Live data from Hacker News

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

alecmuffett.com

291–300 of 499 posts

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

#291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mean tweets - yes. Very obvious incitement to violence - no.

So you would categorize these as "incitements to violence"? The recent arrest at London’s Heathrow airport of a noted Irish comedian, Graham Linehan, for the “crime” of three politically incorrect tweets A few months ago, police arrested a couple for messages shared in a WhatsApp chat group as six officers searched their home. Authorities arrested a grandmother for silently holding a sign outside an abortion clinic t…

The 31 months was for literally inciting a mob to burn down a building with asylum seekers inside, in the middle of a riot. Yes, from the Internet rather than in person, and she's now very vigorous in claiming she didn't intend anyone to actually do it. But yeah. Likely criminal even in the US under the "imminent lawless action" exception.

Musk had bugger all to do with the rape gangs scandal, which broke literally years ago, and has been brought up with regularity by the newspapers here since. (For what it's worth there have also been plenty of non-Pakistani groups doing similar things and getting away with it. The main problem seems to be that no one in authority misses, or listens to, dropout teenage girls who have fallen off the radar - which makes them easy pickings for nonces.)

I don't know about the others. The sign holder was likely within the 150m buffer zone put around abortion clinics last year, though. Given the content of the sign (which just steps over the letter of the statutory prohibition not to influence patients' decisions while being entirely morally unobjectionable) I suspect it was a deliberate setup for arrest for outrage, just like the Palestine Action people. But I could be wrong.

It's perhaps also worth noting that Britain's traditions of free speech have never been as absolutist as the US (the last successful prosecution for blasphemous libel was as recent as the 70s and it's still technically a crime to advocate for a republic) but that raucous objections to government have very rarely been the target in recent centuries. The major difference in practice is that being grossly offensive isn't constitutionally protected. You're still not likely to get done for it, though.

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

#292
post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

German prosecutors actually did a bizarre and out-of-touch (for an American audience) interview with 60 Minutes recently where they proudly declare they're going to bring order to the Internet and how things like calling politicians "dicks"[1] is rightfully VERBOTEN. > But it was a 2021 case involving a local politician named Andy Grote that captured the country's attention. Grote complained about a tweet, that calle…

Germany does not protect free speech the way the US does. You're free to voice any opinion, but the exact wordings in which you are allowed to do it are restricted. You are allowed to say "I hate Merz" but not "Merz is a piece of garbage". I'm not saying this is good, but it's not recent and it does not prevent free communication of ideas.

> You're free to voice any opinion

What a bold lie. There are plenty of opinions that are literally illegal to voice such as Nazism.

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

#293
post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> 12,000 arrests per year Arrested is not the same thing as being charged. The latter is what would lead to a trial. > So they are currently trying to get rid of juries, which they will do Huh > a leader that has styled himself as a more extreme Nigel Farage I’m sorry, what? > The UK is actually a scary place right now It is?

Are you just ignorant or trying to antagonize. What's the point of posting worthless non rebuttals to easily provable facts.

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

#294
post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> Isn’t that the entire point of government ID of any variety? Ideally this could be done without deanonymizing accounts to service providers unless the user wants to for a 'verified' account linked to their identity publically but I don't think any digital ID system has been built that way. Imagine it acting like OAuth but instead of passing back an identity token it's just verification of age, platforms would store…

You just described OpenID

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

#295
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…

You mentioned "on your phone". Is it only for phone OSes? A depressing "download from the Google Play Store or the Apple App Store only" app? Are UK citizens required to have it?

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

#296
post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And in many other countries those would get you prosecuted for hate speech or incitement to violence. The lie here is you've picked too examples of atrocious behavior, but you're trying to pretend that actually all the rest are just people posting dank memes and so "it could happen to you!!".

Those examples are completely inoccuous to my sensibilities. Of course, there are plenty of countries that lack the broad speech protections Americans enjoy, but one doesn't expect such curtailments of personal liberty in a fellow English-speaking western "liberal" democracy.

The first example was "man arrested for wearing the exact same outfit as a man who intentionally blew himself up, killing 22 people". It's not "he was wearing the same chequered shirt!" either. As a UK citizen... I don't see how that fits under "free speech", lol

Even with "freedom of speech", you do not have "freedom from fascism" built into that, case in point, Wikipedia has multiple pages documenting both the current US administration's attitude towards trans people (that, in Charlie Kirk's words, we are "abominations unto god" that should be "taken care of" "as in the 50s/60s", which can only be taken to mean lynching), as well as the attitude of the US presidency towards democracy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_transgender_peo...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Targeting_of_political_opponen...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_14290 (were PBS and NPR "biased"?)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_backsliding_in_the_...

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/sep/25/transg...

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

#297
post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

German prosecutors actually did a bizarre and out-of-touch (for an American audience) interview with 60 Minutes recently where they proudly declare they're going to bring order to the Internet and how things like calling politicians "dicks"[1] is rightfully VERBOTEN. > But it was a 2021 case involving a local politician named Andy Grote that captured the country's attention. Grote complained about a tweet, that calle…

Germany does not protect free speech the way the US does. You're free to voice any opinion, but the exact wordings in which you are allowed to do it are restricted. You are allowed to say "I hate Merz" but not "Merz is a piece of garbage". I'm not saying this is good, but it's not recent and it does not prevent free communication of ideas.

You can't expect people to express themselves freely when a single mistatement could land them in prison.

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

#298
post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say even one is too many. The law was written in such a way intentionally to suppress speech. People who wrote it ain’t stupid.

Indeed. The success of even one such prosecution means that the second someone in government wants someone out of the way, they can efficiently be imprisoned for anything rising to the level of... "offensive."

"offensive" actually has a relatively solid definition based on how judges have ruled on it in the past. This includes hate-mongering against protected characteristics, which I see a lot of from the USA right now.

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

#299

It's so organic and grass roots and good for democracy™ that every single Western country suddenly decided that eliminating privacy online in lockstep was the top priority despite none of the ruling parties running on it as a platform or with any meaningful referendums from the voting public. But to what end?

Britain has been in love with this idea for decades at this point. It's not a surprise 1984 was British.

But yes in the last ~20 years are so it's somehow become a top EU goal as well.

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

#300

It's also worth stating that the worst part of that proposed amendment [1] isn't even necessarily the VPN ban, it's the next clause, on page 20: "The “CSAM requirement” is that any relevant device supplied for use in the UK must 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."…

> any relevant device supplied for use in the UK must have installed tamper-proof system software It's happening. Computer freedom, everything the word "hacker" ever stood for, will be officially destroyed if this passes. We're about to be robbed of control over our computers by force of law . It's just the UK now but eventually it will be every country. This is a very dark day. I've been prophesizing its arrival for…

They just won't stop. We needed to have laws in place to prevent digital IDs being continuously pushed on people because the powers that be want total control of all information.

It's happening in the US now under the guise of AI data centers for consumers but I suspect it will be instead used to surveillance everyone who doesn't agree with the fascist government. This is Larry Ellison's public vision but Musk and Thiel also play a role.

Post reply on HN