In what is seen by many as an alarming move, the UK Government has been discretely expanding a contentious surveillance technology with the potential to log and store the internet histories of millions of individuals.

A new report by the UK’s top Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation, David Anderson, says that bulk interception and acquisition of Internet and communications data is of ‘vital utility’ to security and intelligence agencies.

The United Kingdom has passed a law that recognizes ‘domestic violence over social media’, and makes it a punishable offense. According to the new law, threatening or even monitoring someone via social media counts as domestic violence. So how do they distinguish between the average act of ‘following’ someone on Facebook or Twitter, and monitoring? Good question.

The U.S. and U.K. both seem poised on the brink of allowing people to send text messages to emergency services, instead of dialing 911 (999 in the UK).