Lawmakers want to ban VPNs
eff.org
eff.org
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 circumstance for the newly-introduced crime of searching for "extremist" information. That seems to deter many people already, and once the majority is forced to use the local approved (surveilled, censored) services, it is even easier to introduce whitelists or simply cut international connections (as is already practiced temporarily and locally), at which point the ban is successfully applied to everyone.
*without resorting to complete Russian style government control
The US is not (yet) Russia. The rule of law is definitely being destroyed as we speak, so who knows 5, 10 years down the road, but there are still several prerequisite institutions that need to be destroyed before the US could reliably enforce a VPN ban.
This is a pretty bold claim and I'm not sure it matches up with reality.
Karl Marx said that in the first stage of communism there would be a required period of dictatorial control in order to transition from and dismantle capitalist institutions. This is exactly what happened in China and the USSR... there just never was a phase 2.
That's not quite "this will never happen here", more like premeditated dictatorship that never ended because the ruling class preferred being a ruling class rather than return themselves to "communist paradise".
As far as Marx, well, he didn’t provide a recipe for phase 2 either—he just kind of assumed that things would fall into place naturally after the revolution (that needed to be global! the whole communism-within-a-country thing was a later invention / post-hoc rationalization, lampooned masterfully by Voinovich’s Moscow 2042). The entirety of the nascent social sciences field (which Marx was performing to the contemporary standards of, however disastrously that turned out) was rather high on the whole natural law thing around that time. Turns out that, if you created a power vacuum, it would be filled by people who had most ruthlessly optimized for capturing power, as opposed to fairness, your preferred ideology, or anything else. Which at first meant Lenin and then ultimately Stalin, in whose purges died the last true (if at that point very, very bloody) believers. (Notice also how there are very few mentions in history of the eponymous soviets, councils [of workers and peasants], deciding anything whatsoever.) Also most of the intellectual backbone of the nation and the national liberation movements of multiple peoples, but who’s counting.
Russia and China were barely industrial nations.
Capitalism is circumlocutions of long dead people who provided little to society but the sound of their voice, vacuous writings.
So kind of the educated labor exploiters of the past to explain how the world must work. Very TINA of them.
Capitalism is people socially convincing each other there's a communal upside to capitalism. Sounds almost like socialist communist nonsense, this capitalism.
Strip away endless obfuscation the real economy is anything but physical statistics, it becomes clear capitalism is just empty rhetoric.
You have to do better than this to convince people of things.
If you had said "Buying and selling things internationally makes a country capitalist" rather than posing a pointless hypothetical, you would have had to defend that, and you weren't ready to.
Communism is literally a ruling class dictating the lives of an entire country. Capitalism at least gives the opportunity of individual action.
You are allowed to hate capitalism, clearly you do, and advocate for socialism, et. al. Whatever point you think you just made with your post is completely devoid of substance.
Not that it particularly matters, but he didn't say that. Marx never set down specific ideas about how a communist or proto-communist society should organize itself. He thought history was a natural progression of inevitable forces and was more interested in establishing the inevitability of communism (ha) than in describing specifically what a post-capitalist society would look like. (Misleadingly, he did use the phrase "dictatorship of the proletariat," though not to describe any type of dictatorial government.)
The whole "vanguard party of elites ruling by fiat" thing was Lenin's idea. Lenin though the working class wasn't educated enough to lead itself, so a ruling Communist Party should act as a steward on their behalf. Naturally, this idea was popular with people like Lenin and Mao, since it justified their being elevated to the status of authoritarian dictators.
> more like premeditated dictatorship
Lenin's communist party was, in theory, meant to represent the public. The pitch was never, "time for our prescribed period of temporary authoritarian dictatorship." Like any other political party, the Communist party was supposed to be democratically selected and represent the public. Obviously it quickly became corrupt and snuffed out the democratic elements, but any government is vulnerable to that sort of thing.
No, I think the USSR's descent into authoritarianism was very much an "it won't happen here" phenomenon, save perhaps for the fact that the Tsar's monarchy had only just ended and authoritarianism would have been nothing new to Russia.
1. Have a dysfunctional court system. (Not a powerless one, mind you; it’s enough that it basically never rule against the government. It would probably even be enough if it never ruled against any of the following.)
2. Mandate page-level blocks of “information harmful to the health and development of children” (I wish I were joking) for consumer ISPs, by court order; of course, that means IP or at least hostname/SNI blocks for TLS-protected websites, we can’t help that now can we. The year is 2012.
3. Gradually expand the scope throughout the following steps. (After couple of particularly obnoxious opposition websites and against an unavoidable background of prostitution and illegal gambling, the next victim, in 2015, was piracy including pirate libraries. Which is why I find the notion of LibGen or Sci-Hub being Russian soft power so risible, and the outrage against Cloudflare not being in the moderation business so naïve.)
4. Make sure the court orders are for specific pieces of content not websites (as they must be if you don’t want the system to be circumventable by trivial hostname hopping), meaning the enforcement agency can find a particularly vague order and gradually start using it for whatever. Doesn’t hurt that the newly-blocked website’s owner will be faced with a concluded case in which they don’t even have standing.
5. Ramp up enforcement against ISPs.
6. Use preexisting lawful intercept infra at ISPs to ramp up enforcement even further. Have them run through the agency-provided daily blacklist, fine the offenders. Any other probe you can get connected to the ISP will work too.
7. Offer ISPs a choice (wink, wink) of routing their traffic through agency-controlled, friendly-contractor-made DPI boxes they will need to buy, promising to release them from some liability. (First draft published 2016, signed into law 2019.)
8. Mandate the boxes.
9. It is now 2021 or so and you’ve won, legally and organizationally speaking, the rest is a simple matter of programming to filter out VPN protocols, WhatsApp calls and such. Pass additional laws mandating blocks of “promotion” of block evasion if you wish, but the whole legal basis thing is a pretence at this point. For instance, you can de facto block YouTube absent any legal order by simply having the DPI boxes make it very slow, a capability not mentioned in any law whatsoever, then cheerfully announce that in the national press.
See how very easy it is? How each legal or technical capability logically follows from very real deficiencies of the preceding ones so even a reasonable court would be disinclined to rule against them? Understand now why I’m furious when reasonable people on this forum defend the desires of their—mostly good and decent!—governments to control the Internet?
(See also how most of this happened before “Russia bad” became the prevailing sentiment, and how most of it went largely unnoticed in the EU and US, aside from a couple of reputable-but-fringe orgs like RSF to whom very few listen because they cry wolf so much? The ECtHR didn’t even get to the cases, IIRC, before the trap snapped shut and Russia was drummed out of the Council of Europe to widespread cheering, making the matter de facto moot.)
You know that road. You know exactly where it ends.
It's basically a restriction on communication, i.e. the government decides who you're allowed to talk to, not just a privacy issue.
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.
So as soon as they left with little intention to return, they suddenly become the problem that socialists really hate to discuss: ex-Soviets hate socialism. It's like cults, or, if we're honest, there's other repressive groups and repressive ideologies that have loooooooooong lost their any usefulness and really only the repression remains.
In other words, if tech companies show Chinese that non-communist democratic states exist and how it is to live there, then no amount of CCP censorship will ever actually convince those people that the CCP has good intentions.
Judging by my conversations with Chinese, it's working.
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.
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.
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.
Ah, the "institutions." I didn't think about those. Very convincing.
You can literally break the law by just pushing your foot down harder. It's that easy! Therefore they're pointless.
Or, the TSA. They might have taken away my knife, but putting a rock in a sock and hitting someone in the head is an easy workaround. Therefore it's pointless.
(Arguing that the law is easy to break has no effect on whether the law is a good idea, should exist, or is effective.)
What stops people from speeding more than they already do is enforcement. The law isn't doing anything.
But the TSA isn't a law. The TSA is, notionally, the enforcement. And it doesn't do anything either.
So the TSA really is pointless. If you drive around at 30 mph over the limit, you're going to get a ticket, and this traffic cop presence stops people from speeding "too much". If you smuggle explosives onto an airplane, you may die in the crash, but that would have happened regardless of the TSA. The TSA hasn't added any value.
Your take on TSA seems to be in the imperfect=useless camp. There are good ROI, efficiency, and philosophical reasons to want to abolish TSA, but it seems naive to say there is zero value and their mere existence has not deterred anyone.
People speed to get to a destination faster or to relieve their frustration on the road (street racers notwithstanding). If the cost of speeding increases they'll speed much less, because they're more interested in their terminal goal. There's a lot of elasticity here.
Attacking a plane is a terminal goal for terrorists. If it gets harder, they'll do it somewhat less or pursue softer targets. But there's much less elasticity here. So it's less clear that more security measures will result in fewer deaths.
That doesn't imply the TSA is useless but I think it might be clarifying to the discussion.
Are you familiar with the TSA's measured efficiency? It's not naive at all to say that, below a certain detection threshold, the deterrence value is zero.
Compare https://www.loweringthebar.net/2015/06/tsa-successfully-pass... .
You'll notice that what I actually said was "[the TSA doesn't] do anything", which is accurate in a context of accident prevention. I didn't call them imperfect. I called them useless directly. It isn't the case that they do some good work and some bad work. They don't do anything that is useful in any degree.
If Trump administration was ever serious about reducing government waste, they should have dismantled the TSA.
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 total value of lives lost over a 20 year span is about one year of TSA spending.
[1]: https://ourworldindata.org/data-insights/airline-hijackings-...
AirTran for instance went out of business because of one crash. If someone blew up a United plane, I can guarantee you that Delta would increase the security before you got on their flights to instill confidence on passengers.
And people act as if airport security and the TSA measures are unique to the US. My wife and I just got into a position where the stars aligned for us to fly a lot post Covid. But during that time the three countries that we have flown out of - London, Costa Rica and Mexico all have the basic same security measure with the slight difference that you can bring liquids on board from LHR because they have newer scanners that supposedly detect explosives.
And it’s not just airlines. We also had to go through the same type of security to get on the “Chunnel” from London to France.
The only thing that is really theatre is taking off your shoes in the US.
The TSA just happened to be made ac the same time as that changed.
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 .
As far as people not wanting to bring guns on planes - did you forget what country this is? 2nd Amendment people get their panties in a knot anytime they can’t bring a gun anywhere.
Every time they've tested it, the testers were able to get 70-80% of their weapons past the TSA; which, yes, includes guns.
I don't know precisely how they achieved that, but they certainly did.
The best I could find that you could sneak explosives through if you were sophisticated enough but nothing about sneaking guns through.
DHS routinely tests TSA and they always fail spectacularly. This was just the first one on Google. You can easily find many more, this is widely reported on.
In your citation: In the public hearing today on Capitol Hill, members pushed for the full implementation of a program using new scanning equipment that creates a 3-D image of bags, giving screeners better ability to spot possibly dangerous items
Those new scanners are in 255 of the nations 432 airports
https://www.mprnews.org/story/2025/07/19/new-airport-scanner...
Scanner upgrades are mostly effective against weapon smuggling, not carrying on board by determined team.
After 9/11 the assumption has to be that they're going to fly the plane into a building and kill everyone, so now if you try to hijack a plane all the passengers and crew are going to beat you to death with their fists and shoelaces like their life depends on it, which makes it a lot harder to hijack a plane. The TSA has approximately nothing to do with that.
Also notice that even if you somehow managed to kill everyone on the plane, you'd then be left with just a plane full of terrorists for the government to blow out of the sky. And if all you wanted was to kill a bunch of random people then being on a plane has nothing to do with it.
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.
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 defend anymore) that caused an entirely new generation
It sounds like you're saying that inhibiting overreactions to terrorism would lessen its effect and act as a deterrent to it.
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).
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.
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.
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.
>Less than a quarter as many people as get stuck when the NYC subways are offline, presumably.
There plenty of ways to get from Manhattan to Queens if the train system went down then to get from California to Florida.
Is it really that hard to see the difference between a localized transportation system in NYC and a worldwide network of planes? Especially since airline security doesn’t just affect domestic flights it also affects flights leaving the US.
And you think the US pressured England of all places to have higher security? Did you forget about all the bombing they use to have? Did they also irsssye countries to have higher security security measures for domestic flights and their internal train system?
Or do you think that Israel would have less security if it weren’t for US pressure or Central America?
Why would the US care for instance if there were screenings to get on the baby Sansa propellor plane that flies from San Jose Costa Rica to Manual Antonino?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quepos_La_Managua_Airport
The plane they use.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cessna_208_Caravan#Variants
Yes the terminal is a hut and I’ve flown into there before.
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 the reason a plane is different because people think it could happen to them if they got on a plane.
But if it happens to a train people don't think it could happen to them if they got on a train? Either that's not true or those people would have such a disconnected relationship to logic that there is no use pandering to them anyway because they wouldn't see the connection between your policies and the results.
> There plenty of ways to get from Manhattan to Queens if the train system went down then to get from California to Florida.
Spoken like someone who hasn't seen the days when it goes down. What happens when you take the 4 million people who ride the subway every day and tell them it isn't there? Impassable gridlock.
> Is it really that hard to see the difference between a localized transportation system in NYC and a worldwide network of planes?
All of the transportation systems are interconnected. What does the connectedness change? If something happens on a train in New York, does it materially affect San Francisco but not Honolulu because trains connect New York and California but not Hawaii?
Planes are even less affected by this than other things because you can damage train tracks or road bridges that act as a bottleneck but the only infrastructure air travel requires is airports and planes, and airports are widely distributed and planes are easy to move around.
> Especially since airline security doesn’t just affect domestic flights it also affects flights leaving the US.
Which is another reason it's a farce, because it also affects flights entering the US and then it doesn't matter what the TSA does when you can go through airport security in the country of your choosing with the weakest or most bribe-accepting security that lets you get behind the checkpoint on a plane to the US.
> And you think the US pressured England of all places to have higher security?
Your original claim was that all other countries do this. Before 9/11, they didn't, and now you're having to resort to only the countries with the most stringent checks. Obviously Israel where bombings are practically a daily occurrence would need more than countries where that is much less common, but that's kind of the point, isn't it?
> Why would the US care for instance if there were screenings to get on the baby Sansa propellor plane that flies from San Jose Costa Rica to Manual Antonino?
Are you saying that the screenings to get on that plane are the same as the ones imposed by the TSA, or are you now conceding that this is wrong:
> You realize every single country has similar procedures?
If you are asking whether it is the same, everywhere. In my recent experience of flying out of international airports…
- LHR - you don’t remove your shoes and they have newer scanners that supposedly detect explosives in liquids.
- SJO - you don’t remove your shoes
- XQP - they don’t have sophisticated scanners. Security uses handheld scanners. But what do you expect when the terminal is literally a hut? (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/01/Qu...)
> But if it happens to a train people don't think it could happen to them if they got on a train?
Well first most people outside of NYC aren’t as heavily dependent on public transportation. They already see it as dangerous and for poor people (yes I think that’s ignorant). In other words people with means already avoid public transportation and they would even be more likely to do so. This is very much a car centric culture
Do you know how many people outside of NYC believe the narrative that the minute you step on a train in NYC that you are going to be shot or raped?
No I don’t believe that. I’ve used NYC mass transit once when I went to the US Open (the reason I mentioned Queens where the Arthur Ashe stadium is).
I lived in Atlanta for 25 years. I took MARTA once to get from the north suburbs of Atlanta to the airport. The rest of the time we would drive or take Uber. I took it again recently to get from the airport to downtown when visiting.
MARTA also has such a reputation for only being for poor people to the point where its derogatorily called Moving Africans Rapidly Through Atlanta (before the pearl clutching starts about me using a racist acronym I’m Black). If people started bombing trains. You would see even less ridership from people who had alternatives.
> All of the transportation systems are interconnected. What does the connectedness change? If something happens on a train in New York, does it materially affect San Francisco
You mean all 5 people who ride trains inter-city across the country?
> Which is another reason it's a farce, because it also affects flights entering the US and then it doesn't matter what the TSA does when you can go through airport security in the country of your choosing with the weakest or most bribe-accepting security that lets you get behind the checkpoint on a plane to the US.
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?
But you still haven’t answered the main overriding question - why does every major airport in every country have the same procedures? Is everyone in the world wrong? And if it is because of supposed pressure from the US, why is it true for domestic flights within their own borders and for their train systems (at least my n=1 experience on a train outside of the US)?
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?
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.
There was no such premise to begin with. They applied some pressure to some countries which had some effect, others followed suit by following bad precedents set by others.
> 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?
I mean, people used to rob trains. That was definitely a thing.
> Yes because so many guns ands bombs have gotten through TSA since 2001…
Look, we need to keep paying the expensive lease on this bear-repelling rock because even though it demonstrably hasn't repelled the actual bears we've encountered, if we didn't have it there might have been thousands of bears, possibly trillions.
> Which commercial airports let you get on the plane without going through security?
How about this one: How many of them require it to be a government agency? Even in a lot of Europe it's private.
> the high speed train in Florida does require you to go through security domestically
Let's get rid of that too then.
> Last time I checked, hijackers can’t run a hotel into a building or make the hotel employees move a hotel to another country.
Neither can you do that with a plane if your plan is to blow it up, so why do you have to take off your shoes and have your drink stolen?
Your words.
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.
And explain to me again why the US would “pressure” countries to increase security on domestic flights? Why would the US care if a propellor plane flying from a literal hut in Manuel Antonio Costa Rica to San Jose has security screenings or a train going from London to Paris had security screenings?
> Look, we need to keep paying the expensive lease on this bear-repelling rock because even though it demonstrably hasn't repelled the actual bears we've encountered, if we didn't have it there might have been thousands of bears, possibly trillions
Because terrorism doesn’t exist anymore and everyone loves America?
> How about this one: How many of them require it to be a government agency? Even in a lot of Europe it's private.
So now you went from “other countries have airports where security isn’t the same” to “it’s private”. What difference does it make?
FWIW: Airports can choose to have private security instead of TSA. The only one that does of any note is SFO.
Even if it is private in the EU, they still follow EU wide security regulations. How does it being private make any difference in your experience?
And even o > Let's get rid of that too then.
So every single commercial airport in the world has screenings, as well as some domestic foreign train systems (Ibe only been on one internationally) as well as private high speed rail in the US where it isn’t required by law.
Just maybe they know something you don’t know?
The liquids ban really is bullshit though, it's to prevent a fictional movie plot using a bomb mixed up using binary liquids...
The liquids ban is bullshit because you can have arbitrarily many small bottles of liquid and an arbitrarily large empty bucket to mix them in once you're inside. And because blowing up a plane isn't any more of a problem than blowing up a subway car or a highrise hotel lobby but it's ridiculous and infeasible to stripsearch everyone who goes into a high population density area.
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.
One notable change is: reinforced cockpit doors that can't be forced open from the outside easily. Good luck hijacking with that.
But another notable change is that plane crews and passengers all understand now that plane hijacking is a life or death situation, and would fight hijackers to the bitter end.
Which is what happened on the very day of 9/11, on Flight 93.
How long do you think it’s going to be before a pilot opens the door if a hijacker starts shooting people?
Airport security is by far not just in America with the only exception in my experience is that other airports don’t make you take your shoes off and some allow liquids in carryon
No you don’t pay for TSA out of taxpayer money. The airlines do bu adding a cost to your ticket.
I expressed no opinion on the TSA.
There also isn't room to get away from angry passengers. They're probably going to overwhelm terrorists with guns relatively quickly.
I would book a first class flight in the first seat in front of the plane. Make all of the first class passenger - fewer of them, probably wealthier business travelers who don’t think they are Rambo - move to the back of the cabin.
The aisle would be the perfect kill zone. I watched a documentary and they said SWAT training for taking over a plane from terrorist they know that whoever goes in first is likely to get shot.
How are you distinguishing that from any other law? You can literally break the law against theft by just picking someone's pocket. It's that easy!
But that was never the argument to begin with. They're proposing a law requiring websites to ban users who visit via a VPN. So to begin with we already have a major difference. The people subject to the law (websites) are different than the people who would be trying to circumvent it (users and VPN services).
Meanwhile websites have no actual means to know if someone is using a VPN. There are a zillion VPN services and anyone with an IP address can start one. There is no way for them to comprehensively ban them all. So now what happens? The website bans some VPNs -- they would be doing an incredibly painstaking job if they managed to get three out of every four -- and then the user just tries three or four random VPNs or VPN-equivalents until they find one that works and keeps using that.
At this point you could try to prosecute the website for failing, but then you'd be prosecuting everybody because nobody would actually be able to do it. Whereas if making an attempt is sufficient for compliance then they check their compliance box meanwhile everybody is still bypassing it. Which is why it's useless.
"Software people" have an above-average understanding of probabilities overall. It's politicians who tend to think in absolutes. If you tell them that the effectiveness of something is poor and vastly exceeded by its costs, they say "so you admit that its effectiveness is more than zero". And then people will instead have to say that something doesn't work when they mean it has low effectiveness or an underwater cost-benefit ratio.
Moreover, a lot of things with computers actually are absolutes. You can't backdoor encryption without a massive systemic risk to national security and personal privacy of someone bad getting the keys to everything. You can't allow people to send arbitrary data to each other while preventing them from communicating something you don't want them to -- the same string of bits can have arbitrarily many semantic meanings and that's proven with math, and software can do the math without the user needing to understand it.
And the most important one is this:
> But for a totalitarian government...
A totalitarian government is trying to do something different and illegitimate. Banning VPNs etc. has higher effectiveness as a means for censoring the general population than it does as a means to prevent crimes or limit contraband in a democracy, because criminals will take the required countermeasures when the alternative is being arrested or not getting their fix whereas laymen are less likely to when the alternative is "only" that they don't get to read criticism of the government.
"It works better for totalitarian regimes" is an argument for not doing it.
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.
>"It works better for totalitarian regimes" is the argument for not doing it
Parent is not justyfing them doing it. They are explaining how little exhaustive their implementation can be, while still being effective for their goals.
If 75% of people in some group are above average then 25% of them still aren't.
> They are explaining how little exhaustive their implementation can be, while still being effective for their goals.
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.
The problem is that authoritarianism has been allowed to become attractive to many politicians, because they are allowed to be bought by corporate money, even if it harms their constituents. Rights, freedom, and privacy has become secondary to money and the blind lust for power.
You have so many twits trying to get away with authoritarian nonsense that they're conditioning people through propaganda to accept authoritarian nonsense. What happens then? More twits trying to get away with authoritarian nonsense.
We need to come up with a better solution to this than the historical norm of things getting so bad that people are finally willing to fight a war over it.
OP's points were:
completely banning VPN is difficult
significantly reducing VPN usage is a win for (totalitarian) govs
it's enough to make it difficult for the layman to achieve govs' goal
No one disputes this.
> significantly reducing VPN usage is a win for (totalitarian) govs
But a loss for non-totalitarian countries, and therefore a cost rather than a benefit in the context of US states doing it.
> it's enough to make it difficult for the layman to achieve govs' goal
And I addressed that, but I'll reiterate.
Even ordinary people can bypass VPN blocks with a trivial amount of effort. It's really not that hard, and in fact there is an entire cottage industry dedicated to making it easier, because we don't want totalitarian regimes keeping their population in the dark -- and the people thwarting those blocks are our friends, or often even the US government itself, for actually good reasons for once.
So if you block something that people aren't that interested in seeing, like criticism of the government when that's something that tends to make a lot of people uncomfortable, then blocking people from seeing it has an effectiveness which is a little better than totally negligible. Because some people won't go out of their way even a little bit to see it, and then they don't. (Which is why it's important that we make it absolutely trivially easy for ordinary people to bypass those blocks.)
Whereas if you're trying to block something that people actually want -- drugs, porn, whatever -- it's not going to work because that trivial amount of effort to bypass it is too small to be meaningful in a context where the user is actively seeking it out.
If they're blocking all traffic beyond their borders, then that's a separate matter, but usually such restrictions are more annoying than absolute.
But from a lawmaker perspective, the topic is not technical.
The question, at the end, is about the enforcement of the punishments that go with circumvention; and in some places there is punishment even when you are "just" trying to circumvent these restrictions.
It's easy to break-in into someone's place. What prevents you from doing it, is the punishment (and potentially ethics), not the physical barrier.
It's illegal to steal a macbook that has been abandoned on the train. Try leaving yours and see if the more important thing is the physical barrier or ethics/punishment/existence of laws.
Governments can make evading their censorship very difficult, painful, and risky, if they want to. It can have a huge impact.
All this did was to inject venom into an otherwise civil exchange.
Have you actually been to China? I was there not long ago traveling around a range of cities and never had trouble with either Mullvad or Astrill having used both hotel and residential networks. I have many friends who have similar experiences. In fact, I've never recalled anyone having trouble getting outside of the great firewall.
Using a VPN, or any other technical workaround you can think of, doesn't negate that the law in your state says you must prove your age to access the content.
States require proof of age to purchase alcohol. You can ask someone who is of age to buy it for you, that doesn't make it legal for you to have it.
Not true for California, and probably many other states:
[0] https://www.shouselaw.com/ca/defense/laws/minor-in-possessio...
I do know people who use no circumvention methods: some are simply not sufficiently familiar with technologies (including older people, who seem to think that something is wrong with their phones), for others it is a mix of regular shying away from technologies and being worried that it draws the government's attention. And then there are those who appear to genuinely support the censorship (or whatever else the government does). I also hear of people switching to local services as the regular ones are blocked.
Anecdotal data is of little use to determine the extent though, and trustworthy statistical data may be hard to come by, but if you somewhat trust the Levada Center, their polls indicate that YouTube's Russian audience halved following the blocking, among other things. [0]
> WireGuard also works just fine - I was able to selfhost and use it without any extra obfuscation.
For both IPsec and WireGuard, I have both heard of the blocks [1] and observed those myself, particularly to servers across the border (which were otherwise available; there is a chance that I misconfigured something back then, but I recall it working fine with local servers). For IPsec, I have also observed blocks within the country (and RKN lifting those on request, confirming an intentional blocking that way, twice; also confirmed that those were for IPsec packets in particular, not any UDP). But possibly it does not affect all the foreign subnets: as with a recent blackout [2], when quite a few were affected, but not all of them.
[0] https://www.levada.ru/2025/04/24/polzovanie-internetom-sotsi...
[1] One of the recently seen public mentions is at https://blog.nommy.moe/blog/exotic-mesh-vpn/
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 day. My traffic patterns are unusual compared to usual browsing (mostly database replication), and something seem to trigger DPI now and then. Fortunately, wrapping it in the simplest Shadowsocks setup seems to be working fine at the moment.
But yeah, can confirm, VPNs are ubiquitous and work reasonably well for everyone I know who still lives there. Although I think all decent VPN providers have measures against traffic analysis nowadays, as plain Wireguard is not exactly reliable.
There's a Wireguard-based mesh (static routing, but declarative centrally managed setup using Nix) with Shadowsocks for traversing hostile borders. Runs a few private/personal services for myself, family, and friends - email, messaging, media library, the commonplace homelab stuff. Certainly not the best design - things never are, there's always room for more and more improvements, no matter how much you work on it, but I'm pretty happy with it overall.
There's no real reason why is it like this. I could've done it more conventionally and probably avoid a lot of downsides - but it's a fun little exercise that allows me to play with various technologies, and I like that the system is truly mine, hardware and premises it's on, all built by my own hands (random fun fact: I was a founding engineer at the ISP that two of my nodes are on).
tl;dr: Had a single home server, moved around and added a few more. No particular reason, it's just a fun geeky toy for me. :-)
> decent VPN providers
You'd be surprised by the amount of people I know who use random "VPN services" which are literally just WireGuard configs you can buy through a Telegram bot for like 100₽/month
Why else do you think actual policies change so much between presidential administrations (assuming a U.S. bias, but other countries have similar issues)? All the laws about cryptocurrency, DEI, greenhouse gas emissions, environmental regulations, etc. that the Biden administration cared about but the Trump administration is choosing not to enforce are still on the books. If Democrats ever get back in to power, people that are casting them aside under pressure from the current administration are likely in for a whole lot of pain. And likewise, during the Biden administration all the laws about immigration and federal control over the federal budget were still in force, and people who relied upon a friendly administration are currently going through a world of pain right now.
No, this is not the way it should be. If I were to rewrite the Constitution, one thing I'd put in is a feedback mechanism between legislation and enforcement, so that laws which are not enforced fall off the books, and it becomes illegal for the executive branch to choose not to enforce a law. That'd force the body of law to converge to what is a.) realistically enforceable and b.) what actually happens in practice, so that people can look at what their neighbors are doing and be reasonably sure that they're not breaking any laws by doing the same thing.
But in the absence of that, your best bet is often to still just look at what your neighbors are doing and do the same thing, because then you blend in to the crowd and don't attract attention.
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.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-circumvention#Distributio...
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.
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.
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.
You sure must have links to this social media, right?
Not to mention these online content censorship laws for kids are wrong in principle because parents are supposed to be in control of how they raise each of their own kids, not the government or other people.
And these laws make authoritarian surveillance and control much easier. It's hard to not see this as the main objective at this point. And even if it isn't, this level of stupidity is harmful.
How much more proof do we need that we're speedrunning the authoritarianism and frankly we're already somewhat authoritarian, it's just pluralism for now. Wait until the elites eat each other and only one dictator is left.
Many parents aren't taking time to be in control, and no amount of legislation will fix that.
This is already the case in the UK. We discovered another sad fact. Parents will suddenly develop the technical literacy to turn parental controls off because it's inconveniencing them, but won't bother to fine grain the control to make it safe for their children.
Apple and android controls aren’t that difficult to understand. Roblox parental controls aren’t that difficult to understand. Could it be simpler by unifying these things under one framework? Sure - I’ve worked with tons of parents who fall under the trap that Roblox is safe because they set iOS parental controls. I feel for them because they aren’t “tech” people and apple conditions them to expect a setting to be universal across the operating system, so it’s quite a shock when they find out their child has been texting with some groomer from Roblox chat.
The parents who are doing that will continue to do that. Improving those controls will help those parents and I agree efforts should be made for them. But for every one of those parents I encounter I get about 4-5 more who don’t bother to set any kind of parental control or filter on their children’s devices. When their 9 year old starts talking about pornhub and I give them resources on setting up parental controls it almost always falls on deaf ears. They simply don’t give a fuck. They can’t be bothered to spend 20 minutes figuring out how to set it up, even if I offer to walk them through it.
It is the new form of parental neglect, the modern version of a latchkey kid
Are we really going to argue “since some parents won’t adequately parent their children, we’re going to create a massive censorship and surveillance apparatus and the Government will tightly control what everyone is allowed to view or talk about online”?
eg consider child-proof packaging and labeling laws for medication, which dramatically reduced child mortality due to accidental drug misuse.
Read about the infamous EU's chat control and lobbying behind it: https://mullvad.net/en/blog/mullvad-vpn-present-and-then
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’t be using children as a shield.
They'd latch on to whatever reason they'd think would stick.
What's left?
There are better solution than blocking IPs.
Anyways, the main point I was making is the filtering should be done on-device at the parents' discretion, if they really wanted to protect their children. We can give them that feature and eliminate an excuse for authoritarian laws at the same time. This doesn't even require legislation, we can just do it if enough people working on operating systems agree.
Ironically enough, that meant when I was working at AWS, I sometimes couldn’t access a site that I was working on for a client when I went into the office for a business trip (I worked remotely).
You realize that a lot of parents support this sort of thing because they are not technically sophisticated enough to control it themselves? Or they simply think that it has no place in polite society? That is why politicians enact these laws, because they are hearing from constituents that they want it.
We can make it so that it's as easy as changing the settings on their child's phone and then setting a password to lock that setting. The technical barrier isn't high.
> Or they simply think that it has no place in polite society?
That doesn't justify giving the government the tools to crush free speech on the Internet, which threatens the very existence of polite society. The current wave of authoritarianism around the world is a direct consequence of undemocratic governance systems on the Internet. In hindsight, it was kind of our fault. Failing to foresee its civilization-scale impact, we did not design the Internet with democratic principles in mind. This eventually resulted in large social media and cloud services platforms with enough users to sway elections, that operate under opaque centralized moderation and curation mechanisms. This became a real problem when smartphones were invented and most of human communication suddenly got moved online: freedom of speech has been de facto damaged for almost two decades now.
But it's a problem that can reverse itself, if we can figure out a way to neutralize the Internet's implicit incentives that encourage the centralization of compute and storage (which is equivalent to the centralization of power when most communication occurs online). And as you might guess, such solutions require a free enough Internet to create and deploy. That's why we must push back against these Internet control laws in the meantime, otherwise governments will simply use these legal tools to suppress attempts to decentralize the Internet, and we'd end up with authoritarian regimes all around the world.
Yes, governments really did want to force us to use HTTPS with only broken/weak crypto.
Same propaganda, different buzzwords.
Notice that in those cases DJB was represented by the eff, so they have been involved in this issue for a very long time.
The context with this article is different but the similarities are with how lawmakers misunderstand VPNs. They are an essential tool for workers and there are many other ways to circumvent censorship without VPNs anyway. The irony of this ban is that Zanzibar also wants to attract digital nomads, and the most important tool for them is an unrestricted and reliable internet connection.
Last time I checked modestly reliable geoblocking existed, and completely unreliable vpn blocking.
A friend told me that when he comes across a site for which Nordvpn is blocked, he just changes IP. Latest the third one always works, even on YouTube (he is all about privacy).
Even if you somehow manage to enumerate the Nordvpn IPs - a thing of which Nordvpn probably thought in their threat model - then you still have thousands of other providers.
https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2020/03/aws-waf-a...
However, to address your specific chosen example, one could argue a difference from murder, if they say “your site must block these traffic sources or you’re in trouble”: one could argue (it’s not at all cut and dried) that it’s like saying that venues are liable for the murders committed at them, rather than the murderer.
Something that's extraordinarily low effort will become exceedingly high effort, and this will achieve their goals.
It says that a site that distributes harmful content for minor, like, let's say, xvideos, will have to block vpn users from wiscosin.
Yes. that will mean, that if xvideos will wish to be compliant with Wiscosin laws, they would have to figure out a way to block all vpn users.
Bad. Really bad.
But no, it's not like Wiscosin citizens will be prevented to work remotely using a VPN to connect to their corporate network.
Authoritarianism is not limited by your birthplace, it can turn up anywhere. And when it does people are often really enthusiastic about it.
The findings in the Times article were subsequently debated in the House of Lords. The figures weren't disputed: https://lordslibrary.parliament.uk/select-communications-off...
30 arrests a day for something in a population of seventy million people, a large proportion of whom are online in some way, is not that much.
And it's not 30 arrests per day for saying things the government don't like or that are politically incorrect, is it? It's mostly for things that rise to the level of threats or harassment or cause alarm.
On the one hand it's a new conduit for threatening conduct, and on the other hand, it's probably replacing some.
I'd note something that comes up when this number is mentioned often enlightens the context: that people often use this figure to say "that's more than in Iran or Russia", as if the number itself is actually meaningful. Nobody's going to arrest you in Russia for abusing transgender people; nobody's going to arrest you in Iran for encouraging the punishment of promiscuity or gay people. In either case they might turn a blind eye if you threaten the lives of those people. But the things they would arrest you for — criticising the government or the war — you know not to even say out loud when not among friends. Because the punishment is not the mild inconvenience you would get in the UK.
There are bigger problems in the UK with misunderstanding policing of speech in the real, physical world: the Palestine Action stuff is being much more obviously mishandled. I think it's much more important to focus on getting the government to handle that more logically and sanely.
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 like people are being arrested and later released for perfectly legal speech. That would arguably be seen by many as an impairment of freedom of expression.
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 later released for perfectly legal speech.
But you just said we don't know, because offence type is not provided?
>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.
Am I going to find myself in jail one day for "Unregulated use of a private/public key pair?"
It's the conservative 2/3 of the Democratic party.
"Small government" in all its forms and variations is smoke.
If you hear someone who says they desire small government, they are either lying to your face because they want their despot to have power, or haven't given their position enough interrogation to ask themselves the question "If the government isn't powerful, what is preventing a power-hungry despot from seizing power?"
Are you a child? Probably not, so you are just accessing legally available content by alternate means. It's strange how many people think they are out-smarting a system when said system is explicitly designed to allow them access.
These laws are primarily intended to stop children browsing the internet from being exposed to porn and gore when they're simply browsing the web. A child who has gained sufficient independence to purchase their own VPN subscription or operate an SSH server to look at pictures of boobies without their parents knowing has also likely reached the point in life where doing so is not harmful to them.
Firstly, the article makes it clear that the definition of "harmful to children" is being systematically expanded to mean "makes conservatives a bit uncomfortable."
And secondly:
> It's strange how many people think they are out-smarting a system when said system is explicitly designed to allow them access.
The whole point of the article is to draw attention to the fact that certain regions are trying to make the use of a VPN illegal. If that were to happen, using an SSH tunnel would indeed be "outsmarting the system."
Not sure how you meant that, but I'm sure that using an SSH tunnel to get around VPN restrictions will be determined to be illegal. They'll just say an SSH tunnel IS a VPN in the legal sense.
Of course, this won't matter for the vast majority that they don't prosecute - it will only matter for the few they do, which hopefully isn't you or me. But you never know. You get pulled over for a broken taillight and then - "hey, is that a NordVPN sticker on your laptop there..." and next thing you know you're doing 10-life.
Seems clear to me that a lot of religious sites are directly harmful to children if they allow the church elders abuse them with impunity.
a) Alcohol is considered harmful for minors, hence
b) It is unlawful for minors to posses and consume alcohol;
c) It is unlawful to sell alcohol to minors;
Similarly:
1) Internet may potentially contain harmful material, hence:
2) It is unlawful for minors access Internet;
3) It is unlawful to sell or provide to minors access to Internet or any devices or services that facilitate access to Internet
Easy-peasy
Someone needs to make a case as for why in 2015 this was perfectly acceptable but in 2025 it's not anymore. The internet has gotten tamer since its inception and porn is still porn, exactly as depraved as it always was. What's considered the bad parts of the internet these days used to be the whole thing.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0epennv98lo
https://www.lbc.co.uk/article/digital-id-cards-ill-stop-ille...
Terrorism still crops up occasionally but the rhetoric has certainly expanded.
Don’t be deceived - huge amounts of lobbying went into this, because some savvy entrepreneurs saw a market to sell age-verification services. The key driver behind the laws is more about creating that market than actual child protection - if they were actually interested in that, they wouldn’t be pushing things that are clearly so ineffective (but expensive).
1. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/safer-technology-...
These laws aren’t meant to be followed. Their text is deliberately vague, and their demands are impossible by design. They aren't foolish, or at least their ignorance isn't needed to explain the system's broader function. They are meant to serve as a Chekhov's gun that may or may not fire over your head, depending solely on whether the people holding it decide like you.
In peaceful times, they fade into the background, surfacing only when it’s convenient to blackmail some company for cash or favors. In times of crisis, they declare a never-ending war on extremism, sin, and treason, fought against an inexhaustible supply of targets to take down in front of their higher‑ups, farming promotions, contracts for DPI software, and jobs updating its filters.
Historically, such controls were limited by the motivation and competence of the arms dealers, usually taking the form of DNS or IP blocks easily bypassed with proxies. With modern DPI, it's entire protocols going dark. Even so, those able to learn easily find a way around them. The people who suffer most are seniors, unable even to call family across the border without a neighbor's help, and their relatives forced into using least trustworthy messengers (such as Botim, from the creators of ToTok, a known UAE intel operation [0]) thinking they're the only way to stay in touch, not knowing how or wanting to use mainstream IM over a VPNs that may or may not live another month.
If wherever you are your votes still matter, please fight this nonsense. Make no mistake, your enemies are still more ridiculous than Voltaire could hope they'd be, but organizing against or simply living through a regime constantly chewing on the internet's wires is going to be a significantly greater inconvenience than taking _real_ action now.
A more apt metaphor might be Damocles’ sword?
Selective enforcement should be illegal - people practicing it should be put in prison, the law should be auto-repealed, any past sentences cancelled and the people sentenced should be compensated.
This should be written into every constitution, just like free speech and the right to kill when killing is right ("right to bear arms").
The bill reads like you would think from someone who's been talking with the ceo of an age verification company. The bill gives the website two options: use a _commercial_ age verification product tied to gov't id checking, or "digitize" the web user's gov't id.
Seems highly unlikely it would ever happen (at least in the U.S.) but seems like it'd solve a decent amount of verification problems. With a JWT, the IdP wouldn't even necessarily need to know the recipient since the validity could be verified by the consuming party using asymmetric crypto.
We can't just rely on technological solutions because you can't out-tech the law at scale. People need to actually understand that the government is very close to having the tools needed for a stable technocratic authoritarian regime here in the US and all around the world. It might not happen immediately even if they have the tools, but once the tools are built, that future becomes almost unavoidable.
Seems quite achievable and sustainable to me
Every human carries dense compute and sensors with them. If they don't they stand out while still surrounded by dense compute and sensors held by others at all times
Not nice to think about but it is the reality we are moving towards – vote accordingly
People want this stuff. People want ring doorbells, they want age verification, they want government control. Think of the children/criminals/immigrants.
Voting won’t help.
Voting doesn't work because everybody votes on everything, not just people who understand the subject matter.
Voting doesn't work because it's impossible to express nuanced choice - you vote for a candidate or party as a whole, not on specific policies. The number of parties is much smaller than the number combinations of policies so some opinions can't be expressed at all.
Society is complex and there will always be someone somewhere that can influence an outcome where he/she doesn't understand the subject matter. Hence, nothing works and can ever work.
"Let's just give up" is the only conclusion I can see. Hardly useful.
Can you give an example of something that works by your standards?
You're right it's too strong as a general statement but it was in response to a specific issue - those in power wanting to take yet another bit of power from the general population - (this time and in this particular country) by banning VPNs.
People always vote based on the most pressing issues to them - immigration, taxes, abortions, LGBT rights (random list which is different in every country). Minor issues fall between the cracks until they become so bad they become pressing to enough people.
> "Let's just give up" is the only conclusion I can see. Hardly useful.
Then you're reading it wrong. I listed specific issues - the solution is to find solutions to those issues.
Here's a couple suggestions I'd like to see gamed out and tested:
- The right to vote not as a function of age but a test of reasoning ability and general knowledge.
- Limiting the amount of time a person can perform politics (including professional lobbying) to 5-10 years.
- Splitting laws into areas of expertise and potentially requiring tests to prove understanding to gain the right to vote on those areas for both the general population and politicians.
- Replacing FPTP with more nuanced voting systems.
These are just a few random suggestions described briefly. When I do this, people start nitpicking and then I have to reply with obvious solutions to surface issues - I encourage everyone to instead think how to make this work (yes, in an adversarial environment) instead of just trying to shoot it down.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_test
Democracy is a complicated difficult thing. If you think you can fix it after a 5 minute reflection, think some more, read more. It's way, way harder than that. A lot of smart people have thought a lot about it, and clearly good ideas are in very short supply. Think more humbly about the subject, please.
There are just a handful of corporations get to decide which websites are visitable every 90 days. Put a bit of legal pressure on the corporate certificate authorities and there's instant centralized control of effectively the entire web thanks to corporate browser HTTPS-only defaults and HTTP/3 not being able to use self-signed certs for public websites.
$ ls -lathr /etc/ssl/certs/ | wc -l
265
We're really only missing a few things before there's decentralized VPN over HTTPS that anyone in the world can host and use, and it would be resistant to all DPI firewalls. First, a user-friendly mobile client. Second, a way to broadcast and discover server lists in a sparse and decentralized manner, similar to BitTorrent (or we may be able to make use of the BT protocol as is), and we'd have to build such auto-discovery and broadcasting into the client. Third, make each client automatically host a temporary server and broadcast its IP to the public server lists when in use.
No, but I'm curious why you'd think that?
"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.
The point of all this is to make it so that governments can't pin down the IP of any client without expending significant resources. It makes mass surveillance, control, and prosecution prohibitively expensive. Law enforcement would still be able to trace suspects through the hops with their rich arsenal of backdoors, exploits, and clues in the physical world, just not without significant effort and therefore expenses. So they will only be able to pursue criminals in a targeted manner, which is how law enforcement in a free society is supposed to work.
The decentralized VPN service can only work if clients are also servers, otherwise there will be too many people who use the service without contributing to it, resulting in a tragedy of the commons.
The reason it exists is just that it predates WireGuard by ~decade.
I don't know if Tailscale has any plans to make their service more censorship resistant, but I hope they do.
If your primary focus is just reaching region blocked content, Self hosted VPNs can work great if you have access to a residential IP in your target country- I've taken advantage of family member's domestic connections instead of VPSes now, as I was lucky enough to have family in the regions I wanted. Devices like the Apple TV can function as a Tailscale exit node too, which greatly simplified deployment.
One of the most bizarre legal opinions I've ever heard of, but if they used any digits in the writing of the law those are up for grabs. Law makes a 30 day window or something? The governor can just change it to a million days with a stroke of the pen and then sign the edit into law with the same pen!
Pretty close.
> (b) If the governor approves and signs the bill, the bill shall become law. Appropriation bills may be approved in whole or in part by the governor, and the part approved shall become law.
> (c) In approving an appropriation bill in part, the governor may not create a new word by rejecting individual letters in the words of the enrolled bill, and may not create a new sentence by combining parts of 2 or more sentences of the enrolled bill
https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/constitution/wi_unannotated
The big limitation here is that it is limited to appropriations. Further, the constitution goes out of its way to try and prevent creative vetoing.
Unfortunately, the court decided that numbers are not words.
As a result, the governor changed "for the 2023–24 school year and the 2024–25 school year" to "for 2023–2425"
https://statecourtreport.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/wisco...
I can understand allowing a governor to change the text of a bill. But I cannot understand allowing them to sign those changes into law. It seems like that would mean they could creatively reverse the meaning of any bill.
It seems like a governor should be able to approve the text as written, or change it and send it back.
What am I missing?
That was the idea. But Wisconsin has twisted into something else entirely. Arguably, the idea was not a good one to begin with, anyway.
Can someone explain how this is true? Even if there is not a VPN, there should be https encryption and privacy protection.
Or otherwise that if you want to effectively ban VPNs you'll end up at the point where secure encryption is effectively banned, because there are ways to tunnel traffic over pretty much any protocol eg. SSH, HTTPS if you're creative.
The key change is needed with things such as meshtastic and lora. Taking things out of the hands of regulators is key
For better security, a signed obligation to observe law might be collected from every employee, and an access log kept, with records signed by company's digital signature.
Being a devil's advocate, you already entrust the government to register your property, issue your money, prosecute you for wrongdoing (including death penalty) and send you to the war. Your data is already collected and sold by thousands of data brokers. What are you losing by having a backdoor that would be used only in strict accordance with the law (laws being created by your elected representatives) and only for legal purposes? You must comply with the law anyway, no matter if the government can or cannot see what you are doing.
If you truly believed in democracy and rule of law in your country, you would have no doubts and volunteered to install the backdoor yourself.
Further those who do wish to break the law could still utilize cryptography to avoid backdoors so this would only really apply said surveillance to those not breaking the law.
Perhaps this is also different for digital activities due to the history of the digital space and the scale/ease at which if allowed it can be surveilled.
This is naive. The goal is not to make VPNs technically impossible, it is to move the use of VPNs into the realm of illegality. If successfull, it is just a case of selective enforcement, another vector of going after anyone you don't like.
Western leaders are in panic mode. I am not very political but when I look at the last Biden administration and the current Trump administration I see two men in panic mode - very weak.
A partial solution to western civilization collapse is to make ourselves as individuals strong: prioritize family, friends, continual life long education, spirituality, highly productive work, supporting our local communities, etc.
The polarization keeps us divided. Meanwhile, the billionaire become more and more rich and powerful, no matter which sides currently has the power. Baillouts, tax cuts, regulation or de-regulation. Doesn't matter, there is a group who always win.
You could point to many examples why, but I don't think there's a better example of this than how China managed to utterly snooker the west when they tried to run the same old economic imperialism playbook on them.
The nepo-babies making those decisions who wanted to coast on the US's global superpower status were outsmarted by a hungry up-and-comer. Now they're pissed off, but don't have an actual plan for how to fix things, so they're resorting to a series of own-goals that make them feel good in the moment.
Some of them are even building bunkers, but don't seem to have the foresight to understand that they're either setting themselves up to bend the knee to the first warlord who lays siege, or betrayed from within by their bodyguards. Like I said, not serious people.
These are dark times, and as an individual it can sometimes feel hopeless. I don't know if we can save our country. But you can try saving yourself, your friends, your family, you community, the people you truly care about.
Good luck, everyone.
> A partial solution to western civilization collapse is to make ourselves as individuals strong: prioritize family, friends, continual life long education, spirituality, highly productive work, supporting our local communities, etc.
I broadly agree, but western civilization has had so much regulatory capture by vested interests that sap productivity (whether it's US billionaires capturing the tax code or retirees in France demanding the state fund their arguably too early retirement) that individualism may not be enough.
https://old.reddit.com/r/XGramatikInsights/comments/1ovd88s/...
Considering that most crimes require people to be physically present at the crime scene, it also doesn't seem to be a functioning deterrent at all in the real world.
Most of the bad behaviour is concentrated in "seedy" places, where you usually have to go out of your way to interact with that place. A real name policy doesn't change the nature of the place at all.
If anything, the places that would be most affected are the ones where people are roleplaying or pretending to be something other than "themselves". E.g. gay or transgender people, furries, MMO/MUD/MUSH players, streamers, etc which overall seem to be exceedingly harmless.
There is also the blatantly obvious problem that this only works on people who are risk averse to begin with. So it will basically have no effect on actual perpetrators, who see some risk vs reward tradeoff for their bad behaviour.
I get your overall point, but conflation of the two is inaccurate.
Nothing guarantees free speech like making it trivial to keep a copy of everything everyone says that can always be tracked back to their real identity! No way that could have a chilling effect on perfectly normal speech.
they are persistent and have continuity through generations, organize across borders, influence manufacturers and even pressure individual developers.
tech doesnt secure privacy. finding these people and calling them out directly might.
Oh look, someone's conflating business VPNs and consumer VPNs again. This time to legitimize consumer VPNs.
The cited laws propose to ban pornography for minors, and ban VPNs that hide geolocation and their use in accessing pornography. Nothing to do with businesses using private VPNs to encrypt employee traffic.
>Vulnerable people rely on VPNs for safety. Domestic abuse survivors use VPNs to hide their location from their abusers.
Woah, maybe VPNs have some uses I haven't considered, let's take a look at the linked article.
>Use a virtual private network (VPN) to remain anonymous while browsing the internet, signing a new lease or applying for a new home loan. This will also keep your location anonymous from anyone who has gained access to or infiltrated your device.
I think the loan thing is rubbish I don't get it, and it's unaffected by the law. But the idea of installing a VPN in case the device is compromised might make sense, if the device is compromised it might still be trackable, especially while downloading the VPN, but maybe if it connects at startup, and the RAT isn't configured to bypass the VPN bridge, it might work.
Quite a stretch if you ask me. And again, not relevant to adult sites blocking VPNs.
The rest of the example are the usual "people use it to evade the government and regulations but it can be THE BAD GOVERNMENt AND REGULAtiONS"
It's also pretty trivial to wrap in an app
Source, I was setting up home proxies so classmates could access Flash games on school computers when I was 12...
Kids are resourceful.
If I could figure out 65C02 assembly programming at 12 in the 80s without the Internet and some books, I’m sure the 12 year old me in 2025 could set up a proxy.
> Quite a stretch if you ask me. And again, not relevant to adult sites blocking VPNs.
With the workaround I outlined, adult sites can no longer be aware of all VPNs in order to block them, if things do get that far. And you can be sure the ones the measure is supposed to "protect" will gain access to scripts/apps for said workaround.
Can’t count how often I‘ve heard otherwise technologically literate people saying how they use a VPN (NordVPN e.a.) because „something something security“.
This would require blocking VPN use for all users, regardless of where the user comes from (at just until their age verified). That seems like a big invasion of rights of users from other states.
If they insist on blocking VPN use, the onus should be on VPN service providers, or VPN service users.
"Lawmakers want to ban VPN users from accessing porn websites."
or
"Lawmakers wants porn websites to ban VPN users"
It's an important distinction that has caused a lot of confusion in the last thread about this article.
I know that the author is arguing a slippery slope for political reasons, but it's not factual and it causes confusion.
> All it does is make it easier for the Government to monitor VPN connections.
That is not all it does. We're talking about them banning VPNs.
> They already can request logs from providers.
Most claim they do not keep logs. This has been proven for certain providers. Providers operating in different jurisdictions are not necessarily obligated to provide these logs.
> Most, if not all VPNs require a proof of identity...
I have never been asked by a VPN for proof of identity.
> Next up is device security itself...
This is by far a separate issue. Yes it is true mitm attacks are still possible when using a VPN, they do however provide an extra layer of security and shift trust to an entity you should consider trustworthy (your VPN) from a possibly untrustworthy LAN, ISP, or country.
This is ignoring the primary use which is of privacy. Governments have shown time and time again when possible they will implement blanket surveillance and often not follow due process. Just as someone, some organization, or some government should require a very good reason to open your mail, or obtain a warrant to search your house, they should too require this to eavesdrop on your digital communications.
VPNs and similar technology are also useful to those under oppressive regimes to communicate privately. While this is not currently the case in the US, the mechanisms to retain the freedoms currently enjoyed should be upheld in case they are ever required.
Further, you ignore the benefits VPNs provide in terms of geoblocking.
Finally, VPNs are also useful in corporate, education, and other networking settings including accessing your home network from elsewhere or remote services you host.
I've never been asked for proof of identity by a VPN.
Every time such a thing happens new technology is created out of necessity. The more totalitarian a regime is the more people are pushed under ground. This only hurts big companies and governments that benefit from having all the juicy delicious data flowing through cooperating CDN's and big centralized platforms where they can see it real time and with real identities.
Motivate developers to make easy-peazy tools to push the normies to Tor, SSH tunnels, hybrid open source VPN's, DNS tunneling, HTTPS piggy-backing, Obfuscated HTTPS websockets, Domain Fronting, Lora Relays, Laser Relays, open source user-space mesh VPN's like Tinc and watch the arms race unfold.
My super secret ulterior motive is that I despise the big platforms including all the big VPN platforms that have money trails or claim BTC is anonymous and claim to not log anything or have real time lawful intercept API's thus allowing them to claim no logs.
I octo-dog dare governments to ban VPN's.
> Their solution? Entirely ban the use of VPNs.
> Yes, really.
Which is then followed by the actual explanation:
> an age verification bill that requires all websites distributing [...] “sexual content” to both implement an age verification system and also to block the access of users connected via VPN.
This doesn't ban VPNs - it requires age-verified sites to block VPN users.
Which makes 3 of the 4 categories they describe basically unaffected by the change to the law. Business users, students, journalists protecting sources - all can turn off their VPN to access porn when they want to, and enjoy the use of their VPN at any other time. (The fourth category is "people who want privacy," who are in fact negatively affected by the law.)
Don't get me wrong, I think this is a bad bill, but it's also a bad article that is basically lying.
1) In my home state I can no longer access Pornhub
2) Last month I visited Mississippi and could not access BlueSky, even though I can from my home state.
[I personally blame this on the "holier then thou", "don't tread of me" conservatives who cannot resist the urge to try to rule over the activities of others.]
I haven't selected a VPN provider because I have heard that a lot of websites create barriers to people who use VPNs. For example, I've seen people say that couldn't access Reddit via a VPN.
Accessing imgur from the UK has been a bit tricky. Sometimes they limit certain IP addresses like the US one usually doesn't work but the Singapore one does (slowly) for some reason.
Xray
Vless
Hiddify
Streisand
(and buy VPSes by heaps while you can)
https://youtu.be/Pr4v725LPOE?si=ih3gfTSpiHumtrFs&t=79
"That's not how apps work"
"Then make it work you think we are stupid but we are not, we know" VPNs have something to do with IPs which are necessarily geolocatable , and also users need to make an account to connect to a VPN, you can just ask them what country and State they are in.
Being willfully obtuse draws no sympathy, and will not exclude companies from compliance
The website (which is the party these obligations are being placed on) could geolocate the VPN IP, but that wouldn't tell them where the user is actually from.
First of all, IP addresses are issued in blocks and the IPs are distributed within regional proximity. This is how connections are routed, a router in say, Texas, knows that it can route block, say 48.88.0.0/16 to the south to mexico, 48.95.0.0/16 to the west to Arizona, and so on.
whois/RDAP data will tell you the precise jurisdiction of the company that controls the block. It's entirely sensible to use that for geographic bans, the mechanisms are in place, if they are not used, a legislative ban will force providers to use that mechanism correctly. I wouldn't say it's trivial, but it what the mechanism has been designed to do, and it will work correctly as-is for the most part.
In the context of jurisdiction within a state in the U.S., I don't think it's accurate or reliable enough when taking mobile phones into account.
Country-level is much more accurate
We already know how this story ends. Companies get hacked. Data gets breached. And suddenly your real name is attached to the websites you visited, stored in some poorly-secured database waiting for the inevitable leak. This has already happened, and is not a matter of if but when. And when it does, the repercussions will be huge."
Then
"Let's say Wisconsin somehow manages to pass this law. Here's what will actually happen:
People who want to bypass it will use non-commercial VPNs, open proxies, or cheap virtual private servers that the law doesn't cover. They'll find workarounds within hours. The internet always routes around censorship."
Even in a fantasy world where every website successfully blocked all commercial VPNs, people would just make their own. You can route traffic through cloud services like AWS or DigitalOcean, tunnel through someone else's home internet connection, use open proxies, or spin up a cheap server for less than a dollar."
EFF presents two versions of "here's what will happen"
If we accept both as true then it appears a law targeting commercial VPNs would create evolutionary pressure to DIY rather than delegate VPN facility to commercial third parties. Non-commercial first party VPNs only service the person who sets them up. If that person is engaged in criminal activity, they can be targeted by legislation and enforcement specifically. Prosecution of criminals should not affect other first party VPNs set up by law-abiding internet users
Delegation of running VPNs to commercial third parties carries risks. Aside from obvious "trust" issues, reliability concerns, mandatory data collection, potential data breach, and so on, when the commercial provider services criminals, that's a risk to everyone else using the service
This is what's going on with so-called "Chat Control". Commercial third parties are knowingly servicing criminals. The service is used to facilitate the crime. The third parties will not or cannot identify the criminals. As a result, governments seek to compel the third party to do so through legislation. Every other user of the service may be affected as a result
Compare this with a first party VPN set up and used by a single person. If that person engages in criminal activity, other first party VPNs are unaffected
EFF does not speculate that third parties such AWS, DigitalOcean, or "cheap server[s] for less than a dollar" will be targeted with legislation in their second "here's what will happen" scenario
Evolutionary pressure toward DIY might be bad news for commercial third party intermediaries^1
But not necessarily for DIY internet users
1. Those third parties that profit from non-DIY users may invoke the plight of those non-DIY users^2 when arguing against VPN legislation or "Chat Control" but it's the third parties that stand to lose the most. DIY users are not subject to legislation that targets third party VPNs or third party chat services
2. Like OpenAI invoking the plight of ChapGPT users when faced with discovery demands in copyright litigation
People causing shenanigans using residential IPs if they ban VPNs is gonna lead to a lot of kicked doors, red herrings, lawsuits, and very probably ballooning budgets and will yet again fail to stop Bad Things™ not that it was really designed to anyway. I wonder if they think this is a good idea because they have machinations or is it just that they are clueless wealthy dinosaurs corrupting a future that isn't theirs?
They might interfere with the businesses of other third party intermediaries like "Big Tech"
Paying the middleman (intermediary) might in theory discourage it from conducting commercial surveillance but it doesn't solve the problem presented by using third parties as middlemen
The possibility to profit from surveillance remains
An effective solution would remove the possibility, and thereby the incentive, by removing the third party
"(b) No Internet service provider or its affiliates or subsidiaries, search engine, or cloud service provider shall be held to have violated sub. (2) on the basis of the entity having provided access or connection to or from a website, content on the Internet, or a facility, system, or network not under that entitys control, or the entitys provision of communicating, transmitting, downloading, intermediate storage of, providing access software for, or other services that communicate ...
(c) No Internet service provider or its affiliates or subsidiaries, search engine, or cloud service provider shall be held to have violated sub. (3) on the basis of the entity having provided access or connection to or from a website, content on the Internet, or a facility, system, or network not under that entitys control, or the entitys provision of communicating, transmitting, downloading, intermediate storage of, providing access software for, or other services that communicate ..."
The bill restricts "persons" from knowingly retaining identifying information on users. This is some peculiar wording maybe trying to allow for some loophole where automated retention of information is exempted
"Under the bill, persons that perform reasonable age verification methods may not knowingly retain identifying information of the individual attempting to access the website after the individuals access has been granted or denied"
"(b) A person that performs a reasonable age verification method in compliance with par. (a) may not knowingly retain identifying information of the individual attempting to access the website after the individuals access has been granted or denied."
The EFF title is inaccurate
The bill does not "ban" VPNs
It does not create illegality
It creates potential civil liability for certain businesses, and only if and when someone sues and wins
Trump also called out someone to be fired from Microsoft he didn’t like and let’s not forget that the FCC threatened ABC because Kimmel dare speak bad about a racist podcaster.
States also were firing teachers because they said mean things about the same podcaster.
https://amp.miamiherald.com/news/state/florida/article312903...
Dana White is on Meta's board.
Musk had a new government position created for him to oversee.
Google donated $300 mil to the Ballroom and somehow their antitrust case went overwhelmingly in their favor.