UK PEOPLE: this is REALLY IMPORTANT.
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@cstross @oschonrock @PeterSommerlad We can happily discuss whether age restrictions on "VPN users" is a Good or Bad idea for a law.
My point is that it's impossible to enforce such a law.
It would be as pointless as the Online Safety Act. Well-intentioned, no doubt, but embarrassing when ignored. The 4chan bulletin board has been fined £20,000 and more for breaching the Online Safety Act. Their response has been "we don't care, we're not complying with a UK law, we're not going to pay any fines". The only thing Ofcom can do is to ask UK ISPs to block access to 4chan. They haven't yet, but if they do it'll be easily bypassed by a VPN or TOR.
@Fonant @cstross @PeterSommerlad
I agree that enforcement will be very leaky at best.
Whether that is "enough" depends on the case. In the case of X/twitter (see elsewhere) it might be, because the power of a network is proportional to N^2.
What makes the OSA very very stupid is that it subjects the 90% of the adult public who are using these services (ie porn etc) legally to a massive invasion of privacy with signficant risk of damaging data leaks by dodgy third parties.
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@david_chisnall @cstross The government has to discover that there is an illegal VPN being used in the first place.
It is quite possible for millions of VPNs to be made available to UK children, hosted all over the world. Perhaps hosted by children, sharing the small monthly server costs. Quite secret, extremely difficult to find.
The proposed law could only ever hope to apply to a few big VPN companies. Which just moves the VPN usage by children underground, where other dangers lurk.
@Fonant @david_chisnall @cstross
"We don't need to worry, because the govt will not be able to enforce it" is the counterpart to legislators who say "we don't need to put in detailed definitions & restrictions, because we trust police & prosecutors to use the powers responsibly".
History has proven both are always true until they aren't. -
@cstross @capriciousday Lawyers likewise. Working at home or in a court building, using confidential & legally privileged data on the office server...
@HighlandLawyer @cstross @capriciousday I don't see anything in the amendment that would apply to a business using e.g. Wireguard to access resources in an internal network. The definition of "relevant VPN service" "means a service of providing, in the course of a business, to a consumer, a virtual private network for accessing the internet". So B2C things only, not corporate VPNs.
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@HighlandLawyer @cstross @capriciousday They'll argue that lawyers are over 18 "and why would be a problem to prove that?".
Remember it's the "Labour" party we are talking about.@Uilebheist @cstross @capriciousday So clerical staff will be required to use a separate computer system to the fee earners, since some of them may be 16 or 17?
And yes, it is IngSoc we're talking about.
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@Fonant @david_chisnall @cstross
"We don't need to worry, because the govt will not be able to enforce it" is the counterpart to legislators who say "we don't need to put in detailed definitions & restrictions, because we trust police & prosecutors to use the powers responsibly".
History has proven both are always true until they aren't.Defining a "VPN" will be extremely difficult, but that's not my point.
My point is that it is impossible to block access to VPNs, and equally impossible to ban them.
This is a mathematical certainty. We can't un-learn how to have securely encrypted communications.
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@cstross @Fonant @PeterSommerlad
Complex subject.
For example, I would be quite pro a complete twitter ban in EU/UK.
Is that "nanny state", or is that recognising that X is deliberately manipulated to be a malignant anti-democratic cancer?
Porn for kids.... TBH, I get less excited about that, and selective blocking is hard/impractical.
@oschonrock @cstross @Fonant @PeterSommerlad One reason for a Twitter ban is that it would then be much more difficult for people to excuse their presence there. And for people not wanting to be there but feel pressured to, to get an excuse to leave.
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@Fonant @david_chisnall @cstross
"We don't need to worry, because the govt will not be able to enforce it" is the counterpart to legislators who say "we don't need to put in detailed definitions & restrictions, because we trust police & prosecutors to use the powers responsibly".
History has proven both are always true until they aren't.@HighlandLawyer @Fonant @david_chisnall @cstross
Exactly this.
A bad law isn't one that states its own intention to be abused, it's one that doesn't include specific concrete measures to prevent abuse, because the intent to abuse will surely come along soon enough, like it always has.
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@cstross @david_chisnall The likelihood of the police taking my computer for forensic examination is zero.
I have plenty of things that I must keep private. So does everyone.
@Fonant @cstross @david_chisnall One should design a society so that there is as little as possible for the people in power to grab on to once it becomes a police state. A legislation process that only considers fair weather is really bad, and the weather already seems kind of cloudy.
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I have no idea if that is their intention. Highly doubt it, given how clueless they are.
The smart ones will use TOR bridges so it's even less trackable.
But then you were probably being sarcastic, and well, I agree. That's what happens when you put stupid logs in people's way.. they learn to jump over them. And some will break their legs doing it.
A little sarcastic, yes.
But I think it'll be more than just the "smart" ones, I think the kids'll share.
As you say some will get hurt, but I'm not convinced that the numbers will be any different from what they would have been without intervention.
Just as with pretty much every "tech" problem, effective intervention for harm reduction needs to be social, but nobody will actually fund the workers needed to do that.
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@cstross @david_chisnall The likelihood of the police taking my computer for forensic examination is zero.
I have plenty of things that I must keep private. So does everyone.
@Fonant @cstross @david_chisnall actually it's one unfortunate incident or altercation in the street or false report or log interpretation error or mistaken identity or... or... or... etc away.
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RE: https://social.vivaldi.net/@LonM/115966748145817371
UK PEOPLE: this is REALLY IMPORTANT. If the government bans under-16s from using VPNs, then logically they must intend to REQUIRE AGE VERIFICATION FOR ALL VPN USE. Which will affect adults too!
*Your* privacy and right to anonymous web browsing is at risk!
@cstross I have a fleet of devices in the field that communicate back to my infrastructure over VPN links. Do those devices now have to prove they're over 16? Do both ends? Does anybody in charge have any fucking idea what they're doing?
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RE: https://social.vivaldi.net/@LonM/115966748145817371
UK PEOPLE: this is REALLY IMPORTANT. If the government bans under-16s from using VPNs, then logically they must intend to REQUIRE AGE VERIFICATION FOR ALL VPN USE. Which will affect adults too!
*Your* privacy and right to anonymous web browsing is at risk!
@cstross Reason number "a zillion and some" why privacy, etc. is better served using something decentralized like Tor, rather than VPNs companies that can be forced to ID-check UK users.
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Well the "home lan" is effectively the "corporate use case" I described, just for advanced IT folk.. (I used to do the same).
The geoblocking use case is "fair" in the sense that it "just works", but almost certainly contravenes the streaming service providers T&Cs. It does nothing for privacy, since you clearly log into these services.
(Psst: I also use TOR to get around geoblocking.. not quite as convenient, but free)
@oschonrock @PeterSommerlad @cstross This gets at a particularly dumb part of “banning VPNs”: the VPN is just the transport mechanism the proxy service uses.
No, we’re not a VPN, we’re a SOCKS proxy.
No, SOCKS is banned now, so we shut that down. We do offer a QUIC proxy, though.
And so on.
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@oschonrock @Fonant @PeterSommerlad Labour has a nasty paternalist/nanny state tradition going back over a century. It's baked in at this point: Labour knows what's best for you, peasant. (So do the Tories, but they approach it differently.)
@cstross @oschonrock @Fonant @PeterSommerlad Perhaps try putting a labour MP in charge of the labour party instead of a fucking tory.... It failed with Blair and it is failing with Starmer.
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@cstross @oschonrock @Fonant @PeterSommerlad Perhaps try putting a labour MP in charge of the labour party instead of a fucking tory.... It failed with Blair and it is failing with Starmer.
@Ulrich_the_elder @cstross @Fonant @PeterSommerlad TBF... Blair was better..
He communicated better. So he managed to achieve more things that a labour govt should..
Notably in education for him..
But yeah he fucked it up by being a religious nutcase going on crusades in the middle east...(Very Tory) Among other things
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RE: https://social.vivaldi.net/@LonM/115966748145817371
UK PEOPLE: this is REALLY IMPORTANT. If the government bans under-16s from using VPNs, then logically they must intend to REQUIRE AGE VERIFICATION FOR ALL VPN USE. Which will affect adults too!
*Your* privacy and right to anonymous web browsing is at risk!
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O that ordinal person shared this topic
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RE: https://social.vivaldi.net/@LonM/115966748145817371
UK PEOPLE: this is REALLY IMPORTANT. If the government bans under-16s from using VPNs, then logically they must intend to REQUIRE AGE VERIFICATION FOR ALL VPN USE. Which will affect adults too!
*Your* privacy and right to anonymous web browsing is at risk!
@cstross it also means banning anyone under age from owning/renting a server in a different country, with very much the same implications for people over the age limit, since setting up a VPN endpoint is reasonably easy enough for your average technically inclined 16 year old. Oh and also, it outlaws TOR, if taken to its logical conclusion.
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RE: https://social.vivaldi.net/@LonM/115966748145817371
UK PEOPLE: this is REALLY IMPORTANT. If the government bans under-16s from using VPNs, then logically they must intend to REQUIRE AGE VERIFICATION FOR ALL VPN USE. Which will affect adults too!
*Your* privacy and right to anonymous web browsing is at risk!
@cstross Haven't adults clued into the fact that trying to force kids into boxes never works out? On top of the privacy issues.
