Comment on Will the government be able to put 2 & 2 together

floofloof@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

• Bassman27@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  No way they will ban VPNs as it will get in the way of businesses that rely on it / those terminally working from home

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  • AnyOldName3@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    Obviously they’ll have a carve-out for businesses that apply for a VPN licence and have the other end of the VPN remain in the country. Not because they listen to the public saying that VPNs have legitimate uses, but because the megacorp they consult with before drafting the law says it’s the only legitimate use-case and has a VPN product they can sell to small businesses that can’t afford to wait for their self-hosted VPN to be certified by the one overworked civil servant who has sole responsibility for approving every VPN licence.

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    • piccolo@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      And how are they to determine whats a “vpn”? Just rent a server in another country and ssh tunnel to it, and there you go. Impossible to know your using a ‘vpn’.

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      • sobchak@programming.dev ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

        It’s possible to probabilistically determine when an SSH connection is being used like a VPN, then block that traffic. If they go full Great Firewall.

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    • hobovision@mander.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      Oi! You got a loicense for that VPN, mate?

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    • Bassman27@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      Image

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• UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  outlawing VPNs

  What would that even look like?

  No two computers can talk to each other without an ISP intermediary?

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  • AnarchistArtificer@slrpnk.net ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    The UK government certainly don’t know. I wouldn’t put it past them to do something stupid like banning it on the household level, which would really fuck things up for people who need to use VPNs for their job.

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  • floofloof@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    They’ll ban it for private individuals and allow businesses to pay for a commercial VPN licence.

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    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      It’s just not that simple, as private individuals do contract work and manage private businesses, large residential and commercial complexes use VPNs to manage high network traffic and guarantee security, and off-site IT support regularly use VPNs for elevated access.

      Retail VPNs don’t even strictly evade ISPs. They simply route traffic through their own hubs and then on to the destination. If the UK were to “ban VPNs” that wouldn’t really stop me from connecting to a US or French based VPN service. And that’s what I’d want anyway, since my goal is to not appear to be a UK resident while trafficking data.

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      • floofloof@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

        I see it being a law that’s not generally enforceable, but whose purpose is to empower them to enforce it selectively against targets chosen for political reasons.

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      • Luckaneer@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

        If it’s anything it’ll probably be age verification at point of sale for the VPN for retail VPN providers. Pay with a credit card kinda deal. I know that’s not ideal, hell none of it is, but I think it’s how steam dealt with it and that worked OK.

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