “technical capability notice” to Apple, compelling the tech giant to create a backdoor to its encrypted iCloud service, the Washington Post reported. The move would enable UK law enforcement and security agencies to access encrypted data stored by Apple users worldwide, according to the newspaper.
The UK’s Investigatory Powers Act (IPA), referred to by critics as the “Snoopers’ Charter,” grants authorities the power to mandate that tech companies permit access to users’ data for investigative purposes. It also makes it a criminal offense to reveal that the government has made such a demand. The recent notice requires Apple to provide a means for decrypting user data. It is currently protected by end-to-end encryption, ensuring that only users can access their information.
Creating such backdoors could weaken overall security and set a dangerous precedent, according to Daniel Castro, vice-president of the US-based Information Technology and Innovation Foundation. In a statement he has described the UK’s move as an “unjustified over-reach that threatens the security and privacy of individuals and businesses around the world.”
Last March, in a submissionto the a parliamentary committee, Apple expressed concern that the IPA could be used to force companies to “break encryption by inserting backdoors into their software products.” Apple asserted that it “would never build a backdoor” and would rather withdraw “critical safety features” from the UK market affecting the security of British users’ data.
Ross McKenzie, a data protection partner at law firm Addleshaw Goddard, told The Guardian that the UK order could lead to a clash with the EU, potentially affecting agreements that allow the free flow of personal data between the UK and Europe.
UK security officials argue that encryption can hinder efforts to combat crime and terrorism. “Maintaining proportionate, lawful access to such communications in the face of ever-more prevalent encryption is sometimes our only means of detecting and understanding these threats,” Ken McCallum, head of the UK’s domestic intelligence agency MI5, stated last October. He believes that “privacy and exceptional lawful access can coexist if absolutist positions are avoided.”
The UK Home Office has declined to confirm or deny the existence of the notice, stating, “We do not comment on operational matters,” according to The Guardian.
Apple has long defended the encryption of its operating systems, notably challenging the FBI in court in 2016 over a demand for a “backdoor” to access the iPhone of a suspect in the San Bernardino, California, terrorist attack. In legal filings, Apple argued that the US government was requesting something it did not possess and that creating such a tool would be “too dangerous.”
The FBI eventually unlocked the phone using an Israeli spy tool, though it reportedly found nothing of value. Later revalations showed that other Israeli spyware, called Pegasus, had been used to hack tens of thousands of iPhones worldwide, targeting journalists, dissidents, and even heads of state.'
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