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UK households could face VPN 'ban' after use skyrockets following Online Safety Bill (www.birminghammail.co.uk)

submitted 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) by themachinestops@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/technology@lemmy.world

325 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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.

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[–] cley_faye@lemmy.world 21 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

Oh, sweet summer child. Of course you can ban them. Lawmakers don't always care about the technicality of things, because in most cases they don't have to.

You can't prevent VPN from existing, and short of a very tightly curated whitelist of services, you can't prevent people from actually using them, sure. Unless you're on the side of the state, the Law, and the enforcement. In which case, you can. A blanket ban on VPN usage is the perfect gateway to "we've seen traffic from your house toward a known VPN server, so, blam, arrest". And it does not have to stop at known server.

Given the regular tries to outright ban encryption, this is the perfect venue to mass target encrypted communications. Depending on the wording, the mere presence of unobservable traffic could be enough for an arrest.

If what I'm saying here sound dystopian to you, just remember that not only most of this was actually tried (and aborted) time after time, but also that until quite recently, the general public actually using strong encryption was illegal in many places, including our western countries, and experiments to make state spyware mandatory are also a recurrent thing (which might take hold with the "ID verification through your phone" apps soon).

[–] xorollo@leminal.space 10 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Thanks for this. I think it's really important to point out that merely having unobservable traffic could be a trigger for this.

We can't avoid taking these threats seriously because we think we are smarter.

[–] 1984@lemmy.today 3 points 3 days ago (1 children)

We arent smarter. Actually most people here have no voice or influence outside of their computer screen.

We can use some tech, sure. But I very much challenge the idea that we are smarter as a group than other university students.

But since a lot of us have poor social skills, we compensate by thinking we are smarter or better, when we should instead train our social skills and stop thinking like that.

[–] xorollo@leminal.space 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I agree, but I think it is a trap we can easily fall into. Especially in this case.

[–] 1984@lemmy.today 4 points 3 days ago

Yeah I agree. We have to wake up a bit. Real change happens outside of this place.