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Lawmakers want to ban VPNs

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Re: Lawmakers want to ban VPNs

#341

Post by raw_anon_1111 »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #338
raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Terrorism is never about how many people you kill. It’s about instilling fear and sending a message and the downstream economic harm. Look no further than 911. Two costly unnecessary wars (that even republicans don’t defend anymore) that caused an entirely new generation of people to hate America.

> Terrorism is never about how many people you kill. It’s about instilling fear and sending a message and the downstream economic harm. But again, what does it have anything to do with it being a plane? If they were to blow up a train instead of a plane, are people going to be like "haha you idiots, that only works if it's a plane"? > Look no further than 911. Two costly unnecessary wars (that even republicans don’t…

(I edited my above comment. I didn’t finish my thought “caused an entire generation to hate America”).

My wife and I fly a lot so we don’t think twice about it. But I’m sure you know how many people are deftly afraid of flying. Can you imagine how reticent people would be about flying if planes start blowing up? Much more economic harm comes from a disruption of air travel than if mass transit stopped in one city.

No one in America to a first approximation cares about trains or mass transit. They are mostly popular in those left leaning cities that are infested by criminality any way. I can see it now “what did they expect when they elected a socialist Muslim” (please note sarcasm).

Re: Lawmakers want to ban VPNs

#342

Post by moffkalast »

keraf wrote: post #185

Reminds me of my time in Zanzibar, where the internet was censored and some VPN providers (like Proton) weren't working. The authorities then imposed a complete ban of VPNs without permit, with threats of harsh punishment (2000 USD fine or 12m in prison). Exceptions could be made by filling a form justifying the use of the VPN and details about it (for example IP address) but reviews are slow and obscure. The context…

I guess the sultan of Oman will have to move somewhere else now.

Re: Lawmakers want to ban VPNs

#343

Post by rgblambda »

exasperaited wrote: post #270
rgblambda wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>And it's not 30 arrests per day for saying things the government don't like or that are politically incorrect, is it? We don't know, as offence type isn't provided by police services. The key takeaway is that arrests have risen since 2020 while convictions have not. Given the sole evidence needed for a conviction is also needed for an arrest, you'd think convictions would rise at almost the same level. But it looks…

> The key takeaway is that arrests have risen since 2020 while convictions have not. Yes, but this also coincides with the pandemic which put more people online and created a lot of anger and harassment of nurses, doctors, government officials, and it also coincides with growing activism in the trans debate space, which has undoubtedly led to more actual harassment. > But it looks like people are being arrested and l…

If there has been a rise in the amount of harassment due to the pandemic, then why have actual convictions dropped compared to before the pandemic. I refer to the graph of convictions per year in the HoL report linked above.

>But you just said we don't know, because offence type is not provided?

If someone is arrested but not convicted, we must presume innocence. "Legal speech" isn't a type of offence.

Re: Lawmakers want to ban VPNs

#344

Post by bccdee »

spwa4 wrote: post #265
Spooky23 wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really, that’s just the type the EFF gins up. The problem is the regulation of speech and requiring verification. The VPN stuff is a misapplication of security “best practices”. Tech companies are amoral and happily facilitate the use of their technology for oppression in other places.

I would argue it's more accurate to say tech companies take the "old-style" US approach. It's based on the idea that propaganda doesn't actually work. There weren't many actual communists in Russia, it was a dictatorship with mostly prisoners/hostages who were threatened into lying, and knew full well that they were threatened, and after the teenage phase is over, actually start asking " why are we being threatened o…

> There weren't many actual communists in Russia

What's this claim based on?

Hierarchies are fractal; at every level of an ideological authoritarian society, comfort and influence are only granted in exchange for affirming and regurgitating state ideology. Cognitive dissonance forces people who take that deal to choose between losing self-respect and accepting the ideology. I think you'd be surprised how well this works. People always want to believe that they deserve the things they have.

> ex-Soviets hate socialism

Naturally, they change their minds when they leave. There's no longer any psychological incentive to believe. Besides, people who choose to leave have typically already broken with the ideology. You compare it to a cult, but the thing about cults is that the members generally do believe.

> non-communist democratic states exist and how it is to live there

Life in many authoritarian states is fine for most people. It is what it is; if you don't make a fuss, you can live pretty comfortably. Obviously many dictatorships are not like this, but China is fairly stable.

For almost all of human history, people have lived under authoritarian governments. It's unpleasant to think about, but authoritarianism can be stable and durable. There's no guarantee that democracy wins.

Re: Lawmakers want to ban VPNs

#345

Post by giobox »

txrx0000 wrote: post #92
suslik wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using this tech, all the CP traffic would detectably flow towards my ip, right? I’m sure I’m not the only one who would find this worrisome.

> Using this tech, all the CP traffic would detectably flow towards my ip, right? No, but I'm curious why you'd think that?

The risk surely exists if you decide to run their gate service:

"After you activate the VPN Gate Service, anyone can connect a VPN connection to your computer, and access to any hosts on the Internet via your computer"

"When you are running the VPN Gate Relaying Function on your company's network, then any person's communication to Internet hosts will be relayed via your company's network."

> https://www.vpngate.net/en/join.aspx

There's simply no way I would offer my residential or company IPs as exit nodes to strangers.

> Third, make each client automatically host a temporary server and broadcast its IP to the public server lists when in use.

If this came to pass, much the same problems.

Re: Lawmakers want to ban VPNs

#346

Post by Gud »

spwa4 wrote: post #258
Gud wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really, because pre-Soviet Union wasn’t a capitalist society. Russia and China were barely industrial nations.

If buying and selling things internationally makes a country capitalist, then Soviet Russia was capitalist. Pre-Soviet Russia was mercantilist, which can be somewhat handwavyly described as capitalism-unless-I-can-kill-you, both between people within a nation and between nations themselves and is still not entirely dead.

Well, that is not the definition of capitalism.

Re: Lawmakers want to ban VPNs

#347

Post by AnthonyMouse »

raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #341
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Terrorism is never about how many people you kill. It’s about instilling fear and sending a message and the downstream economic harm. But again, what does it have anything to do with it being a plane? If they were to blow up a train instead of a plane, are people going to be like "haha you idiots, that only works if it's a plane"? > Look no further than 911. Two costly unnecessary wars (that even republicans don’t…

(I edited my above comment. I didn’t finish my thought “caused an entire generation to hate America”). My wife and I fly a lot so we don’t think twice about it. But I’m sure you know how many people are deftly afraid of flying. Can you imagine how reticent people would be about flying if planes start blowing up? Much more economic harm comes from a disruption of air travel than if mass transit stopped in one city. No…

> Can you imagine how reticent people would be about flying if planes start blowing up? Much more economic harm comes from a disruption of air travel than if mass transit stopped in one city.

There are more than four times more riders of the subway in NYC alone than there are plane tickets sold nationwide.

Meanwhile if you're actually worried about deterring people from flying then what does it do to force them to risk missing their flight if they don't waste two hours getting there early, or subject them to warrantless suspicion, scary radiation, uninvited groping, nude body scanners and senseless humiliation?

And all for nothing because it can't be the thing preventing people from blowing up planes when tests consistently show that they're still letting through three quarters of contraband.

Re: Lawmakers want to ban VPNs

#348

Post by eutropia »

drdaeman wrote: post #292
flexagoon wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it working in Russia? I'm Russian and basically every single person I know has and actively uses a VPN with no consequences. WireGuard also works just fine - I was able to selfhost and use it without any extra obfuscation. They only blocked a few largest providers, but that's seemingly it.

> WireGuard also works just fine - I was able to selfhost and use it without any extra obfuscation. Good for you. I have a few machines around the world (a truly geo-distributed homelab lol), and my node on a residental connection in Russia (north-west, no clue about other regions) has pretty spotty vanilla Wireguard connectivity to the rest of the world - it works now and then, but packets are dropped every other da…

Why and how is your homelab distributed like this?

Re: Lawmakers want to ban VPNs

#349

Post by antonkochubey »

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…

The current VSL (value of a statistical life) is approximately $13.1 million, a figure that varies by agency. For example, the Department of Transportation (DOT) uses $13.7 million for its safety standards.

Re: Lawmakers want to ban VPNs

#350

Post by spwa4 »

bccdee wrote: post #344
spwa4 wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue it's more accurate to say tech companies take the "old-style" US approach. It's based on the idea that propaganda doesn't actually work. There weren't many actual communists in Russia, it was a dictatorship with mostly prisoners/hostages who were threatened into lying, and knew full well that they were threatened, and after the teenage phase is over, actually start asking " why are we being threatened o…

> There weren't many actual communists in Russia What's this claim based on? Hierarchies are fractal; at every level of an ideological authoritarian society, comfort and influence are only granted in exchange for affirming and regurgitating state ideology. Cognitive dissonance forces people who take that deal to choose between losing self-respect and accepting the ideology. I think you'd be surprised how well this wo…

> Life in many authoritarian states is fine for most people. It is what it is; if you don't make a fuss, you can live pretty comfortably. Obviously many dictatorships are not like this, but China is fairly stable.

I've always found Chinese who left are either rich or not. If they're rich, they've seen other rich suddenly fall out of grace, suddenly "relocate" or outright disappear.

If they're not rich, they've always been miserable in China, and don't want to go back.

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