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

alecmuffett.com

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

#491
post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually do too, the issue is that in today’s wacko world the defense of Free Speech which in the early 2000s was a domain of the left/center-left, now has been abandonded due to the notion of “hate-speech” and opportunistically taken by the right (even tho many like MAGA will drop it the moment it stops being politically convenient i.e expulsion of students being critical of Israel actions). A lot of those are pro…

> which in the early 2000s was a domain of the left/center-left Could you elaborate on that? I'm aware of the Lib Dems championing changes to the law to remove restrictions on "insulting" speech, but even so, they're not left/centre left. There's a joke that they're just yellow tories. > now has been abandonded due to the notion of “hate-speech” That's untrue. Stirring up or inciting racial hatred was made an offence…

Figured I'd add that the BBC has had to apologise recently for Question Time posing a question to the panellists about a stat of 1 in 3 children in Glasgow having English as a second language, but the text prompt they showed on screen lied, saying that 1 in 3 children in Glasgow are not fluent in English. That's a pretty substantial change.

It's not very centre-left of the BBC to aid Farage in his racism, and of course there's a Reform politician there to have the first and last words about it. Keep in mind that this is a Scottish episode, with the leader of the Scottish National Party at Westminster, the leader of Scottish Labour, the leader of Scottish Conservatives, a Scottish journalist (there's usually one or two non-politicians on the panel) who did a lot of indyref coverage. And despite Reform not winning a single seat for Scotland in the 2024 General Election, or in the last Scottish Parliament election in 2021, they apparently always need to give Reform a voice on everything so they shoehorned him onto this panel.

This all just screams centre-left.

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

#492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By that same logic you could describe hitler as just a man concerned about the economy of his country.

The fact that you're linking my logic to Hitler is representative of how lewd your thinking has become.

Hitler's crimes were all speech crimes. If your opinion is that speech can never be a crime, then in your opinion what were Hitler's actual crimes?

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

#493
post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're totally right that it would be easy from a tech perspective to do that. it's a shame that: (A) most people cannot grasp how it could be that "GovSSO" can attest "This person you just sent our way just logged into GovSSO [with biometric 2FA], and they are at least 16 years old" without the receiving system having any way of knowing who that citizen is or even whether they're 16 or 99. (B) very real terrible gov…

> (A) most people cannot grasp how it could be that "GovSSO" can attest "This person you just sent our way just logged into GovSSO [with biometric 2FA], and they are at least 16 years old" without the receiving system having any way of knowing who that citizen is or even whether they're 16 or 99. The loophole that every kid everywhere would instantly figure out is that they just need to borrow their mom’s ID, their o…

> The loophole that every kid everywhere would instantly figure out is that they just need to borrow their mom’s ID, their older brother’s ID, or a pay some Internet service $1 to use their ID.

Do most kids have their parents' ATM card and PIN? Their Gmail credentials and 2FA device? Tons of stuff today relies on a secret the parents aren't supposed to share with their kids. When logging in on a device that wasn't marked "remember this next time" it should be requiring 2FA. Yes, your 19 year old bro can get you porn, but that's been true for like 60 years buying Penthouse at the liquor store.

Of course all this is academic, since the fact is that because things like oAuth are not intuitively grokkable by non-computer people, so no one would accept "having to sign into with GovSSO" even if everything was verifiably privacy-respecting.

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

#494
post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huge numbers are for political speech. It's not just prosecutions. Child protection is abused to force far left wing beliefs on the population. A former Marine was charged with inciting racial hatred after describing some migrants as “scumbags” and “psychopaths” in a 12-minute video posted on Facebook following the murders of three children in Southport, which sparked riots around the country. He was then banned from…

> He was then banned from coaching his own daughter's football club. A jury cleared him in 17 minutes, but Wales is run by the left so they kept the coaching ban in place because they believe right wing people are a threat to children. Who is the "they" in this? The football club? If the situation is essentially that he called certain groups scumbags, but the footbal club has members of that group, its not surprising…

https://www.eugyppius.com/p/chancellor-friedrich-merz-has-fi...

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

#495

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that you're linking my logic to Hitler is representative of how lewd your thinking has become.

Hitler's crimes were all speech crimes. If your opinion is that speech can never be a crime, then in your opinion what were Hitler's actual crimes?

[flagged]

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

#496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that you're linking my logic to Hitler is representative of how lewd your thinking has become.

No it’s pointing out that your argument sounds like it’s intentionally missing critical information in a way that makes your audience think or feel a certain way.

[flagged]

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

#497
post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, you are stripping all context and content. You are pretending that protest organising and calling for the burning down of a building populated with asylum seekers are the same thing. I vehemently reject this facetious framing.

You're conflating legitimate criticism with incitement. The police record suggest the opposite. Take the example *Bernadette Spofforth, 55*, she shared false information that the attacker was an asylum seeker, adding "If this is true, all hell will break loose." (not false btw) Deleted it, apologized. She still got arrested, held 36 hours, and then *released without charge because of insufficient evidence*. No call f…

FWIW - Bernadette Spofforth invented a fictitious Muslim asylum seeker that had arrived by small boat as the perpetrator of an awful act of violence towards small children. She ended her post with "I'm done with the mental 'health excuse'. You should be as well!" Shortly afterwords, mosques and migrant hotels were attacked in the worst race riots the UK has seen in years - fuelled, at least in part, by her disinformation.

It wasn't a retweet and it was only deleted - some 10 hours later - when the media started asking her about the source of the name she had created.

The idea that she was simply expressing legitimate concern is ludicrous.

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

#498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not all of them Do you understand the concept of a slippery slope? Anyone being arrested for online posts is too many from a free speech absolutist pov.

Free speech absolutism is a nonsensical position.

A car without gas is still a car, but you need to work to get it anywhere.

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

#499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same PM who proscribed PA defended in court a woman who did exactly what PA was doing, painting warplanes in protest.

> The same PM who proscribed PA defended in court a woman who did exactly what PA was doing, painting warplanes in protest Out of curiosity, who?

I know it's Torygraph but the reporting matches other sources and this article seems complete.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/06/20/starmer-defended...

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