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How Long Before VPNs Become Illegal?
- altrego99 14y agoKind of a side point, as many people join and use the tor network, will the speed of tor increase - or atleast move towards the average Internet speed in the world? Edit: Only reason why I don't use tor yet is that everytime I tried, speed was slow. Thanks for the opinions on the question.
- hack_edu 14y agoIt should definitely get better over time, but the latency issue is pretty tough to get around. Bouncing between a half dozen nodes, surely back and forth across an ocean once or twice between each request and piecing everything back together, is a pretty tough problem to solve. Especially when a disproportionate number of nodes seem to be located in Central Europe. Its also an issue that most exit nodes restrict their outbound speed and ports they route outward. Without restricting the speed in my tor configuration my exit node holds a constant 10/MBs all day even with only common ports open. Once you stop restricting ports you'll be getting multiple cease-and-desist notices within a matter of days since all your traffic will be absorbed by torrents. Someone will likely come up with an equally/more secure option before Tor gets all that close to your average user's connection speed.
- coolnow 14y agoPeople torrenting over Tor make my blood boil.
- dale-cooper 14y agoWell, it feels like asymmetrical connections are still more common so it should not get better?
- jkap 14y agoIt seems unlikely that VPNs will ever become completely illegal, at least not in the US. Too many very large companies use them for Congress to consider it. They may make them illegal for non-corporate uses, but that would be difficult to enforce and overall useless.
- noarchy 14y agoI can easily see governments forcing ISPs to blacklist the IP addresses of known VPN servers. I'm only slightly surprised that this hasn't happened yet in the UK and other such places. The first step is to try to ban direct access to websites. Then they'll likely try to ban the workarounds. Yes, power users will always find a way around these things, but it will work to stop many, I suspect. And as for corporate/government VPN users, maybe this will be an excuse to introduce a VPN "license" for those who will be allowed to use them.
- wtracy 14y agoThe big tech companies I've worked for use VPN heavily for remote workers, so my first reaction was, "This could never happen." But now that you mention it, I could see a situation where domestic VPN providers are forced to log user data (or be on the hook for copyright violations when the VPN is used by employees) and ISPs are strong-armed into blacklisting overseas VPN providers. That's actually kind of scary.
- eli 14y ago...it’s by no means unthinkable. In Iran, where a quarter of all Internet subscribers use VPNs, the government has already announced a crackdown on privacy-enhancing tools that bypass local law. Err, yeah. That's not a very convincing argument.
- grecy 14y agoMaybe they won't be outright illegal, but I could see laws being passed so VPNs must keep extremely detailed logs of users and their activity, thus making them useless as a way to mask online activity.
- AncientPC 14y agoWhat happens when you use an off-shore VPN that doesn't keep logs? TorrentFreak listed a bunch of them with their respective privacy policies: https://torrentfreak.com/which-vpn-providers-really-take-anonymity-seriously-111007/ https://torrentfreak.com/which-vpn-providers-really-take-ano...
- grecy 14y agoSure, that's a good way around it right now. But I can also see America forcing their will on other countries and forcing them to keep detailed logs too (let's face it, the UK is right there with America) Countries like the one that hosts TPB may hold out as long as possible, but eventually the rest of the "internet world" could just ban those IPs or whatever. (just like they are banning the TPB IP now). What I'm saying is, I can see the day where it's illegal or extremely difficult to use a VPN anonymously, from any country.
- pyre 14y agoYou're ignoring the possibility of surveillance. It's possible to 'wiretap' a VPN connection that you use all the time. Any VPN company would have to comply with a court order in that jurisdiction.
- guard-of-terra 14y agoYou should notice this is orchestrated by countries with consistently high scores on various internet freedom ratings. They turn blind eye on any violation if it's reasoned with IP protection, and they crack down on other countries for rumors or vague plans on blocking some sites or just "because".
- ChuckMcM 14y agoNever of course. To make them illegal would force the question of a constitutional right to privacy. So in the US at least it won't happen. That being said, I expect various people to continue to obfuscate and make it confusing. At some point I expect a 'VaaS' type service to be announced with pretty compelling economics, and it will be impossible to tell that the service provides access to certain third parties. Phil Zimmerman is doing his part with Silent Circle. That too is looking to force the question.
- baddox 14y agoHere's a few US cases regarding the constitutional right to privacy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution#Privacy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Amendment_to_the_United_... Several of them are even from the last ten years, since the Internet has indeed raised many questions.
- tocomment 14y agoWhat's VaaS?
- wtracy 14y agoVPN as a Service, I would assume.
- aqme28 14y agoPrivacy as a Service sounds like a very plausible business model for the future (or even today). edit: I forgot about this[1], so apparently it already exists! [1]: http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-57412225-281/this-internet-provider-pledges-to-put-your-privacy-first-always/ http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-57412225-281/this-internet...
- AncientPC 14y agoTor has its own issues (difficult set up, high latency), as well as VPNs (single point failure / tracking, US-based companies must obey warrants). Perhaps there's an opportunity for a company based in Switzerland to run a private TOR network for obfuscation with guaranteed bandwidth. Private TOR network has its own problems though. You need a large number of users to anonymize each other's data, and the block of assigned IPs can be treated as a single entity and blocked / rerouted as a result.
- pasbesoin 14y agoIIRC, prohibition of VPN-type "circumvention" was already part of one or more draft legislation initiatives in the U.S. -- serious initiatives. I'm not sure, but was it part of the early SOPA/PIPA drafts -- a portion that was moderated or removed as part of the "appeasement" efforts of the legislation's proponents? In summary, it's my recollection that this is already being pushed for, in and by the U.S. government and/or its lobbyist "masters". And they don't have to outlaw all VPN connections -- just establish either legal justification or extra-judicial powers to harass and/or arrest you if you can't qualify and justify your use of a VPN to their satisfaction. Keep in mind: They don't have to apply such powers universally. Just enough to provide the desired effect.
- res0nat0r 14y agoPerfect time for another episode of: Betteridge's Law of Headlines: "Any headline which ends in a question mark can be answered by the word 'no'".
- Karunamon 14y agoQ: How Long Before VPNs Become Illegal? A: No. Doesn't flow too well here ;)
- res0nat0r 14y agoI think there is an implied, "they won't" in there somewhere I'm sure of it.
- chc 14y agoEh, it very well might be the best answer. It's a "Have you stopped beating your grandmother?" kind of question. Perhaps the famous Zen non-answer "Mu" would be better, but "No" is about as close an English equivalent as you'll get. Q: How long until they ban VPNs? A: No. Just no.
- aw3c2 14y agoThen it is "can be answered negatively" instead. Simple as that.
- stcredzero 14y agoIn this case, it's false.
- zbuc 14y ago"Is Betteridge's Law of Headlines generally correct?"
- mistercow 14y agoQ: How long until VPNs become illegal? A: No. Doesn't really fit.
- 7952 14y agoI find it hard to believe that governments can ever do anything to stop file sharing in the long term. The more things are forced underground the harder they are to stop. The DMCA was intended to stop piracy but ultimately gave legal cover to numerous sites that would otherwise have been sued out of existence.
- fleitz 14y agoThey'll never become illegal, it will just become like guns in crime, use a VPN, get an extra 5 years for whatever your thoughtcrime might be. Paid with bitcoins? Here's 10.
- jfoutz 14y agoThe day after there are no legal requirements for handling health care data or financial data on the internet.
- rsanchez1 14y agoThey'll become illegal when Obama wills it. SOPA/PIPA/CISPA don't matter now that Congress is irrelevant.
- jcr 14y agoNever. The article is mostly fear mongering on a slow news day. The reason why it would be impossible to make a "VPN" illegal is simple; Internet commerce transactions are done over an encrypted tunnel (httpS via SSL/TLS), and there is really no simple technical differences between one kind of secure tunnel and another. For those that don't know, SSL/TLS based VPN's do exist, and the most common implementation is OpenVPN. It's based on the same OpenSSL (library) code that your web browser is (most likely) using. http://openvpn.net/ http://openvpn.net/ The SSL/TLS based VPN's use "only" 128 to 160 bit encryption, and if your tin foil hat is on tight enough to cut off your circulation, then this fact makes you nervous. You can run OpenVPN via UDP over a "tun" interface (OSI Layer 3) or even a "tap" interface (OSI Layer 2), and compared to many VPN-ish alternatives, it's pretty fast in my tests. The other common light-weight approach to VPN's is using PPTP (Point to Point Tunneling Protocol). I have NOT (recently) studied the crypto employed in PPTP implementations, but I'd guess it's nearly on par with SSL/TLS. It's been eons since I've messed with PPTP, so I'm going to keep my (outdated) opinions mostly to myself. The most fair thing to say is there is (can be) some crypto involved, and it can be pretty fast. Though I'm currently working on some OpenVPN stuff for firends, I personally prefer the more (ahem) sophisticated (read: difficult and complicated) VPN solutions based on SSH, or better, IPSec. They are a lot more work, but they tend to be more robust and more resistant (when done properly --and any VPN done wrong is just a false sense of security). The down-side with SSH based tunnels is there is a greater performance overhead with TCP based connections, and hence, you get reduced throughput. IPSec is better, but it's even more difficult to get right. For a lot of testing I use Tunnelr.com. They offer both OpenVPN and SSH (SOCKS) based VPN's for a cheap price. https://tunnelr.com/ https://tunnelr.com/ It's kind of sad that privacy is being equated with piracy, but the "lump it altogether" folks are idiots. There are actually lots of extremely good (and legal) reasons to use both VPN's and other types of secure connections... --Every time you buy something from Amazon or similar, you're most likely using a secure connection. The original article has a link to: https://torrentfreak.com/which-vpn-providers-really-take-anonymity-seriously-111007/ https://torrentfreak.com/which-vpn-providers-really-take-ano... Sadly, the above listing of data retention policies of various VPN providers is already out of date. For example, iPredator (from the folks at ThePirateBay) are now logging IP address in accordance with the EU data retention laws going into effect in Sweden. https://blog.ipredator.se/2012/03/the-question-of-data-retention.html https://blog.ipredator.se/2012/03/the-question-of-data-reten... The iPredator/TPB blog post is intentionally distracting and painfully vague on details about the logging they've implemented to comply with the law. (NOTE: I stumbled on the poorly named iPredator service of TPB because they offer PPTP based VPN's.) The same may or may not be true of other EU based services listed in the TorrentFreak link above. See the following for reasonably updated info: https://wiki.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/Transposition https://wiki.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/Transposition If you do any work on Computer Vision (CV) or other types of image/video analysis (Machine Learning) based on data downloaded from the Internet, you need to be extremely careful. When you have scripts/programs/spiders downloading (image/video) data for you, your never know what "kind" of data is on the other end of any link, and that data may very well be illegal! --It sucks, but this is the reality everyone lives with. If you take a step back, you'll realize how normal browsing of the Internet is really no different than running your own spider to collect data. Every link you click is a potential violation of some law.
- Malic 14y agoAssuming Google's SPDY protocol catches on wide-scale (which is likely, I believe), then SSL will be pervasive; SSL is a requirement of SPDY. At that point, most web traffic will be encrypted.