On Sept. 11, Michigan representatives proposed an internet content ban bill unlike any of the others we’ve seen: This particularly far-reaching legislation would ban not only many types of online content, but also the ability to legally use any VPN.
The bill, called the Anticorruption of Public Morals Act and advanced by six Republican representatives, would ban a wide variety of adult content online, ranging from ASMR and adult manga to AI content and any depiction of transgender people. It also seeks to ban all use of VPNs, foreign or US-produced.
Main issue I have with this article, and a lot of articles on this topic, is it doesn’t address the issue of youth access to porn. I think any semi-intelligent person knows this is a parenting issue, but unfortunately that cat’s out of the bag, thanks to the right. “Proliferation of porn” is the '90s crime scare (that never really died) all over again. If a politician or industry expert is speaking against bills like this, their talking points have to include:
- Privacy-respecting alternatives that promise parents that their precious babies won’t be able to access that horrible dangerous porn! (I don’t argue that porn can’t be dangerous, but this is yet another disingenuous right-wing culture (holy) war)
- Addressing that vagueness in the bill sets up the government as morality police (it’s right there in the title of the bill, FFS), and NOBODY in a “free” country should ever want that.
- Stop saying it can be bypassed with technology. The VPN ban in this bill is a reaction to talking points like that.
- Recognize and call out that this has nothing to do with protecting children and everything to do with a religious minority imposing its will on the rest of the country (plenty of recent examples to pull from here).
Unfortunately this is becoming enough of “A Thing” that the left is going to have to, once again, be seen doing “something” about it. So they have to thread a needle of “protecting kids,” while respecting the privacy of their parents who want their kids protected and want to look at porn, and protecting businesses that require secure communications.
Banning VPNs would be an unmitigated disaster and anyone who suggests that it’s a good idea has absolutely no idea what they’re talking about and should never be allowed to make tech policy again because they are a massive idiot.
Businesses, institutions, and even the government itself all require the use of VPNs to remain secure. VPNs are vital to functioning IT infrastructure everywhere.
Additionally, such a move wouldn’t even stop people from accessing porn (which isn’t even what VPNs are for), all it would really do is break IT security everywhere.
You’re right. Sadly, this have no bearing on the people actually deciding federal laws in the US, if I am to trust the news cycle from the last 10 or so months.
The damage that would stem from such things is guaranteed to span far and large :(
The problem is that influencers have shilled stupid VPN services so much that even legislatures think they know what they are and think the primary use for the technology is circumvention and privacy.
They have no idea about all the IPsec tunnels providing site-to-site VPNs for all their businesses. Or how VPN protocols like GRE, which while providing no security on their own, are still very useful for tunneling protocols through different network stacks.
I mean. They’d only enforce the ban on VPN providers that don’t provide logs to the government. I get what you mean from a technology standpoint. But, in actual implementation of the law it would do exactly what they want. They’re not gonna ban your work VPN. They just want to track what everyone is doing online.
That in itself introduces numerous security problems, still incredibly stupid and all this surveillance data makes for a hacker goldmine. Not like governments have a great IT security track record.
It’s not government. It’s about passing tech infrastructure entirely into the hands of the tech Oligarchs. Forcing VPN companies to sell or integrate Palantir/CIA/FBI backends in order to keep operating in the US.
You’re thinking too much about how the legislation is worded. It doesn’t matter when the actual implementation will just be to increase the ability for tech oligarchs to spy on all citizens. That’s the material goal. Your security doesn’t matter. The oligarchs will implement it to protect their own security and monopoly on data. That’s it. That’s all that this is meant to do. The old fucks in the legislative branch don’t have to actually understand it or write that down. They will just pass it off to tech companies to implement how they see fit. And enforce it on providers when they are told to by the Oligarchs. It’s not smart. It doesn’t have to be. It’s malicious handoff to tech oligarchs to handle and enforce as they see fit.
This is exactly the color of the issue. Everyone should read this.
Most VPNs do not use a separate VPN provided. What about places that host their own? My employer would never open their logs to the us government (hosted outside the us). I would never willingly open my own logs to the government - they have to not only physically invade my house but have to decrypt my drives, and hope they did it quickly enough that any incriminating logs haven’t been purged
It’s not about stopping random people hosting their own VPN. It’s about collecting data on the majority of the population. You’re thinking too hard about it.
Yeah but people are really stupid and the economy is going to implode any day now anyways. It has nothing to do with porn and everything to do with criminalizing privacy and making mass surveillance more easy. They do not care how it affects people, they are rich and completely detached from reality. They will go live on Epstein Island or move to Ireland or something when America explodes. They rather be rich and connected then do anything that would actually help anyone, and Americans for the past 30 years have voted consistently for mass surveillance, destroying the constitution and fiat economics. This is what your average American wants by their voting habbits. People are just too stupid and brainwashed by this point.
Bingo. They want to know your shopping habits, your political affiliations and how valuable you are to the economy (how disposable you are) so they can better predict what you’re going to do. It’s good for business and political ambitions alike, and ensures that you won’t do any inconvenient protests or strikes. (There’s a drone for that!)
I remember walking into work one day and some agitated co-worker wanted to know what I knew about Colorado’s libraries, because he knows I regularly use them. He was listening to hate radio on the way into work and became convinced that it was a huge problem that libraries were not tracking their Internet usage back to individuals. The idea of people doing things untracked (also, on “his” dime, LOL) was driving him crazy.
I had to laugh and try to calm him down by pointing out things like Tor (and i2p) and the fact that at that time anyway, you could wardrive and probably find a few dozen open Wifi connections within a few blocks, and use one of those if you were really up to something “nefarious” (whatever that might be). Not to mention go to some coffee shop.
He was much more annoyed that people might be watching porn at the libraries, though, as if all taxpayers have to endorse every single use of all things [1]…though I’m sure control freaks like this would be positively delighted at having the right people (read: Republicans) able to see all activity of all Internet users…
One guess what religion he is and what party he votes for…
[1] See for another example - how a certain type of person thinks they should get to decide what food stamps are spent on.
MAGA and republican…
Because people this obsessed with controlling others sure as heck ain’t Christian by any logical definition.
That’s what revolutions are for when the government fails its social contract
That’s what they’re trying to get ahead of with this kind of mass-surveillance plan. Identify and mark everyone who may possibly want to create political disruptions. Just posting on a site like this will get you on a list and you will suddenly start getting pulled over and searched for no reason at best, you will disappear entirely at worst.
It’s not just the government. It’s almost the entire human race.
Thats what revolutions are for just make sure you dont let the power dynamics of an economy dictate your future again or it is never going to change because you will just become the rich people inhibiting our species.
It’s hard to have a revolution without the global powers interfering and trying to steer you down the path of international corporate pseudocapitalism, or authoritarianism. The history of communist revolutions is very interesting in this regard. The good communists always got crushed by the bad and authoritarian and well funded communists.
I want to see one state pass this (not mine ofc) just to see the carnage of an entire state full of companies that suddenly cease operations.
This is the first thing I thought about. Bills like these always allow for vulnerabilities that would affect the entire nation, themselves included. It’s extremely short sided.
How do you even define a VPN? Is SSH tunnelling allowed then?
For that matter, how do you define porn?
yeah a vpn ban would fuck up networks
Just like world-wide tariffs will disrupt supply chains.
They don’t care, they are dumber than rocks and twice as corrupt.
So what you are saying is this is a fantastic RTO strategy. /s
But yeah, I work for an international company, setting up the IT infrastructure so that each of those individual offices have a standard security policy and connection whitelists, and then requiring an on-site IT person to manage each of those sounds horrible.
VPNs is not just for remote workers. It’s used by corporations who don’t want to pay for a direct connect to federate with their work sites.
The only way a VPN ban is going to work is if they make a carve-out for corporations.
Which, let’s face it, it’s Republicans so there’s a one-to-one chance that language will be there.
Couldn’t a VPN service make a corporation and attain exemption?
VPNs are needed for way more than people working from home. It’s hard to understate how spectacularly stupid banning VPNs would be in terms of business alone, never mind all the other problems it would cause.