After Wisconsin finds out how to reliably filter vpn, they can then teach Netflix and Akamai how to do it.
Last time I checked modestly reliable geoblocking existed, and completely unreliable vpn blocking.
A friend told me that when he comes across a site for which Nordvpn is blocked, he just changes IP. Latest the third one always works, even on YouTube (he is all about privacy).
A device-side IP filter locked behind a password that parents can configure in the device's settings would be much more effective and easier to implement than censoring the Internet. This should be the default solution, yet it's never brought up for whatever reason.
Not to mention these online content censorship laws for kids are wrong in principle because parents are supposed to be in control of how they raise each of their own kids, not the government or other people.
And these laws make authoritarian surveillance and control much easier. It's hard to not see this as the main objective at this point. And even if it isn't, this level of stupidity is harmful.
It is the objective, it's always been the objective. The worst part is that I bet these people don't even think of themselves as authoritarian so much as they stumble into it through a combination of selfishness, ignorance, and complete disregard for ethics. They like money and power, more information means more of both, darn the torpedos, tap the lines, hit the gas and all of a sudden it's oops all facism.
The goal is controling the flow of information online. "protecting the children" may or may not be a sincere concern but ultimately censorship is what is desired here.
These are religious fanatics trying to ban porn because they believe it's evil. All the rest is dressing to advance that cause and isn't worth spending too much time trying to make sense of.
They'd latch on to whatever reason they'd think would stick.
> And even if it isn't, this level of stupidity is harmful.
How much more proof do we need that we're speedrunning the authoritarianism and frankly we're already somewhat authoritarian, it's just pluralism for now. Wait until the elites eat each other and only one dictator is left.
I'm reminded of efforts in the 1990s to ban strong encryption in email and websites because governments tried to tell us it was used by drug dealers and pedos to do their nefarious activities.
Yes, governments really did want to force us to use HTTPS with only broken/weak crypto.
Stuff like this really reminds me how nobody is actually in control. Entire countries are just going where ever the rivers takes them with those supposed in charge not knowing any better and often worse than the rest and functionally being so clueless they’re passengers too
"Here's what happens if VPNs get blocked: everyone has to verify their age by submitting government IDs, biometric data, or credit card information directly to websites—without any encryption or privacy protection."
Can someone explain how this is true? Even if there is not a VPN, there should be https encryption and privacy protection.
They mean "no privacy protection from the website", presumably. Websites getting compromised and leaking IDs is a big deal, now that we've decided that websites should be seeing our IDs.
Wisconsin "porn" websites will just move out of Wisconsin.
The bill reads like you would think from someone who's been talking with the ceo of an age verification company. The bill gives the website two options: use a _commercial_ age verification product tied to gov't id checking, or "digitize" the web user's gov't id.
Holding out for government IdP that can return verified but anonymous data (like age)--like a JWT that has no identifier besides an age claim.
Seems highly unlikely it would ever happen (at least in the U.S.) but seems like it'd solve a decent amount of verification problems. With a JWT, the IdP wouldn't even necessarily need to know the recipient since the validity could be verified by the consuming party using asymmetric crypto.
As someone born in a post‑Soviet country with rather many odd digital laws--including one requiring that any use of encryption be registered with the department of commerce and the secret service (meaning no TLS unless you get a permit)--I can clearly see the endgame of similar proposals.
These laws aren’t meant to be followed. Their text is deliberately vague, and their demands are impossible by design. They aren't foolish, or at least their ignorance isn't needed to explain the system's broader function. They are meant to serve as a Chekhov's gun that may or may not fire over your head, depending solely on whether the people holding it decide like you.
In peaceful times, they fade into the background, surfacing only when it’s convenient to blackmail some company for cash or favors. In times of crisis, they declare a never-ending war on extremism, sin, and treason, fought against an inexhaustible supply of targets to take down in front of their higher‑ups, farming promotions, contracts for DPI software, and jobs updating its filters.
Historically, such controls were limited by the motivation and competence of the arms dealers, usually taking the form of DNS or IP blocks easily bypassed with proxies. With modern DPI, it's entire protocols going dark. Even so, those able to learn easily find a way around them. The people who suffer most are seniors, unable even to call family across the border without a neighbor's help, and their relatives forced into using least trustworthy messengers (such as Botim, from the creators of ToTok, a known UAE intel operation [0]) thinking they're the only way to stay in touch, not knowing how or wanting to use mainstream IM over a VPNs that may or may not live another month.
If wherever you are your votes still matter, please fight this nonsense. Make no mistake, your enemies are still more ridiculous than Voltaire could hope they'd be, but organizing against or simply living through a regime constantly chewing on the internet's wires is going to be a significantly greater inconvenience than taking _real_ action now.
This sort of thing turns up very regularly in US politics, from the Comstock Laws to the Communications Decency Act. The late 90s even had a requirement to use easily breakable encryption (48-bit RSA) which big tech companies generally obeyed. And a worse proposal (the "clipper chip") which was never deployed.
Authoritarianism is not limited by your birthplace, it can turn up anywhere. And when it does people are often really enthusiastic about it.
UK ISPs block around 1500+ domains through High Court orders and police make 12k+ arrests a year for online speech. You don’t need a formal firewall when the effect is the same in practice.
And cue the rise of self-hosted VPNs. 1 click to get a VPS instance, install VPN software, and make a connection. Automatically destroy the instance with another click or after a certain amount of time.
If this keeps going, they will ban self-hosting next: only government-approved hosts allowed.
We can't just rely on technological solutions because you can't out-tech the law at scale. People need to actually understand that the government is very close to having the tools needed for a stable technocratic authoritarian regime here in the US and all around the world. It might not happen immediately even if they have the tools, but once the tools are built, that future becomes almost unavoidable.
Feels like they'd make that illegal, and enforce it by checking the CCTV footage for the person who planted that mini computer, then arresting that person.
I feel like that'd take a level of surveillance that's technically unsustainable. But then again, sustainability isn't a consideration when it stands in the way of "better" control.
AI is the perfect low cost tool to enable that. Plantir knows this and has been making strategic moves to build this
Seems quite achievable and sustainable to me
Every human carries dense compute and sensors with them. If they don't they stand out while still surrounded by dense compute and sensors held by others at all times
Not nice to think about but it is the reality we are moving towards – vote accordingly
When the ban happens it'll be really easy to implement without requiring only government approved hosts or any such distributed measures requiring enforcement. Certificate Authorities.
There are just a handful of corporations get to decide which websites are visitable every 90 days. Put a bit of legal pressure on the corporate certificate authorities and there's instant centralized control of effectively the entire web thanks to corporate browser HTTPS-only defaults and HTTP/3 not being able to use self-signed certs for public websites.
Consider SoftEther, which is VPN over Ethernet wrapped in HTTPS. It's open-source. It has a server discovery site called VPNGate. You can host a server to let somebody else use, then use a server soneone else is hosting.
We're really only missing a few things before there's decentralized VPN over HTTPS that anyone in the world can host and use, and it would be resistant to all DPI firewalls. First, a user-friendly mobile client. Second, a way to broadcast and discover server lists in a sparse and decentralized manner, similar to BitTorrent (or we may be able to make use of the BT protocol as is), and we'd have to build such auto-discovery and broadcasting into the client. Third, make each client automatically host a temporary server and broadcast its IP to the public server lists when in use.
Isn't it Wisconsin law that lets the Governor change any numeric digits in a law while it's on his or her desk?
One of the most bizarre legal opinions I've ever heard of, but if they used any digits in the writing of the law those are up for grabs. Law makes a 30 day window or something? The governor can just change it to a million days with a stroke of the pen and then sign the edit into law with the same pen!
> Isn't it Wisconsin law that lets the Governor change any numeric digits in a law while it's on his or her desk?
Pretty close.
> (b) If the governor approves and signs the bill, the bill shall
become law. Appropriation bills may be approved in whole or
in part by the governor, and the part approved shall become law.
> (c) In approving an appropriation bill in part, the governor
may not create a new word by rejecting individual letters in the
words of the enrolled bill, and may not create a new sentence by
combining parts of 2 or more sentences of the enrolled bill
Why ban VPNs when you can freely force social networks like HN to tie nickname registration to an state issued digital ID certificate to guarantee freedom of speech and legal accountability?
Not just social media, expect ANY app to be able to “verify” you through the new apple digital ID (android wallet soon I assume), the “verification is simple and seamless!!”, and add few Alegria drawings explaining why providing your ID helps defeating the “bad evil guys!!” and you are good to go.
To this day I have no clue what the point of this idea is. Forcing you to use an ID on the internet is the real world equivalent of making everyone you interact with take a photo of your ID. It's completely nonsensical.
Considering that most crimes require people to be physically present at the crime scene, it also doesn't seem to be a functioning deterrent at all in the real world.
Most of the bad behaviour is concentrated in "seedy" places, where you usually have to go out of your way to interact with that place. A real name policy doesn't change the nature of the place at all.
If anything, the places that would be most affected are the ones where people are roleplaying or pretending to be something other than "themselves". E.g. gay or transgender people, furries, MMO/MUD/MUSH players, streamers, etc which overall seem to be exceedingly harmless.
There is also the blatantly obvious problem that this only works on people who are risk averse to begin with. So it will basically have no effect on actual perpetrators, who see some risk vs reward tradeoff for their bad behaviour.
Well, let’s be honest — users of VPNs regularly don’t know what they are doing, too.
Can’t count how often I‘ve heard otherwise technologically literate people saying how they use a VPN (NordVPN e.a.) because „something something security“.
I've been thinking a lot about VPNs lately, mainly for 2 reasons:
1) In my home state I can no longer access Pornhub
2) Last month I visited Mississippi and could not access BlueSky, even though I can from my home state.
[I personally blame this on the "holier then thou", "don't tread of me" conservatives who cannot resist the urge to try to rule over the activities of others.]
I haven't selected a VPN provider because I have heard that a lot of websites create barriers to people who use VPNs. For example, I've seen people say that couldn't access Reddit via a VPN.
I've not had much problem. Never had that problem with Reddit. I use the free veepn browser extension.
Accessing imgur from the UK has been a bit tricky. Sometimes they limit certain IP addresses like the US one usually doesn't work but the Singapore one does (slowly) for some reason.
Couldn't all of this be handled by META tags, request/response headers and some "they'll obviously do it" laws aimed at operating systems, device manufacturers and browser companies?
20 years ago the boogeyman was "the terrorists!" And now the boogeyman is "not the children!!" Or "immigrants!!" Depending on your audience's political views, but the ultimate goal is more surveillance, more control and more power abuse by who’s in control.
I wonder if all of the journalism on Epstein would be considered "Sexual content" and if journalists would be forced to self-doxx to report in these states
"Here's what happens if VPNs get blocked: everyone has to verify their age by submitting government IDs, biometric data, or credit card information directly to websites-without any encryption or privacy protection.
We already know how this story ends. Companies get hacked. Data gets breached. And suddenly your real name is attached to the websites you visited, stored in some poorly-secured database waiting for the inevitable leak. This has already happened, and is not a matter of if but when. And when it does, the repercussions will be huge."
Then
"Let's say Wisconsin somehow manages to pass this law. Here's what will actually happen:
People who want to bypass it will use non-commercial VPNs, open proxies, or cheap virtual private servers that the law doesn't cover. They'll find workarounds within hours. The internet always routes around censorship."
Even in a fantasy world where every website successfully blocked all commercial VPNs, people would just make their own. You can route traffic through cloud services like AWS or DigitalOcean, tunnel through someone else's home internet connection, use open proxies, or spin up a cheap server for less than a dollar."
EFF presents two versions of "here's what will happen"
If we accept both as true then it appears a law targeting commercial VPNs would create evolutionary pressure to DIY rather than delegate VPN facility to commercial third parties. Non-commercial first party VPNs only service the person who sets them up. If that person is engaged in criminal activity, they can be targeted by legislation and enforcement specifically. Prosecution of criminals should not affect other first party VPNs set up by law-abiding internet users
Delegation of running VPNs to commercial third parties carries risks. Aside from obvious "trust" issues, reliability concerns, mandatory data collection, potential data breach, and so on, when the commercial provider services criminals, that's a risk to everyone else using the service
This is what's going on with so-called "Chat Control". Commercial third parties are knowingly servicing criminals. The service is used to facilitate the crime. The third parties will not or cannot identify the criminals. As a result, governments seek to compel the third party to do so through legislation. Every other user of the service may be affected as a result
Compare this with a first party VPN set up and used by a single person. If that person engages in criminal activity, other first party VPNs are unaffected
EFF does not speculate that third parties such AWS, DigitalOcean, or "cheap server[s] for less than a dollar" will be targeted with legislation in their second "here's what will happen" scenario
Evolutionary pressure toward DIY might be bad news for commercial third party intermediaries^1
But not necessarily for DIY internet users
1. Those third parties that profit from non-DIY users may invoke the plight of those non-DIY users^2 when arguing against VPN legislation or "Chat Control" but it's the third parties that stand to lose the most. DIY users are not subject to legislation that targets third party VPNs or third party chat services
2. Like OpenAI invoking the plight of ChapGPT users when faced with discovery demands in copyright litigation
Preexisting solutions to future problems! Thanks to AI (mostly) botnets specifically for renting residential IPs have multiplied since most commercial VPN IP blocks get rate-limited, captcha'd, outright blocked which got even worse with AI.
People causing shenanigans using residential IPs if they ban VPNs is gonna lead to a lot of kicked doors, red herrings, lawsuits, and very probably ballooning budgets and will yet again fail to stop Bad Things™ not that it was really designed to anyway. I wonder if they think this is a good idea because they have machinations or is it just that they are clueless wealthy dinosaurs corrupting a future that isn't theirs?
They actually act perfectly rationally. Media post articles about how easy it is to bypass the law using VPN, mock the government, and what the law author should feel reading this? "Ok let them break the law"? Of course, the reasonable response is to close the loopholes.
The issue is tech isn't as simple as that, vpn's are key in many jobs, are they banned? It is the same issue when they ask for backdoors in every messaging app. It is rational if you don't think any deeper than surface level but once you dig an inch deep, it is clear why it isn't rational.
Some company would surely jump in and get an exception written for certain corporate VPNs. But if not, it can be that those who contribute to the right people get exceptions and those who don't, don't. Rational or logical consistency just....don't have to apply
As a rule, criticism of the ruling elite will never be tolerated in the long term. The Internet was free and unrestricted until the masses shifted their attention to it, at which point, the ruling elite cracked down on it in order to maintain their hegemony by maintaining the ignorance of the masses, which they see as cattle to be herded and milked and sacrificed ritualistically from time to time for their internal social bonding purposes.
>So when Wisconsin demands that websites "block VPN users from Wisconsin," they're asking for something that's technically impossible. Websites have no way to tell if a VPN connection is coming from Milwaukee, Michigan, or Mumbai. The technology just doesn't work that way.
"Then make it work you think we are stupid but we are not, we know" VPNs have something to do with IPs which are necessarily geolocatable , and also users need to make an account to connect to a VPN, you can just ask them what country and State they are in.
Being willfully obtuse draws no sympathy, and will not exclude companies from compliance
> VPNs have something to do with IPs which are necessarily geolocatable
The website (which is the party these obligations are being placed on) could geolocate the VPN IP, but that wouldn't tell them where the user is actually from.
IPs are geolocatable yes, not with a perfect accuracy, but with a jurisdictional accuracy.
First of all, IP addresses are issued in blocks and the IPs are distributed within regional proximity. This is how connections are routed, a router in say, Texas, knows that it can route block, say 48.88.0.0/16 to the south to mexico, 48.95.0.0/16 to the west to Arizona, and so on.
whois/RDAP data will tell you the precise jurisdiction of the company that controls the block. It's entirely sensible to use that for geographic bans, the mechanisms are in place, if they are not used, a legislative ban will force providers to use that mechanism correctly. I wouldn't say it's trivial, but it what the mechanism has been designed to do, and it will work correctly as-is for the most part.
>Businesses run on VPNs. Every company with remote employees uses VPNs. Every business traveler connecting through sketchy hotel Wi-Fi needs one. Companies use VPNs to protect client and employee data, secure internal communications, and prevent cyberattacks.
Oh look, someone's conflating business VPNs and consumer VPNs again. This time to legitimize consumer VPNs.
The cited laws propose to ban pornography for minors, and ban VPNs that hide geolocation and their use in accessing pornography. Nothing to do with businesses using private VPNs to encrypt employee traffic.
>Vulnerable people rely on VPNs for safety. Domestic abuse survivors use VPNs to hide their location from their abusers.
Woah, maybe VPNs have some uses I haven't considered, let's take a look at the linked article.
>Use a virtual private network (VPN) to remain anonymous while browsing the internet, signing a new lease or applying for a new home loan. This will also keep your location anonymous from anyone who has gained access to or infiltrated your device.
I think the loan thing is rubbish I don't get it, and it's unaffected by the law. But the idea of installing a VPN in case the device is compromised might make sense, if the device is compromised it might still be trackable, especially while downloading the VPN, but maybe if it connects at startup, and the RAT isn't configured to bypass the VPN bridge, it might work.
Quite a stretch if you ask me. And again, not relevant to adult sites blocking VPNs.
The rest of the example are the usual "people use it to evade the government and regulations but it can be THE BAD GOVERNMENt AND REGULAtiONS"
The only way to block a VPN is to have the knowledge that certain IPs are used by VPN providers. It's pretty trivial for someone to run a script/app that spins up a server somewhere, installs VPN software on it, and uses that for the connection. Now there's no way to separate whether a user is connecting via a VPN or not.
I think you misunderstand the comment you are replying to, it's talking about the perspective of the sysadmin of the adult website, and how it would detect a VPN user.
After Wisconsin finds out how to reliably filter vpn, they can then teach Netflix and Akamai how to do it.
Last time I checked modestly reliable geoblocking existed, and completely unreliable vpn blocking.
A friend told me that when he comes across a site for which Nordvpn is blocked, he just changes IP. Latest the third one always works, even on YouTube (he is all about privacy).
A device-side IP filter locked behind a password that parents can configure in the device's settings would be much more effective and easier to implement than censoring the Internet. This should be the default solution, yet it's never brought up for whatever reason.
Not to mention these online content censorship laws for kids are wrong in principle because parents are supposed to be in control of how they raise each of their own kids, not the government or other people.
And these laws make authoritarian surveillance and control much easier. It's hard to not see this as the main objective at this point. And even if it isn't, this level of stupidity is harmful.
It is the objective, it's always been the objective. The worst part is that I bet these people don't even think of themselves as authoritarian so much as they stumble into it through a combination of selfishness, ignorance, and complete disregard for ethics. They like money and power, more information means more of both, darn the torpedos, tap the lines, hit the gas and all of a sudden it's oops all facism.
The goal is controling the flow of information online. "protecting the children" may or may not be a sincere concern but ultimately censorship is what is desired here.
I think putting parents in control is the right path, but will reveal a sad fact.
Many parents aren't taking time to be in control, and no amount of legislation will fix that.
Or the sadder fact that it's not actually about protecting kids.
These are religious fanatics trying to ban porn because they believe it's evil. All the rest is dressing to advance that cause and isn't worth spending too much time trying to make sense of.
They'd latch on to whatever reason they'd think would stick.
> And even if it isn't, this level of stupidity is harmful.
How much more proof do we need that we're speedrunning the authoritarianism and frankly we're already somewhat authoritarian, it's just pluralism for now. Wait until the elites eat each other and only one dictator is left.
I'm reminded of efforts in the 1990s to ban strong encryption in email and websites because governments tried to tell us it was used by drug dealers and pedos to do their nefarious activities.
Yes, governments really did want to force us to use HTTPS with only broken/weak crypto.
Same propaganda, different buzzwords.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper_chip
Yes and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernstein_v._United_States
Notice that in those cases DJB was represented by the eff, so they have been involved in this issue for a very long time.
In hindsight, they really misjudged how comfortable pedos would be with discussing their affairs in plaintext email.
just the rich, well-connected ones with friends in high places right?
Stuff like this really reminds me how nobody is actually in control. Entire countries are just going where ever the rivers takes them with those supposed in charge not knowing any better and often worse than the rest and functionally being so clueless they’re passengers too
"Here's what happens if VPNs get blocked: everyone has to verify their age by submitting government IDs, biometric data, or credit card information directly to websites—without any encryption or privacy protection."
Can someone explain how this is true? Even if there is not a VPN, there should be https encryption and privacy protection.
They mean "no privacy protection from the website", presumably. Websites getting compromised and leaking IDs is a big deal, now that we've decided that websites should be seeing our IDs.
My guess is that this data isn't secure even at rest, as the constant flow of data breaches has shown.
Wisconsin "porn" websites will just move out of Wisconsin.
The bill reads like you would think from someone who's been talking with the ceo of an age verification company. The bill gives the website two options: use a _commercial_ age verification product tied to gov't id checking, or "digitize" the web user's gov't id.
Holding out for government IdP that can return verified but anonymous data (like age)--like a JWT that has no identifier besides an age claim.
Seems highly unlikely it would ever happen (at least in the U.S.) but seems like it'd solve a decent amount of verification problems. With a JWT, the IdP wouldn't even necessarily need to know the recipient since the validity could be verified by the consuming party using asymmetric crypto.
As someone born in a post‑Soviet country with rather many odd digital laws--including one requiring that any use of encryption be registered with the department of commerce and the secret service (meaning no TLS unless you get a permit)--I can clearly see the endgame of similar proposals.
These laws aren’t meant to be followed. Their text is deliberately vague, and their demands are impossible by design. They aren't foolish, or at least their ignorance isn't needed to explain the system's broader function. They are meant to serve as a Chekhov's gun that may or may not fire over your head, depending solely on whether the people holding it decide like you.
In peaceful times, they fade into the background, surfacing only when it’s convenient to blackmail some company for cash or favors. In times of crisis, they declare a never-ending war on extremism, sin, and treason, fought against an inexhaustible supply of targets to take down in front of their higher‑ups, farming promotions, contracts for DPI software, and jobs updating its filters.
Historically, such controls were limited by the motivation and competence of the arms dealers, usually taking the form of DNS or IP blocks easily bypassed with proxies. With modern DPI, it's entire protocols going dark. Even so, those able to learn easily find a way around them. The people who suffer most are seniors, unable even to call family across the border without a neighbor's help, and their relatives forced into using least trustworthy messengers (such as Botim, from the creators of ToTok, a known UAE intel operation [0]) thinking they're the only way to stay in touch, not knowing how or wanting to use mainstream IM over a VPNs that may or may not live another month.
If wherever you are your votes still matter, please fight this nonsense. Make no mistake, your enemies are still more ridiculous than Voltaire could hope they'd be, but organizing against or simply living through a regime constantly chewing on the internet's wires is going to be a significantly greater inconvenience than taking _real_ action now.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ToTok
It's funny how democratic countries copy whatever laws authoritarian regimes passed, but with a 5-year lag.
This sort of thing turns up very regularly in US politics, from the Comstock Laws to the Communications Decency Act. The late 90s even had a requirement to use easily breakable encryption (48-bit RSA) which big tech companies generally obeyed. And a worse proposal (the "clipper chip") which was never deployed.
Authoritarianism is not limited by your birthplace, it can turn up anywhere. And when it does people are often really enthusiastic about it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper_chip
Very related:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_Wars
Could be more serious than that, maybe it's not a lag. Maybe they are becoming.
The Great Firewall dates from 2003 and we still don't have a Great British Firewall so the lag seems longer.
UK ISPs block around 1500+ domains through High Court orders and police make 12k+ arrests a year for online speech. You don’t need a formal firewall when the effect is the same in practice.
It's not funny, it fucking sucks.
And cue the rise of self-hosted VPNs. 1 click to get a VPS instance, install VPN software, and make a connection. Automatically destroy the instance with another click or after a certain amount of time.
If this keeps going, they will ban self-hosting next: only government-approved hosts allowed.
We can't just rely on technological solutions because you can't out-tech the law at scale. People need to actually understand that the government is very close to having the tools needed for a stable technocratic authoritarian regime here in the US and all around the world. It might not happen immediately even if they have the tools, but once the tools are built, that future becomes almost unavoidable.
Seems like a raspberry pi hidden at a library, restaurant, or anywhere with wifi would thwart this.
Feels like they'd make that illegal, and enforce it by checking the CCTV footage for the person who planted that mini computer, then arresting that person.
I feel like that'd take a level of surveillance that's technically unsustainable. But then again, sustainability isn't a consideration when it stands in the way of "better" control.
AI is the perfect low cost tool to enable that. Plantir knows this and has been making strategic moves to build this
Seems quite achievable and sustainable to me
Every human carries dense compute and sensors with them. If they don't they stand out while still surrounded by dense compute and sensors held by others at all times
Not nice to think about but it is the reality we are moving towards – vote accordingly
When the ban happens it'll be really easy to implement without requiring only government approved hosts or any such distributed measures requiring enforcement. Certificate Authorities.
There are just a handful of corporations get to decide which websites are visitable every 90 days. Put a bit of legal pressure on the corporate certificate authorities and there's instant centralized control of effectively the entire web thanks to corporate browser HTTPS-only defaults and HTTP/3 not being able to use self-signed certs for public websites.
I've been considering doing that, because it seems a lot of VPN owned IP addresses are being flagged.
I logged into reddit from my local library wifi and immediately got a contagious ban that spread to all my reddit accounts.
Consider SoftEther, which is VPN over Ethernet wrapped in HTTPS. It's open-source. It has a server discovery site called VPNGate. You can host a server to let somebody else use, then use a server soneone else is hosting.
https://www.vpngate.net/en/
We're really only missing a few things before there's decentralized VPN over HTTPS that anyone in the world can host and use, and it would be resistant to all DPI firewalls. First, a user-friendly mobile client. Second, a way to broadcast and discover server lists in a sparse and decentralized manner, similar to BitTorrent (or we may be able to make use of the BT protocol as is), and we'd have to build such auto-discovery and broadcasting into the client. Third, make each client automatically host a temporary server and broadcast its IP to the public server lists when in use.
Using this tech, all the CP traffic would detectably flow towards my ip, right? I’m sure I’m not the only one who would find this worrisome.
> Using this tech, all the CP traffic would detectably flow towards my ip, right?
No, but I'm curious why you'd think that?
You don't need to burn books if you can just ban access to them!
Isn't it Wisconsin law that lets the Governor change any numeric digits in a law while it's on his or her desk?
One of the most bizarre legal opinions I've ever heard of, but if they used any digits in the writing of the law those are up for grabs. Law makes a 30 day window or something? The governor can just change it to a million days with a stroke of the pen and then sign the edit into law with the same pen!
> Isn't it Wisconsin law that lets the Governor change any numeric digits in a law while it's on his or her desk?
Pretty close.
> (b) If the governor approves and signs the bill, the bill shall become law. Appropriation bills may be approved in whole or in part by the governor, and the part approved shall become law.
> (c) In approving an appropriation bill in part, the governor may not create a new word by rejecting individual letters in the words of the enrolled bill, and may not create a new sentence by combining parts of 2 or more sentences of the enrolled bill
https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/constitution/wi_unannotated
The big limitation here is that it is limited to appropriations. Further, the constitution goes out of its way to try and prevent creative vetoing.
Unfortunately, the court decided that numbers are not words.
As a result, the governor changed "for the 2023–24 school year and the 2024–25 school year" to "for 2023–2425"
https://statecourtreport.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/wisco...
May not reject individual letters? You know that's there because someone did it before.
What if it’s a “thirty day” window? Safe?
Yes, my understanding is that only digits are meaningless per the supreme court's ruling there
Why ban VPNs when you can freely force social networks like HN to tie nickname registration to an state issued digital ID certificate to guarantee freedom of speech and legal accountability?
https://old.reddit.com/r/XGramatikInsights/comments/1ovd88s/...
Because you can't freely force social networks like HN to tie nicknames to a state IDs. Just because some politician said that doesn't make it so.
You can, though. That's what laws are.
Not just social media, expect ANY app to be able to “verify” you through the new apple digital ID (android wallet soon I assume), the “verification is simple and seamless!!”, and add few Alegria drawings explaining why providing your ID helps defeating the “bad evil guys!!” and you are good to go.
And also to defeat AI slopbots!
To this day I have no clue what the point of this idea is. Forcing you to use an ID on the internet is the real world equivalent of making everyone you interact with take a photo of your ID. It's completely nonsensical.
Considering that most crimes require people to be physically present at the crime scene, it also doesn't seem to be a functioning deterrent at all in the real world.
Most of the bad behaviour is concentrated in "seedy" places, where you usually have to go out of your way to interact with that place. A real name policy doesn't change the nature of the place at all.
If anything, the places that would be most affected are the ones where people are roleplaying or pretending to be something other than "themselves". E.g. gay or transgender people, furries, MMO/MUD/MUSH players, streamers, etc which overall seem to be exceedingly harmless.
There is also the blatantly obvious problem that this only works on people who are risk averse to begin with. So it will basically have no effect on actual perpetrators, who see some risk vs reward tradeoff for their bad behaviour.
Republican lawmakers, in this case.
Well, let’s be honest — users of VPNs regularly don’t know what they are doing, too.
Can’t count how often I‘ve heard otherwise technologically literate people saying how they use a VPN (NordVPN e.a.) because „something something security“.
Irony being trusting random VPN providers and arbitrary foreign (exit) countries potentially makes security _worse_ than without the VPN
Sure, but the laws weren't supposed to make you more secure, they were supposed to make "kids safer".
I've been thinking a lot about VPNs lately, mainly for 2 reasons:
1) In my home state I can no longer access Pornhub
2) Last month I visited Mississippi and could not access BlueSky, even though I can from my home state.
[I personally blame this on the "holier then thou", "don't tread of me" conservatives who cannot resist the urge to try to rule over the activities of others.]
I haven't selected a VPN provider because I have heard that a lot of websites create barriers to people who use VPNs. For example, I've seen people say that couldn't access Reddit via a VPN.
I've not had much problem. Never had that problem with Reddit. I use the free veepn browser extension.
Accessing imgur from the UK has been a bit tricky. Sometimes they limit certain IP addresses like the US one usually doesn't work but the Singapore one does (slowly) for some reason.
You can access Reddit from a VPN while signed into Reddit.
Couldn't all of this be handled by META tags, request/response headers and some "they'll obviously do it" laws aimed at operating systems, device manufacturers and browser companies?
20 years ago the boogeyman was "the terrorists!" And now the boogeyman is "not the children!!" Or "immigrants!!" Depending on your audience's political views, but the ultimate goal is more surveillance, more control and more power abuse by who’s in control.
That doesn't match what I've seen in UK politics.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Horsemen_of_the_Infocalyp...
I wonder if all of the journalism on Epstein would be considered "Sexual content" and if journalists would be forced to self-doxx to report in these states
"Here's what happens if VPNs get blocked: everyone has to verify their age by submitting government IDs, biometric data, or credit card information directly to websites-without any encryption or privacy protection.
We already know how this story ends. Companies get hacked. Data gets breached. And suddenly your real name is attached to the websites you visited, stored in some poorly-secured database waiting for the inevitable leak. This has already happened, and is not a matter of if but when. And when it does, the repercussions will be huge."
Then
"Let's say Wisconsin somehow manages to pass this law. Here's what will actually happen:
People who want to bypass it will use non-commercial VPNs, open proxies, or cheap virtual private servers that the law doesn't cover. They'll find workarounds within hours. The internet always routes around censorship."
Even in a fantasy world where every website successfully blocked all commercial VPNs, people would just make their own. You can route traffic through cloud services like AWS or DigitalOcean, tunnel through someone else's home internet connection, use open proxies, or spin up a cheap server for less than a dollar."
EFF presents two versions of "here's what will happen"
If we accept both as true then it appears a law targeting commercial VPNs would create evolutionary pressure to DIY rather than delegate VPN facility to commercial third parties. Non-commercial first party VPNs only service the person who sets them up. If that person is engaged in criminal activity, they can be targeted by legislation and enforcement specifically. Prosecution of criminals should not affect other first party VPNs set up by law-abiding internet users
Delegation of running VPNs to commercial third parties carries risks. Aside from obvious "trust" issues, reliability concerns, mandatory data collection, potential data breach, and so on, when the commercial provider services criminals, that's a risk to everyone else using the service
This is what's going on with so-called "Chat Control". Commercial third parties are knowingly servicing criminals. The service is used to facilitate the crime. The third parties will not or cannot identify the criminals. As a result, governments seek to compel the third party to do so through legislation. Every other user of the service may be affected as a result
Compare this with a first party VPN set up and used by a single person. If that person engages in criminal activity, other first party VPNs are unaffected
EFF does not speculate that third parties such AWS, DigitalOcean, or "cheap server[s] for less than a dollar" will be targeted with legislation in their second "here's what will happen" scenario
Evolutionary pressure toward DIY might be bad news for commercial third party intermediaries^1
But not necessarily for DIY internet users
1. Those third parties that profit from non-DIY users may invoke the plight of those non-DIY users^2 when arguing against VPN legislation or "Chat Control" but it's the third parties that stand to lose the most. DIY users are not subject to legislation that targets third party VPNs or third party chat services
2. Like OpenAI invoking the plight of ChapGPT users when faced with discovery demands in copyright litigation
Preexisting solutions to future problems! Thanks to AI (mostly) botnets specifically for renting residential IPs have multiplied since most commercial VPN IP blocks get rate-limited, captcha'd, outright blocked which got even worse with AI.
People causing shenanigans using residential IPs if they ban VPNs is gonna lead to a lot of kicked doors, red herrings, lawsuits, and very probably ballooning budgets and will yet again fail to stop Bad Things™ not that it was really designed to anyway. I wonder if they think this is a good idea because they have machinations or is it just that they are clueless wealthy dinosaurs corrupting a future that isn't theirs?
Lawmakers in general have less than one percent knowledge on what they make laws on. I look forward to them all logging in remotely after the ban.
The key change is needed with things such as meshtastic and lora. Taking things out of the hands of regulators is key
They actually act perfectly rationally. Media post articles about how easy it is to bypass the law using VPN, mock the government, and what the law author should feel reading this? "Ok let them break the law"? Of course, the reasonable response is to close the loopholes.
The issue is tech isn't as simple as that, vpn's are key in many jobs, are they banned? It is the same issue when they ask for backdoors in every messaging app. It is rational if you don't think any deeper than surface level but once you dig an inch deep, it is clear why it isn't rational.
Some company would surely jump in and get an exception written for certain corporate VPNs. But if not, it can be that those who contribute to the right people get exceptions and those who don't, don't. Rational or logical consistency just....don't have to apply
As a rule, criticism of the ruling elite will never be tolerated in the long term. The Internet was free and unrestricted until the masses shifted their attention to it, at which point, the ruling elite cracked down on it in order to maintain their hegemony by maintaining the ignorance of the masses, which they see as cattle to be herded and milked and sacrificed ritualistically from time to time for their internal social bonding purposes.
I think they know exactly what they are doing. This isn’t the nineties anymore. Which makes it even worse.
But our gerontocracy is still living in the nineties (if we’re lucky).
>So when Wisconsin demands that websites "block VPN users from Wisconsin," they're asking for something that's technically impossible. Websites have no way to tell if a VPN connection is coming from Milwaukee, Michigan, or Mumbai. The technology just doesn't work that way.
https://youtu.be/Pr4v725LPOE?si=ih3gfTSpiHumtrFs&t=79
"That's not how apps work"
"Then make it work you think we are stupid but we are not, we know" VPNs have something to do with IPs which are necessarily geolocatable , and also users need to make an account to connect to a VPN, you can just ask them what country and State they are in.
Being willfully obtuse draws no sympathy, and will not exclude companies from compliance
> VPNs have something to do with IPs which are necessarily geolocatable
The website (which is the party these obligations are being placed on) could geolocate the VPN IP, but that wouldn't tell them where the user is actually from.
IPs aren't necessarily even geolocatable. Sometimes they are, sometimes AT&T Mobile routes you six states over and exits through a CGNAT IP
IPs are geolocatable yes, not with a perfect accuracy, but with a jurisdictional accuracy.
First of all, IP addresses are issued in blocks and the IPs are distributed within regional proximity. This is how connections are routed, a router in say, Texas, knows that it can route block, say 48.88.0.0/16 to the south to mexico, 48.95.0.0/16 to the west to Arizona, and so on.
whois/RDAP data will tell you the precise jurisdiction of the company that controls the block. It's entirely sensible to use that for geographic bans, the mechanisms are in place, if they are not used, a legislative ban will force providers to use that mechanism correctly. I wouldn't say it's trivial, but it what the mechanism has been designed to do, and it will work correctly as-is for the most part.
I know how it works. I know how it doesn't.
In the context of jurisdiction within a state in the U.S., I don't think it's accurate or reliable enough when taking mobile phones into account.
Country-level is much more accurate
How is that accuracy when it comes to IPv6 though?
What if your geolocated IP is from … a VPN? Maybe one outside the jurisdiction of the law?
>Businesses run on VPNs. Every company with remote employees uses VPNs. Every business traveler connecting through sketchy hotel Wi-Fi needs one. Companies use VPNs to protect client and employee data, secure internal communications, and prevent cyberattacks.
Oh look, someone's conflating business VPNs and consumer VPNs again. This time to legitimize consumer VPNs.
The cited laws propose to ban pornography for minors, and ban VPNs that hide geolocation and their use in accessing pornography. Nothing to do with businesses using private VPNs to encrypt employee traffic.
>Vulnerable people rely on VPNs for safety. Domestic abuse survivors use VPNs to hide their location from their abusers.
Woah, maybe VPNs have some uses I haven't considered, let's take a look at the linked article.
>Use a virtual private network (VPN) to remain anonymous while browsing the internet, signing a new lease or applying for a new home loan. This will also keep your location anonymous from anyone who has gained access to or infiltrated your device.
I think the loan thing is rubbish I don't get it, and it's unaffected by the law. But the idea of installing a VPN in case the device is compromised might make sense, if the device is compromised it might still be trackable, especially while downloading the VPN, but maybe if it connects at startup, and the RAT isn't configured to bypass the VPN bridge, it might work.
Quite a stretch if you ask me. And again, not relevant to adult sites blocking VPNs.
The rest of the example are the usual "people use it to evade the government and regulations but it can be THE BAD GOVERNMENt AND REGULAtiONS"
The only way to block a VPN is to have the knowledge that certain IPs are used by VPN providers. It's pretty trivial for someone to run a script/app that spins up a server somewhere, installs VPN software on it, and uses that for the connection. Now there's no way to separate whether a user is connecting via a VPN or not.
Is this related to my comment at all? I do have another comment about the technical feasibility of this ban though.
It's pretty trivial for you or I. The average 12 year old who this law aims to protect doesn't know how to do that.
Never underestimate the work ethic of a 12 year old who wants to look at porn.
I wouldn't underestimate 12 year olds. It's not hard to find an online community (chatroom/message board) where other members post this stuff.
It's also pretty trivial to wrap in an app
Source, I was setting up home proxies so classmates could access Flash games on school computers when I was 12...
At 11 years old, I was dialing into BBS' to download images I'd print for my friends.
Kids are resourceful.
I think you misunderstand the comment you are replying to, it's talking about the perspective of the sysadmin of the adult website, and how it would detect a VPN user.