How can the UK government fine itself? In this news story the UK government has been fined £500,000 but who is doing the fining? Is the government fining itself?
Expanding on @Rick's answer, the UK government does not hold all of its money in an undifferentiated general fund (although much of it is held that way). In non-profits and government, one generally uses &quot;fund accounting&quot;, in which particular pots of money can only be used for particular purposes and the government keeps track of how much money is held in each fund. In this case, credit in a fund for cabinet operations would be transferred to a fund for privacy violation fines whose disposition would be set forth either in the Data Protection Act (2018) itself, or in some other piece of legislation (perhaps statutes on court administration) setting forth how funds collected as fines are used. This said, the intuition of the question isn't wrong. When one part of the government fines another part of the government, especially if the fine has the impact of preventing the fined part of the government from carrying on necessary governmental operations, the economic effort of the fine can be swiftly wiped out in the next annual appropriations bill, or in an interim emergency appropriations bill, if necessary. And, if the individual offenders who committed the violations aren't penalized, this may not be a very effective incentive to bring about compliance with the law. Of course, even if the economic incentive that the fine creates to comply is negligible, this doesn't mean that the symbolic and political cost of holding a government agency accountable in the same way that a private firm would be held accountable, that indicates the magnitude of the wrong done, is meaningless for the politicians running that agency.
The facts you describe are very likely an infringing derivative work which would provide a basis for a lawsuit against the person operating the website. But, nothing is certain, and these determinations are highly fact specific. It is highly unlikely that the government would enforce a violation of copyright alleged in these circumstances criminally.
No, a penalty clause is illegal, end of story. A contract could include a &quot;liquidated damages&quot; clause – this is how late fees are legal – that if you breach the contract in a certain way, you will compensate the company for the damage that you have done (bookkeeping, interest on money owed) in a standard and reasonable manner. Incidentally, what you describe is slavery, which is illegal throughout the US. The closest you could get is if the company offers a benefit for staying with the company for some period of time, then the employee might forego that benefit if they don't fulfill that aspect of the contract.
Claiming to be independent is probably not a crime: the family that say they have set up the Principality of Sealand have never been prosecuted (though that may have something to do with the difficulty of arresting them). It does not, however, excuse a British subject from the ordinary duties of paying taxes and the like; anyone in a more accessible (and more clearly British) part of the country would be subject to the normal forms of law enforcement, including imprisonment for contempt of court if they refused to obey court orders. Despite the more eccentric theories of the 'sovereign citizen' movement (who do exist in the UK), the fact that somebody living in Britain is subject to British laws is not open to negotiation. Resisting this law enforcement by force would not be a good idea: as well as the fact that the Government has access to bigger and better armed forces than you do, it would probably render you guilty of treason. The Treason Act 1351 (as amended and translated) makes it illegal to "levy war against our lord the King in his realm, or be adherent to the King's enemies in his realm, giving to them aid and comfort in the realm, or elsewhere"; the good news is that the death penalty for treason was abolished in 1998 (some time after that for murder).
The government cannot seize property because a person residing at that property has a tax debt: the debtor has to have a legal interest in the property, which you say you don't have. The government can seize property under the practice of civil forfeiture, which is a legal dispute between law enforcement and property – the simplest way to put it is that the property itself has &quot;done wrong&quot; (is involved in illegal activity). That's not what tax debt is. It is possible for the state to seize property in error, so just because the state makes a mistake somehow does not mean that the state cannot file the paperwork and seize the property if the owners ignore the summons.
In the UK this is just called &quot;an appeal for the suspect to come forward.&quot; The UK police are not allowed to lie or mislead as suggested in the OP, and any reduction in punishment is in the hands of the courts when passing sentence (unlike some other jurisdictions, I believe).
Given that this is a UK based company, the most applicable Act would be the Unsolicited Goods and Services Act 1971 A person who, not having reasonable cause to believe there is a right to payment, in the course of any trade or business makes a demand for payment, or asserts a present or prospective right to payment, for what he knows are unsolicited goods sent (after the commencement of this Act) to another person with a view to his acquiring them [for the purposes of his trade or business], shall be guilty of an offence and on summary conviction shall be liable to a fine not exceeding level 4 on the standard scale. This law specifically refers to [unsolicited] charges for entries in directories. You also mentioned that they're misrepresenting that a company is already a customer and sending out invoices on that basis. That would be a breach of the Fraud Act 2006 A person is in breach of this section if he dishonestly makes a false representation As to their enforceability, that answer is no. If this came before an actual judge, the judge would throw it out in a heartbeat. No agreement was made to provide a service in return for a payment and these companies rely on sending threatening letters via (seeming) third-parties precisely because they wish to avoid that level of scrutiny.
No, it is not illegal in UK to use proxies. No, it is not like the tor concept. No, the ISP does not slow you down (they mostly throttle detectable p2p connections), but if you use public proxies, many of them will be unacceptably slow. Note: for things like facebook, a proxy is utterly useless. You already donated your private data to them, there's nothing to hide.