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Never. 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 trans

by jcr 14y ago

Never. 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 It's been eons since I've messed with PPTP, so I'm going to keep my (outdated) opinions mostly to myself.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.

Retric 14y ago
Plenty of things are illegal even though it's next to impossible to prevent them. EX: Insider trading, Smoking pot, large scale piracy, etc.
- jcr 14y ago
  My statements were not about preventing people from breaking laws, instead, they are about never knowing that you're breaking a law until after you have broken it. Even if a link is on/to a reputable site and ends with ".html", it could still be a link to JPG image of kiddie porn. You've just broken the law, even though you had no intention of breaking the law, and had no intention of being in possession of kiddie porn. (NOTE: Sending an image file when a HTML file is expected is possible by manipulating the MIME type sent by the web server for the ".html" extension to tell the browser it is a JPEG image. Of course, another way to do it is redirection, since by default, most browsers follow most forms of redirection.) Even if you had an automated agent (web spider) program following links, it is YOUR connection that is logged as accessing the image. If the kiddie porn image was part of some sting operation being run by law enforcement, then you're stuffed. This issue of "not knowing what you're accessing" is one of the long standing and underlying flaws in the design of the Internet, so you can be certain it won't be fixed any time soon.
  - Retric 14y ago
    The law does no work like that. You only broke the law after the conviction, up until that point it's in an undecided psudo quantum state. Due to things like mens rea http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mens_rea http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mens_rea So, for example if you buy a trunk at an estate sale that contains cocaine, open it realize it's cocaine, then call the cops. You did not break the law even though you where in possession of cocaine which is illegal. Work though some variations of this and you could literally be walking down the street with a suitcase full of cocaine and not actually be breaking the law while doing so. PS: There are a relatively small number of strict liability crimes where intent is considered irrelevant. But, extenuating circumstances still come into play.

by jcr 14y ago

Retric 14y ago

Plenty of things are illegal even though it's next to impossible to prevent them. EX: Insider trading, Smoking pot, large scale piracy, etc.

jcr 14y ago
My statements were not about preventing people from breaking laws, instead, they are about never knowing that you're breaking a law until after you have broken it. Even if a link is on/to a reputable site and ends with ".html", it could still be a link to JPG image of kiddie porn. You've just broken the law, even though you had no intention of breaking the law, and had no intention of being in possession of kiddie porn. (NOTE: Sending an image file when a HTML file is expected is possible by manipulating the MIME type sent by the web server for the ".html" extension to tell the browser it is a JPEG image. Of course, another way to do it is redirection, since by default, most browsers follow most forms of redirection.) Even if you had an automated agent (web spider) program following links, it is YOUR connection that is logged as accessing the image. If the kiddie porn image was part of some sting operation being run by law enforcement, then you're stuffed. This issue of "not knowing what you're accessing" is one of the long standing and underlying flaws in the design of the Internet, so you can be certain it won't be fixed any time soon.
- Retric 14y ago
  The law does no work like that. You only broke the law after the conviction, up until that point it's in an undecided psudo quantum state. Due to things like mens rea http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mens_rea http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mens_rea So, for example if you buy a trunk at an estate sale that contains cocaine, open it realize it's cocaine, then call the cops. You did not break the law even though you where in possession of cocaine which is illegal. Work though some variations of this and you could literally be walking down the street with a suitcase full of cocaine and not actually be breaking the law while doing so. PS: There are a relatively small number of strict liability crimes where intent is considered irrelevant. But, extenuating circumstances still come into play.