The most important thing about this, and other similar overreach, is that there is no democratic constituency for this. It's a waste of time, almost a distraction, picking at the rationality of these constant attacks. The important thing is to find out exactly who they are doing it for.
Who asked for it? Let them speak up, and explain why they are so special that governments should and do obey them. Starmer doesn't personally care about any of this (or anything.) No Labour MP cares about any of this. Who is convincing them to override democracy to create tools that make it easier to override democracy? Force them to drop the pretense that they have come up with this themselves, and that they personally believe that it is important.
Start by finding out who the hands were who wrote the actual text. The MPs themselves, and the network of important nephews and nieces that work on their respective staffs are too stupid to write this stuff. Who are the minds that are crafting law for supposed democracies from whole cloth?
Intelligence agencies, and they have a legitimate edict to catch paedos or stop terrorists. Through Investigatory Powers regulation they have been granted powers to make such demands.
Australia has close legislation with the Technical Assistance and Access bills that can be used by Law Enforcement / Australian Intelligence Community, but it explicitly doesn't allow the deliberate weakening of security or backdoors, unless such a weakness is inherent in the technology.
Security services. You have to be absolutely blind at this point not to realise this. The "media campaigns" are identical to the ones used for the past few decades, in print media these were run by tabloids and they have moved on, with less success, online (in the 90s, the coverage of the tabloid campaigns was wall-to-wall). OSA was textbook: unrelated tragic event, young child, grieving parents, mentioning this campaign in relation to the OSA repeatedly despite them being unrelated, same thing every time.
The really odd thing is that you have people who will claim that the media is run by right-wing billionaires. On certain topics, you will see every story come from civil servants, the government is just too big (the easiest way to tell is the sources, articles run by civil servants will almost never have actual sources and will usually not be constructed in a logical way, for example a new one is to repeatedly refer to Russia). But because so many people are making so much money from the government, this kind of thing is ignored (and I will also say, the observation that this isn't the actual government just civil servants is important...some newspapers are now notorious for having civil servants contacts who brief journalists against their own ministers, Home Office is the most well-known but it has happened in almost every area...there is nothing that elected officials can do).
"Security services" isn't a power center, they are a tool used by power centers. We are not being attacked by nameless institutions, we are being attacked by people who have names.
I have absolutely no idea what theory of power people are operating under who believe that "civil servants" are trying to take over the world. Even if they're all secret Satanists working for the devil to impose evil upon the planet, let the devil introduce himself.
> The really odd thing is that you have people who will claim that the media is run by right-wing billionaires.
It is so odd to think that power is wielded by the powerful. No, it's actually powerless administrators on 80K/year who force heads of state to make bizarre power grabs. And I have no idea why right-wing billionaires get pointed out as absurd, and "left-wing" billionaires get off scot-free by going completely unmentioned. Unless you think that it's a contradiction for a left-winger to be a billionaire, then that's fair enough. A lot of them get called left-wing because they believe in global warming and vaccination or something (I don't remember Marx or the Jacobins writing about that, or trans people, or illegal immigrants.)
> But because so many people are making so much money from the government
That's the billionaires. You realize that there are people making money, and you realize that they're the ones that must be driving things, but you don't identify them and indemnify the most powerful people on the planet. I simply can't see this as a thought process at all. I have no idea how people are convinced to focus all of their anger on people with no power who they don't know.
> "Security services" isn't a power center, they are a tool used by power centers.
No, they /are/ a power center. They have a lot of power: they advise governments, police and business, who listen to their advice and act on it very often. A lot of the work they do is (sadly) essential in the world as it exists today. Of course the "security services" want to open and read your mail and will advise accordingly.
Yes, the people who have names are civil servants leading the security services and believe that these things are their responsibility to implement to achieve their aims.
I didn't say anything about taking over the world. These people are doing interviews (Ken McCallum has done several interviews, he is appearing on podcasts which is part of their new media strategy - https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4g2nwlpw1yo - this is an example, do you not know any journalists? How do you think a story like this gets written? Lol) and they are extremely explicit about this. The UK has a problem with terrorism, they believe that by breaking encryption they will be able to catch more terrorists. Again, they are doing interviews with the media telling you this, you don't have to have a complex world view that relies on shadowy cabals...they are telling you they are doing this, they are incentivized to do this, they are the only people with the power to do this.
It isn't a bizarre power grab, these people have legal powers, they are using these powers. Why do you think a billionaire is powerful? What legal powers does he have to break encryption? Can he arrest you? Is the history of the 20th century an example of governments overusing their powers or billionaires? Illogical.
If billionaires were making money from the government, you would see growth. The UK isn't growing. They aren't driving things because nothing that is happening is helping business. The assumption that you are making is that they secretly control everything...but what is happening now that is benefitting them? The size of the state is growing rapidly, they have effective lobbying power...because they run the government...this isn't a conspiracy theory, this is just logic. The people who have power...are the people with power. In the UK, if you actually understand how government works which you appear not to, elected officials have clearly limited powers over the departments they control. We had an election, and you are seeing the government cycle through the exact same policies that have been suggested by civil servants (which ministers are legally unable to dismiss). Is this the billionaires again? Lol.
This blanket refusal to actually look at what is happening rather than drop this world view that is embedded into personality is why the UK is collapsing. Who do you think is running the government other than the government?
I know civil servants at every level, I know MPs, why do you assume that everyone is as ignorant as you? I worked in politics. No-one who works in politics and is aware of how government works disputes this. Senior civil servants do not dispute it is happening, I believe the last three Civil Service heads have said this is happening. The narrative of "the billionaires" is something that no-one believes, it only exists to fool credulous children, I would go so far as to say (in my experience) unions do not actually believe this anymore...I am not sure who actually believes it apart from people unaware of how government works. However, there are two issues: reform is very hard because any government needs civil servants to do things (as an example, the creation of Border Force was an attempt to reform a part of the government that was out of control, it happened then Home Office civil servants spent years attempting to bring it down and limit their power, which is delegated to a substantial degree), and the Civil Service has been very successful in appearing to do enough (for example, they present a policy choice, that policy choice is ineffective by design but it sounds like something that can be sold...almost all Treasury policies are like this, they cannot work, at some level i assume ministers know they cannot work but there is something to announce, it usually is designed to sound good...I am not sure why this isn't obvious either, we have years now of governments announcing policies with no impact, you aren't slightly suspicious about why? Credulous).
Of course they care about it in the sense that they care about maintaining law and order which forms the foundation of their power. Everyone knows the emperor has no clothes when it comes to "think of the children" bills. It's a fig leaf over their power grab. Everyone also knows that this will ultimately be used to crack down on dissidents, criminals, and other undesirables (likely immigrants as well) and that is where you'll find the democratic constituency for this overreach:
Authoritarians generally and right-wing populists in particular are the major proponents of government surveillance and control.
Who asked for it? Let them speak up, and explain why they are so special that governments should and do obey them. Starmer doesn't personally care about any of this (or anything.) No Labour MP cares about any of this. Who is convincing them to override democracy to create tools that make it easier to override democracy? Force them to drop the pretense that they have come up with this themselves, and that they personally believe that it is important.
Start by finding out who the hands were who wrote the actual text. The MPs themselves, and the network of important nephews and nieces that work on their respective staffs are too stupid to write this stuff. Who are the minds that are crafting law for supposed democracies from whole cloth?