I'm sorry but between this and everything else lately...they seem pretty committed to "Security at any economic and/or personal cost! Security for everyone!"
I don't think it's to do with people 'losing their minds'. The weird thing about bills like this, or really anything effecting privacy/IT security, is that no matter how bad it is the general public have no idea it's happening. The number of people I've spoken to who know nothing about Snowden/PRISM etc despite it being front page news for months shocks me.
That basically means that it's up to a small group of people who are informed (like ourselves) to do what we can to stop this stuff. If we sit back and do nothing they won't have any problem implementing these laws.
For a long time, people who are concerned about online security and privacy have been derided as paranoid, tinfoil-hat-wearing kooks.
Not only that, but it seems to me that there's been far less coverage of these issues in mainstream media than in the tech press, and most mainstream coverage seems to take the governments' side. People who get most or all of their news from TV likely won't hear anything about all this; if they do, their eyes will glaze over as they don't have a clue how encryption works, or why it's important. Or, it will just vanish in the news cycle and they never think about it again.
Edit: It also seems to me that most people just aren't going to care unless it directly affects them, at which time it's already far too late.
If this is implemented, it's going to be fun the day that someone from the government gets hacked and compromised via the very same security weaknesses they ordered.
I feel like the UK is showing us what happens when the western world enters the information age without the protections and focus on individual freedoms some other countries have (not just the US, although of course they're high on the list).
In many ways we're seeing history play out all over again - new, disruptive thing shows up, governments wet themselves in terror, and try to control it. The difference is what happens now; in the US this tends (excluding drugs) to lead slowly towards a more nuanced position where the reigns are gradually loosened. In the UK that seems to never happen, the arrow of control and government intrusion only ever points in one direction. It's very puzzling; I'm not sure what the source of it is but I think it's going to be a serious issue in the future. Specifically as the rest of the world forges ahead, either through the evolving view of attempting to control of the uncontrollable, or through sheer lawlessness in other countries where the control is never in place. In the middle will be the UK, clinging desperately to the belief that (as someone else in the thread put it) they can hold back the tide.
I'm sorry but between this and everything else lately...they seem pretty committed to "Security at any economic and/or personal cost! Security for everyone!"
In the real world, that never works.