This sounds like the company from Cory Doctorow’s most recent novel, Picks & Shovels

Let’s delve into the issue

“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.“

In the US it’s usually euphemised under ‘loitering’ or ‘vagrancy’ or some such rubbish

an American publication

According to Wikipedia, its mostly written and edited in London, and was started in Britain in the 1800s (to raise support for abolishing import tariffs in fact)

This is the premise of Tom Maughan’s short story “Flyover Country”