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Lawmakers want to ban VPNs

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Re: Lawmakers want to ban VPNs

#301

Post by AnthonyMouse »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #224
cedws wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think us software people tend to think in absolutes. Yes, completely banning VPNs is very difficult. But for a totalitarian government, reducing VPN usage by say 60% is a win. You only have to make it difficult enough for the layman.

I keep citing, as an example of this, speed limits. You can literally break the law by just pushing your foot down harder. It's that easy! Therefore they're pointless. Or, the TSA. They might have taken away my knife, but putting a rock in a sock and hitting someone in the head is an easy workaround. Therefore it's pointless. (Arguing that the law is easy to break has no effect on whether the law is a good idea, shou…

> You can literally break the law by just pushing your foot down harder. It's that easy!

How are you distinguishing that from any other law? You can literally break the law against theft by just picking someone's pocket. It's that easy!

But that was never the argument to begin with. They're proposing a law requiring websites to ban users who visit via a VPN. So to begin with we already have a major difference. The people subject to the law (websites) are different than the people who would be trying to circumvent it (users and VPN services).

Meanwhile websites have no actual means to know if someone is using a VPN. There are a zillion VPN services and anyone with an IP address can start one. There is no way for them to comprehensively ban them all. So now what happens? The website bans some VPNs -- they would be doing an incredibly painstaking job if they managed to get three out of every four -- and then the user just tries three or four random VPNs or VPN-equivalents until they find one that works and keeps using that.

At this point you could try to prosecute the website for failing, but then you'd be prosecuting everybody because nobody would actually be able to do it. Whereas if making an attempt is sufficient for compliance then they check their compliance box meanwhile everybody is still bypassing it. Which is why it's useless.

Re: Lawmakers want to ban VPNs

#302

Post by defanor »

idiotsecant wrote: post #298
defanor wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> every single person I know has and actively uses a VPN I do know people who use no circumvention methods: some are simply not sufficiently familiar with technologies (including older people, who seem to think that something is wrong with their phones), for others it is a mix of regular shying away from technologies and being worried that it draws the government's attention. And then there are those who appear to ge…

Are you saying that it's reasonable to think fully half of YouTube traffic was Russian?

Of course not: I meant Russian audience, which that poll and the post were about. Added "Russian" into the post, to avoid further misunderstandings.

Re: Lawmakers want to ban VPNs

#303

Post by gishh »

uhhuhnwhatdoes wrote: post #291
oscaracso wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Buying and selling things internationally does not make a country capitalist.

No True Scotsman applied to concept; fascinating. Capitalism is circumlocutions of long dead people who provided little to society but the sound of their voice, vacuous writings. So kind of the educated labor exploiters of the past to explain how the world must work. Very TINA of them. Capitalism is people socially convincing each other there's a communal upside to capitalism. Sounds almost like socialist communist n…

Capitalism and communism couldn’t be more different, in the true definition of the terms.

Communism is literally a ruling class dictating the lives of an entire country. Capitalism at least gives the opportunity of individual action.

You are allowed to hate capitalism, clearly you do, and advocate for socialism, et. al. Whatever point you think you just made with your post is completely devoid of substance.

Re: Lawmakers want to ban VPNs

#304

Post by AnthonyMouse »

JustExAWS wrote: post #287
ACCount37 wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TSA really is pointless, and airport "security" in general is an example of what you get when you keep sacrificing real freedom to fight imaginary threats. If Trump administration was ever serious about reducing government waste, they should have dismantled the TSA.

Are you really unaware of how often plane hijackings use to occur?

Plane hijackings used to occur because the SOP was to not resist and try to negotiate with the hijackers for the safe release of the passengers.

After 9/11 the assumption has to be that they're going to fly the plane into a building and kill everyone, so now if you try to hijack a plane all the passengers and crew are going to beat you to death with their fists and shoelaces like their life depends on it, which makes it a lot harder to hijack a plane. The TSA has approximately nothing to do with that.

Re: Lawmakers want to ban VPNs

#305

Post by esafak »

skeledrew wrote: post #36
txrx0000 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this keeps going, they will ban self-hosting next: only government-approved hosts allowed. We can't just rely on technological solutions because you can't out-tech the law at scale. People need to actually understand that the government is very close to having the tools needed for a stable technocratic authoritarian regime here in the US and all around the world. It might not happen immediately even if they have t…

I feel like that'd take a level of surveillance that's technically unsustainable. But then again, sustainability isn't a consideration when it stands in the way of "better" control.

China is sustaining it just fine at much higher scale, and advancing technology only makes it easier.

Re: Lawmakers want to ban VPNs

#306

Post by ACCount37 »

JustExAWS wrote: post #287
ACCount37 wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TSA really is pointless, and airport "security" in general is an example of what you get when you keep sacrificing real freedom to fight imaginary threats. If Trump administration was ever serious about reducing government waste, they should have dismantled the TSA.

Are you really unaware of how often plane hijackings use to occur?

And are you aware of what exactly has changed?

One notable change is: reinforced cockpit doors that can't be forced open from the outside easily. Good luck hijacking with that.

But another notable change is that plane crews and passengers all understand now that plane hijacking is a life or death situation, and would fight hijackers to the bitter end.

Which is what happened on the very day of 9/11, on Flight 93.

Re: Lawmakers want to ban VPNs

#307

Post by JustExAWS »

fn-mote wrote: post #297
JustExAWS wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you really unaware of how often plane hijackings use to occur?

Eyeballing the data [1], it looks like total fatalities in the low 1000s, and roughly 20 hijackings per year 1980-2000. Let's value each human fatality at $1M, and - lacking any knowledge about the subject - cargo also at $1M/incident. That's about $1B in human life loss and $20M/year in cargo. The 2025 budget for ths TSA was over $10B, so we're spending 10x the loss to prevent it. Value each human life at $10M? Then…

You’re completely ignoring the knock on economic effects of lower confidence in flight safety, liability and the not so hypothetical ability of someone to take over a plane and use it to attack ground targets.

AirTran for instance went out of business because of one crash. If someone blew up a United plane, I can guarantee you that Delta would increase the security before you got on their flights to instill confidence on passengers.

And people act as if airport security and the TSA measures are unique to the US. My wife and I just got into a position where the stars aligned for us to fly a lot post Covid. But during that time the three countries that we have flown out of - London, Costa Rica and Mexico all have the basic same security measure with the slight difference that you can bring liquids on board from LHR because they have newer scanners that supposedly detect explosives.

And it’s not just airlines. We also had to go through the same type of security to get on the “Chunnel” from London to France.

The only thing that is really theatre is taking off your shoes in the US.

Re: Lawmakers want to ban VPNs

#308

Post by coldtea »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #286
cedws wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think us software people tend to think in absolutes. Yes, completely banning VPNs is very difficult. But for a totalitarian government, reducing VPN usage by say 60% is a win. You only have to make it difficult enough for the layman.

> I think us software people tend to think in absolutes. "Software people" have an above-average understanding of probabilities overall. It's politicians who tend to think in absolutes. If you tell them that the effectiveness of something is poor and vastly exceeded by its costs, they say "so you admit that its effectiveness is more than zero". And then people will instead have to say that something doesn't work when…

>"Software people" have an above-average understanding of probabilities overall. It's politicians who tend to think in absolutes.

If I had a penny for everytime a software person / nerd on HN and elsewhere made an argument that shows little understanding of probabilities and statistics, or perhaps only a theoritical understand that's context dependent (meaning they know the math, but magically forget them when discussing some specific topic), I'd be rich.

>"It works better for totalitarian regimes" is the argument for not doing it

Parent is not justyfing them doing it. They are explaining how little exhaustive their implementation can be, while still being effective for their goals.

Re: Lawmakers want to ban VPNs

#309

Post by Filligree »

idiotsecant wrote: post #300
JustExAWS wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you really unaware of how often plane hijackings use to occur?

Barely ever? I don't see any evidence to suggest that the TSA has any level of effectiveness in preventing them, either.

What prevents them is the reinforced cockpit door, and the passengers’ knowledge that they’ll die if they don’t stop the hijackers.

The TSA just happened to be made ac the same time as that changed.

Re: Lawmakers want to ban VPNs

#310

Post by JustExAWS »

ACCount37 wrote: post #306
JustExAWS wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you really unaware of how often plane hijackings use to occur?

And are you aware of what exactly has changed? One notable change is: reinforced cockpit doors that can't be forced open from the outside easily. Good luck hijacking with that. But another notable change is that plane crews and passengers all understand now that plane hijacking is a life or death situation, and would fight hijackers to the bitter end. Which is what happened on the very day of 9/11, on Flight 93.

With reinforced doors - pilots still come out to use the restroom. Flight attendants usually just block the aisle. People will fight back in the case of knives. But how much fighting back dk you think is going to happen if people have guns?

How long do you think it’s going to be before a pilot opens the door if a hijacker starts shooting people?

Airport security is by far not just in America with the only exception in my experience is that other airports don’t make you take your shoes off and some allow liquids in carryon

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