UK households could face VPN 'ban' after use skyrockets following Online Safety Bill
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Most authoritarian option there is.
And Farage would say doing it is "Common Sense".
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Jokes on you, e2e encryption is already banned in some cases in the uk afaik. Hence apple dropping some cloud services
Easy enough to do when it's mega corps. They don't really care about anything but money. If everyone had self hosted services with e2e, be far harder. Encryption is everywhere now.
So they will go after the end points. Which again, is a battle they can't win. All very Cory Doctorow's "Unauthorized Bread".
If you care about this stuff:
UK: https://action.openrightsgroup.org/make-one-donation
US: https://www.eff.org/pages/donate-eff
EU: https://my.fsfe.org/donateThere will be others too, those are just in my head's cache.
Some how we need to get governments to listen to us serfs instead mega corps and authoritarian police/spooks.
The world they want is not only terrible for digital and political freedom, but competition, thus functioning markets. It's terrible for making developers and makers instead of dumb consumers, which in turn, is terrible for technology and progress.
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There are ways around this even if they do ban vpn. Its a hopeless battle being fought by the ignorant.
I mean anyone can rent a server in Europe and install OpenVPN themselves. Hell, it doesn't even need to open OpenVPN, Wireguard works just as well and is basically undetectable.
Eat shit, UK government, for real. Idiots think that by speaking the same language as US fascists they can have similarly dumb ideas.
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I mean anyone can rent a server in Europe and install OpenVPN themselves. Hell, it doesn't even need to open OpenVPN, Wireguard works just as well and is basically undetectable.
Eat shit, UK government, for real. Idiots think that by speaking the same language as US fascists they can have similarly dumb ideas.
To be honest, I've found WireGuard's performance is harmed more by replay attacks than OpenVPN. Least that is what I put it down to when I tried them both from a VPN provider that offered both.
Edit: missed the a in replay.
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Just adopt a CCP style social credit system already. Why all of this pussyfooting around being a totalitarian, censorship focused, surveillance state? Just do it. Give the good people of UK a solid reason to be a little bit more French again.
There has been a widespread misconception that China operates a nationwide and unitary social credit "score" based on individuals' behavior, leading to punishments if the score is too low. Media reports in the West have sometimes exaggerated or inaccurately described this concept.[4][5][6] In 2019, the central government voiced dissatisfaction with pilot cities experimenting with social credit scores. It issued guidelines clarifying that citizens could not be punished for having low scores and that punishments should only be limited to legally defined crimes and civil infractions. As a result, pilot cities either discontinued their point-based systems or restricted them to voluntary participation with no major consequences for having low scores.
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Prominent backbench MP Sarah Champion launched a campaign against VPNs previously, saying: “My new clause 54 would require the Secretary of State to publish, within six months of the Bill’s passage, a report on the effect of VPN use on Ofcom’s ability to enforce the requirements under clause 112.
"If VPNs cause significant issues, the Government must identify those issues and find solutions, rather than avoiding difficult problems.” And the Labour Party said there were “gaps” in the bill that needed to be amended.
(NOTE: Any links to politician tweets in this comment are from Nitter mirrors, not direct links to Elon Musk's nazi bar.)
The Technology Secretary, Peter Kyle, pretty much called Nigel Farage a paedophile in a news network interview earlier today because he opposed the Online Safety Act, by saying he's on the side of sex offenders like Jimmy Savile.
He then went to Twitter and doubled-down on this stance:
If you want to overturn the Online Safety Act you are on the side of predators. It is as simple as that.
This of course generated a lot of fury among the site's users.
For context, the Online Safety Act has been used to censor and age-gate anything and everything deemed "illegal content" under Ofcom guidelines. Any social media platforms must comply, else risk getting fined up to 10% of your annual global revenue. This is so broadly worded that it includes anything related to illegal immigration and people-smuggling (literally quoted in the GOV.UK page I linked.)
Twitter had genuinely been forced to censor all coverage around anti-asylum seeker protests behind age verification requirements, which has riled up a lot of right-wing politicians here. The reason for these protests is that the previous (Conservative) government had been paying exorbitant amounts of money to house asylum seekers in hotels, effectively lining the pockets of hotel chain executives - all while we deal with a massive housing and cost of living crisis.
This was meant to be a measure to give asylum seekers temporary accommodation which was put in place at the start of COVID, but has been government policy since 2020 with no end in sight.
Labour have also done jack-shit to resolve our skyrocketed (legal) immigration levels since they got into power, except for scrapping the Rwanda Deal which would have deported any illegal migrants to a third country for processing (which as the name obviously suggests, is the East African state of Rwanda.)
Zia Yusuf (head of Reform's DOGE division, yes they're ripping off Trump and Elon Musk) had this to say about the OSA on Twitter:
Britain is now a country which you can enter illegally without ID, but need photo ID to watch a protest against people entering without ID.
Let that sink in.
Labour have fucked up so catastrophically hard with how they've handled this legislation, that they've straight-up generated bipartisan sympathy for the leaders of a right-wing populist party - who are the only political force that have vowed to repeal the legislation because it is being used for mass surveillance and censorship.
Also, if you're thinking of voting Reform UK in 2029 (and it has honestly crossed my mind because age verification checks are a major sticking point for me), then you should take the pledges from Nigel Farage and Zia Yusuf with a grain of salt. Richard Tice (the party's deputy leader) openly tweeted support for pushing through mandatory ID checks on social media four years ago.
If Labour don't get rid of Keir Starmer, do a full cabinet reshuffle and reverse course, we are going to see a Reform landslide in the next election...
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This kinda proves that it was never about the children. How many children have know how and the means to buy a VPN subscription?
Were you never a child? I formatted my family pc and reinstalled windows xp in 5th grade, and used a proxy to circumvent the schools online filter in 7th grade.
Children are not as stupid as you seem to think
VPNs also accept many anonymous payment methods that happen to be easily accessible to children, like gift cards. And free VPNs exist
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Prominent backbench MP Sarah Champion launched a campaign against VPNs previously, saying: “My new clause 54 would require the Secretary of State to publish, within six months of the Bill’s passage, a report on the effect of VPN use on Ofcom’s ability to enforce the requirements under clause 112.
"If VPNs cause significant issues, the Government must identify those issues and find solutions, rather than avoiding difficult problems.” And the Labour Party said there were “gaps” in the bill that needed to be amended.
It would have been smarter for the UK to mandate that every ISP must provide a family filter for free as part of their service. Something that is optional and can be turned on or off by the account holder but allows parents to set filters (and curfews) if they want. They could even require that ISPs require new signups to affirm if they want it on or off by default so people with families are more likely to start with it enabled.
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Maybe if they see significant issues with the populace adhereing to this law they should identify the solution of revoking the unpopular law.
See: the 18th and 21st Amendments in the US (Prohibition).
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Prominent backbench MP Sarah Champion launched a campaign against VPNs previously, saying: “My new clause 54 would require the Secretary of State to publish, within six months of the Bill’s passage, a report on the effect of VPN use on Ofcom’s ability to enforce the requirements under clause 112.
"If VPNs cause significant issues, the Government must identify those issues and find solutions, rather than avoiding difficult problems.” And the Labour Party said there were “gaps” in the bill that needed to be amended.
So now it's not just TERF island but also nazi island.
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Prominent backbench MP Sarah Champion launched a campaign against VPNs previously, saying: “My new clause 54 would require the Secretary of State to publish, within six months of the Bill’s passage, a report on the effect of VPN use on Ofcom’s ability to enforce the requirements under clause 112.
"If VPNs cause significant issues, the Government must identify those issues and find solutions, rather than avoiding difficult problems.” And the Labour Party said there were “gaps” in the bill that needed to be amended.
Enterprises will love that. A perfect excuse to end wfh. However, this will cripple business travelers. I'm sure there'll be some exception for corporations where they can exercise maximum control over their employees while still being allowed to generate capital.
Hey UK: suck it.
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Just needs a Union Jack on his hat and the wrapping paper and "UK" in place of "US" on the box.
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Labour are not governing for the people, and they are not the Labour party anymore.
They're Labouring very hard for the corporations.
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All this pandering to Reform voters is completely useless, people will still vote for the original rather than a shitty knockoff. Despicable behaviour from Labour.
This is REALLY familiar...
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To be honest, I've found WireGuard's performance is harmed more by replay attacks than OpenVPN. Least that is what I put it down to when I tried them both from a VPN provider that offered both.
Edit: missed the a in replay.
What's a reply attack? Do you have people activity MITM-ing your connection?
Personally I've found Wireguard performance to be significantly better, especially on spotty mobile Internet -
Can we develop a new VPN protocol where the encrypted traffic is disguised as a 24 hour continuous stream of Never Gonna Give You Up
RickGuard
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Prominent backbench MP Sarah Champion launched a campaign against VPNs previously, saying: “My new clause 54 would require the Secretary of State to publish, within six months of the Bill’s passage, a report on the effect of VPN use on Ofcom’s ability to enforce the requirements under clause 112.
"If VPNs cause significant issues, the Government must identify those issues and find solutions, rather than avoiding difficult problems.” And the Labour Party said there were “gaps” in the bill that needed to be amended.
Banning VPNs is quite a serious move.
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I don't think it's that centralized. Just some elite somewhere pushes through what elites everywhere would want, and they try to do the same around it.
Like spread of a disease.
I think the way to fight it is similar. Unions, customer associations, parties (not for election, but for having as many people as possible for mutual aid and actions ; it might even be counterproductive to get into government, since that breeds expectations which are not delivered upon, which hurts the party ; better to do volunteer projects without using state power as much as possible).
Yeah, I don’t think it is, but it’s the end result that concerns me.
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Were you never a child? I formatted my family pc and reinstalled windows xp in 5th grade, and used a proxy to circumvent the schools online filter in 7th grade.
Children are not as stupid as you seem to think
VPNs also accept many anonymous payment methods that happen to be easily accessible to children, like gift cards. And free VPNs exist
Where there is a will there is a way, I guess.
Still, a possible ban on VPNs affects way bigger group of business and adult users than the number of tech savvy kids.
Where should the line be drawn? How much rights should everyone have to give up so that little techie Billy can’t hack his way to see some titties?
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I’m uninformed. What’s the reason for the porn ID thing? Is it just porn or more?
If data is collected that can be used for blackmail, it will eventially be used for that purpose.
