Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Lawmakers want to ban VPNs

eff.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

271–280 of 419 posts

Re: Lawmakers want to ban VPNs

#271

Post by adgjlsfhk1 »

brookst wrote: post #253
thaumasiotes wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your examples are unlike each other. What stops people from speeding more than they already do is enforcement. The law isn't doing anything. But the TSA isn't a law. The TSA is, notionally, the enforcement. And it doesn't do anything either. So the TSA really is pointless. If you drive around at 30 mph over the limit, you're going to get a ticket, and this traffic cop presence stops people from speeding "too much". I…

The examples are similar in that they demonstrate that reducing probability is a reasonable goal, and it is a mistake to say anything imperfect is useless. Your take on TSA seems to be in the imperfect=useless camp. There are good ROI, efficiency, and philosophical reasons to want to abolish TSA, but it seems naive to say there is zero value and their mere existence has not deterred anyone.

the problem with TSA is that their effectiveness is near 0. every time there have been tests, ~3/4ths of bombs/guns go straight through. you'd get better accuracy out of a monkey pointing at whoever happens to have a banana in their bag

Re: Lawmakers want to ban VPNs

#272

Post by hereme888 »

defanor wrote: post #140

> 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…

Russia is not even remotely similar to the U.S.A. in terms of freedom, rights, and infrastructure.

Politicians will never be able to ban VPNs or vetted e2e encryption (like signal, and now X) in the US. Especially with this strongly pro-American, strongly pro-privacy admin and Supreme Justices on the watch.

Re: Lawmakers want to ban VPNs

#273

Post by gilli »

hereme888 wrote: post #272
defanor wrote: post #140

> 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…

Russia is not even remotely similar to the U.S.A. in terms of freedom, rights, and infrastructure. Politicians will never be able to ban VPNs or vetted e2e encryption (like signal, and now X) in the US. Especially with this strongly pro-American, strongly pro-privacy admin and Supreme Justices on the watch.

Tell me another joke..

Re: Lawmakers want to ban VPNs

#274

Post by LadyCailin »

lucianbr wrote: post #214
LadyCailin wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For sure. And the US looked very different under McCarthyism too, so there’s even precedent. But my point is that there are other prerequisites that have to happen first.

Why is that important? Sounds like saying "well before winter comes, autumn must come first". Yeah duh, so what? Winter is still coming, if anyone cares about it.

Because if you overreact to an issue, then that can and will be used to dismiss your arguments entirely, and the general public can more easily be swayed against you.

Re: Lawmakers want to ban VPNs

#275

Post by colechristensen »

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.

Your hair-splitting argument is missing the point entirely, don't you see that?

Re: Lawmakers want to ban VPNs

#276

Post by Alex2037 »

dang wrote: post #236
Alex2037 wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

I'm sorry, comrade commissar. I'll go stand in the corner now.

Re: Lawmakers want to ban VPNs

#279

Post by lucianbr »

LadyCailin wrote: post #274
lucianbr wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is that important? Sounds like saying "well before winter comes, autumn must come first". Yeah duh, so what? Winter is still coming, if anyone cares about it.

Because if you overreact to an issue, then that can and will be used to dismiss your arguments entirely, and the general public can more easily be swayed against you.

Non sequitur. Pointing out an intermediate step changes nothing about how bad or good the issue is or how appropriate or inappropriate the reaction is.

Re: Lawmakers want to ban VPNs

#280

Post by porphyra »

defanor wrote: post #140

> 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…

One time in China (in 2018) I ran my own OpenVPN instance on a Linode VPS in Singapore, and then it got blocked within a couple of days lol. I'm guessing it was deep packet inspection.
Post reply on HN