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Lawmakers want to ban VPNs

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Re: Lawmakers want to ban VPNs

#351

Post by bccdee »

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.

> Especially with this strongly pro-American, strongly pro-privacy admin

lol

"pro-privacy" and "pro-cop" are diametrically opposed, and Republicans pick "pro-cop" every time. And "pro-American" doesn't mean anything; it's a marketing term.

> Supreme Justices on the watch.

Have you been keeping up with their rulings? The Roberts court is completely spineless. They do whatever the administration wants and justify it post-hoc. In their shadow docket rulings, they don't even bother with justifications.

Re: Lawmakers want to ban VPNs

#352

Post by raw_anon_1111 »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #347
raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(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 ri…

You realize every single country has similar procedures? The only difference in my experience flying out of LHR (London) this year and flying out of ATL is that you don’t have to remove your shoes and they allow liquids to pass through security after a secondary screening. SJO (Costa Rica) was about the same earlier this year except they also don’t aloud liquids.

You also have to go through screening and metal detectors to get on the train between London and France (the “Chunnel”)

If NY gets disrupted - no one cares outside of New York. Do you remember how people were stuck after 911 or more recently when a bad software update took out airlines nationwide?

There is a reason that the government set up a fund to protect the entire airline industry from collapse from liability after 911.

Re: Lawmakers want to ban VPNs

#353

Post by bccdee »

hereme888 wrote: post #318
gilli wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tell me another joke..

Here's one: How successful was the combined efforts of politicians + 3-letter agencies + universities, at banning computer encryption in the past? Not successful at all, hahaha.

Banning encryption proved infeasible, so they just switched to programs like PRISM instead. That was very successful.

Re: Lawmakers want to ban VPNs

#354

Post by InsideOutSanta »

raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #337
InsideOutSanta wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the purpose of blowing up a plane in the air when you can blow up something on the ground and achieve much more damage?

It’s not about “damage”. Terrorism never is. It’s about instilling fear and an over reaction that will have people sympathetic to your cause. It worked during 911 and it’s working right now in Israel.

Yeah, but that's my point. Planes go missing somewhat regularly, and sometimes even get blown out of the sky intentionally. It's news for a week or two. So why go through the trouble of getting on a plane and blow it up in the sky (and kill yourself in the process) when you can just blow up something like a music star's concert and get more media attention, and even survive the whole thing.

Re: Lawmakers want to ban VPNs

#355

Post by bccdee »

spwa4 wrote: post #350
bccdee wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I mean, of course the people who left wanted to leave. What about people who actually live in China?

Re: Lawmakers want to ban VPNs

#356

Post by raw_anon_1111 »

InsideOutSanta wrote: post #354
raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not about “damage”. Terrorism never is. It’s about instilling fear and an over reaction that will have people sympathetic to your cause. It worked during 911 and it’s working right now in Israel.

Yeah, but that's my point. Planes go missing somewhat regularly, and sometimes even get blown out of the sky intentionally. It's news for a week or two. So why go through the trouble of getting on a plane and blow it up in the sky (and kill yourself in the process) when you can just blow up something like a music star's concert and get more media attention, and even survive the whole thing.

I only see one major domestic commercial airline crash in the last decade.

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

Blowing up a concert doesn’t cause nearly the fear even if people stay away from concerts - no one cares. Airlines are different.

Re: Lawmakers want to ban VPNs

#357

Post by AnthonyMouse »

raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #352
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 ri…

You realize every single country has similar procedures? The only difference in my experience flying out of LHR (London) this year and flying out of ATL is that you don’t have to remove your shoes and they allow liquids to pass through security after a secondary screening. SJO (Costa Rica) was about the same earlier this year except they also don’t aloud liquids. You also have to go through screening and metal detect…

> You realize every single country has similar procedures?

The US has a way of setting bad precedents or pressuring other countries to adopt its inanity, yes. Another reason not to do it here.

> If NY gets disrupted - no one cares outside of New York.

The very large number of people in New York probably care though. Also, why would someone blowing up a train in New York be less scary to people in DC than someone blowing up a plane in New York would be to people in DC?

> Do you remember how people were stuck after 911 or more recently when a bad software update took out airlines nationwide?

Less than a quarter as many people as get stuck when the NYC subways are offline, presumably.

Re: Lawmakers want to ban VPNs

#358

Post by idiotsecant »

raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #316
Filligree wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Guns? If you don’t have security. It’s a lot easier to overpower someone with knives than guns

Are you suggesting that TSA can reliably stop being from bringing guns onboard?

The only thing preventing that is that people mostly don't want to bring guns on board. It's a pointless exercise that accomplishes basically nothing .

Re: Lawmakers want to ban VPNs

#359

Post by idiotsecant »

defanor wrote: post #302
idiotsecant wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Oh, well that sounds reasonable, then.

Re: Lawmakers want to ban VPNs

#360

Post by spwa4 »

bccdee wrote: post #355
spwa4 wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I mean, of course the people who left wanted to leave. What about people who actually live in China?

Well, most are not rich and the biggest complaint is hukou, ie. that you can't actually live where you want in China. The state assigns you a city and you go there. There's a huge set of consequences if you don't, and a lot of people aren't happy with the choice made for them. People outside of China think China is like the US. You want to live in, oh, say Washington, or Anchorage, you can just go live there, find a job and live life.

Which also means your basic question is kind-of wrong. There's a lot of Chinese who want to leave but can't. The only Chinese who actually leave were asked by the government to leave, for a purpose (often studying), usually only for a limited time. Now it's not like it's 100% forced, they do ask for volunteers and what you want but it's certainly not a free choice to leave China or go back.

In China you're effectively locked into your city/town/village, and often a specific building and job (you can leave for a weekend or ..., that's not usually a problem, though sometimes it is)

For the rich the fear is kind-of the same, just with much more pressure and much more consequences, essentially being asked to relocate, give up a company (apparently much more common under Xi), forced to hire someone and give them a high position, buy or sell certain things, and being arrested, even tortured (in some kind of torture chair) if you are even suspected of not complying with often corrupt requests from government officials. The issue with that is just how many corrupt governments or de-facto governments there are. State, province, city, 1000 special purpose governments (e.g. one for the coal industry). Of course, the state can't be bothered with having a standard for identifying/authorizing themselves, so there's scam requests too. Then there's the local police, and 10+ police services that all operate where you live for one reason or another.

Makes you wonder. I always thought a communist state would be like a gigantic bureaucracy. And it is, but it's also a mafia.

Second complaint you keep hearing is about the consequences of failing the Gaokao, or even succeeding but getting selected wrong/not what you want. There are no second chances.

And I do get almost all of Asia is less "do what you want" than the US or Europe is, but some aspects of China are absurdly controlling.

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