@cstross @Fonant

Unless I misunderstood the proposed law, it's the VPN operator that would be prosecuted in this case. They may lose their ability to take money from people in the UK.

If I'm over 18, it is not illegal for me to use the VPN, so someone would have to prove that I am using it but no one checked that I was over 18. If I am under 18, then the provider is at more legal risk but they could claim that they did age verification and this user managed to bypass it somehow.

The simplest way of doing age verification is to require a payment from a credit card in your name. The easiest way of bypassing this is to use a parent's credit card. If a company takes payment for VPN use via credit card, and makes a minimal effort to not accept debit cards or pre-paid cards for folks in the UK, they're probably okay.

Which doesn't mean that this is in any way a sensible law.

@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.

@cstross @david_chisnall I'm not planning to do anything that would result in the government seizing my computer

There is no way the government can know whether or not I use a VPN or not, nor whether I use TOR.

Unless the law allows the police to randomly inspect people's computers, and they do this to a significant proportion of the population, I can use any VPN I like without fear. We don't live in a police state yet...

@cstross Control freaks delivering e-surveilance on a plate for their likely successor-in-power to abuse. #UKLabour #Farage

Signed.

@cstross there are others, like Argo, or Streisand (linked in the README), but more annoying because they unnecessarily require you to have Ansible installed on your system.

@cstross

The assumption is that the govt needs to implement age verification for an ostensibly sensible reason (in this case preventing under-16s accessing unsuitable material), but in reality age verification is often no different to identity verification and so by extension the govt ends up verifying the identity of the user of every mobile device, which thanks to the general dependency on Apple and Google phones would give the govt the ability to identify and track anyone with a smartphone.

@cstross @david_chisnall I agree. Allowing for inspection of innocent people's personal computers is both unacceptable and also counter-productive for law enforcement.

The police are not going to be randomly doing "illegal VPN inspections" on everyone. They can only target the few big public VPN services, and persuade them to add age verification.

@hypostase @cstross

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.

@Fonant @david_chisnall Sure you're not planning on doing anything. That doesn't mean it won't happen to you. Remember, "if you've got nothing to hide you've got nothing to fear" was a favourite saying of Lavrenti Beria.

@oschonrock @PeterSommerlad @cstross I'm presuming they'd want to check your age every time you USE a VPN connection? Otherwise the restriction on underage use would be meaningless.

@mbpaz @cstross My router is over 18 years old, and I'm not replacing it. And I can prove its age.

@Fonant @oschonrock @PeterSommerlad The people proposing this amendment in the House of Lords are technical illiterates, that's what makes this so dangerous. So it will be interpreted over-broadly and damagingly with inevitable, unpredictable, side-effects.

@Fonant @PeterSommerlad @cstross

I doubt that... Or actually... they prob haven't thought about that sort of useful detail.

But just like when your porn account has been age/verified once, you then just "log in" (or carry some kind jwt in a permanent cookie) for subsequent usage.

And yes, if your kid can get access to your computer and log in as you, then all bets are off.

VPNs will likely be similar?

@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.

@cstross @Fonant @PeterSommerlad

100% agreed...

The entire bill is totally technically illiterate with all sorts of backfiring fishhooks... embarrasing really.

No idea why Labour feels the need to do this sort of thing.

Worldproof the child, not childproof the world. And parents' responsibility.

@oschonrock @PeterSommerlad @cstross Yes. They can legislate as much as they want to age-verify all VPN users. Mathematics and logic makes this impossible to enforce in any meaningful way, though.

@Uilebheist @cstross "I'm an aging router, and I assume responsibility for any outbound packets these young devices connecting to me may send "

@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 @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.

@Fonant @cstross @david_chisnall emphasis on yet. When you go through the U.K. border they can seize for inspection all devices you are carrying, no matter your citizenship.