UK households could face VPN 'ban' after use skyrockets following Online Safety Bill

It does feel that way. UK bureaucracy is just one giant guinea pig stunting it's own commonwealth.

Next someone will try enforcing paper umbrellas as a solution for climate action. We'll all say, "That won't work". They'll still do it; it won't work. We'll say, "We told you so", and it won't get reversed because they're already aiming at the next foot to shoot.

100% Brexit quickly shut up similar movements when people saw how badly it went

I’m uninformed. What’s the reason for the porn ID thing? Is it just porn or more?

Then, we move to the socks proxy, or tor, or other options I haven’t even considered yet.

Still an important part. Free VPNs that spy on you are a thing, but work

Were you never a child? I formatted my family pc and reinstalled windows xp in 5th grade, and used a proxy to circumvent the schools online filter in 7th grade.

Children are not as stupid as you seem to think

VPNs also accept many anonymous payment methods that happen to be easily accessible to children, like gift cards. And free VPNs exist

In my English textbook, ca. 2007 there was a comic of a child in a cage hanging outside the house. The father told the neighbor something like "This way they get out of the house, but stay off the streets."

I think that hit quite well, what many consider parenting in the UK.

Jokes on you, e2e encryption is already banned in some cases in the uk afaik. Hence apple dropping some cloud services

Next step: ban on remote work.

Well we just fire you, and the one you’re still using then must be your personal one!

Either just banning remote work or more realistically you'll need a permit for running a vpn server. Permit pricing starting at 100k a year

It has always been the main aim of legislation like this to nobble VPNs, they just needed the "child" "violent pornography" etc. excuse to do so. UK government already monitors all of the internet traffic for the UK, except for MPs who are exempt, VPNs are a blocker for this.

Obviously, not even the UK government would expect a private VPN ban (work VPNs would likely need an Ofcom license) to stop everybody from using a VPN or suitable alternative, its not the aim. The aim is to stop the majority from doing so and criminalize the minority who do still bypass the block as it gives them the power to seize equipment, ask for your logins (its illegal punishable with jail time to not supply this in the UK), request ISP logs etc. to deep dive into your life.

Honest question but what makes you think that would happen? Do most businesses use VPNs?

If they do outlaw it will likely be banned solely for non-business use for this reason alone.

The new Christian nationalist orders are not so patient. Even Charles X of France rolled back rights too speedily, sparking public outcry resulting in Parisian haircuts. (a bit off the top 🪟🔪)

SCOTUS used to be sneakier, carving out sections of fourth- and fifth-amendment protections, but since Dobbs the Federalist Society Six have tossed subtlety and reason to the wind and now adjudicate away rights based on vibe and conservative rhetoric grievance.

Hopefully the US and UK both will recognize why the French public was swift to act when manarchists took shears to the Napoleonic Code.

Farage: Gets elected.

Everyone: At least you'll abolish the OSA!

Farage: Nah, I said that because it would make me popular. Amma use the OSA to ban things I consider "woke".

It's something russia has been doing for a decade and got pretty good at.

A long term blanket vpn ban is not compatible with a modern digital infrastructure, but with certain protocols (openvpn, wireguard) they can detect their usage and filter them out when necessary.

It does require a lot of expensive DPI (deep packet inspection) hardware I'm not sure UK has, so building a Great Firewall of Britain (Hadrian's Firewall?) will take some time.

All this pandering to Reform voters is completely useless, people will still vote for the original rather than a shitty knockoff. Despicable behaviour from Labour.

EU is about to do the exact same thing. Norway is the place to be. That's where I went - at least according to my ip address.

That's good. Everyone can read base 1.

The solution is very simple, just require a license /s

We all know that prohibition in the US was a rousing success!

I'd tentatively say, casually available heroin, morphine and laudanum/opium.

It obviously caused problems and pushed the market underground but it seems to have worked out.

I'm not aware of any studies in to this though, so it's only conjecture/guesswork.

I'll also clearly state I'm not putting them on the same level as this current dystopian bullshittery.

They're Labouring very hard for the corporations.

I don't think it's that centralized. Just some elite somewhere pushes through what elites everywhere would want, and they try to do the same around it.

Like spread of a disease.

I think the way to fight it is similar. Unions, customer associations, parties (not for election, but for having as many people as possible for mutual aid and actions ; it might even be counterproductive to get into government, since that breeds expectations which are not delivered upon, which hurts the party ; better to do volunteer projects without using state power as much as possible).

My guess they will block VPN services IP addresses like proton, shouldn't affect business VPN.

Ban remote working, vpn now only allowed from business addresses as registered with companies house.

WireGuard would be illegal. ISPs would monitor for encrypted traffic streams. All remote workers must now come back to the office. ofcom can see any and all traffic. Your loyalty to the king shall be examined. You choices of media will be scrutinized. The threat of losing your children will be used to force compliance. Welcome to the machine.