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UK House of Lords Votes to Extend Age Verification to VPNs
81–90 of 213 posts
Re: UK House of Lords Votes to Extend Age Verification to VPNs
#82Are there any remaining western countries with strong free speech protections? UK and Germany weren't ever good in this department but now worst than ever. US supposedly good but I wouldn't risk it in practice. Australia I hear is also quite bad. Canada and NZ I don't know. I expect Denmark and Sweden to have somewhat weak free speech laws too. Norway and Finland I expect to be good. France I expect to be just slight…
How is age verification and free speech in any case related? You can solve the problem of age verification without limiting your free speech right. Those two get entangled all the time and it does not make sense.
Non-anonymous free speech is a bit of a red herring. If you say something publicly, especially in this era of mass data, you are perpetually liable to be punished for it at some point in the future. If not by the current government, potentially another. Virtually every country in the world has experienced authoritarianism at one point or another, and there is never a guarantee that it won't again. Saying something publicly tied to your identity is signing up to be imprisoned when an authoritarian who doesn't like what you said seizes power. We have many historical examples of dictators rounding up and executing wide classes of people, so we know this threat model is more than just a hypothetical but rather something that can and does realistically happen at various times and places.
Therefore, in practice, anonymity is the only way to safely express oneself in public. Privacy is the true bastion of the freedom of ideas. This is naturally lost when the means to communicate privately are stripped from us, when every word we've ever said is recorded and tied to our identity. Age verification could possibly theoretically be implemented in a way that does not immediately infringe upon privacy, but you surely know that there is no world in which it will ever be implemented in such a way.
Re: UK House of Lords Votes to Extend Age Verification to VPNs
#83This is very bad news because I have been in contact with low cost providers (lowendtalk) and the community & even they usually end up renting etc. from datacenters and they usually would have name as well So theoretically, suppose I have a vpn company on A) either such lowend niche providers who might support let's say my mission or we are aligned or B) the hyperscalers or large companies. Now I am 99% sure that lar…
You are over thinking. This is to enforce age restrictions online which parents are overwhelmingly in favour of. Make the friction high enough for evading age restrictions and it will stop most kids. Not all but most. Same as most shops stop under age kids buying alcohol and most cinemas enforce age ratings. If you want to roll your own VPN go ahead. As far as the "dystopian" state of the UK goes. Even if the UK was…
> As far as the "dystopian" state of the UK goes. Even if the UK was a "distopia" the internet won't save you, even though people of a certain age like to think they can stop an authoritarian government from their keyboard. Take the US as a recent example, the bastion of free speech, but US citizens are being murdered by a government organisation. Posting memes from your VPN won't help.
I understand what you mean but still, one has to realize that all the grievances happening in US (esp with Greenland) feels like something trying to distract from the Epstein files (Me and my cousin literally talked about this yesterday and these were almost his words not mine)
Epstein files pressure got dialed up to 11 because of internet, was it not.
If however the internet keyboard warriors weren't there or just the people who were aware from the internet (I mean I can't attest for you but I was reaware of epstein files from internet)
Also yeah, Take the example of Nepal whose almost authoritarian esque govt. was literally toppled by internet protestors to get an anti corrupt person in power.
Internet & anonymity still has power and to just give it up to a govt. would still have massive massive consequences man.
If this law passes, anonymity & privacy is fundamentally ended in UK.
> If you want to roll your own VPN go ahead.
If my VPN would have an IP be arranged via a VPS they will just come knocking to my VPS
Russians actually use a Russia VPS to connect to VPN but they are getting locked down. (Source: I saw some russian person in a forum doing exactly this)
if we are comparing UK to Russia on a reasonable amount, then that would speak mountains too and we can move our conversation from there.
Edit: perhaps I feel like I was also overthinking it a year back when I was worried about VPN's block (I have written it in Hackernews you can go read) and I figured that with something like UK, the tech wouldn't be enough to be uncensorable and we are still off to govt laws and I was worried about exactly this happening.
I didn't want to be right then and I don't want to be right now but I am just telling what I have a reasonable enough suspicion of something happening in future.
Re: UK House of Lords Votes to Extend Age Verification to VPNs
#84I don't get why the device changes the blame logic. If child-services knew a parent was constantly watching/leaving around adult-content near children, that'd be considered the parents fault. If a parent lets a kid watch anything they want on TV and the kid watches adult content, it's the parents fault. But if the parent gives the child a phone, and doesn't manage what apps they use or content they watch, now it's th…
Does big tech help the parents? Can I set the age of the child in the phone user account and then the browser will report the age to the websites and the nice websites will aknowledge it and deny minors to watch adult content?
No big tech and browser makers did not put their hurds of developers to handle this and forced the governments to try more retarded solutions.
This big OSes should have a super easy activation procedure where a parent will enter the birthday of the account user and then the tech should do the magic,/
What are the current solutions for Android and iOS? To buy some apps and give them root permissions and they will filter out webpages or block entire domains ?
Re: UK House of Lords Votes to Extend Age Verification to VPNs
#85Every government in the world right now wants to get their hands on the controls and put their thumb on the scales here. Modern social media has proven to be effectively remote control for their citizens, nothing like this kind of power has never existed before and is absolutely irresistible to politicians. Expect them all to be laser focused on this until they're able to seize complete control, no matter how long it…
Counterpoint - Governments are attempting to wrest political control away from coordinated global corporate fascists.
The "coordinated corporate fascists" (your words not mine) are providing a platform where I can challenge the the state and be seen by potentially millions of people.
Re: UK House of Lords Votes to Extend Age Verification to VPNs
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
If those services are provided by a company that “offered or marketed to persons in the United Kingdom” or “provided to a significant number of persons”, then they need to implement those checks. Still outside of openvpn, and still outside of general servers, you can still spin up your own server and use that, without any age checks, as you're not offering any service. The host who lets you spin up the server might a…
So effectively truly Private vpn providers have to have an exit from UK. I mean even if say proton says that its not meant for UK but "substantial" people use protonvpn because its private, then they would be forced for the same laws. Another point is what prevents UK govt or UK bots to sign up for Proton Vpn say themselves and the difference between bots and humans is becoming thin especially for such Private Vpn's…
It is not an interception. It is not a condition on either party. It does not require either party to have the other's ID.
It is no more than a requirement on the service provider.
Re: UK House of Lords Votes to Extend Age Verification to VPNs
#87Just for clarification. House of Lords amendments do not have to be accepted by the House of Commons and may not make it into law. If you do not agree with an amendment then write to your MP, write to the ministers concerned. If you do not tell them your concerns they will not know. You can ask for an appointment with your MP. You can ask for an appointment with ministers. Better still you can form an advocacy group…
I've written to my MP several times about this. Each response just repeats the same talking points about safety whilst completely missing the underlying technical issues and consequences.
Same. I have protested over email about the Online Safety Act (amongst other things). I get a generic reply after 6-8 weeks with the same talking points.
Legislation like this does not make children safer, it makes everyone else less safe.
Re: UK House of Lords Votes to Extend Age Verification to VPNs
#88Are there any remaining western countries with strong free speech protections? UK and Germany weren't ever good in this department but now worst than ever. US supposedly good but I wouldn't risk it in practice. Australia I hear is also quite bad. Canada and NZ I don't know. I expect Denmark and Sweden to have somewhat weak free speech laws too. Norway and Finland I expect to be good. France I expect to be just slight…
"Free speech" usually refers to the freedom to say what you want without the state giving you consequences for what you say.
In Germany, for example, you can say almost anything you want and no-one will give a hoot. If you're truly interested, here's some background for Germany in particular https://www.deutschland.de/en/topic/politics/freedom-of-expr...
And reporters without borders has a world press freedom index that ranks the US on place... 57 - behind most of Europe. https://rsf.org/en/index
Re: UK House of Lords Votes to Extend Age Verification to VPNs
#89Can we somehow get age verification without IDs? Age verification itself is OK as an idea. I’m happy to show ID to buy alcohol at the store… but the store clerk doesn’t take a photo of that ID and store it in logs somewhere forever. Can we please get a law where kids won’t just take their parents’ IDs and upload them to random places?
You might like the Digital ID scheme. It uses Zero Knowledge Proofs, so that one of your 'IDs' could be a simple 'Is over 18' ZKP, without involving your name or anything other detail. These are not tracked by government or possible to associate with your wider identity. This is one of the examples listed in the framework docs.
> "Unlike with a physical document, when using a digital identity, you can limit the amount of information you share to only what is necessary. For example, if you are asked to prove you are over 18, you could provide a simple yes or no response and avoid sharing any other personal details." (from https://www.gov.uk/guidance/digital-identity )
There's a huge amount of disinformation circulating about the digital ID scheme, and the government's messaging over it has been catastrophically clumsy. Which is a pity, because the system has clearly been designed with civil liberties in mind (ie defensively) and for citizens it's a serious improvement over the current system.
Re: UK House of Lords Votes to Extend Age Verification to VPNs
#90Just for clarification. House of Lords amendments do not have to be accepted by the House of Commons and may not make it into law. If you do not agree with an amendment then write to your MP, write to the ministers concerned. If you do not tell them your concerns they will not know. You can ask for an appointment with your MP. You can ask for an appointment with ministers. Better still you can form an advocacy group…
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