Neuchâtel, Switzerland, 6:40am, 13 August 2013. A prosecutor, four criminal investigators and an IT expert enter the apartment of award-winning journalist, Ludovic Rocchi. Working on assignment, the journalist’s wife is home alone and reportedly interrogated in his place. Computer equipment and notebooks are seized before the dawn squad retreat, taking along with them a good chunk of Switzerland’s press freedom.

Illegal detention and government threats to a free press, just the latest headlines to emerge from the UK in a summer of revelations connected to NSA surveillance. Both revolve around the Guardian newspaper, and both require legal precedent to change in order to prevent Britain further lurching towards the unpleasant label of 21st Century totalitarian democracy.