@oschonrock @cstross @PeterSommerlad A ban on Twitter in the EU would also be impossible to enforce.

@cstross @capriciousday Lawyers likewise. Working at home or in a court building, using confidential & legally privileged data on the office server...

@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.

@Fonant @cstross @PeterSommerlad
Yes, I agree that geoblocking would have many holes (vpns, tor, etc), but that is acceptable in this case, IMO

Because the threat that ban would be trying protect against, is serious damage to Europe's democracies. Democracy is a numbers game by definition. So to eliminate a major source of malignant misinformation for say 90% people who can't be bothered to circumvent the geoblock, would destroy the network effect that is so core to any social network's power.

@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.

@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 @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.

@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.

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.

@Nicovel0 @dan @cstross

"Did you pass the underage VPN ban?"
"Sure did, boss! Required federated identity on every *nix host accessible from the UK, real impossible just like you asked!"

@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.

@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.

@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.

@oschonrock

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.

@cstross

@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.

@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?

@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.

@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.

@dan @jaawerth @cstross @Nicovel0 It will include whatever they deem it does for whatever purpose they see fit. Even Citrix and VNC if they think they need to.