This comment is a little unclear.
However no matter what the government or security services want, they won't be able to stop people who want to use VPN or End to end encryption. Nothing would ever change in that regard.
This comment is a little unclear.
However no matter what the government or security services want, they won't be able to stop people who want to use VPN or End to end encryption. Nothing would ever change in that regard.
VPNS need money to operate, and money businesses have anchors in the real, physical, brick-and-mortar world, which is ultimately under control of the British police, with their extendable batons and prison bars.
If you make money by laying asphalt on British streets and get paid in British pounds, there's no way for you to pay an internet business in Malta if the British government doesn't want you to. Sure, there's crypto, but crypto needs businesses which let it interface with the British banking system, which the UK government can instruct banks to shut down.
A internet based company in many countries can not be held to any law because the UK aren't a fan. Companies don't need to collect cash in the UK to run a business worldwide.
Which is why the next step is to accelerate the VPN ban wave to all countries, not just the UK. Australia, New Zealand, many European countries.
Eventually the bans will be widespread enough that VPNs become near meaningless. You won't be able to bypass streaming region locks, or access regional discounts. You won't be able to ensure E2EE privacy in some other region because all the major ones will be cracked down.
The only way forward will be running VPNs out of poorer countries, countries with less telecommunication restrictions, etc. Although this will come at the cost of latency. 100-200ms to connect to a Tajikistan VPN. From my experience, even Google Searches and YouTube playback become sluggish at 100ms+, the modern web has 1000 .js files executing every time a page loads and the 100ms delay just screws everything up. It's like browsing the web on a PS3 in 2026.
Once people start switching to Guatemalan VPNs, the Government will ban "manipulating networking routing" at the backhaul and ISP levels. You will not be able to adjust routing, it will become illegal. Before anyone says "you can't do that, it won't work", I was told the same thing when I said they'd ban VPNs, yet here we are.
One step at a time to erode privacy, security and freedom. Once you jump up a level, you cannot comprehend a world below that level. The mega restrictions of tomorrow are normalized in the new world.
The technology bit doesn't really matter though.
The real problem is that the legislation would bring the power to prosecute people who use them or use it against them.
The security services aren't having any of that shit because it puts their position at risk both from the front-facing side and recommendations and guidance issued and from their own operations.
The power to prosecute and the actual ability to prosecute are two different things. They currently can't prosecute CSAM offences nor piracy due to capacity. It won't happen.
The sad reality is that CSAM and Piracy don't impact the Government, therefore the prosecution is weak and drastically underfunded.
The reality is, VPNs help people learn, have freedoms and explore alternative world views. This is a direct "harm" to the Governments, because they have trouble dictating the narrative.
The problem is not with the state actually prosrcuting all, or even many vpn "offences". The problem is that the legislation gives states another powerful tool to prosecute people they find annoying but cannot easily punish for clearly breaking other laws.
Exactly, the effective purpose of overcriminalization is to provide a tool for selective use against “bad” people (those who get in the way). This includes recidivist criminals—though often only those who do damage to someone important—but it also includes counter-establishment activists, influencers, and supporters.
I think VPN prosecution could happen if it was treated more like traffic offenses than like felonies.
Force ISPs to log all connections and make ISP customers accountable for their traffic, like they are in Germany for example. If you detect an IP to be used for a VPN, ask every ISP to disclose al customers who interacted with it and issue them a ticket. Three tickets and you're denied internet service for two years.
I think this would scare most people off.
Well true but wait until you do something else and they pile that on top of it.
That’s because they don’t want to stop VPNs, they want to criminalise the ones they don’t have visibility into.