I'm reminded of efforts in the 1990s to ban strong encryption in email and websites because governments tried to tell us it was used by drug dealers and pedos to do their nefarious activities. Yes, governments really did want to force us to use HTTPS with only broken/weak crypto. Same propaganda, different buzzwords.
Lawmakers want to ban VPNs
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Re: Lawmakers want to ban VPNs
#42I'm reminded of efforts in the 1990s to ban strong encryption in email and websites because governments tried to tell us it was used by drug dealers and pedos to do their nefarious activities. Yes, governments really did want to force us to use HTTPS with only broken/weak crypto. Same propaganda, different buzzwords.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper_chip
Yes and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernstein_v._United_States
Notice that in those cases DJB was represented by the eff, so they have been involved in this issue for a very long time.
Re: Lawmakers want to ban VPNs
#43A device-side IP filter locked behind a password that parents can configure in the device's settings would be much more effective and easier to implement than censoring the Internet. This should be the default solution, yet it's never brought up for whatever reason. Not to mention these online content censorship laws for kids are wrong in principle because parents are supposed to be in control of how they raise each…
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Re: Lawmakers want to ban VPNs
#44It's funny how democratic countries copy whatever laws authoritarian regimes passed, but with a 5-year lag.
This sort of thing turns up very regularly in US politics, from the Comstock Laws to the Communications Decency Act. The late 90s even had a requirement to use easily breakable encryption (48-bit RSA) which big tech companies generally obeyed. And a worse proposal (the "clipper chip") which was never deployed. Authoritarianism is not limited by your birthplace, it can turn up anywhere. And when it does people are oft…
Re: Lawmakers want to ban VPNs
#45Lawmakers in general have less than one percent knowledge on what they make laws on. I look forward to them all logging in remotely after the ban. The key change is needed with things such as meshtastic and lora. Taking things out of the hands of regulators is key
I think they know exactly what they are doing. This isn’t the nineties anymore. Which makes it even worse.
But our gerontocracy is still living in the nineties (if we’re lucky).
Re: Lawmakers want to ban VPNs
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
The only way to block a VPN is to have the knowledge that certain IPs are used by VPN providers. It's pretty trivial for someone to run a script/app that spins up a server somewhere, installs VPN software on it, and uses that for the connection. Now there's no way to separate whether a user is connecting via a VPN or not.
It's pretty trivial for you or I. The average 12 year old who this law aims to protect doesn't know how to do that.
Never underestimate the work ethic of a 12 year old who wants to look at porn.
Re: Lawmakers want to ban VPNs
#47Wisconsin "porn" websites will just move out of Wisconsin. The bill reads like you would think from someone who's been talking with the ceo of an age verification company. The bill gives the website two options: use a _commercial_ age verification product tied to gov't id checking, or "digitize" the web user's gov't id.
Holding out for government IdP that can return verified but anonymous data (like age)--like a JWT that has no identifier besides an age claim.
Seems highly unlikely it would ever happen (at least in the U.S.) but seems like it'd solve a decent amount of verification problems. With a JWT, the IdP wouldn't even necessarily need to know the recipient since the validity could be verified by the consuming party using asymmetric crypto.
Re: Lawmakers want to ban VPNs
#48Well, let’s be honest — users of VPNs regularly don’t know what they are doing, too. Can’t count how often I‘ve heard otherwise technologically literate people saying how they use a VPN (NordVPN e.a.) because „something something security“.
Irony being trusting random VPN providers and arbitrary foreign (exit) countries potentially makes security _worse_ than without the VPN
Re: Lawmakers want to ban VPNs
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
The only way to block a VPN is to have the knowledge that certain IPs are used by VPN providers. It's pretty trivial for someone to run a script/app that spins up a server somewhere, installs VPN software on it, and uses that for the connection. Now there's no way to separate whether a user is connecting via a VPN or not.
It's pretty trivial for you or I. The average 12 year old who this law aims to protect doesn't know how to do that.
I wouldn't underestimate 12 year olds. It's not hard to find an online community (chatroom/message board) where other members post this stuff.
It's also pretty trivial to wrap in an app
Source, I was setting up home proxies so classmates could access Flash games on school computers when I was 12...
Re: Lawmakers want to ban VPNs
#50A device-side IP filter locked behind a password that parents can configure in the device's settings would be much more effective and easier to implement than censoring the Internet. This should be the default solution, yet it's never brought up for whatever reason. Not to mention these online content censorship laws for kids are wrong in principle because parents are supposed to be in control of how they raise each…
I think putting parents in control is the right path, but will reveal a sad fact.
Many parents aren't taking time to be in control, and no amount of legislation will fix that.