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Lawmakers want to ban VPNs

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Re: Lawmakers want to ban VPNs

#151

A 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…

The goal is controling the flow of information online. "protecting the children" may or may not be a sincere concern but ultimately censorship is what is desired here.

Whenever "think of the children" shows up as a pretend-genuine argument, you may bet on it being a scam/grift.

Read about the infamous EU's chat control and lobbying behind it: https://mullvad.net/en/blog/mullvad-vpn-present-and-then

Re: Lawmakers want to ban VPNs

#152

A 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…

IP filter? So what you do when you block the entire cloudflare, CloudFront, Amazon and Google cloud ip ranges?

What's left?

There are better solution than blocking IPs.

Re: Lawmakers want to ban VPNs

#154

A 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…

The goal is controling the flow of information online. "protecting the children" may or may not be a sincere concern but ultimately censorship is what is desired here.

pedo and terror the 2 excuses

Re: Lawmakers want to ban VPNs

#155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They actually act perfectly rationally. Media post articles about how easy it is to bypass the law using VPN, mock the government, and what the law author should feel reading this? "Ok let them break the law"? Of course, the reasonable response is to close the loopholes.

The issue is tech isn't as simple as that, vpn's are key in many jobs, are they banned? It is the same issue when they ask for backdoors in every messaging app. It is rational if you don't think any deeper than surface level but once you dig an inch deep, it is clear why it isn't rational.

The companies using VPN for work can file an application for an white list exception, if they provide an application with a list of employees having access. I think this is how it works in my country. You are making an elephant from a fly (proverb meaning exaggerating minor issues).

For better security, a signed obligation to observe law might be collected from every employee, and an access log kept, with records signed by company's digital signature.

Re: Lawmakers want to ban VPNs

#156

> It Won’t Even Work I heard similar sentiments about censorship efforts in Russia, but it does seem to work, unfortunately. So far they have outlawed and blocked major VPN providers (and keep blocking more, including non-commercial ones, like Tor bridges, and foreign hosting companies' websites), blocked major detectable protocols used for those (IPsec, WireGuard), made usage of proxying ("VPN") an aggravating circu…

It won’t even work* *without resorting to complete Russian style government control The US is not (yet) Russia. The rule of law is definitely being destroyed as we speak, so who knows 5, 10 years down the road, but there are still several prerequisite institutions that need to be destroyed before the US could reliably enforce a VPN ban.

Every country that has slid into North Korea style total control begins with a "it won't happen here. And it'd stop before it gets that bad."

Re: Lawmakers want to ban VPNs

#157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They actually act perfectly rationally. Media post articles about how easy it is to bypass the law using VPN, mock the government, and what the law author should feel reading this? "Ok let them break the law"? Of course, the reasonable response is to close the loopholes.

The issue is tech isn't as simple as that, vpn's are key in many jobs, are they banned? It is the same issue when they ask for backdoors in every messaging app. It is rational if you don't think any deeper than surface level but once you dig an inch deep, it is clear why it isn't rational.

> they ask for backdoors in every messaging app

Being a devil's advocate, you already entrust the government to register your property, issue your money, prosecute you for wrongdoing (including death penalty) and send you to the war. Your data is already collected and sold by thousands of data brokers. What are you losing by having a backdoor that would be used only in strict accordance with the law (laws being created by your elected representatives) and only for legal purposes? You must comply with the law anyway, no matter if the government can or cannot see what you are doing.

If you truly believed in democracy and rule of law in your country, you would have no doubts and volunteered to install the backdoor yourself.

Re: Lawmakers want to ban VPNs

#158
post #98

Of course, what if I use an SSH tunnel instead as that normally suffices a lot easier for me. It's basically the same underlying libraries? They would have to regulate the use of libssl, libcrypto, etc. This makes no sense lol. Am I going to find myself in jail one day for "Unregulated use of a private/public key pair?"

That depends on if you are poor and/or considered a political enemy. Where is the party of small government?

> Where is the party of small government?

It's the conservative 2/3 of the Democratic party.

Re: Lawmakers want to ban VPNs

#159
post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn438z3ejxyo https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0epennv98lo https://www.lbc.co.uk/article/digital-id-cards-ill-stop-ille... Terrorism still crops up occasionally but the rhetoric has certainly expanded.

I was querying that the motivation is control and power abuse more than protecting children. I live in the UK and know people that go into politics. A lot want to protect children. People can be over cynical about assuming everyone is evil.

Maybe “simple and easily manipulated” is better. The driving force behind the UK’s “child safety” push seems to be mostly because there was “enormous potential across the Safety Tech sector … to foster the development of sustainable, high-tech companies across the country” [1].

Don’t be deceived - huge amounts of lobbying went into this, because some savvy entrepreneurs saw a market to sell age-verification services. The key driver behind the laws is more about creating that market than actual child protection - if they were actually interested in that, they wouldn’t be pushing things that are clearly so ineffective (but expensive).

1. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/safer-technology-...

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