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VPNs are not the solution to a policy problem

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Re: VPNs are not the solution to a policy problem

#141

Post by mirimir »

brokenmachine wrote: post #112
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sweden is a member of the EU [1]. It has a 6-month data retention law [2]. Much safer to route through Norway, Switzerland or even the United States. (I use PIA [3].) [1] https://europa.eu/european-union/about-eu/countries_en [2] https://www.purevpn.com/blog/data-retention-laws-by-countrie... [3] https://www.privateinternetaccess.com

Personally I would never use a US-based VPN.

Well, who can you trust? Ultimately, no one.

PIA has been dissed over their promotional practices. And for using weak encryption, which allowed them to minimize resource use, and undercut competition.

But I gotta say that their no-logs victory in court is impressive!

Re: VPNs are not the solution to a policy problem

#142

Post by jaredklewis »

nikcub wrote: post #102

There are a few schools of thought on where responsibility should lie in protecting user privacy. The first that it is a role of government and policy - in the same way the government sets standards for automobile and road safety they can set and enforce policies for user privacy. The second school of thought is individual responsibility. Users should take steps to protect their own privacy on a case-by-case basis, i…

I strongly disagree.

This policy fight isn't a fight to regulate the market (like the automobile regulations you mentioned). It's a fight for a fundamental right to privacy. Any technology improvement that can protect privacy can be made illegal, and enforced by a boot on the face (see China).

If the government makes encryption without government key escrow illegal (not at all outlandish, has been discussed in many countries), will you personally, nikcub, continue to use encryption without key escrow? If you are willing to risk imprisonment to do so, you are among the bravest people. It is a small group.

The policy fight is massively more important than the tech. A tech that takes 100 years to develop can be made illegal in a day.

If everyone starts using VPNs, ISPs will ban them. There might be some game of cat and mouse, but eventually the same lobbyists that lobbied to remove these privacy rules are going to lobby to take some of tech options off the table.

Re: VPNs are not the solution to a policy problem

#143

Post by cottsak »

VPN providers can totally scale. They will cease to be semi-dark-web services and turn first class. Services that test them will emerge verifying the security and encryption of tunnels.

Additionally there will be some who take an extreme view to this "zero knowledge" approach offering all forms of payment and workarounds to preventing down-stream ISPs/backhaul from tracking/identifying/classifying user traffic.

Maybe VPNs "are not the solution" but they still can do a lot of good in the mean time yet.

Re: VPNs are not the solution to a policy problem

#144

Post by gambiting »

byuu wrote: post #36

Another thing often overlooked with VPNs is that they're just not that fast. I have a 600/40 connection, and I've tried at least six for-pay VPN providers. The fastest one I found (won't mention as my goal isn't to advertise for them) hits, at best, 100/30. And even then, only over L2TP. For whatever reason, OpenVPN is always slower on every PC I've tried this with. And obviously, you gain a good deal of latency, esp…

I use Private Internet Access and I can easily max out my 300Mbps/50mbps connection, both ways, when connecting through a neighbouring country(I'm in UK, and usually use either Sweden or Netherlands exit points)

Re: VPNs are not the solution to a policy problem

#145

Post by demonshalo »

jaredklewis wrote: post #142
nikcub wrote: post #102

There are a few schools of thought on where responsibility should lie in protecting user privacy. The first that it is a role of government and policy - in the same way the government sets standards for automobile and road safety they can set and enforce policies for user privacy. The second school of thought is individual responsibility. Users should take steps to protect their own privacy on a case-by-case basis, i…

I strongly disagree. This policy fight isn't a fight to regulate the market (like the automobile regulations you mentioned). It's a fight for a fundamental right to privacy. Any technology improvement that can protect privacy can be made illegal, and enforced by a boot on the face (see China). If the government makes encryption without government key escrow illegal (not at all outlandish, has been discussed in many c…

> It's a fight for a fundamental right to privacy.

Where did this right come from? and since when is this a thing? Don't mean to be condescending but "the right to privacy" isn't really a thing in this particular domain (legally speaking)

Re: VPNs are not the solution to a policy problem

#146

Post by TeMPOraL »

jaredklewis wrote: post #142
nikcub wrote: post #102

There are a few schools of thought on where responsibility should lie in protecting user privacy. The first that it is a role of government and policy - in the same way the government sets standards for automobile and road safety they can set and enforce policies for user privacy. The second school of thought is individual responsibility. Users should take steps to protect their own privacy on a case-by-case basis, i…

I strongly disagree. This policy fight isn't a fight to regulate the market (like the automobile regulations you mentioned). It's a fight for a fundamental right to privacy. Any technology improvement that can protect privacy can be made illegal, and enforced by a boot on the face (see China). If the government makes encryption without government key escrow illegal (not at all outlandish, has been discussed in many c…

Maybe nitpicking, but:

> a fight for a fundamental right to privacy

Many don't consider this to be a fundamental right.

> A tech that takes 100 years to develop can be made illegal in a day.

As the recorded history goes, I think it was always the other way around - a new technological development suddenly invalidating a set of laws, and lawmakers playing catch-up with its use.

I wish governments of the world got their collective shit together so we could have sane privacy laws, but as it is now, technology is an important leverage to push the policymakers in the right direction. Maybe you can't focus 100% on it, but it would be foolish to just ignore it. It's the single most powerful tool we have here.

Re: VPNs are not the solution to a policy problem

#147

Post by TeMPOraL »

jfoutz wrote: post #61

Lots of people seem to think the right answer is selling improved security. I disagree. It would be much more exiting to get the data coming from politicians homes, and the homes of their staff. It would be a fantastic way to generate news. Why is senator X's household researching cancer treatment? Will they step down this year? I can't help but think military bases would google their next deployment, that's another…

Well, pastebinning communication of a politician (or better - their kid) seems like such an effective idea, I wonder why this doesn't seem to happen? Is there a strong roadblock somewhere there? It's not like most politicians and their staff know much about Internet security.

Re: VPNs are not the solution to a policy problem

#148

Post by chatmasta »

dfc wrote: post #122

It's strange to see the evolution of the technology versus policy debate. We started out with "the Internet views censorship as damage and routes around it." A little later we had Lessig saying "code is law." And now the refrain is "VPNs are not the solution to a policy problem." I miss the idealism and optimism of the past. The only hopeful thing I can find in the new "quote" is that it seems that the tech world is…

So true and I could not agree more. When did technical problems start requiring political solutions?

I think it's a Trojan horse from politicians to start legislating where nobody needs legislation. The net will still route around censorship, but it's becoming increasingly harder in a world where a high percentage of global bandwidth transits through a small number of large deployments by centralized corporations.

The pessimist in me sees this as a sure sign that the "Balkanization of the internet" train has long since left the station. However I remain optimistic that "information wants to be free." As long as information exists somewhere (and people know to look for it), decentralized tools like torrents, ipfs, Tor, etc will continue to enable access to it.

What I worry most about is the public's increasing dependency on sandboxed devices. We celebrate sandboxing as a win for security, which it certainly is, but the more we depend on it, the more we are subject to the whims of its corporate gatekeepers. How long before laptops are as sandboxed as phones?

Software can only solve the technical problems so long as it can run on the hardware in your possession.

Re: VPNs are not the solution to a policy problem

#149

Post by skynode »

quantumfoam wrote: post #136

I'll just leave this here: https://github.com/trailofbits/algo/blob/master/README.md I used a droplet on DigitalOcean to configure an Algo server. Very seamless setup, highly recommend. There's a $10 promo floating around: DROPLET10. You can self host too.

Stated anti-features leave a lot to be desired.

Re: VPNs are not the solution to a policy problem

#150

Post by 7HNajAH »

So which VPSs are good for privacy? We all know DigitalOcean, AWS and Linode as simple to set up and use VPSs, but does anyone have any recomendations of VPSs based on their terms? I currently use DO for my VPS/VPN, but i've seen people voice concerns about them in the past. Is there a list of 'most free' providers?
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