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I wonder about this...sure there are plenty of people who are older and less knowledgable about government surveillance; but as these programs ramp up, so does

I wonder about this...sure there are plenty of people who are older and less knowledgable about government surveillance; but as these programs ramp up, so does VPN usage.

samwillis 3y ago
The currently proposed "Online Safety Bill" will potentially put significant limits or ban VPNs. I suspect (if it passes) it will be a case of VPNs that don't collect ICRs will be band, or at least prohibited from payment services, in the UK. https://www.openrightsgroup.org/blog/15101/ https://www.openrightsgroup.org/blog/15101/
- DiscourseFan 3y ago
  At least it would be difficult to enforce such things, with cryptocurrencies and all. I wonder if governments will try to convince their citizens that all VPN users are criminals and pedophiles as an excuse to make their use illegal, using it as prima facie evidence of wrongdoing in police investigations as a means of increasing the state of terror, surveillance, and control over their populations.
  - PrimeMcFly 3y ago
    The UK already has a law that allows them to imprison you if you genuinely don't remember an encryption key and they don't believe you. Just wait till they introduce a law that allows them to imprison people for using a VPN to get around some bs accusation and they don't believe your defense.
    - nly 3y ago
      It's more likely they'll mandate that ISPs block traffic to popular VPN services
- worldofmatthew 3y ago
  Harder to ban Tor outright. No payments and snowflake bridges run on many (often) residential IPs.
trasz4 3y ago
You do realize that using VPN makes the company you're paying for that VPN gather way more of your internet browsing history than the UK's surveillance program?
- yellow_postit 3y ago
  VPNs grow the security target on their backs as adoption increases.
wolverine876 3y ago
> there are plenty of people who are older and less knowledgable about government surveillance IME, younger people have given up on protecting themselves.
freeflight 3y ago
There is a pretty decent chance some VPN providers are actually intelligence service, or other bad actor, honey pots. It's part of VPN that most users these days don't even understand, as VPN providers are heavily advertised on the claim of improving privacy. When in reality the VPN only shifts the party you have to trust from one to another, but the problem still remains the same.
- DiscourseFan 3y ago
  I myself cannot encrypt my internet traffic or scramble it through a variety of IP addresses around the world. You're right, we should all be using TOR if we really want to be extra-secure, but TOR simply is too slow for most general usages.
  - 1827163 3y ago
    I doubt if any VPN is truly secure, even ones that truly don't keep logs, because of the activities of Team Cymru and other actors as well. NSA and GCHQ have been known to trace through VPNs, as far back as 2013 in the Snowden leaks. https://www.vice.com/en/article/jg84yy/data-brokers-netflow-data-team-cymru https://www.vice.com/en/article/jg84yy/data-brokers-netflow-... As one of the original posters mentioned, the Internet itself, being so centralized, is the problem. We need a new network.
  - bauruine 3y ago
    When did you last try Tor? The DDoS [0] has ended and it's now pretty fast again. I'm watching a 4k youtube video over Tor right now. Also the next version implements traffic splitting [1] which should improve performance even more. [0]: https://status.torproject.org/issues/2022-06-09-network-ddos/ https://status.torproject.org/issues/2022-06-09-network-ddos... [0]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/core/torspec/-/blob/main/proposals/329-traffic-splitting.txt https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/core/torspec/-/blob/main/p...

I wonder about this...sure there are plenty of people who are older and less knowledgable about government surveillance; but as these programs ramp up, so does VPN usage.

samwillis 3y ago

The currently proposed "Online Safety Bill" will potentially put significant limits or ban VPNs. I suspect (if it passes) it will be a case of VPNs that don't collect ICRs will be band, or at least prohibited from payment services, in the UK. https://www.openrightsgroup.org/blog/15101/ https://www.openrightsgroup.org/blog/15101/

DiscourseFan 3y ago
At least it would be difficult to enforce such things, with cryptocurrencies and all. I wonder if governments will try to convince their citizens that all VPN users are criminals and pedophiles as an excuse to make their use illegal, using it as prima facie evidence of wrongdoing in police investigations as a means of increasing the state of terror, surveillance, and control over their populations.
- PrimeMcFly 3y ago
  The UK already has a law that allows them to imprison you if you genuinely don't remember an encryption key and they don't believe you. Just wait till they introduce a law that allows them to imprison people for using a VPN to get around some bs accusation and they don't believe your defense.
  - nly 3y ago
    It's more likely they'll mandate that ISPs block traffic to popular VPN services
worldofmatthew 3y ago
Harder to ban Tor outright. No payments and snowflake bridges run on many (often) residential IPs.

trasz4 3y ago

You do realize that using VPN makes the company you're paying for that VPN gather way more of your internet browsing history than the UK's surveillance program?

yellow_postit 3y ago
VPNs grow the security target on their backs as adoption increases.

wolverine876 3y ago

> there are plenty of people who are older and less knowledgable about government surveillance IME, younger people have given up on protecting themselves.

freeflight 3y ago

There is a pretty decent chance some VPN providers are actually intelligence service, or other bad actor, honey pots. It's part of VPN that most users these days don't even understand, as VPN providers are heavily advertised on the claim of improving privacy. When in reality the VPN only shifts the party you have to trust from one to another, but the problem still remains the same.

DiscourseFan 3y ago
I myself cannot encrypt my internet traffic or scramble it through a variety of IP addresses around the world. You're right, we should all be using TOR if we really want to be extra-secure, but TOR simply is too slow for most general usages.
- 1827163 3y ago
  I doubt if any VPN is truly secure, even ones that truly don't keep logs, because of the activities of Team Cymru and other actors as well. NSA and GCHQ have been known to trace through VPNs, as far back as 2013 in the Snowden leaks. https://www.vice.com/en/article/jg84yy/data-brokers-netflow-data-team-cymru https://www.vice.com/en/article/jg84yy/data-brokers-netflow-... As one of the original posters mentioned, the Internet itself, being so centralized, is the problem. We need a new network.
- bauruine 3y ago
  When did you last try Tor? The DDoS [0] has ended and it's now pretty fast again. I'm watching a 4k youtube video over Tor right now. Also the next version implements traffic splitting [1] which should improve performance even more. [0]: https://status.torproject.org/issues/2022-06-09-network-ddos/ https://status.torproject.org/issues/2022-06-09-network-ddos... [0]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/core/torspec/-/blob/main/proposals/329-traffic-splitting.txt https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/core/torspec/-/blob/main/p...