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UK House of Lords attempting to ban use of VPNs by anyone under 16

alecmuffett.com

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Re: UK House of Lords attempting to ban use of VPNs by anyone under 16

#251

Post by andsoitis »

phatfish wrote: post #234
autoexec wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are a trash paper so skepticism is warranted but care should be taken not to dismiss facts just because of who reports them. Thankfully, we don't have to depend on the word of the Daily Mail for evidence that the UK doesn't value the ideal of free speech and are far too comfortable punishing and silencing online speech. It's a problem, and it makes their efforts to tie people's online activity to an individual w…

[flagged]

What do you think about the attempt to ban VPN (this story)?

Re: UK House of Lords attempting to ban use of VPNs by anyone under 16

#253

Post by marcus_holmes »

iamacyborg wrote: post #92
ethanwillis wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, let me just arrest you over some text and hold you for a couple of days. Surely no problem! But being serious if anything this is worse than no imprisonment. Why are they arresting so many people they don't have any grounds to jail longer term?

Days? > The police can hold you for up to 24 hours before they have to charge you with a crime or release you. > They can apply to hold you for up to 36 or 96 hours if you’re suspected of a serious crime, such as murder. > You can be held without charge for up to 14 days if you’re arrested under the Terrorism Act. https://www.gov.uk/arrested-your-rights/how-long-you-can-be-...

but then once charged you can be held for years on remand [0], there is no limit to how long the court can take to actually getting around to holding your trial. The law says now 8 months, but (as this site says) people are held for years.

[0] https://legalknowledgebase.com/how-long-can-someone-be-held-...

Re: UK House of Lords attempting to ban use of VPNs by anyone under 16

#254

Post by FridayoLeary »

avianlyric wrote: post #172
baazaa wrote: post #36

On a related note, they built their digital ID so that third parties could verify attributes (it's NOT just a single-service login across government + a linking ID across government services, which is how it was sold by the BBC). They're pretty close to completely de-anonymising the internet for UK citizens. Say they introduce an Australian-style social media ban for under 16s, then requires all social media to link…

> On a related note, they built their digital ID so that third parties could verify attributes Isn’t that the entire point of government ID of any variety? The only reason anyone ever asks to see ID is so they can use it verify attributes of your identity, such as name and age. Otherwise what’s the point of an Identity Document , if it’s not to document something? Digital ID has always been sold as something approxim…

Nobody asked for it. Digital ID is being introduced to help the government, not the people.

Re: UK House of Lords attempting to ban use of VPNs by anyone under 16

#255

Post by pydry »

phatfish wrote: post #234
autoexec wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are a trash paper so skepticism is warranted but care should be taken not to dismiss facts just because of who reports them. Thankfully, we don't have to depend on the word of the Daily Mail for evidence that the UK doesn't value the ideal of free speech and are far too comfortable punishing and silencing online speech. It's a problem, and it makes their efforts to tie people's online activity to an individual w…

[flagged]

>this nonsense about the UK being some authoritarian hell hole is getting silly.

Not really. They're arresting people for protesting a genocide.

>i don't mean some obnoxious twat bulling teachers over Facebook. I mean speech that actually matters

Just a holocaust, nbd.

Re: UK House of Lords attempting to ban use of VPNs by anyone under 16

#256

Post by swores »

xp84 wrote: post #239
pksebben wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Okay, so I see we've arrived at fantasyland now. Just because someone probably posted an idiotic idea like that on Twitter one time does not mean it has any path to becoming law. Do you know how difficult it is to get a constitutional amendment passed?

I agree that it's not currently reality and the person you replied to could have made their point by using actual examples of appalling ICE actions rather than a scenario that's currently just fantasy.

That said, it's not just "someone posted an idiotic idea on Twitter". The idea of stripping people of their citizenship has literally been suggested by the current president to a press gaggle, and that's not a one off random statement it follows years of things like prominent political voices suggesting that certain Muslim members of congress should be deported despite their having been born in the US...

As to the technical difficulties of passing a constitutional amendment, I agree it's hard to imagine that happening. Depressingly though it's less hard to imagine the president signing an executive order telling ICE to go against that part of the constitution, followed by one or both of ICE actions outpacing judicial ability to enforce the constitution, and/or judges ruling in favour of ICE being allowed to ignore the constitution.

These are possibilities that, if suggested 30 years ago would sound like crazy conspiracy theory territory, but in 2025 they're actual plausible scenarios looking at the coming months, yet alone years. I wish this was just scare mongering, but the truth is if you don't think this is possible then you haven't been following US politics closely enough - from the words of Trump and his team, such as Stephen Miller, to the actions of agencies such as ICE and the FBI, to rulings of the Supreme Court such as the one giving Trump unqualified immunity that anything he does as a work act rather than a personal one can't be treated as illegal, even if it goes against the constitution.

Re: UK House of Lords attempting to ban use of VPNs by anyone under 16

#257

Post by masfuerte »

pjc50 wrote: post #176
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The proscription is ridiculous They broke into a military base. If that was sanctioned by the organisation, they should be shut down.

That's the organisation. The knock on effects are quite considerable. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/nov/27/sally-rooney-p... Also the whole thing moved incredibly quickly; it went from new organization to banned almost immediately. I'm fairly sure that other groups previously like the Greenham Common camp didn't get this treatment. It was reasonable to arrest people who actually broke into the base and those…

> Also the whole thing moved incredibly quickly; it went from new organization to banned almost immediately.

Are you sure? They were founded in 2020.

You can argue that destroying property may be legitimate protest, but that is not all they did. In 2024 they used sledgehammers to destroy machinery in an Elbit factory. Again, arguably legitimate protest. But then they attacked police officers and security guards who came to investigate with those same sledgehammers. That is in no way legitimate.

If the government was going to proscribe them for anything it should have been for that. The RAF thing was indeed bullshit.

Anyway, it seems to me that to simultaneously believe that

a) telling a group of people that they can't use a particular name is an unacceptable attack on our freedoms yet

b) physically attacking people with sledgehammers is OK

requires quite some mental gymnastics.

Re: UK House of Lords attempting to ban use of VPNs by anyone under 16

#258

Post by pydry »

nine_k wrote: post #215
goobatrooba wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Certainly, calling the UK "ultra-authoritarian" is incorrect. But the point about attempts of completely deanonymizing Internet access is still important. The inability of the government to know everything about its citizens is an important check that prevents it from slipping towards illiberal, even if prosperous, system, like that in mainland China, or Singapore.

>Certainly, calling the UK "ultra-authoritarian" is incorrect.

It's Russia level. They're prosecuting people for holding up signs protesting a genocide.

Re: UK House of Lords attempting to ban use of VPNs by anyone under 16

#259

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

mjmas wrote: post #132
andyjohnson0 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brit here. The HoL's role is to review and scrutinise legislation as part of the parliamentary process of turning bills into acts (laws). Most legislation originates in the (directly elected) House of Commons. But all parliamentary bills pass through the Lords, and they can propose ammendments, but those ammendments have to be approved by the Commons. Those that aren't are sent back to the Lords for reconsideration.…

Are there any limitations on what can be proposed in one of the houses? For example in Australia our upper house (senate) can't adjust or propose bills to do with money.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_bill#United_Kingdom

> In the United Kingdom, section 1(1) of the Parliament Act 1911 provides that the House of Lords may not delay a money bill more than a month.

This is the closest thing the UK has to that.

Re: UK House of Lords attempting to ban use of VPNs by anyone under 16

#260

Post by kmeisthax »

tehjoker wrote: post #67
andyjohnson0 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's crazy that there is a house of unelected lords in an allegedly modern country. I certainly agree. But its worth noting that only 92 of the 825 seats in the Lords are reserved for hereditary peers - the remainder are nominated by the (elected) leaders of the main political parties, or are appointed for non-political achievements (science, society, business, arts, etc.) There are also 26 Church of England bishop…

That description sounds like the U.S. senate before there was a constitutional amendment to implement directly elected senators. The indirect election of senators was used to ensure that senators were selected to be favorable to elite interests. Direct election was intended to make it more responsive. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seventeenth_Amendment_to_the_U... However, I have many criticisms of the continuing und…

It's also the same problem with the European Commission. If anything, it's worse than hereditary peers. At least the peers are obviously illegitimate.
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