I, for one, am just /shocked/ that Baroness Cass (of the Cass Report) is trying to limit people's personal freedoms.
UK House of Lords attempting to ban use of VPNs by anyone under 16
71–80 of 499 posts
Re: UK House of Lords attempting to ban use of VPNs by anyone under 16
#72Re: UK House of Lords attempting to ban use of VPNs by anyone under 16
#73On a related note, they built their digital ID so that third parties could verify attributes (it's NOT just a single-service login across government + a linking ID across government services, which is how it was sold by the BBC). They're pretty close to completely de-anonymising the internet for UK citizens. Say they introduce an Australian-style social media ban for under 16s, then requires all social media to link…
> Keep in mind the UK already arrests and imprisons vast numbers of people for speech offences. Vast? No, they really don't.
How would you argue that more than one arrest is fair in a modern democracy? Can you even point to an arrest where it passes the pub test?
Re: UK House of Lords attempting to ban use of VPNs by anyone under 16
#74Will probably work as well as their prohibition of knives for underaged people (That is, none at all)
Reminds me of my favourite UK totalitarian politician fantasy story: https://www.forbes.com/sites/ianmorris/2019/03/14/yes-a-poli...
The UK went culturally off the deep end a long time ago.
Re: UK House of Lords attempting to ban use of VPNs by anyone under 16
#75This is one of dozens of amendments proposed by members, so it's more accurate to say "three members of the House of Lords attempting to ban the use of VPNs".
I'm not from the UK but I thought the house of lords is largely a vestigial legislative body and has no serious power. Am I wrong there?
They can propose amendments to legislation, and delay some legislation from passing if they don't like it or don't get their amendments approved.
Re: UK House of Lords attempting to ban use of VPNs by anyone under 16
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Keep in mind the UK already arrests and imprisons vast numbers of people for speech offences I think you’ve been spending too much time on Twitter
> While figures show that the total number of arrests for online posts fell to 9,700 last year, down from a record 13,800 in 2023... https://freespeechunion.org/daily-mail-investigation-exposes...
This is based on statistics for the Malicious Communications Act. That includes people sending, for example, threatening messages to an ex partner.
Not all of them are online posts, in fact probably a minority
Re: UK House of Lords attempting to ban use of VPNs by anyone under 16
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
> While figures show that the total number of arrests for online posts fell to 9,700 last year, down from a record 13,800 in 2023... https://freespeechunion.org/daily-mail-investigation-exposes...
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Yes, let me just arrest you over some text and hold you for a couple of days.
Surely no problem! But being serious if anything this is worse than no imprisonment. Why are they arresting so many people they don't have any grounds to jail longer term?
Re: UK House of Lords attempting to ban use of VPNs by anyone under 16
#78Re: UK House of Lords attempting to ban use of VPNs by anyone under 16
#79What is it about these UK politics posts that draws a particular type of commenter? What the heck media are these folks consuming to have such a warped view of this country?
I've had American colleagues ask me about the London crime wave. They seem to have some sort of alternative news source that doesn't tell them murders have halved from the high point around the millennium.
https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/news/london-murder-rate-dr...
Then they say it's about knife crime. Where the UK also does better than the US.
https://www.euronews.com/2018/05/05/trump-s-knife-crime-clai...
Re: UK House of Lords attempting to ban use of VPNs by anyone under 16
#80I know what you're thinking: these restrictions are easy to work around. But don't worry, we can just layer more restrictions on top. Eventually the children will be safe! The government just needs to...
- require proof of age (ID) to install apps from unofficial sources on your phone or PC. Probably best to block this at both the OS and also popular VPN downloading sites like github.com and debian.org.
- require proof of age (ID) to unblock DNS provider IP addresses like 8.8.8.8 and 1.1.1.1 at your ISP.
- make sure children aren't using any other "privacy" tools that might be a slippery slope to installing a VPN.
This makes it so much easier for the parents too! The internet will be so safe that they won't even need to talk to their children about internet safety.