Sounds like yet another "privacy and/or protection effort" on the UK govt. I used to come over there at least once per year to do a pen test on a large investment bank (me, a co-worker, and a VP from the US offices). The VP used it as his yearly vacation. After 4 or 5 of those pen-tests the UK put that GDPR (or whatever it is called) privacy law into effect and completely screwed up our tests. I used to be able to take screenshots of employees playing games or surfing porn, crack passwords, and escalate privileges until that law hit. Suddenly that company could claim they were secure because we no longer completely owned the network since we were handcuffed by the law.

That was idiotic. The only thing that did was make companies less secure because no hacker out there cares a lick about that law.

I was stationed at RAF Alconbury near Huntingdon years ago and things weren't quite as bad then, but they were starting to get there. Things like the TV tax van patrolling the neighborhoods looking for violators, and cameras starting to pop up. The vans every once in a while tried to come on base (to fine the people in the barracks) but our SOFA agreement did not allow that. Now I understand there are speed and red-light cams, CCTV everywhere, GDPR, laws about pronouns or "hate speech" - it is seriously getting out of hand. Hopefully they haven't gone full stupid and banned VPNs and even VOIP (like Dubai did). I always worry Americans will be too stupid to stop the same slide the UK went through. Fortunately we have some wins with the cameras but states like CA will do what they want regardless.