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 has come to our attention that we haven’t fascismed hard enough, nor in sufficient detail”
Best of luck with that, idiots. How are you planning to tell the difference between my personal VPN and my work VPN?
They wouldn’t consider such rational things
What about the VPN I have to my home?
Well we just fire you, and the one you’re still using then must be your personal one!
He means, how is the government supposed to tell the difference between personal and work vpns.
he just answered your question. maybe read it again
Either just banning remote work or more realistically you’ll need a permit for running a vpn server. Permit pricing starting at 100k a year
How many small businesses can afford such permit? Hell, I’d argue that even bigger companies will have a problem paying for that.
Also, what if I just connect to a vps overseas and set my exit point there? Will they ban vps too? This is gonna be so much fun to see from the outside
yes everything will be banned and binned. better dust off that carrier pigeon
How many small businesses can afford such permit? Hell, I’d argue that even bigger companies will have a problem paying for that.
Feature, not a bug.
They want people back in offices to help landlords and property prices. This way they can say that remote work is not banned and it’s just companies choosing not to buy a permit and offer it.
I work from office and i regularly use a vpn at work to connect remotely to devices that are not physically with me. Not to talk about companies that provide remote assistance and use them to connect to their customers devices.
Remote work is just a byproduct of vpns, but not the real reason why you use them at work.
You think given how well thought through this online safety act has been that they’ll understand that would be an issue and legislate accordingly?
VPN ban risks pushback from their billionaire masters. Multinational corporations don’t want to deal with anything that could hurt profits.
Absolutely not, of course. I’m just hoping they try to enforce this so a shitstorm of proportions only seen in the brexit will ensue.
One thing we must acknowledge to these idiots is how much effort they put on showing the world the consequences of extremely stupid acts so the rest don’t have to do it.
how much effort they put on showing the world the consequences of extremely stupid acts so the rest don’t have to do it.
Kinda sucks to be the world’s policy alpha tester though.
Next step: ban on remote work.
It’s not just remote work. All our manufacturing sites use to VPN connections data centres. It would cripple manufacturing on an epic scale if they were instabanned.
Ah, fascism on the rise.
Bye bye UK economy. How do you expect businesses to work without VPNs?
My guess they will block VPN services IP addresses like proton, shouldn’t affect business VPN.
But what if I work for Proton and I am in the UK?
dust off that resume
Your company will be forced to make you redundant.
Ban remote working, vpn now only allowed from business addresses as registered with companies house.
VPN in businesses is mostly to secure internal use infrastructure against external threats. Use for remote working is an afterthought.
Oh that makes it easier for the government.
Maybe that the end goal, force people back into the office by banning vpn
Like i said, that won’t work, because VPN has more important uses than mere homoffice.
Oh, that would be hilarious to watch.
I could definitely see myself setting up a Wireguard VPN only allowing connections to a bunch of porn sites here on my home fiber in Sweden. Should make a nice little side profit.
Isn’t this currently what Russia is trying to do with their internet?
It’s something russia has been doing for a decade and got pretty good at.
A long term blanket vpn ban is not compatible with a modern digital infrastructure, but with certain protocols (openvpn, wireguard) they can detect their usage and filter them out when necessary.
It does require a lot of expensive DPI (deep packet inspection) hardware I’m not sure UK has, so building a Great Firewall of Britain (Hadrian’s Firewall?) will take some time.
Just to add that Hadrian’s Firewall used to exist/does exist, I think. It was located in BT’s main POP in Newcastle.
All good names are taken :<
the Government must identify those issues and find solutions, rather than avoiding difficult problems
The government: Parents have you tried being a parent to your children?
Parents: Oh lord no that’s too difficult can’t you just, I don’t know lol, ban it or something?
In my English textbook, ca. 2007 there was a comic of a child in a cage hanging outside the house. The father told the neighbor something like “This way they get out of the house, but stay off the streets.”
I think that hit quite well, what many consider parenting in the UK.
Those child cages were real. They would attach to a window similar to AC units today.
This government literally can’t afford to fuck about wasting money yet here they are. Proving they are imposters failing the country.
Just to fast-forward this dumb cat-and-mouse thing, the next step is people go back to torrenting their porn and deeper down the rabbit hole of garbage “free” websites skirting the rules.
As always, the UK is useful on the international stage because sometimes you need to be able to point at some idiot trying dumb stuff to explain to people why dumb stuff is dumb.
Then, we move to the socks proxy, or tor, or other options I haven’t even considered yet.
I am pretty sure they would consider tor as using a VPN.
Probably they would demand ISPs to run lists of known VPN addresses and if you connect to them, they will forward the information to the anti-terrorism unit and you will get SWATed.
If Russia, China, and Iran cannot stop tor usage, there’s no way the UK can do it.
I believe China can stop any kind of access at any time, they just choose to allow a certain percentage of folks to get through above a certain bar of sophistication and need.
Don’t the people in those countries use a proxy to access tor first? probably that means cycling through the proxies regularly as they become known. I have no doubt that it is impossible to prevent truly tech savvy people from access. Also Russia, Iran and China all run state sanctioned hackers, so the governments have a vested interest in allowing these groups to obscure where they are coming from.
But i am not sure how much that transpires to a broader public.
That’s what things like snowflake and bridges are for. Because, at least with snowflake, it just looks like a webRTC phone call. But it’s actually tor traffic. And snowflake proxies are ephemeral, since you can just run them in your browser and help anyone connect.
go back?
Their next strategy will be to keep a list of websites that are “government approved”, I’m afraid. Long live the Great UK Firewall!!
It does feel that way. UK bureaucracy is just one giant guinea pig stunting it’s own commonwealth.
Next someone will try enforcing paper umbrellas as a solution for climate action. We’ll all say, “That won’t work”. They’ll still do it; it won’t work. We’ll say, “We told you so”, and it won’t get reversed because they’re already aiming at the next foot to shoot.
There has to be a logical next step for the information age. Old school government is not fucking working, and we can all see it.
The fact that there aren’t large scale riots already is astounding.
UK Bureaucracy is just one giant guinea pig
He tries his best…
I’m uninformed. What’s the reason for the porn ID thing? Is it just porn or more?
It also general censorship they are applying it to some political content as well.
It’s probably true that a few anti-porn people exist somewhere in the world. It’s certainly true that fascists love adding in new tools to keep the general population from using the internet freely.
So the answer to your question is yes, and yes.
It’s never about the children, it’s an excuse for surveillance capitalism.
Surveillance due to paranoia due to all the shady shit they’re doing.
Neoliberal political class implementing fascist surveillance capitalism laws — masquerading as child protection — because they are owned by a fascist oligarchy.
Must protect the children
If data is collected that can be used for blackmail, it will eventially be used for that purpose.
Christian evangelists at the root of it all. 'nuff said.
You know the old saying… The politicians don’t want children to be able to recognize a cunt.
100% Brexit quickly shut up similar movements when people saw how badly it went
Now if only Trumpism would have shut down extremist right wing idiology globally.
Trumpism is still in progress, maybe…
It should have died when he tried to coup the US government after he lost the 2020 election.
Alberta seems to have missed that memo.
Damn Alberta; always trying to leave the EU.
Tfw Big Brother is charmless potato named Keir Starmer.
Freenet, I2P and Tor will be the new refuge
I think it’s Hyphanet now.
Geeze I hope I don’t…slap tailscale on a vps
Freedom from EU regulation. 😋
I mean, in terms of the age restriction rules, we might get it first. But the EU is setting up for a very similar set of rules, the USA is also working on their own version. France came before us. Australia are also running I think (now, soon? Not too sure). As to whether similar talk (and it’s just talk right now) around banning VPNs will happen elsewhere too. Well, if they pull it off here too without too much of a problem, yes it will likely be rolled out elsewhere.
It’s not isolated in any way and the fact it seems to be very suddenly a thing every country wants to do should make it even more concerning.
Come on UK, just skip all the boring parts and make unremovable collars for everyone fitted with GPS, cameras and miniature bombs that can be remotely detonated. After all, that’s the only way to make sure nobody is doing bad, very bad illegal stuff and to PROTECT THE CHILDREN, isn’t it? Fucking hell, these fucks really are trying to create a bloody dystopia…
They think 1984 is a manual.
Oh, wait, no, that was about the evil communists.
That sounds awful lot like dictatorship…
Why not just ban all human rights while you’re at it?
Little by little!
Can’t do it all at once or thepeasantspopulace might catch on!The anti-terror unit needs to fill its new vacancies first. Do you know ho many enforcers it takes to arrest a single man in a wheelchair?
