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Will the government be able to put 2 & 2 together (lemmy.world)
submitted 10 months ago by to c/unitedkingdom@feddit.uk
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[–] 77 points 10 months ago (13 children)

If they do figure it out their conclusion will be something like outlawing VPNs while handing more infrastructure to Peter Thiel.

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  • [–] 7 points 10 months ago (6 children)

    outlawing VPNs

    What would that even look like?

    No two computers can talk to each other without an ISP intermediary?

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  • [–] 8 points 10 months ago* (4 children)

    They'll ban it for private individuals and home ISP connections, and allow businesses to pay for a commercial VPN licence.

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  • [–] 10 points 10 months ago (3 children)

    It's just not that simple, as private individuals do contract work and manage private businesses, large residential and commercial complexes use VPNs to manage high network traffic and guarantee security, and off-site IT support regularly use VPNs for elevated access.

    Retail VPNs don't even strictly evade ISPs. They simply route traffic through their own hubs and then on to the destination. If the UK were to "ban VPNs" that wouldn't really stop me from connecting to a US or French based VPN service. And that's what I'd want anyway, since my goal is to not appear to be a UK resident while trafficking data.

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  • [–] 4 points 10 months ago

    If it's anything it'll probably be age verification at point of sale for the VPN for retail VPN providers. Pay with a credit card kinda deal. I know that's not ideal, hell none of it is, but I think it's how steam dealt with it and that worked OK.

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  • [–] 11 points 10 months ago (5 children)

    No way they will ban VPNs as it will get in the way of businesses that rely on it / those terminally working from home

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  • [–] 30 points 10 months ago (4 children)

    Obviously they'll have a carve-out for businesses that apply for a VPN licence and have the other end of the VPN remain in the country. Not because they listen to the public saying that VPNs have legitimate uses, but because the megacorp they consult with before drafting the law says it's the only legitimate use-case and has a VPN product they can sell to small businesses that can't afford to wait for their self-hosted VPN to be certified by the one overworked civil servant who has sole responsibility for approving every VPN licence.

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  • [–] 9 points 10 months ago (1 child)

    And how are they to determine whats a "vpn"? Just rent a server in another country and ssh tunnel to it, and there you go. Impossible to know your using a 'vpn'.

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