Ok, my answer was sloppy.
Here’s what I meant:
1. Context is “EU digital identity”. For a decade EU asked researcher how to have a way to verify age only, without extra data leaking. They have a working solution, and it’s the one rolling out to EU citizens.
2. This document talks about VPNs because they have been bought up recently as “how to skip age verification tools”. It is a legitimate concern. Every EU citizen has/will-have a privacy safe wallet to prove age, users from other nations will not, EU minors can just VPN to nation X, and skip age verification.
3. The org producing this doc outlines that yeah, the above is true. It’s actually a balanced doc. Each of us would have written a different one, sure. I likely would have liked “yours” better, since I think we feel we share common values. I’m just saying i don’t thing it is misrepresenting reality.
The doc targets eu legislators, likely not tech savvy.
This is not about restricting access to VPNs, this is about outlining that they exists, that they have an impact on solutions proposed for age-verification.
Did it not exists, it would reinforce that eu votes on shot without having any grasp on what is at stake.
I actually agree with you: I see civic liberties under attack way too often (and try to contribute as much as possible to upholding them).
But by large, the EU has done a good job at upholding those freedoms. Repeated attacks on those freedoms have been rejected when it was time to vote (in the EU parliament!!!).
This makes me confident in the process.
Yes, of course, we can always have “better”, but at some point calling out as fascists some legislators trying to understand what’s the relationship between VPNs and age verification seems to me as the opposite of wanting them to be better educated.
To precisely answer the “restrict access to VPNs”, no of course that’s not “good”.
But I like the fact that EU legislator get to read that document, instead/on-top of some partisan mumbo jumbo from whatever news outlet.