UK Government Exempting Itself From Cyber Law Inspires Little Confidence

In the case of the UK, some of the rituals (such as the one you’re referring to with the prime minister) are based on longstanding traditions, because humans are weird and we like those sorts of things, but the requirement to do that stems from the constitution, not from the King deciding if he likes the PM or not.

And, err, in England: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Execution_of_Charles_I

>there is no "bill of rights"

There very literally is a bill of rights: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_of_Rights_1689

>which is akin to if we handed a bunch of decendants of the mayflower and rich industrialists and priests their own house of Congress.

The House of Lords does need reform, but this is not in any way an accurate picture of it since at least 1999 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Lords_Act_1999). When you strip away the historical baggage, the House of Lords is just an appointed second chamber. I'm fully in favor of removing the last vestiges of the hereditary principle in government, but hereditary peers do not have a significant amount of power in the current system.

>And when they "elect" a prime minister

Elections really do happen in the UK and really do determine who is Prime Minister. No need for the scare quotes here.

> so basically, there's this constant ritual of pretending they're a democracy when really it's only like that because the king current feels like it.

I'll resist the temptation to point out which country is more pertinently and accurately described this way in the present situation.

In theory he was asking permission from the Queen. But in practice, everyone knew that the Queen was powerless to reject his request. Even for something as plainly anti-democratic.

The Supreme Court eventually ruled that the prorogation was not lawful.

Lots of people were hoping that the Queen would stand up for the people. It was a complicated moment when she didn't!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_United_Kingdom_prorogatio...

Fun fact: The UK has the Magna Carta, the original bill of rights signed in 1215. Did you know that's 561 years before the US declared its independence from the UK? To put it another way, 561 years is more than double the length of time the US has been a country.

Second fun fact: UK Prime Ministers aren't elected. Their party is elected, and tends to command a majority in the House of Commons, but if they don't, they get to trade horses with other parties to see which coalition can command a majority, and thus win a confidence vote. The party selects a leader through their own internal processes. Doesn't even have to be an elected MP. Then they tell the king, who rubberstamps the decision. They can do this at any time, not just after an election. Provided the leader can command a majority in Parliament, they get to continue. If enough of your own party dislikes you as leader, they will vote against a confidence motion and drop themselves and you out of power; your job is to not let it get to that.

The House of Lords is a secondary chamber, which scrutinises what the House of Commons passes and suggests rewordings and rewrites. (There's a whole other layer of scrutiny at the committee stage, for costing, etc.) They can send back bad bills, but can't send them back indefinitely, if the government had that in its election manifesto, so appointed or not, they can't defy the "will of the people".

The king doesn't rock the boat, not because he fears for his life, but because he'd trigger a constitutional crisis which will inevitably resolve in the form of a republican UK.

As to the House of Lords, around 11% of its members are hereditary peers. A bill [1] is in progress to reduce that to zero:

> The bill would remove membership from 89 hereditary peers who currently sit in the House. Their membership would end at the conclusion of the current parliamentary session.

So, in summary, the UK is a democracy with its own set of historical quirks, much like many other democracies (Electoral College, anyone?).

[1]: https://lordslibrary.parliament.uk/hereditary-peers-in-the-h...

Then, of course, one of the scandals: the government got caught exploiting children they had placed (sometimes for fake reasons) for prostitution. Thousands. And by "got caught" I don't mean that the police noticed it, like normally happens when a hotel or nightclub does it. I mean that one of the victims exposed it (the government and the police refused to act for over 10 years, and so after 5 years, one of the exploited girls to age out of youth services and got a job, at which point she used her position in the press to expose the practice. It would take 4 more years from that point on for the government to act). Who was responsible? Well, a bunch of the government workers involved in the scheme were Pakistani on a visa (which was illegal: youth services was not allowed to hire these people, of course, this was barely reported and absolutely no consequences for that). Obviously these men were considered guilty, as in personally criminally liable. That plenty of English city hall workers were involved is quietly swept under the rug. That the police refused to help the children that complained, and in fact helped prostitute them and got payments for that is swept under the rug. That some of the "customers" were government workers and police officers especially was swept under the rug.

And, of course, when private persons or organizations (like hotels) are caught doing something like this enormous damages are awarded to the victims. No damages were awarded to any of the victims in this huge scandal (this has nothing to do with that even 1000 pounds times 1000s of victims would have cost the government millions. In private cases normally the damages are high 5 to low 6 figures, in pounds). So the government, as in the people that form the government, used their special privileges in law to prostitute minors, doing what the government considers billions of pounds in damages total ... and suddenly nothing was owed. Suddenly nobody was liable, and normal rules for responsibility didn't apply. And so on and so forth.

Oh and it was not the first, nor the last time it happened.

It's puzzling to hear those steps described as "authoritarian." What makes you feel that way?

But at the same time, they don't want to admit it and are rewriting these standards in a very specific way so that only British engineering firms and consultants can draft regulatory documents or ensure compliance.

It ensures a monopoly for these engineering firms and consultants.

This is a wrong assumption, it's not that they aren't customers as they'll deal with hundreds of vendors/partners and will benefit from these changes regardless but national cyber & supporting IT agencies (including the UK) are often providers themselves to both other government agencies and private organizations in the country.

This can be anything from running their SOC functions to specialized consulting services to intelligence sharing so the bill is definitely relevant and the exclusion of the govt. doesn't seem to serve a purpose other than saving the budget to implement/maintain their own rules.