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Lawmakers want to ban VPNs

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Re: Lawmakers want to ban VPNs

#391

Post by sidewndr46 »

imiric wrote: post #212
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…

Unless the government decides to ban all cryptography, or forcefully install their own certificates on every device, it should be possible to avoid any restriction attempts. If they're doing deep packet inspection to detect specific protocols, then those can be tunneled via encrypted protocols they do allow, such as TLS or SSH. This is certainly more inconvenient to use, but not impossible. If they're blocking all tr…

TLS and SSH obscure the exact data, not the usage pattern.

Re: Lawmakers want to ban VPNs

#392

Post by [deleted] »

josephg wrote: post #315
drysine wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>simply cut international connections (as is already practiced temporarily and locally) No, international connections are not cut. The mobile internet gets cut locally and temporarily when the Ukraine attacks Russian cities trying to terrorize population. Several essential or popular Russian services are whitelisted. All the rest of Russian internet is as inaccessible as foreign servers.

> The mobile internet gets cut locally and temporarily when the Ukraine attacks Russian cities trying to terrorize population. It’s hard to feel sympathetic when Russian bombs have been “accidentally” hitting Ukrainian civilians since day 1 of the war. Has the war been affecting civilian life in Russia much? I hear Ukraine has been targeting the Russian power grid lately.

[deleted]

Re: Lawmakers want to ban VPNs

#393

Post by bloppe »

soraminazuki wrote: post #378
bloppe wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Hanlon's razor probably applies here. There's no way the average Wisconsin legislator understands this bill.

No. Stop using Hanlon's razor as a magic word that lets those in power evade responsibility for turning tech against people. They already excel at dodging consequences without anyone resorting to lazy two word arguments in their defense. It doesn't take a computer genius to understand the broader implications this has on civil society. If they genuinely lack the insight to comprehend this, then they certainly wouldn’…

I'm not saying they should get a pass for being incompetent. I'm just saying we shouldn't lose our heads theorizing malice.

Re: Lawmakers want to ban VPNs

#394

Post by bloppe »

b00ty4breakfast wrote: post #379
bloppe wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Hanlon's razor probably applies here. There's no way the average Wisconsin legislator understands this bill.

how about Asimov's 3rd Law of Stupid: sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice

Fair enough, but still worth being accurate.

Re: Lawmakers want to ban VPNs

#395

Post by drysine »

josephg wrote: post #315
drysine wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>simply cut international connections (as is already practiced temporarily and locally) No, international connections are not cut. The mobile internet gets cut locally and temporarily when the Ukraine attacks Russian cities trying to terrorize population. Several essential or popular Russian services are whitelisted. All the rest of Russian internet is as inaccessible as foreign servers.

> The mobile internet gets cut locally and temporarily when the Ukraine attacks Russian cities trying to terrorize population. It’s hard to feel sympathetic when Russian bombs have been “accidentally” hitting Ukrainian civilians since day 1 of the war. Has the war been affecting civilian life in Russia much? I hear Ukraine has been targeting the Russian power grid lately.

Why did you put "accidentally" in quotes?

Re: Lawmakers want to ban VPNs

#396

Post by [deleted] »

txrx0000 wrote: post #381
giobox wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/…

It's no different from a coffee shop providing an open WiFi, or an ISP providing you with a fiber connection. What people do on it is their problem, not yours. Their web traffic is wrapped in another layer of HTTPS, not in plaintext you can read. Most traffic is not criminal traffic, you're not any more likely to be the exit node for a criminal than you are to purchase something from a criminal in real life. That wai…

[deleted]

Re: Lawmakers want to ban VPNs

#397

Post by [deleted] »

drysine wrote: post #395
josephg wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The mobile internet gets cut locally and temporarily when the Ukraine attacks Russian cities trying to terrorize population. It’s hard to feel sympathetic when Russian bombs have been “accidentally” hitting Ukrainian civilians since day 1 of the war. Has the war been affecting civilian life in Russia much? I hear Ukraine has been targeting the Russian power grid lately.

Why did you put "accidentally" in quotes?

[deleted]

Re: Lawmakers want to ban VPNs

#398

Post by AnthonyMouse »

raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #390
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you haven’t noticed, “the people in DC” right now don’t care about the US outside of red states. I feel like you're failing to see the symmetry at all. We have direct historical evidence on point that they cared about some New York City skyscrapers, and those were definitely Republicans too. Do you really think they wouldn't care about the same thing today regardless of whether it was a plane or a train? > And t…

No I’m saying it’s completely illogical that you believe the US pressured countries to have the same security screenings on domestic flights within the country including to get on a baby twin engine plane for a 30 minute flight from SJO to XQP or that countries like Great Britain or Israel that had a history of bombings wouldn’t have increased security measures. If you are asking whether it is the same, everywhere. I…

> No I’m saying it’s completely illogical that you believe the US pressured countries to have the same security screenings on domestic flights within the country including to get on a baby twin engine plane for a 30 minute flight from SJO to XQP or that countries like Great Britain or Israel that had a history of bombings wouldn’t have increased security measures.

Nobody said they successfully pressured everyone about everything. But they do it a some and it doesn't do nothing, unfortunately. There are many countries still now requiring ineffective nonsense they didn't require before 9/11.

> They already see it as dangerous and for poor people

It seems like your argument is that we should needlessly harass middle class airline passengers but not poor people riding mass transit because nobody cares about poor people, but that seems like a bad idea for not just one but both reasons.

> Most bribes are for drugs and other contraband. Have you ever in the past 20 years heard of a case where someone bribed an official to bring a weapon on board a plane that was used to take over or bomb a plane?

Of course not, because the TSA is completely pointless so you don't have to bribe anyone. When someone wants to do that (e.g. shoe bomber) they just go right through without having to pay a bribe, and then they get stopped by passengers or crew.

> why does every major airport in every country have the same procedures?

To begin with, they don't. Moreover, even the original cargo cults were about planes.

> If people started bombing trains. You would see even less ridership from people who had alternatives.

But that was my point. If we cared about any of this and it was actually effective (which it isn't) then it doesn't make sense to do it for planes but not hotels and trains and everything else.

And we can clearly see that not doing it for anything other than planes hasn't resulted in an epidemic of bombings in the US for everything that isn't an aircraft, so why are we still wasting resources and troubling people by doing it for planes?

Re: Lawmakers want to ban VPNs

#399

Post by coldtea »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #324
coldtea wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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 discu…

> 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. If 75% of people in some group are above average then 25% of them still aren't. > They a…

>But their goals are different than yours. Or if they're not, you're the baddies

Which is beside the point. Parent (and me explaining what the parent men) aren't approving of the goals of those proposing such laws. Nor are we going into their merits or their evilness, whether pro or against.

We are making a merely technical point about how such a measure doesn't need to be 100% enforced air-tightly to have the desired purpose (again: desired by the governments, not by us).

And we go into this argument because someone dismissed the impact of such measures with the reasoning that since they can't be fully enforced, they're unimportant.

Re: Lawmakers want to ban VPNs

#400

Post by raw_anon_1111 »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #398
raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No I’m saying it’s completely illogical that you believe the US pressured countries to have the same security screenings on domestic flights within the country including to get on a baby twin engine plane for a 30 minute flight from SJO to XQP or that countries like Great Britain or Israel that had a history of bombings wouldn’t have increased security measures. If you are asking whether it is the same, everywhere. I…

> No I’m saying it’s completely illogical that you believe the US pressured countries to have the same security screenings on domestic flights within the country including to get on a baby twin engine plane for a 30 minute flight from SJO to XQP or that countries like Great Britain or Israel that had a history of bombings wouldn’t have increased security measures. Nobody said they successfully pressured everyone abou…

> Nobody said they successfully pressured everyone about everything. But they do it a some and it doesn't do nothing, unfortunately. There are many countries still now requiring ineffective nonsense they didn't require before 9/11.

So the idea that America forced every single country in the world to basically have the same security procedures even on domestic flights - except for removing your shoes - was completely false?

> It seems like your argument is that we should needlessly harass middle class airline passengers but not poor people riding mass transit because nobody cares about poor people, but that seems like a bad idea for not just one but both reasons

No I’m saying both that historically, no one tried to hijack a train. What exactly are they going to make the train conductor do?

> Of course not, because the TSA is completely pointless so you don't have to bribe anyone. When someone wants to do that (e.g. shoe bomber) they just go right through without having to pay a bribe, and then they get stopped by passengers or crew.

Yes because so many guns ands bombs have gotten through TSA since 2001…

> To begin with, they don't. Moreover, even the original cargo cults were about planes.

Which commercial airports let you get on the plane without going through security?

As far as cargo culting, you do know how often trains got hijacked in the 80s?

> But that was my point. If we cared about any of this and it was actually effective (which it isn't) then it doesn't make sense to do it for planes but not hotels and trains and everything else.

Last time I checked, hijackers can’t run a hotel into a building or make the hotel employees move a hotel to another country.

And Brightline - the high speed train in Florida does require you to go through security domestically and my n=1 experience of getting on the train system from London to France also makes you go through computer.

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