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Mozilla to UK regulators: VPNs are essential privacy and security tools
- msuniverse2026 5mo agoUK regulators are just hearing another excuse for a loicense.
- anonymous2024 5mo agoAnd also VPNs are tools to open doors in the minefield of legislations that they need to create to improve the incoming of some business, not of the people that voted for them.
- egamirorrim 5mo agoThe UK gov needs to sod off with all this 1984 BS
- ifwinterco 5mo agoUK is not and has never been a free society, UK elites have an authoritarian streak. Historically they were fairly smart at doing it subtly but the mask slipped during Covid and they never really put it back on. Also - outside the HN bubble this stuff isn’t even unpopular. Normies supported covid lockdowns and they don’t want their kids watching porn either. The people yearn to be ruled and nannied
- budududuroiu 5mo agoI've heard people on HN make the argument that a blanket ban is better because their kids won't feel it's unfair that only their family implements strict internet blocks
- itsnotchow54 5mo ago[dead]
- pibaker 5mo ago> Also - outside the HN bubble this stuff isn’t even unpopular. This stuff wasn't unpopular on HN until it actually happened. Almost every submission on HN about social media had people calling for similar regulations or even outright bans. It was not until they actually started asking for IDs when HNers realized what they really wanted to achieve with these laws.
- wqaatwt 5mo agoThere is a huge difference between supporting the regulation of algorithmic feeds and other dark patterns and a direct attack on personal privacy.
- joe_mamba 5mo ago>There is a huge difference between supporting the regulation of algorithmic feeds and other dark patterns and a direct attack on personal privacy. Normies don't see the difference and politicians don't want there to be a difference. Normies want security and politicians will offer it wrapped in surveilance.
- iLoveOncall 5mo ago> VPNs are essential privacy tools Does Mozilla not understand that this is the exact reason why the UK wants to forbid them?
- reddalo 5mo agoAnd that's also the reason why they introduced "age verification". It's not age verification, they couldn't care less about children. Age verification is just mass surveillance under a fake name.
- ogogmad 5mo ago[flagged]
- auggierose 5mo agoJust because you are paranoid doesn't mean they aren't after you.
- eipi10_hn 5mo agoYour comment is psychotic too.
- gambiting 5mo agoYeah except that Ofcom(the UK communications regulator) already said that the main goal of the Online Safety Act isn't about protecting children, it's about "controlling online discourse". They dropped that pretense literally one day after the act got passed. >>I am getting very intolerant of these conspiratorial comments Weird thing to brag about, but sure.
- delusional 5mo agoWould you mind linking to where you got that "controlling online discourse" quote. I am not able to find anything like that.
- robotswantdata 5mo ago1984 was meant to be a warning, not the UK’s digital infrastructure roadmap
- IndianAISupport 5mo ago[flagged]
- Forgeties79 5mo agoWhat?
- ChrisRR 5mo agoIt's a racism dogwhistle. Just ignore it
- Forgeties79 5mo agoIt was more incredulous than anything don’t worry
- IshKebab 5mo ago[flagged]
- aniviacat 5mo agoTimes would be tough if we could only express thoughts noone thought before.
- speedgoose 5mo agoWhile their arguments are sound, Perhaps Mozilla should disclose in this document that they are also a VPN reseller.
- rvnx 5mo agoIt would sound like an advertisement though, so in some way it’s better they don’t mention it
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- foldr 5mo agoIt’s better to hide conflicts of interest? (Edit: I don’t disagree with Mozilla’s position, but failure to declare an obvious conflict of interest undermines their credibility.)
- Izmaki 5mo agoBy your logic it's also better if Ray-Ban and Oakley don't publicly state that UV light is dangerous and that people should use sunglasses if outside. That sounds silly.
- foldr 5mo agoI said that they should have declared the conflict of interest, not that they shouldn't have made the statement.
- Forgeties79 5mo agoIt’s in the document they link pretty early on. You can argue they could make it more obvious in the blog I guess but that’s flimsy IMO and calling it hidden isn’t accurate
- foldr 5mo ago
- rvnx 5mo agoInteresting that they mention the UK but forget that the EU also wants to protect the kids by banning VPNs
- violin220 5mo ago[dead]
- SiempreViernes 5mo agoSo your strategy when you are trying to change someones mind is to mention a lot of other people think like the mind you are trying to change? Could you explain what is the theory behind that?
- windowliker 5mo agoThis blog post is highlighting their specific contribution to the UK government's open consultation[1], not a general call for sanity. There's a link to their open letter at the end of the piece. No doubt they will write other authorities when the need arises. [1] https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/growing-up-in-the-online-world-a-national-consultation https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/growing-up-in-th...
- gib444 5mo agoThat would be interesting if the UK were still in the EU, no?
- borzi 5mo agoThat's why the government wants to get rid of them.
- itsnotchow54 5mo ago[dead]
- globular-toast 5mo agoThis is a fairly difficult problem. I think the internet should be for adults only, like many other things. But we've fucked up by giving children internet access and it's going to be hard to undo it. I think rather than fighting these measures we need to work on alternatives because keeping children off the internet is a good idea, we just need to implement it in a good way. What about just banning phones for children? Could we ever make that work? It would be like cigarette bans except we now have 5 year olds addicted to tobacco and addict parents who don't want to make them go cold turkey. Public libraries and schools can be used for genuine research purposes, but not addictive shit. And implemented ad blockers at the network level.
- iLoveOncall 5mo agoOr we could realize that there are already 2 generations that grew while having access to the internet and turned out perfectly fine?
- ben_w 5mo agoWe are many things, but "fine" isn't one of them. How much the problems today are due to, rather than coincidental with, the internet, is a much more difficult thing to discern.
- IshKebab 5mo agoWe are fine. You're just falling for the "*this" generation is different" fallacy. Look up some history if you think previous generations had it all sorted until the nasty internet came along and corrupted us.
- ben_w 5mo agoI'm not saying past generations were fine. Every generation having problems doesn't mean the most recent ones don't. What makes problems into disasters is denying that there is a problem until it is too late. Past generations mostly tried (with varying success) to fix the problems in their world. Sometimes the past generations' solutions are good, like much of the world mandating 40 hour work weeks and public pensions and workplace health and safety and so on; other times even when the problem is real, the solutions are worse, like the US experience with prohibition. But when problems get ignored, you get stuff like leaded gasoline, cigarettes, and asbestos being everywhere, the Irish potato famine, the dissolution of the USSR, and the 2007 global financial crisis. Even if AI doesn't do what it promises, the internet brings with it even more globalisation, cheap labour that undercuts any rich nation for jobs which can be done on a computer (which we've already seen examples of, not just with coding but also call centres). Even if Musk's promised about Optimus remain as unfulfilled as whichever version of full-self-driving just got made obsolete, a remote-controlled android does much the same for manual labour. And the internet does enable much weirder warfare: our governments can blame hacks on whoever they like, but there is often no dramatic photo of something burning as a result, just a diffuse degradation of economic performance from fully automated scams and blackmails. And that's without any questions about demographic shift and who pays for the current generation's pensions when they retire, and if this has anything to do with free porn and the state of online dating apps. And without personalised propaganda. Without your home surveillance system (or robot vacuum cleaner) being turned against you by hacks only possible from cheap ubiquitous internet. Without any questions about if doomscrolling does or doesn't induce psychological problems, if sexual deepfakes are worse than schoolyard rumours, or if AI is sopping kids from learning as cheating is easier.
- violin220 5mo ago[dead]
- aboardRat4 5mo agoDidn't people make kinda that huge and broad movement too terminate PIPA and SOPA? Could you, my wonderful Western friends, do that again? I mean, all of it is even on video and largely on YouTube.
- ayashko 5mo agoSomething I learned just recently—the Australian government (surprisingly!) actually recommends VPN usage, they even provide a bit of a guide and how to; https://beconnected.esafety.gov.au/topic-library/advanced-online-security/protecting-your-privacy-online https://beconnected.esafety.gov.au/topic-library/advanced-on...
- monk_grilla 5mo agoThat’s funny, I wonder if they might remove it since it is a common way for people to circumvent the ID requirement laws for certain sites.
- hiisukun 5mo agoThey probably should at least update it -- I don't think a government should recommend free VPN services. Too many of them are a form of botnet, malware, ddos, etc.
- consp 5mo agoMain source of residential ip's you can "rent"?
- miki123211 5mo agoAnd most people don't even need them any more. The days of free WiFi hotspots being able to easily steal your credentials are long gone.
- MajorTakeaway 5mo agoThey never went away, just from your mind. Look at cheap xfinity wifi hotspots everywhere that still steal your credentials in the form of phone number and email address. The bar I went to last night has a free wifi hotspot like every establishment ever. Misinformation smells like your own farts, disgusting to everyone but you.
- 5mo ago
- badgersnake 5mo agoThe UK government does whatever Meta tells them to do. We tax cigarettes because they’re bad for you. Let’s tax algorithmic news feeds.
- canbus 5mo agoAnd who tells Meta what to do?
- badgersnake 5mo agoThey do what makes money, or what they think will make money.
- tim333 5mo agoI'm curious what Meta has changed UK policy wise? I'm a Brit and not heard of such policy changes.
- lyu07282 5mo agohttps://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c20qwz9xzr9o https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c20qwz9xzr9o https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/reddit-user-uncovers-behind-meta-154717384.html https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/reddit-user-uncovers-beh... Basically Meta wants age verification done by devices, the device makers (apple, google) want it on the platform, two sides who don't want the responsibility. On the other side are hundreds of billions invested in companies that offer age verification to websites (persona, etc.). All of these monied interests generate billions into lobbying/corruption efforts that drive all the legislation across the western liberal "democracies" rn.
- tim333 5mo ago[dead]
- usr1106 5mo agoUser to Mozilla: Cannot read your statement with a variant of your own browser because you have it "protected" by an internet gatekeeper.
- HDBaseT 5mo agoAre you referring to Cloudflare? I am using a fork of Firefox and it works perfectly fine.
- usr1106 5mo agoYes, Cloudflare. It says: Your browser is not supported. Use another browser or upgrade. I would upgrade if the vendor of this weaker embedded device provided something... I know Cloudflare works fine on Firefox desktops and probably also on Android.
- acd 5mo agoActually with data fusion VPN does not fix privacy. Ad networks does data fusion of Javascript browser finger print. So you are de cloaked any way on a VPN
- 867-5309 5mo agomost vpns block ads
- pretzel5297 5mo agonot if the fingerprint code is coming from the first party server which is the case for most modern malware.
- fartfeatures 5mo agoYou absolutely should not be using the same browser for general browsing and VPN based browsing. Check out Mullvad Browser, based on Tor Browser but without Tor.
- Havoc 5mo agoI hear the UK regulator did want to respond but Mozilla office doesn't have a fax machine. So the grandpas in charge of regulating modern tech just took a nap instead
- cryo32 5mo agoI have seen some of the inside of this and it's not quite as clear cut. One side of this is driven by a bunch of not too reputable think tanks behind the scenes who persuaded a couple of fringe academics to agree with them and push for it via the civil service. The government is taking bad, paid for advice. I don't know what the agenda is there but there is one and I reckon it's commercial. Probably a consortium of businesses wanting to create a market they can get into. However the security services do not agree with the government or the think tanks and actually promote advice contrary to the regulators. They will ultimately win. Attacking the regulators and revealing who is behind all this is what we should be doing.
- gib444 5mo ago> They will ultimately win. Sorry, who will win?
- ktallett 5mo agoThis comment is a little unclear. However no matter what the government or security services want, they won't be able to stop people who want to use VPN or End to end encryption. Nothing would ever change in that regard.
- cryo32 5mo agoThe technology bit doesn't really matter though. The real problem is that the legislation would bring the power to prosecute people who use them or use it against them. The security services aren't having any of that shit because it puts their position at risk both from the front-facing side and recommendations and guidance issued and from their own operations.
- ktallett 5mo agoThe power to prosecute and the actual ability to prosecute are two different things. They currently can't prosecute CSAM offences nor piracy due to capacity. It won't happen.
- alisideas 5mo ago[flagged]
- pretzel5297 5mo ago[flagged]
- b65e8bee43c2ed0 5mo ago[flagged]
- Insimwytim 5mo agoThis wikipedia article is a great example of degenerate propaganda, that permeates anything historical/political on wikipedia. It doesn't even worth trying to correct, since correcting would imply that it has some worthy material, which it doesn't.
- b65e8bee43c2ed0 5mo agowhile I certainly agree that wikipedia is full of propaganda written by volunteer degenerates and paid shills, I'm not quite sure how is that relevant to this particular article. the amount of tangible evidence of that particular Soviet propaganda campaign is overwhelming. that name is still notorious there.
- abc123abc123 5mo agoThis is the way! It is frightening how eagerly parents want to give up freedom for everyone, in return for not having to care about their offspring and the illusion of 100% safety. I think the authoritarian trend accelerated during corona. Our western political nobility got a real taste for power, and they have not been able to free themselves from that afrodisiac ever since. Therefore chat control, 1, 2, 3, and when that didn't go as planned... lo and behold... age verification, and that of course needs control over vpn, and encryption, and there we go... chat control slipped in through the back door. Soon we can no longer criticize china if this keeps up.
- jermaustin1 5mo ago> It is frightening how eagerly parents want to give up ... every aspect of parenting.
- charcircuit 5mo agoIt should be possible for VPNs to only give UK customers UK exit nodes so that sites can still properly enforce the law. Same thing with having VPNs that ban explicit sites. It's not an all or nothing thing.
- Chance-Device 5mo agoI think this is a genuinely difficult problem that happens to look exactly like what you’d need for extended surveillance. When I think about it seriously, I end up coming up with the idea of a whitelist enforced on device for local accounts used by children. This would probably block most of the internet, and allow access only to sites that are validated as being safe. This would put a lot of pressure on sites and service providers to ensure safety, such as children-only walled gardens within their broader services. We already have piecemeal attempts at something like this through on device private age restriction software, but it’s not organised at the state level, and I think it’s not effective enough as a result. If legally enforced it could be made into a pretty effective system that would give adults freedom and anonymity and provide safety for children, while pushing the costs of child safety onto the platforms, which is where it belongs. If you want to cater to children, prove that you can make it on to the whitelist. Otherwise that’s an audience you’re just not able to access.
- rileymat2 5mo agoThere are already whitelisting solutions that can be installed on devices controlled by parents.
- amiga386 5mo ago... that don't need the identity of the parents to work. Nor do these devices require the identity of non-parents who will never enable the childproofing mode Nor does legislation invert the burden of proof and require the device's manufacturer obtain and store identity documents just to use the devices, otherwise it must restrict all access to a small handful of "kid safe" actions. These aren't "child safety" laws, they're "adult anonymity eradication" laws
- Chance-Device 5mo agoThat don’t really work because this isn’t a nation state level enforced system, and realistically the only state that can force such a thing is the US. If they worked, we wouldn’t be here having this discussion.
- deleted 5mo ago
- JumpCrisscross 5mo agoIs the charitable reading of whatever’s going on in Europe right now that European states don’t believe they can hold American tech giants accountable to their laws? I genuinely don’t see why a law banning under-14 year olds from social media wouldn’t be the first step.
- ryandrake 5mo agoBecause it’s not a good idea, everyone else becomes inconvenienced and/or subject to spyware just to arbitrarily age-limit something that doesn’t have to be age limited, and despite that inconvenience, it will inevitably be worked around by motivated 13 year olds.
- JumpCrisscross 5mo ago> to arbitrarily age-limit something that doesn’t have to be age limited There is evidence of a growing consensus that this does have to be age limited. Both in the research and in voter polls. (I personally believe in it.) > it will inevitably be worked around by motivated 13 year olds The same goes for liquor and cigarette laws. They're still of net benefit.
- foldr 5mo agoThis isn't only happening in Europe: https://ondato.com/blog/florida-age-verification-law/ https://ondato.com/blog/florida-age-verification-law/ The real answer to what's going on is one that HN doesn't like to consider. It's simply that a lot of people in a lot of countries are worried about what children are able to access on the internet and want the government to help restrict it. I don't support these sorts of restrictions. However, HN seems completely unable to have a sensible discussion about them because most posters are convinced that this is all part of some kind of sinister authoritarian scheme. In reality, it's just some bad legislation pushed by various people who largely have good motives, and who are concerned about something that is a real problem. The bad legislation should be opposed. In order to do so effectively, we have to address the actual concerns driving it, rather than railing ineffectually against a largely imaginary authoritarian conspiracy.
- jonathanstrange 5mo agoIt's worth pointing out that some people under some circumstances need to use VPNs. For example, timestamp.apple.com stalls when I call it from my machine, so I cannot sign any executables for macOS. When I use a VPN that changes my IP number, signing and notarizing works perfectly fine. My CI chain would literally not work without a VPN.
- braiamp 5mo agoI love how the comments miss that the problem these laws address deserve addressing, but from the producers side: making safe products for the public. This specific solution is fashioned after tobacco and alcohol regulation, which was never primarily about parental supervision, it's about what can be sold and how. And in public health we'd want everyone moving away from both not just kids. The boneheadness of age verification is that unlike tobacco and alcohol, where the best we can do is restrict access, online harm can actually be fixed at the root by regulating what these services are allowed to do to users in the first place.
- phatfish 5mo agoThe issue is, to regulate the service Meta (or whoever) provides, they have to age gate anyway. Unless the service is child friendly for all users. Which would mean; follow and friend limits, usage limits, blackout periods after 9pm, only seeing posts from friends, no algorithmic "time line". That sort of thing. That regulation would be orders of magnitude more difficult to implement. Just look at the malicious compliance the cookie regulations created, that was a single modal. Better to just ban it for under 16s. That might happen before my kids are old enough to be fully exploited.
- rileymat2 5mo agoIt is unclear to me what VPNs have to do with the conversation with respect to age gating. If a government has the ability to fine content providers for providing content to its citizens, why accept IP verification is good enough to determine the user’s jurisdiction and not fine them anyway for providing the content?
- coldtea 5mo agoThe regulators don't want you to have neither privacy nor security (from them).
- zkmon 5mo agoUSA entities tend to think that terms like "privacy", "security" have same meanings and assumptions across the globe, and that the USA laws are universal. Maybe they also think that entire world is just as dumb or dumber than USA. For a start, you should consider this fact: Privacy for a bad actor goes directly against the security for citizens and good actors. So when you talk about privacy you are making an assumption that it is contributing to safety. But for whom? Bad actors or good actors? Without such qualification, you are just talking lofy-sounding but meaningless ideals.
- aboardRat4 5mo agoIf you don't like privacy, publish your bank card number and cvv in response to this message.
- zkmon 5mo agoYou misunderstood. When I say privacy I was referring to hiding things from authorities, not from other citizens. Every power that authorities are entrusted with, is direct result forfeiting of privacy or freedom by citizens. That's the definition of a nation. You can have 100% privacy and freedom if you are stateless. But when you wish for the benefits of being a citizen, it comes at the cost of privacy and freedom.
- luke727 5mo agoI think that's a silly argument, but even if we accept it at face value 1) VPN usage is difficult to detect and 2) bad actors are still going to use VPNs. This line of thinking removes privacy from good actors while doing nothing to address security concerns from bad actors.
- SwtCyber 5mo agoI agree that privacy and security are not identical, and that bad actors can benefit from privacy tools too. But I don't think that makes privacy a "lofty but meaningless" ideal
- Nasrudith 5mo agoThere isn't qualification for a reason - it doesn't fucking matter when it is both or neither. You might as well further your Dunning-Krueger by complaining that the US failed to develop bullets that only hurt bad people!
- mr-wendel 5mo agoHere is my beef. I'm pro-VPN. The ability to gain more control over who can track your online communication is a net-positive to me, personally and philosophically. However, I can't justify their existence from a utilitarian perspective. Practically speaking, when I look at the actual number of people affected by VPN I estimate that: - Very low: Protecting political activists and dissidents - Low: Circumvention of overzealous blocking and surveillance - Low-to-Medium: Hiding abusive and malicious behavior - Medium: Additional layers of trust and network security (mostly business related, which makes it tangental to the consumer VPN market) - VERY High: Enabling piracy and avoiding geo-content restrictions (no judgment on good-vs-bad, just asserting magnitude) I believe that management at VPN companies are extremely pro-consumer protection (if only because their cash flows depend on this). I absolutely trust the system and network administrators. They don't want to track or look at the data flows because the odds of seeing something nasty is quite high. I have a fair amount of professional industry experience to back this up. So... conundrum! If I take the position that piracy-related stuff isn't a net drag and that business VPN use is fundamentally a separate beast, VPNs in this context are hard to justify.
- SwtCyber 5mo agoAge-gating VPNs fails, becausw it probably won't stop determined piracy or abuse, but it will make privacy tools feel abnormal, regulated, and less available to ordinary users and families
- avazhi 5mo agoThat VPNs are undoubtedly essential privacy and security tools is precisely the problem the UK government has with them.
- azalemeth 5mo agoIt is perhaps worth highlighting that Mozilla has done this in response to a specific UK government consultation [1] all about "growing up in the online world", which has, buried about 30 pages deep, a specific question about age-gating VPNs and similar technologies. As far as I can tell, there is no requirement to be a UK citizen to answer this – if you are, were, or could be resident in the UK I urge you to fill it out and help provide a voice of reason... [1] https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/growing-up-in-the-online-world-a-national-consultation https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/growing-up-in-th...
- SwtCyber 5mo agoI think better enforcement against harmful platform behavior and better digital literacy would do more without normalizing surveillance as the default
- jiaosdjf 5mo agoI just don't accept any ban on VPNs, I will just be a criminal. I'm not fighting for a country I'm not allowed to wave the flag of and I'm not respecting any digital safety laws that simply do not apply to me because I am not a child. I will provision my own infra if thats what it takes, I simply don't care. Fuck this country.
- wormius 5mo agoHas Google made a statement like this? I guess since I complain about Mozilla a lot for their past 5-10 years (minimum) of poor management decisions, I should give them their due when they do come out with a statement of support on our rights.
- palata 5mo ago> Rather than age-gating technologies like VPNs, we believe that regulators should address the root causes of online harm by holding platforms to account Honest question: if you tell Pornhub "now you will be fined heavily if you let 10-year old kids access porn", won't Pornhub implement some kind of age verification? How else would the platform "address the root cause"?
- iamalizard 5mo agoThe easiest, and the fairest way in my opinion, is to realize parents can and should be responsible for what their children read. Just like you wouldn't give your kid access to your BDSM porn magazines from the 80s, you shouldn't let him online without supervision. Other than that, there is no "online harm". No root cause of anything that would need to be addressed, no problems whatsoever. It's just information passing through from one person to another. Laws like age verification will just push kids to even weirder corners of the internet. When will 4chan or motherless implement age verification? On pornhub you see vanilla porn on the front page. On 4chan or motherless you see CP (AI, but still), (fake) rape or (fake) murders. And there are many more sites like those.
- palata 5mo agoI believe that it is possible to compromise. Of course, the parents must play their role. But it doesn't mean that it should be legal to publish porn ads to kids, and hope that the parents install an ad blocker, does it? I don't think we can (and I don't think we should) completely block porn from the Internet. But I could imagine that privacy-preserving age verification on Pornhub could make it slightly less accessible to kids (even it if is by opening a link without knowing what it is). I wouldn't block VPNs though: if someone is able to access Pornhub with a VPN through a country that doesn't mandate age verification, then they will be able to access porn anyway. And then there is not only porn. To me the value of age verification is really to block kids from accessing social media. And again, no need to block VPNs there: it just has to be less accessible to kids. I don't believe that most kids will get a VPN to access social media. Kids are on social media because kids are on social media, we just need to break the network effect.
- 5mo ago
- tim333 5mo agoSo far age gating VPNs is just a possibility they are considering, not actual policy. I just went on the feedback page to ask they don't do it - it'd be a pain for me.
- notepad0x90 5mo agoYou can't ever win this argument against the public and the powers that be by staking it all on "but privacy is important, don't you like privacy?". That's what they keep reducing it to. They're also making it a false dichotomy of sorts, but in reality it's a gradient of possibilities. For example, VPNs aren't like Tor in that they can't really resist "NSA" level global wiretap monitoring in any meaningful way. Or even ISP-level data-analysis driven investigations. It's also important to correlate any privacy protections VPNs provide, with a real-world pre-internet equivalent. paper mail for example has always been subject to Mitm by the authorities. It is possible to divulge who visited what site, and at what time, and only directly to the authorities, and make that disclosure public (after gag orders expire, if any are issued). You can use VPNs for privacy against all sorts of creepy eyes, but your local government being considered one of those hostile actors is the threat model that's under attack here. I would argue for example that the pre-internet equivalent would be two people chatting in the privacy of one of their homes. A bit of a stretch, but alright. But in that there must be the element that the two persons are able to identify each other positively. If one of them is harmed by the other, the victim can identify the attacker to the authorities and pursue justice. How can that be done with VPNs? If middle-actors can't snoop, then can logs on both ends positively identify the other party? Was there a common way pre-internet, where people anonymously gathered and discussed things, with capability to harm each other, but without the authorities being able to do anything about it after the fact? If the authorities are able to gain access to a private key, or some other proof of possession of one end of the connection, can the VPN provider, the network, or the protocol disclose the identity of the source of traffic on the other end? I'm only making these arguments to point out how nuanced the topic is. The false dichotomy of all-or-nothing for VPNs is silly. this is moving towards an outright ban of VPNs with criminal consequence, and with that all other similar tech (including Tor) and privacy measures go down the toilet. Would you rather have that or propose a nuanced compromise one jurisdiction at a time? I get this is just PR for Mozilla though.
- lisagela 5mo ago[dead]
- grougnax 5mo agoUK regulators will ban Mozilla Firefox, then
- jaspervanderee 5mo ago"Regulators". Think about what that means. It's essentially a mechanism to stop the free market of exchange which is detrimental to the debt based system we live in. To stop this, everything you do has to be tracked and no privacy is allowed.
- chris_explicare 5mo ago[flagged]