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Lawmakers want to ban VPNs

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Re: Lawmakers want to ban VPNs

#241

Post by hylaride »

mark_l_watson wrote: post #186

Sadly (at least for me, I am a US citizen) we are seeing the slow burn collapse of western ‘democracies’ and the slow steady rise of the global south. Western leaders are in panic mode. I am not very political but when I look at the last Biden administration and the current Trump administration I see two men in panic mode - very weak. A partial solution to western civilization collapse is to make ourselves as individ…

Western "democracies" are most certainly fraying, but the rise of the global south is nowhere near a certainty. Their institutions are nowhere near strong enough, especially rule of law. People are also not migrating en-mass to them, either.

> A partial solution to western civilization collapse is to make ourselves as individuals strong: prioritize family, friends, continual life long education, spirituality, highly productive work, supporting our local communities, etc.

I broadly agree, but western civilization has had so much regulatory capture by vested interests that sap productivity (whether it's US billionaires capturing the tax code or retirees in France demanding the state fund their arguably too early retirement) that individualism may not be enough.

Re: Lawmakers want to ban VPNs

#242

Post by ndsipa_pomu »

monooso wrote: post #148
James_K wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Of course, what if I use an SSH tunnel instead Are you a child? Probably not, so you are just accessing legally available content by alternate means. It's strange how many people think they are out-smarting a system when said system is explicitly designed to allow them access. These laws are primarily intended to stop children browsing the internet from being exposed to porn and gore when they're simply browsing the…

Did you read the article? Firstly, the article makes it clear that the definition of "harmful to children" is being systematically expanded to mean "makes conservatives a bit uncomfortable." And secondly: > It's strange how many people think they are out-smarting a system when said system is explicitly designed to allow them access. The whole point of the article is to draw attention to the fact that certain regions…

> the article makes it clear that the definition of "harmful to children" is being systematically expanded to mean "makes conservatives a bit uncomfortable."

Seems clear to me that a lot of religious sites are directly harmful to children if they allow the church elders abuse them with impunity.

Re: Lawmakers want to ban VPNs

#243

Post by senshan »

If the goal is to protect minors, then alcohol may be a better model:

a) Alcohol is considered harmful for minors, hence

b) It is unlawful for minors to posses and consume alcohol;

c) It is unlawful to sell alcohol to minors;

Similarly:

1) Internet may potentially contain harmful material, hence:

2) It is unlawful for minors access Internet;

3) It is unlawful to sell or provide to minors access to Internet or any devices or services that facilitate access to Internet

Easy-peasy

Re: Lawmakers want to ban VPNs

#244

Post by Longlius »

SoftTalker wrote: post #235
txrx0000 wrote: post #32

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…

> parents are supposed to be in control of how they raise each of their own kids You realize that a lot of parents support this sort of thing because they are not technically sophisticated enough to control it themselves? Or they simply think that it has no place in polite society? That is why politicians enact these laws, because they are hearing from constituents that they want it.

Excuse my somewhat peeved tone, but if parents aren't capable of pressing one (1) button on a iPhone/Android setup screen to turn on the parental controls and content blocking, then perhaps we should be rethinking their capacity to raise children.

Re: Lawmakers want to ban VPNs

#245

Post by exasperaited »

rgblambda wrote: post #149
rjh29 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would like a citation for 12k arrests a year as that seems insane to me.

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/crime/article/police-make-30-arr... The findings in the Times article were subsequently debated in the House of Lords. The figures weren't disputed: https://lordslibrary.parliament.uk/select-communications-off...

I don't really get why this is surprising or actually particularly worrying.

30 arrests a day for something in a population of seventy million people, a large proportion of whom are online in some way, is not that much.

And it's not 30 arrests per day for saying things the government don't like or that are politically incorrect, is it? It's mostly for things that rise to the level of threats or harassment or cause alarm.

On the one hand it's a new conduit for threatening conduct, and on the other hand, it's probably replacing some.

I'd note something that comes up when this number is mentioned often enlightens the context: that people often use this figure to say "that's more than in Iran or Russia", as if the number itself is actually meaningful. Nobody's going to arrest you in Russia for abusing transgender people; nobody's going to arrest you in Iran for encouraging the punishment of promiscuity or gay people. In either case they might turn a blind eye if you threaten the lives of those people. But the things they would arrest you for — criticising the government or the war — you know not to even say out loud when not among friends. Because the punishment is not the mild inconvenience you would get in the UK.

There are bigger problems in the UK with misunderstanding policing of speech in the real, physical world: the Palestine Action stuff is being much more obviously mishandled. I think it's much more important to focus on getting the government to handle that more logically and sanely.

Re: Lawmakers want to ban VPNs

#246

Post by para_parolu »

senshan wrote: post #243

If the goal is to protect minors, then alcohol may be a better model: a) Alcohol is considered harmful for minors, hence b) It is unlawful for minors to posses and consume alcohol; c) It is unlawful to sell alcohol to minors; Similarly: 1) Internet may potentially contain harmful material, hence: 2) It is unlawful for minors access Internet; 3) It is unlawful to sell or provide to minors access to Internet or any dev…

Protecting minors is never a goal. But punishing VPN providers will be next step after banning usage.

Re: Lawmakers want to ban VPNs

#247

Post by Longlius »

treebeard901 wrote: post #221

All it does is make it easier for the Government to monitor VPN connections. They already can request logs from providers. Most, if not all VPNs require a proof of identity which is used to subpoena your data. Next up is device security itself. Most phones can be remotely compromised with man in the middle style certificates. Most sites do not use certificate pinning and there is always a master key for decryption bu…

>Most, if not all VPNs require a proof of identity

I've never been asked for proof of identity by a VPN.

Re: Lawmakers want to ban VPNs

#248

Post by jamzer »

rileymat2 wrote: post #60

"Here's what happens if VPNs get blocked: everyone has to verify their age by submitting government IDs, biometric data, or credit card information directly to websites—without any encryption or privacy protection." Can someone explain how this is true? Even if there is not a VPN, there should be https encryption and privacy protection.

I think they're referring to the verification end, in terms of being required to hand over personal info to various parties, a certain percentage of which will have insufficient security and be compromised resulting in your info being leaked.

Or otherwise that if you want to effectively ban VPNs you'll end up at the point where secure encryption is effectively banned, because there are ways to tunnel traffic over pretty much any protocol eg. SSH, HTTPS if you're creative.

Re: Lawmakers want to ban VPNs

#249

Post by LexiMax »

elzbardico wrote: post #194
mark_l_watson wrote: post #186

Sadly (at least for me, I am a US citizen) we are seeing the slow burn collapse of western ‘democracies’ and the slow steady rise of the global south. Western leaders are in panic mode. I am not very political but when I look at the last Biden administration and the current Trump administration I see two men in panic mode - very weak. A partial solution to western civilization collapse is to make ourselves as individ…

You're one of the few that correctly sees this goes beyond partisanship boundaries. The polarization keeps us divided. Meanwhile, the billionaire become more and more rich and powerful, no matter which sides currently has the power. Baillouts, tax cuts, regulation or de-regulation. Doesn't matter, there is a group who always win.

Our current crop of leaders are, to quote Succession, not serious people.

You could point to many examples why, but I don't think there's a better example of this than how China managed to utterly snooker the west when they tried to run the same old economic imperialism playbook on them.

The nepo-babies making those decisions who wanted to coast on the US's global superpower status were outsmarted by a hungry up-and-comer. Now they're pissed off, but don't have an actual plan for how to fix things, so they're resorting to a series of own-goals that make them feel good in the moment.

Some of them are even building bunkers, but don't seem to have the foresight to understand that they're either setting themselves up to bend the knee to the first warlord who lays siege, or betrayed from within by their bodyguards. Like I said, not serious people.

These are dark times, and as an individual it can sometimes feel hopeless. I don't know if we can save our country. But you can try saving yourself, your friends, your family, you community, the people you truly care about.

Good luck, everyone.

Re: Lawmakers want to ban VPNs

#250

Post by Demiurge »

Gud wrote: post #216
colechristensen wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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." This is a pretty bold claim and I'm not sure it matches up with reality. Karl Marx said that in the first stage of communism there would be a required period of dictatorial control in order to transition from and dismantle capitalist institutions. This is exactly what happened…

Not really, because pre-Soviet Union wasn’t a capitalist society. Russia and China were barely industrial nations.

Russia was primarily an agricultural exporter, but it was most certainly a capitalist society prior to revolution. It bought and sold many things, and was an industrial nation, on par with many others in Europe, with a capacity to build war ships, tanks, artillery, trains and so on. It had other tremendous inequalities, but without factories, without lower officers in the navy and army, without the first revolution where the capitalists took over, there would be no second revolution of the bolsheviks, or soviets.
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