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The Going Dark initiative or ProtectEU is a Chat Control 3.0 attempt
- SV_BubbleTime 10mo agoVPN is a trust exercise, but, I’m sure if Mullvlad isn’t the best out there, they’re far from the worst.
- charcircuit 10mo agoThey are not the best because they no longer support port forwarding. Their IPs are low quality and get you flagged as suspicious.
- dr00tb 10mo agoCan recommend https://njal.la https://njal.la if you still need port forwarding.
- bossyTeacher 10mo agohow does it compare to mullvad?
- KomoD 10mo agoOne reason not to choose Njalla is that they changed their legal entity without (to my knowledge) telling anyone. THat's a bit of a red flag for me. They were incorporated as 1337 Services LLC in Nevis (the Caribbean island) and recently it suddenly changed to Njalla SRL in Costa Rica. Looks like some guy wrote a post about it where he contacted them, they said "internal restructuring, nothing to worry about" and refused to elaborate further. I know Peter Sunde (of TPB fame) founded it but I don't know if it has changed hands now.
- wkat4242 10mo agoOr proton
- newdee 10mo agoWhich VPN provider doesn’t have their addresses flagged? I know a few offer “residential” IP addresses (for quite the premium), but as I understand it, these are a bit of a grey area and are also usually shared, so usually just a matter of time until they’re banned or flagged as proxy/shared/anonymiser.
- charcircuit 10mo agoThe financial incentives for VPNs as they get bigger cause them to both put as many subscribers on the same IP as possible and to share IPs over the entire subscriber base. It's possible for a VPN to sacrifice profit to avoid being detected as easily.
- HNisCIS 10mo agoTbh between that and cgnat I'm kinda hoping that the entire ipv4 space gets sufficiently tainted that sites stop blocking by ip
- friend-monoid 10mo agoAre you expecting a public IPv4 from a VPN?
- aaomidi 10mo agoAirvpn does it
- greatquux 10mo agoYep they are great! Wireguard support on Linux too
- pteraspidomorph 10mo agoI'm happy Airvpn is rarely mentioned in mainstream vpn lists and don't typically mention them myself (sorry airvpn folks, but here's my apology) because I suspect its relative obscurity is in great part the reason it works so well. Not only reputation - it's technologically good too, supports all the payment methods, good prices, lots of exit points, no nonsense. I've been using them continuously for several years.
- zrm 10mo agoA VPN provider could easily support Port Control Protocol / NAT-PMP without giving each VPN client its own public IPv4.
- Dylan16807 10mo agoNot a whole public IPv4, just one port on it (or a couple). And the public IP should change every reconnect.
- edm0nd 10mo agoThey had to disable port forwarding due to abuse and spam iirc.
- dheera 10mo agoMullvad is one of the few that work in China today, any others? Or is it possible to run your own Mullvad server? Rolling your own L2TP/IPSec gets flagged by the China firewall these days
- endgame 10mo agoWhich other VPN providers support the range of payment methods that Mullvad does?
- IlikeKitties 10mo ago> The EU Commission and several member states are also looking for new rules on data retention. In a new ”Presidency outcome paper”, the member states discuss metadata retention: which websites you visit, and who is communicating with whom, when and how often. The ambition is “to have the broadest possible scope of application” and this time some member states also want the proposal to include VPN services.
- hdb385 10mo ago[dead]
- holoduke 10mo agoI once liked the EU. Well still do it because of the east to travel without borders. But it's leadership is something dangerous and may shape to some form of dictatorship or entity that does not serve its people. But a small minority consisting out of some large companies.
- hkpack 10mo agoI think EU will manage without you liking it. But painting its leadership as the one trying to shape dictatorship is incredible ignorant. Europe is preparing for the Russia invasion from one side, and betrayal by the US from the other. A country serving small minority of large companies is the best description of the US, not the EU.
- IlikeKitties 10mo ago> Europe is preparing for the Russia invasion from one side, and betrayal by the US from the other. Let's assume for a moment that would be true. And let's also ignore the lack of a nuclear weapons in most EU countries. How does breaking encryption for normal people help? Spies and Operatives will just use PGP and ignore these laws, because that's what spies do.
- true_religion 10mo agoMind you I don’t believe this, but the logic is if encryption is banned, then anyone using it will be easier to find like spies. Before online encryption, spies still used code books but having one in your house was essentially proof you were a spy.
- hdgvhicv 10mo agoDidn’t spies just use common books like war and peace or the bible
- hexbin010 10mo ago> Europe is preparing for the Russia invasion from one side, and betrayal by the US from the other. Are you attempting to justify ChatControl with that situation? You might need to help us out with how you arrived at that exactly
- ekjhgkejhgk 10mo agoLike, whos is pushing this shit? Who exactly is it that wants this? Which individuals?
- ImHereToVote 10mo agoThe same ones that pushed to scuttle Germany's nuclear reactors.
- NewCzech 10mo agoHow would you like your censorship wrapped? Anti-terrorism or protecting children? https://starecat.com/content/wp-content/uploads/control-of-internet-speech-how-would-you-like-this-wrapped-anti-terrorism-protect-kids.jpg https://starecat.com/content/wp-content/uploads/control-of-i...
- ori_b 10mo agoUntil people lobby for these privacy rights to be enshrined in law, this will continue to be a problem. Defeating one bad law isn't enough.
- IlikeKitties 10mo agoThere are already MANY laws in the EU and Germany for me regarding privacy. All the proposals are blatantly illegal in Germany for example. Just recently our highest court declared large scale logging of DNS request as "very likely" illegal.
- hexbin010 10mo ago> There are already MANY laws in the EU and Germany for me regarding privacy Which apply equally to the government?
- IlikeKitties 10mo agoYeah, a lot of them apply explicitly to the government. In Germany at least most privacy laws flow from Article 10 of our constitution and for example Article 8 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. Both of which have been used in the past to explicitly remove laws that violated privacy in the name of security.
- hexbin010 10mo agoGermany is definitely a standout. I was taking issue with the blanket reference to the EU The UK when it was in the EU for example had no problem basically doing whatever it liked, relying on exceptions for preventing crime and disorder. I'm sure there are other countries Or like a sibling comment about Italy, who said that the government just ignores the privacy laws
- pavlov 10mo agoGermany has a history of its government using data collected about citizens against them. Much legislation was created after WWII to try to prevent that from happening again.
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- hkpack 10mo agoTo be honest, I think VPN businesses and specifically politically charged ones like Mullvad is doing disservice for the security of the country and specifically EU in this case. I think the right course of action should be a political activism, not a technological one. Especially when the company doing it makes a fortune. The course, when one can just disengage from participating in society by sidestepping the problems by either using VPNs in terms of censorship or by using Crypto in case of regulations is very dangerous and will reinforce the worst trends. Finally such person will still have to rely on the community around for physical protection to live. So instead of speaking from the high ground, please, tell us what your solution about mass disinformation happening from US social media megacorps, Russia mass disinformation, mass recruitment of people for sabotage on critical infrastructure. Tell us, how can we keep living in free society when this freedom is being used as a leverage by forces trying to destroy your union. I just want to remind you that dismantling EU is strategic goal of the US, Russia and China. Please, give us your political solutions to the modern problems instead of earning a fortune by a performance free speech activism.
- amarcheschi 10mo agoWhat? You don't need VPNs to do anything of that, we have political parties and journalists doing the job from within already
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- IlikeKitties 10mo ago> So instead of speaking from the high ground, please, tell us what your solution about mass disinformation happening from US social media megacorps, Russia mass disinformation, mass recruitment of people for sabotage on critical infrastructure. Education. Education. Education. The only thing that ever worked. is Education. Censorship and a total surveillance state aren't an option. Why bother protecting freedom and democracy if you have to destroy freedom and democracy to do so? And in case of sabotage of critical infrastructure, the answer is three-fold: 1. Apply the law to the saboteurs. 2. Retaliate in asymmetric fashion. We can't sabotage their hospitals but we can stop buying russian oil and gas, take their money and 3. arm ukraine. > Tell us, how can we keep living in free society when this freedom is being used as a leverage by forces trying to destroy your union. Are you or have you ever been a communist? We surveived the cold war and the warsaw pact. We can survive a third rate petrol station masquerading as a state. > Please, give us your political solutions to the modern problems instead of earning a fortune by a performance free speech activism. Who is earning a fortune here?
- anura761 10mo ago[flagged]
- MangoCoffee 10mo agoHow long before the EU comes out with a social credit system like China? How long before the EU has its own version of China's Great Firewall?
- gorgoiler 10mo agoI love The Internet, it came into my life as I became an adult, I’ve watched it change the world, and I find attempts to lock it down to be abhorrent. I also grew up in a world where intelligence fieldcraft was an in-person activity where it was just about possible for one side to keep track of the other side, or at least hold some kind of leverage, counter-leverage, and counter-counter-leverage to stop the Cold War getting out of control. The internet, as well as giving us all this freedom to communicate, also gave the Controls of this world — high level intelligence officers based in their home countries but directing operations overseas — a wonderful new lever to influence, harass, and sabotage. Why burn an agent when you can find a useful idiot in a foreign country to agitate on your behalf? I sympathize with nation states’ urge to be able to see what’s going on online, but I hate the way they’re going about it. How do we balance a free Internet against a need to crack down on foreign influence?
- Xelbair 10mo ago>I sympathize with nation states’ urge to be able to see what’s going on online, but I hate the way they’re going about it. How do we balance a free Internet against a need to crack down on foreign influence? and more importantly - whose influence? how do we pick whom do we ally ourselves with and who we go against? How do we prevent such system from being abused to just entrench current powers that be, and stifle genuine opposition? If it is done behind closed doors, there's not much difference in EU becoming like Russia or China, with a coat of liberal paint instead.
- gorgoiler 10mo agoSecurity services qualitatively have as many fuckups to their name as they do successes. I was listening to a podcast last week about British undercover police fathering children with the women they were undercover with. If the position of the anti-Chat-Control people is that we should reject not just the backdoors but also — on the basis that they just can’t be trusted — the whole idea of a national, secret security service, then they should be open and say so.
- Zealotux 10mo agoIn the ancient Greek colony of Locri, any who proposed a new law would do so with a rope around their neck, if the law was voted down, they would get hanged. Food for thought.
- kgwxd 10mo agoI don't think that system would have the desired results in a world where most people have already voted to hang themselves.
- simonebrunozzi 10mo agoZaleucus [0] from Locri wrote the first law system in the 7th century BC. Might be connected to what you have shared. Today's Locri is in Calabria, a region in Italy that many consider infested with mafia-like organizations, which is of course sad, but also ironic. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zaleucus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zaleucus
- quotemstr 10mo agoOnce social trust (or assibiyah, to use Ibn Khandun's term) in a region collapses, it often returns slowly or not at all. Sadly common pattern in history. I think one could plausibly argue that in this way, Calabria never recovered from the collapse of antiquity, the Gothic wars, and generations spent as a Christian-Muslim war zone.
- zen928 10mo agoIntentionally misinformed citizens continued to charge the streets demanding "essential services" like barber shops need to be reopened and to intentionally dismantle and resist against all government protections on public safety during the pandemic (like wearing a mask during an active spreading event), literally while their grandparents and relatives slowly and painfully died on respirators in hospitals largely agreeing with the same notion of covid prevention measures being "pointless". They then attacked the institutions that provided either medical treatments or provided assistance, and continue to promote that culture. Lemmings to a cause they dont understand for a message they know is false. That is to say, there's always someone ready to make zealots die for a cause. IMO, that change would only shift in favor of the most radical extremists who see human life as expendable rather than cause anyone in power to think twice about pushing their ideologies onto masses.
- moralestapia 10mo agoSo, they succeed and repeal it a third time. What can be done to stop them from trying again and again and again until they get away with it?
- Sharlin 10mo agoNot much really, unless the EU takes a big turn to the left. Which is unfortunately not something that's likely to happen anytime soon.
- rjdj377dhabsn 10mo agoThe left? The authoritarian politicians pushing this legislation in the EU are more leftist than right.
- LtWorf 10mo agoThey're usually liberals, so right wing but they don't specifically hate homosexuals.
- blain 10mo ago> They're usually liberals The irony. Aside from that I also thought EU is more left than right wing right now. Nothing what they try to push this term of office seems right wing to me.
- LtWorf 10mo agoNo? Kaja Kallas and Ursula VDL are trying to push war with Russia…
- Sharlin 10mo agoThe EU is definitely more right than left after the last election. The Commission in particular, though it seems they're always more right-wing than the Parliament. As we speak they're watering down all sorts of regulations beneficial to the common citizen but inconvenient to the corporations, and the "moderate" right is now openly threatening to ally, or downright allying, with the far right in various right-wing matters in order to get them passed.
- in_a_society 10mo agoGDPR for thee, but not for me.
- flumpcakes 10mo agoAnd hopefully this gets voted down like all the other laws. Even if it passes, it will probably be repealed or just not enforced within some member nations. At least this is talked about and discussed... unlike in China, or Russia, or the US's own 20+-years-and-still-going-patriot act.
- ibejoeb 10mo agoA reasonable point about the discussion, but I doubt it is a meaningful one. The intention of these international agreements is that they circumvent the laws by moving data out of jurisdiction and have someone else do the surveillance, right? I have to assume that the EU is doing metadata analysis. All the talking is just about bringing it in house. On another topic, I don't know how mullvad intends to avoid compliance. "If VPNs are included, and if Going Dark becomes law, we will never spy on our customers no matter what." Saying "we can't give you logs because we don't have them" just means that they need to start logging or gtfo of the EU.
- flumpcakes 10mo agoThey'll probably take it to court in the regions within the EU where this would be illegal, for example Germany. This is kind of what I meant by this law would be ignored/repealed as it goes against member nations own laws. I would expect there would be a lot of civic push back too. This law hasn't passed before, I'm not confident it will pass this time either. The real issue here is that the EU is not good at handling band faith actors - the same law in different wrapping should not be allowed to persist.
- SiempreViernes 10mo agoIf Mullvad could bother to link to this supposed "Presidency outcome paper" that would be great, after extensive searches on Concilium and eur-lex I have no idea what that is supposed to reference. In any case here's the actual "ProtectEU" text the Comission sent on the first of April which contains most of the text Mullvad is quoting from the "presidency outcome paper": https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A52025DC0148&qid=1766353692446 https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A... As a bonus, here's input report listing the problems that are supposed to be solved: https://home-affairs.ec.europa.eu/document/download/05963640-de76-4218-82cd-e5d4d88ddf96_en?filename=HLG-background-document-21112023.pdf https://home-affairs.ec.europa.eu/document/download/05963640... This is from the introduction: > Access to this data is understood as access granted to law enforcement subject to judicial authorisation when required, in the context of criminal investigations and on a case-by-case basis. As a rule, in the cases where such judicial authorisation is necessary due to the sensitive nature of the data in question, it represents an integral part of the applicable legal and operational framework for facilitating access to this data by law enforcement. Access to data on behalf of law enforcement authorities must be achieved in full respect of data protection, privacy, and cybersecurity legislation, as well as the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) case-law on these matters and applicable standards on procedural safeguards.
- buzer 10mo agoI believe it's this one (which is likely leaked document as that document number isn't publicly accessible): https://docs.reclaimthenet.org/eu-data-retention-presidency-outcome-paper.pdf https://docs.reclaimthenet.org/eu-data-retention-presidency-... There's also this one: https://data.consilium.europa.eu/doc/document/WK-11640-2025-INIT/en/pdf https://data.consilium.europa.eu/doc/document/WK-11640-2025-... The first one appears to be the result of the of the second which called member states to submit their opinions.
- kkfx 10mo agoWell... Until people will react protecting their own interests we will only go in a death spiral. Only recently have we witnessed, particularly in the EU but also in the US and Canada, the blocking of personal bank accounts of individuals who were simply "inconvenient" to the ruling class, from Wikileaks to OnlyFans creators, Francesca Albanese, Frédéric Baldan, Jacques Baud, and various players in the crypto world, all without trial, without any crime committed, just unwelcome. This makes it clear that for Democracy to exist, a balance of power is needed, including internal balance, which requires that the population remains outside the potential control of the State to preserve a significant degree of freedom. Privacy is one of these fundamental freedoms, like freedom of speech, because the ideas circulating can be dangerous, but it is far more dangerous to have someone with the power to prevent ideas and news from circulating.
- yoan9224 10mo agoThe cycle of proposing the same surveillance legislation under different names is exhausting. Chat Control, ProtectEU, Going Dark - same invasive proposals, different branding. What's particularly concerning is the metadata retention scope: "which websites you visit, and who is communicating with whom, when and how often" with "the broadest possible scope of application" including VPN services. This isn't about protecting children or fighting terrorism anymore - it's about normalizing mass surveillance through legislative attrition. Keep proposing it until opposition fatigues and it slips through. The only sustainable solution is enshrining privacy rights into constitutional law with penalties for repeated attempts to circumvent them. Otherwise we'll be fighting Chat Control 4.0, 5.0, 6.0 forever.
- shevy-java 10mo ago> The only sustainable solution is enshrining privacy rights into constitutional law with penalties for repeated attempts to circumvent them. Yeah I also thought about this. Democracy needs some basic rules. Lobbyists try to not only get their laws into effect but undermine the democratic process.
- SiempreViernes 10mo agoPretty sure Google and meta are the ones that normalised mass surveillance...
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- PopePompus 10mo agoMass surveillance by corporations, bad as it is, is less of a threat than mass surveillance by the government. Google can't put you in prison.
- troyvit 10mo agoThey can't put you in jail, but they will often happily sell your data to the government so that they can put you in jail [1], and by holding the data they are now open to subpoenas anyway. Additionally, making surveillance by corporations the norm they've eroded everybody's reasonable expectation of privacy, which is the standard by which U.S. courts judge if surveillance has gone too far. Now that we're all used to this level of corporate surveillance we won't blink when the government does it too. IOW if corporations weren't hoarding this data governments would have a much harder time securing it. [1] https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/us-government-buys-data-americans-little-oversight-report-finds-rcna89035 https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/us-government-buys-dat...
- braiamp 10mo agoThe way to stop it is to introduce a law that does exactly the opposite: that encrypted communication is always protected and should always be protected and that no legislation shall be introduced that weakens these technical guarantees. That way, it essentially has to do a two step solution, of repealing the previous law that prohibits it, and then introducing their own.
- userbinator 10mo agoUnfortunately the EU has no 2nd Amendment, or they could go the route of classifying encryption as a munition.
- Jigsy 10mo agoThe problem with "child abuse" is that some countries classify drawing things as "child abuse," or "rape," or "animal abuse." (Something I don't agree with.) I mentioned in another thread a few weeks back that I got raided by the British police last February for "uploading/downloading "illegal" anime artwork on one of the (anime) artwork websites we're criminally investigating." (Yes, the British police are criminally investigating artwork websites, and I'm still under investigation at the time of writing this.) Even if somehow the government were able to catch everybody who abuse children, take photos and upload them to sites on Tor, they can classify anything they like as "child abuse" in order to justify survillancing people and restricting further freedoms. What's even sadder is that people don't care about safety. They care about the illusion of safety. As long as people have the illusion that they're being kept safe - the farce known as the Online Safety Bill being a great example - they'll tolerate any injustice. Honestly, I'd recommend downloading software like Signal, Session, VeraCrypt, etc. as well as making a Linux USB stick now (especially since countries like the UK wants Red Star OS levels of snooping) because this is honestly going to get much, much worse...
- numlock86 10mo ago> this is honestly going to get much worse Just like with Brexit, the majority of UK's population voted (and will keep voting) for this.
- habinero 10mo agoI was curious and searched to find more context and ... uh, no offense but what on earth have you been doing that you've been tangling with the law over CSAM for at least four years?
- Jigsy 10mo agoWatching anime, looking at anime artwork, reading manga since 2006. Why else would you criminally investigate artwork websites if your aim is not to arrest artists and those who look at their artwork? (And eventually use them as an excuse to show why encryption is evil, and how "evil artists" could be caught more easily if it was backdoored.) If you're looking for news, there won't be any yet as, as I said, I'm still under investigation.
- shevy-java 10mo agoThese lobbyists will never give up. This is one reason why the EU in its current form simply does not work.
- bfkwlfkjf 10mo agoCan we see the names of these people?
- xinayder 10mo agoWell, Chat Control was approved by the Council, so I can't wait for the time Going Dark is also approved by ot. EU, a democracy idol, now turning into a fascism idol.
- AlanYx 10mo agoI'm not criticizing the content of this post, but the author is likely wrong about this specific initiative being called "Going Dark". "Going Dark" has been the umbrella term various worldwide intelligence orgs have been using since the mid-2010s to describe their lack of access to encrypted communications. For example, here's FBI Director James Comey using the term in 2014: https://www.brookings.edu/articles/watch-fbi-director-james-comey-on-technology-law-enforcement-and-going-dark/ https://www.brookings.edu/articles/watch-fbi-director-james-... It's a coordinated broad branding effort by intelligence agencies across the west, but I doubt that this specific EU initiative itself has ever been called "Going Dark" even internally.
- p0w3n3d 10mo agoThey're doing it so often now. We should throw them away. Too bad they haven't been elected
- TehCorwiz 10mo agoThere’s a common theme in the US to declare the existence of gay and trans people to be child abuse. Yes, existence. Like, telling a child gay people exist if they ask. But the whole “think of the children” schlock has always been a power grab. Otherwise we’d start by eliminating child poverty which is a huge factor in the level of actual abuse they receive.
- habbage 10mo ago[flagged]
- senorqa 10mo agoI’m puzzled by the limited opposition from businesses regarding government attempts to access encrypted communications. Granting governments easy access—which inevitably leads to uncontrolled monitoring—compromises a company’s most valuable asset: its privacy. This would effectively hand over the keys to their operations, exposing them to security breaches, stifling growth potential, limiting access to competitive markets, and ultimately, jeopardizing company ownership. Corrupt officials could exploit this access to manipulate markets, facilitate insider trading, sabotage business plans, and even plant fabricated evidence within company communications and systems, leading to potential takeover and imprisonment of owners.
- solidsnack9000 10mo agoIt was not that long ago, that most countries regulated products, communications, food, and many other things, even arms & munitions, very, very lightly. In the UK in 1903, a law was passed prohibiting the sale of pistols to children. The UK is a country where adults who have served in the military have a hard time buying a pistol today. From 1900 onwards, the scope of safety regulation greatly expanded, and the state apparatus necessary to make that regulation stick also expanded. Different countries have gone in different directions with it. The US has a lot less safety than many other countries, but our regulations and regulatory apparatus greatly expanded, too. It's easy to sell safety to voters and with improving technology and information systems, more and more safety was possible. We are probably approaching a local maxima of some kind in our approach to safety; or maybe we just suffer from a maniacal focus on it. Legislators are ever more willing to set aside the fundamental rights in the name of protecting the vulnerable from harm.