If they outlaw VPNs then all internet-connected businesses will flee and everyone will just move to the dark net. Then you’ve got a whole other problem.
These ancient tyrants are in over their heads.
UK households could face VPN 'ban' after use skyrockets following Online Safety Bill
Submitted 17 hours ago by themachinestops@lemmy.dbzer0.com to technology@lemmy.world
https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/midlands-news/uk-households-could-face-vpn-32152789
Comments
muusemuuse@sh.itjust.works 1 hour ago
misteloct@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 hour ago
Selfishly, I think this is great for I2P/Snowflake/Tor. The incoming legitimate traffic helps to protect all users.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 47 minutes ago
The UK has long championed writing legislative checks that their emaciated state infrastructure can’t cash.
LinyosT@sopuli.xyz 1 hour ago
If they do outlaw it will likely be banned solely for non-business use for this reason alone.
MangioneDontMiss@lemmy.ca 22 minutes ago
This online safety bill is dishonest. This has nothing to do with safety and everything to do with money.
Wooki@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
“Safety” meanwhile these same mp’s can’t budget can’t run critical public services.
But don’t worry, your thoughts are policed
frenchfryenjoyer@lemmings.world 27 minutes ago
it’s both hilarious and sad how this is coming from a “please think of the children!!” perspective meanwhile gender affirming care for trans kids got banned pretty recently
MangioneDontMiss@lemmy.ca 21 minutes ago
This bill has nothing to do with safety. Safety is just the scapegoat here.
dubyakay@lemmy.ca 1 hour ago
We call this a waste of tax payer’s money.
tal@lemmy.today 47 minutes ago
"If VPNs cause significant issues, the Government must identify those issues and find solutions, rather than avoiding difficult problems.”
When I was a kid, Reddit and general public Internet access weren’t things, but I sure managed to get my hands on pornography. I’m pretty confident that even entirely killing Internet access isn’t going to stop kids who want to get ahold of porn from getting ahold of it.
frenchfryenjoyer@lemmings.world 32 minutes ago
They can come and pry TOR from my cold dead hands lmfao
this law can eat shit. i ain’t gonna dox myself and feed my personal info to companies. maybe they should take this as a hint that most people care about their privacy
if you don’t want kids seeing NSFW stuff be an actual parent and don’t raise your kids on the internet??
arc99@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
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.
SpaceCadet@feddit.nl 1 hour ago
The problem is that content filters don’t work all that well in the age of https everywhere. I mean, you can block the pornhub.com domain, that’s fairly straightforward … but what about reddit.com which has porn content but also legitimately non-porn content. Or closer to home: any lemmy instance.
I think it would be better if politicians stopped pearl clutching and realized that porn perhaps isn’t the worst problem in the world. Tiktok and influencer brainrot, incel and manosphere stuff, rage baiting social media, etc. are all much worse things for the psyche of young people, and they’re doing exactly jack shit about that.
OutlierBlue@lemmy.ca 1 hour ago
The problem is that they’re not trying to protect kids. They’re trying to be like China where ever user has to identify themselves so they can be tracked across the internet.
uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 hours ago
The new Christian nationalist orders are not so patient. Even Charles X of France rolled back rights too speedily, sparking public outcry resulting in Parisian haircuts. (a bit off the top 🪟🔪)
SCOTUS used to be sneakier, carving out sections of fourth- and fifth-amendment protections, but since Dobbs the Federalist Society Six have tossed subtlety and reason to the wind and now adjudicate away rights based on vibe and conservative rhetoric grievance.
Hopefully the US and UK both will recognized why the French public was swift to act when manarchists took shears to the Napoleonic Code.
obvs@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
Lots of ridiculous-looking people in politics today. They could use some haircuts.
dogs0n@sh.itjust.works 44 minutes ago
Crazy because every (isp provided) router I have used has these options. They probably aren’t 100% correct all the time, but it would be good enough for children (even though you shouldn’t rely soley on filters to replace watching your kid).
archiduc@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
Exactly. This was turned down on on my professional phone so that was always an option.
ReiRose@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
Nanny state
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 46 minutes ago
You’re literally being Jimmy Salvile right now
~ Guy who posed for photo ops with Salvile twenty years ago
SoftestSapphic@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
Nothing will meaningfully improve until the rich fear for their lives
MangioneDontMiss@lemmy.ca 19 minutes ago
those two people who downvoted you can go eat a big bag of dicks.
KonnaPerkele@sopuli.xyz 13 hours ago
This kinda proves that it was never about the children. How many children have know how and the means to buy a VPN subscription?
Anivia@feddit.org 4 hours ago
We’re you never a child? I formatted my family pc and reinstalled windows in 5th grade, and used a VPN to circumvent the schools online filter in 7th grade.
Children are not as stupid as you seem to think
KonnaPerkele@sopuli.xyz 3 hours ago
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?
Electricd@lemmybefree.net 11 hours ago
Still an important part. Free VPNs that spy on you are a thing, but work
themachinestops@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 hours ago
A lot more than you know, I knew how to use it since middle school.
Bluewing@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
All it takes is one big brother/sister that knows how to access a free or paid VPN and their 5 year old little sibling and all their friends will have it also. Despite the difficulty teaching them math or history, they DO learn very quickly and are fast to figure out new things that interest them.
Do you know what’s smarter and more talented the the UK government?
14, 402, 544 kids…
Dreaming_Novaling@lemmy.zip 6 hours ago
I started using a VPN after my friends/classmates told me about them in my Sophomore year of HS, mostly to get around the Wifi banning us from accessing certain apps (social media). Now, like all the other dumb kids, I used whatever they recommended, which was some shitty “Free” VPN that was probably stalking my data. But by Senior year, I smartened up and learned about online privacy and got myself a Proton VPN subscription after using the free version for a bit.
So yeah, I could totally believe middle-school and up are using VPNs, cause that’s what we literally did.
0x0@lemmy.zip 10 hours ago
samus12345@sh.itjust.works 4 hours ago
Just needs a Union Jack on his hat and the wrapping paper and “UK” in place of “US” on the box.
PumpkinSkink@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
Damn. Labor really wants to lose that election to Farage. Good luck to Corbyn and Sultana, I guess.
abbiistabbii@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 hours ago
Farage: Gets elected.
Everyone: At least you’ll abolish the OSA!
Farage: Nah, I said that because it would make me popular. Amma use the OSA to ban things I consider “woke”.
Darleys_Brew@lemmy.ml 6 hours ago
Most authoritarian option there is.
portnull@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 hours ago
Crozekiel@lemmy.zip 2 hours ago
Holy shit that is brilliant…
jabjoe@feddit.uk 12 hours ago
This ends with just another war on encryption.
When encryption is legal, they can’t know what is going on between two points. They going to make is so we can only have encryption to nodes they trust?
It is dangerously technologically illiterate to wage war on encryption.
DacoTaco@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
Jokes on you, e2e encryption is already banned in some cases in the uk afaik. Hence apple dropping some cloud services
jabjoe@feddit.uk 4 hours ago
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: action.openrightsgroup.org/make-one-donation US: www.eff.org/pages/donate-eff EU: my.fsfe.org/donate
There 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.
DeathsEmbrace@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
If I was black hatter I would be looking at these people like they just dropped a golden goose.
some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org 4 hours ago
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.
Mr_Dr_Oink@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
They couldn’t switch off VPNs for businesses. I work in a hospital and we use VPNs to create secure tunnels to other third party health care companies as well as NHS adjacent health services amongst other things. This is to protect patient sensitive data amongst other things. This would cripple our service and go against NHS england and government requirements for the secure transfer and sharing of data.
This would have to be public VPNs only. Despite the fact that it would be complete bullshit either way.
muusemuuse@sh.itjust.works 1 hour ago
Exactly. They best they could hope to do would be to create an exemption for businesses in which case I open my own fapping business.
atticus88th@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
Ive got a few UK coworkers that will be out of the job if anything disables VPNs. They voted for that mess now they can sleep in their 1/3 salary local jobs too.
gaiussabinus@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
A VPN is just a proxy. I don’t see how this would be enforced.
Clbull@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
(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, amid a lot of fury.
For context, the Online Safety Act has been used to censor and age-gate anything and everything deemed “illegal content” under Ofcom guidelines, else risk getting fined up to 10% of your annual global revenue. This includes anything related to illegal immigration and people-smuggling. Twitter had genuinely been forced to censor all coverage around anti-asylum seeker protests behind age verification requirements.
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.
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…
HubertManne@piefed.social 8 hours ago
Maybe if they see significant issues with the populace adhereing to this law they should identify the solution of revoking the unpopular law.
Konstant@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
It’s the populace that is wrong, not the lawmakers /s
samus12345@sh.itjust.works 4 hours ago
See: the 18th and 21st Amendments in the US.
SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
“We will force you to do what we want”, democracy in action
mannycalavera@feddit.uk 16 hours ago
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?
Wooki@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
This government literally can’t afford to fuck about wasting money yet here they are. Proving they are imposters failing the country.
Saleh@feddit.org 14 hours ago
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, without causing trouble.”
I think that hit quite well, what many consider parenting in the UK.
JcbAzPx@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
Those child cages were real. They would attach to a window similar to AC units today.
Flamekebab@piefed.social 16 hours ago
Best of luck with that, idiots. How are you planning to tell the difference between my personal VPN and my work VPN?
then_three_more@lemmy.world 14 hours ago
Next step: ban on remote work.
Digestive_Biscuit@feddit.uk 2 hours ago
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.
kingofras@lemmy.world 16 hours ago
Well we just fire you, and the one you’re still using then must be your personal one!
neon_nova@lemmy.dbzer0.com 15 hours ago
He means, how is the government supposed to tell the difference between personal and work vpns.
snowfalldreamland@lemmy.ml 14 hours ago
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
AbsolutelyNotAVelociraptor@sh.itjust.works 14 hours ago
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
HexesofVexes@lemmy.world 14 hours ago
That sounds a bit like fear mongering from Reform: a VPN is safety 101 when using public networks, and most businesses make use of VPNs to secure their data. They are also a key component if WFH (you use the company VPN).
If Labour are stupid enough to go after VPN usage, I suspect it would guarantee their loss at the next election.
DoucheBagMcSwag@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 hours ago
And there’s the other shoe dropping with VPNs now. Didn’t even take them an extra fucking year
MU5T4N6@feddit.org 5 hours ago
Labour was supposed to destroy the Tories, not join them!
JustTheWind@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
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.
NigelFrobisher@aussie.zone 12 hours ago
I’d email my MP to ask why this Labour Government is using the BBC to promote Reform talking points and implementing brain dead Reform policies, but I don’t expect anything other than the blandest party line response.
OrteilGenou@lemmy.world 14 hours ago
“It has come to our attention that we haven’t fascismed hard enough, nor in sufficient detail”
febra@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
So now it’s not just TERF island but also nazi island.
slaacaa@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
badbytes@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
Banning VPNs is quite a serious move.
MehBlah@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
There are ways around this even if they do ban vpn. Its a hopeless battle being fought by the ignorant.
MangioneDontMiss@lemmy.ca 23 minutes ago
China Laughs Communistically