European Court of Justice, By sprklg, Kirchberg, CC BY-SA 2.0
‘You know, you go to protests in Germany and in France and they just don’t do that level of intelligence gathering. And when I’ve spoken to activists in Europe they talk about Britain as in, as if it’s this fortress. “You can’t possibly break the law,” you know, you — people say “oh, yeah, you know this person spray painted this bank.” And people are like “oh, did they get caught? Presumably in Britain, you know it’s such a surveillance state.”’
Proponents of Brexit love to paint the European Union as an authoritarian institution which poses an existential threat to an ancient tradition of British (or English) liberty. Those who have come into meaningful contact with British domestic security practices, such as the anonymous British activist quoted above, beg to differ.
