I may be posting on an electronic device here but people need to start reading physical books and meeting in person.
UK House of Lords attempting to ban use of VPNs by anyone under 16
271–280 of 499 posts
Re: UK House of Lords attempting to ban use of VPNs by anyone under 16
#272As someone fully supportive of the social media ban for Australian kids, I think As someone fully supportive of the social media ban for Australian kids, I think we need to teach UK kids to vibecode their own VPNs with OSS models at this point so they can save what's left of their future civil liberties. We all know where this is going, they're going to ban the one mathematical tool we have that gives us control over…
You support the ban but also circumventing it?
They support the ban for Australian kids, but anonymity for UK kids.
Re: UK House of Lords attempting to ban use of VPNs by anyone under 16
#273Does anybody have a sense of whether this is best seen as "a proposal by the UK House of Lords", or "a proposal by three fringe whackjobs in the UK House of Lords"? I honestly don't have any idea. How influential are the proposers? Who else has made noise about such things?
The amendment from the same three people about requiring all phones to "have installed tamper-proof system software which is highly effective at preventing the recording, transmitting (by any means, including livestreaming) and viewing of CSAM using that device" strikes me as in the fringe whackjob range.
Re: UK House of Lords attempting to ban use of VPNs by anyone under 16
#274Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Parents should relax and ... " "everyone should just adopt my values and then all these political problems would just disappear. voila!"
> all these political problems The problems I mentioned aren't real , that's the point. It hasn't just never been proven that Counter Strike et al cause amok runs, it's been disproven [1]. Consuming porn doesn't make people rapists (although I do concede: the ethical aspects particularly around studio-produced porn do require discussions), and consuming LGBT content doesn't make children LGBT. People are, to the exte…
[flagged]
Re: UK House of Lords attempting to ban use of VPNs by anyone under 16
#275The way this, and various other proposals/actions in other countries, are all popping up at the same time, seemingly independently though obviously not, has to be one of the biggest warning signs of trouble in my lifetime. Not helped by various European states deciding they want national service again all of a sudden. Our governments have turned into the very thing they claimed to be opposing for decades. It's disgra…
> Not helped by various European states deciding they want national service again all of a sudden Their next-door neighbour is threatening war and their longtime ally has turned into an unreliable kook. It’s not all that surprising that countries are looking to bolster their defences.
> It’s not all that surprising that countries are looking to bolster their defences.
It's not bolstering defenses, it's bolstering expansion of the surveillance state panopticon because "think of the children!"
Re: UK House of Lords attempting to ban use of VPNs by anyone under 16
#276Why does it seem like all this age-restriction and the consequential VPN bans are happening across the west all at once?
Political/issue opportunism. One so-called "democracy" implementing one civilian-harmful garbage policy makes it that much easier for another to emulate it.
Re: UK House of Lords attempting to ban use of VPNs by anyone under 16
#277Meanwhile, British Transport Police are about to start rolling out Live Facial Recognition at London railway stations: https://www.btp.police.uk/news/btp/news/england/british-tran...
Social credit scores and real-time total surveillance are that much closer. The British people are rolling over and okay with this.
Re: UK House of Lords attempting to ban use of VPNs by anyone under 16
#278Remember how the morons, at the early stage, were saying "come on, don't be excessive, it's not China here", and now we are reaching a similar or worse civil rights point in most western countries...
Because the ruling class in most countries envy China's control and the people are too divided, disorganized, and ignorant to understand what they're losing. The ruling class saw an opportunity to gather more power and took it. They cede nothing voluntarily.
Re: UK House of Lords attempting to ban use of VPNs by anyone under 16
#279Earlier 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.
There are the parliament acts which restrict the length of the delay the HoL can inflict (including to just 1 month for money bills). They also cannot amend money bills.
There is however the Salisbury convention which is that the HoL shouldn't block legislation that was a manifesto commitment of the governing party. That doesn't meant they can't amend it at all, but they can't substantively change it. It's also just a convention, not a rule.
Re: UK House of Lords attempting to ban use of VPNs by anyone under 16
#280Earlier quoted context omitted.
Interesting to see these kinds of comments more in this thread compared to the one from yesterday. The one from yesterday was discussing how australia is banning social media for anyone under 16. Most comments were supportive because they hate social media. A few comments were discussing how it is just a way to propagate more KYC.
It's way easier to justify banning social media entirely than banning it for under-sixteens. Paradoxically it infringes on freedom less, as it bans a type of business model for being too harmful rather than restricting people's rights to view and share information.
I would personally simply heavily tax ad revenue rather than banning social media, as while a blanket ban is ironically less of an infringement on free speech than banning it for children, it’s still something of an infringement.
There’s a bunch of benefits to an ad-tax too, beyond revenue generation: Users won’t be encouraged to use VPNs (and most VPN users probably also use ad blockers anyway). It’s difficult to evade, since an advertising business kind-of has to operate in the open; if nobody knows you’re running an ad business, your ad business has failed at the one thing it’s supposed to do. Advertisers are also purely profit-motivated, and so won’t hesitate to rat out their competitors if they’re using some loophole to gain a competitive advantage. It’s also very difficult for them to hide which country they’re targeting, since that information has to be available to their customers, so the taxmen can get it by subpoenaing customers or posing as them. And there’s not that many big ad-tech companies, so you don’t really mind if a few small-fries slip through the net.