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It's official: Utah is the U.S. state closest to banning VPNs

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Re: It's official: Utah is the U.S. state closest to banning VPNs

#161

Post by tomrod »

nine_k wrote: post #65
darknavi wrote: post #45

> When Utah's Senate Bill 73 goes into force on May 6, websites subject to the state's age verification law will be legally barred from explaining how to use a VPN to get around age restrictions. This will definitely work. It sounds like it's time for some "How not to use a VPN" articles. https://www.grapecollective.com/prohibitions-grape-bricks-ho...

More seriously: what good an age restriction is if it can be circumvented by a VPN?

A litmus test in the law for "good" (freedom-respecting) laws and "bad" (moral judgement/forcing homogenous morals) laws.

Utah has chosen, unfortunately, to abrogate the rights of parents to raise their children and to allow people to engage privately online.

Re: It's official: Utah is the U.S. state closest to banning VPNs

#162

Post by GLGirty »

akramachamarei wrote: post #135
GLGirty wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is the most wildly dangerous threat to liberty in this nation's history. You better sit down before you look up “citizens united."

IIUC Citizens United basically defended the freedom of people to donate anonymously to political campaigns. Do I have that wrong, or could you explain what liberties trampled by C.U. outweigh those it maintained?

In practice, it opened the flood gates for corporations and oligarchs to pour money into the electoral system. [1] Do you like technocracy? Because this is how you get technocracy.

[1] https://rooseveltinstitute.org/publications/citizens-united-...

Re: It's official: Utah is the U.S. state closest to banning VPNs

#163

Post by mathgladiator »

jnovek wrote: post #34
roumenguha wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People make tradeoffs when it comes to where to live. You can surely move, but that assumes you have the financial means (if finding a new job is possible for you and your partner, and your children aren't at a point in their lives where moving would be detrimental), the support system, the friend circles, the third spaces and accompanying social systems, the kind of nature and access to that nature that you've grown…

I think people who aren’t or haven’t been poor often don’t realize that moving to another state — or even away from your hometown — is a privilege that is cost prohibitive for many Americans.

I've been homeless and in debt and still moved. It's 100% mindset.

Re: It's official: Utah is the U.S. state closest to banning VPNs

#164

Post by bigbadfeline »

Barbing wrote: post #70

“The internet is built to, and will always, route around censorship. If Utah successfully hampers commercial VPN providers, motivated users will transition to non-commercial proxies, private tunnels through cloud services like AWS, or residential proxies that are virtually indistinguishable from standard home traffic. These workarounds will emerge within hours of the law taking effect. Meanwhile, the collateral damag…

> Utah legislators should know the reason the EFF makes this statement is that it’s true.

Well, it's not true, and Utah's legislators know better than the EFF. The whole idea that political restrictions can be fixed by technical means is a scam. Simply put, today Utah - tomorrow the universe. This didn't start in Utah and it won't end there.

The piecemeal removal of privacy and freedoms has reached an advanced stage and one of the major factors that made it possible is the misplaced faith in circumvention by technical means.

Re: It's official: Utah is the U.S. state closest to banning VPNs

#165

Post by jasomill »

Barbing wrote: post #70

“The internet is built to, and will always, route around censorship. If Utah successfully hampers commercial VPN providers, motivated users will transition to non-commercial proxies, private tunnels through cloud services like AWS, or residential proxies that are virtually indistinguishable from standard home traffic. These workarounds will emerge within hours of the law taking effect. Meanwhile, the collateral damag…

Unfortunately, these efforts will continue so long as the idea that "if I'm not doing anything wrong, I have nothing to hide" remains commonplace.

The optimist in me hopes that attempts to censor popular and relatively harmless content like pornography will discredit this notion for good, sort of like how Internet commerce put to rest the idea that cryptography was only useful for governments, corporations, and bad actors.

Re: It's official: Utah is the U.S. state closest to banning VPNs

#166

Post by ButlerianJihad »

Kim_Bruning wrote: post #142
ButlerianJihad wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Picking a lock is not necessarily illegal. You could be a locksmith in training; you could be picking your own locks. You could be just in a lab or a classroom or a manufacturer that does this stuff.

You could even be a lawyer! https://www.youtube.com/@lockpickinglawyer

He even sells all the necessary tools to assemble a burglary kit.

I feel like his channel is some psyop honeypot to get all the criminals with Dunning-Kruger to buy his tools and then Google calls the cops before they can even jimmy a lock.

The catch with the LPL is that a lot of skill and experience also goes into picking locks. He does it reliably and quickly and efficiently because he knows how. If some goober tried to replicate his success wearing a balaclava at 3am, it may prove a bit more thorny a problem.

Re: It's official: Utah is the U.S. state closest to banning VPNs

#167

Post by cvoss »

giantg2 wrote: post #139
cvoss wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many comments here that are confused about what the bill actually says. Headline very much implies something about a law banning VPNs. But that's not what the headline really means. So it's misleading.

The headline suggests that Utah is moving in the direction of banning VPNs, and is closer than other states. I don't see anything misleading about that, especially when you see the enforcement piece would fundamentally gut VPNs if implemented.

The most natural reading of "Utah is close to banning VPNs" is that there is a bill working its way through the statehouse that would ban VPNs if it passed. But that is an untrue reading.

Another reading of "Utah is close to banning VPNs" is "Utah did something that is not banning VPNs but (as an editorial opinion) is thematically and logically adjacent to that concept." This matches reality (under some viewpoint) but is an unnatural reading.

Hence, the sentence "Utah is close to banning VPNs" is misleading, as evidenced by others' comments. That you read the headline "correctly" does not show the headline to be forthright.

Re: It's official: Utah is the U.S. state closest to banning VPNs

#168

Post by Kim_Bruning »

ButlerianJihad wrote: post #166
Kim_Bruning wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could even be a lawyer! https://www.youtube.com/@lockpickinglawyer

He even sells all the necessary tools to assemble a burglary kit. I feel like his channel is some psyop honeypot to get all the criminals with Dunning-Kruger to buy his tools and then Google calls the cops before they can even jimmy a lock. The catch with the LPL is that a lot of skill and experience also goes into picking locks. He does it reliably and quickly and efficiently because he knows how. If some goober tri…

Or, you buy the kit because picking locks is a fun puzzle? Very hacker-adjacent. It's not necessarily illegal, after all.

Re: It's official: Utah is the U.S. state closest to banning VPNs

#169

Post by ryukoposting »

darknavi wrote: post #45

> When Utah's Senate Bill 73 goes into force on May 6, websites subject to the state's age verification law will be legally barred from explaining how to use a VPN to get around age restrictions. This will definitely work. It sounds like it's time for some "How not to use a VPN" articles. https://www.grapecollective.com/prohibitions-grape-bricks-ho...

Thanks for an interesting read!

Re: It's official: Utah is the U.S. state closest to banning VPNs

#170

Post by anikom15 »

giantg2 wrote: post #67
anikom15 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does. That isn’t going to survive judicial review.

It very well could. See the restriction of fictional adult material depicting fictional minors just because there is a theory of those fake materials contributing to viewers becoming predators in the future. Same sort of harm to children logic could be used here.

VPN instructions aren’t obscene.
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