EFF Warns About the Rise in Efforts to Ban VPNs

Governments are increasingly turning towards the idea of banning VPNs. The EFF is warning that this is a bad idea.

One of the predictions I had about age verification is that lawmakers would find themselves surprised that age verification systems are easily circumvented. One of those circumvention methods, of course, being Virtual Private Networks (VPNs). So, in response to seeing their ridiculously stupid idea of age verification go down in flames, lawmakers would double down on the stupid and push laws banning VPNs on top of it all. This with the only logical conclusion that the government would engage in a neverending game of whack-a-mole similar to what us experts saw during the file-sharing debates.

At this point, we are following along that prediction pretty closely. Following the passage of age verification laws, people went to VPNs in droves to defeat them. The response from lawmakers was to be all surprised that the experts were right. Then, in response, lawmakers who are proving that they are a clause short of a bill decide that the next logical move is to push to ban VPNs altogether. This sort of thing is also being pushed in Wisconsin as well.

It goes without saying that this is a monumentally stupid idea. Businesses use VPNs, people use VPNs, and other organizations use VPNs as well. There are numerous legal reasons to use such things. Banning the technology would cause a hell of a lot of chaos all over the world as tools to increase ones safety is suddenly in the crosshairs of government. Nevertheless, lawmakers are increasingly adopting the attitude of “damn the consequences” because they are on a mission that their magical unicorn technological solutions are pefect in every way and they won’t let reality get in the way of that.

Recently, I learned that I’m not the only one seeing the problem with this trend. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is also raising the alarm about this awful trend. Evidently, I missed the fact that Michigan is also making similar propsals as well. From the EFF:

Remember when you thought age verification laws couldn’t get any worse? Well, lawmakers in Wisconsin, Michigan, and beyond are about to blow you away.

It’s unfortunately no longer enough to force websites to check your government-issued ID before you can access certain content, because politicians have now discovered that people are using Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) to protect their privacy and bypass these invasive laws. Their solution? Entirely ban the use of VPNs.

Yes, really.

VPNs mask your real location by routing your internet traffic through a server somewhere else. When you visit a website through a VPN, that website only sees the VPN server’s IP address, not your actual location. It’s like sending a letter through a P.O. box so the recipient doesn’t know where you really live.

So when Wisconsin demands that websites “block VPN users from Wisconsin,” they’re asking for something that’s technically impossible. Websites have no way to tell if a VPN connection is coming from Milwaukee, Michigan, or Mumbai. The technology just doesn’t work that way.

Websites subject to this proposed law are left with this choice: either cease operation in Wisconsin, or block all VPN users, everywhere, just to avoid legal liability in the state. One state’s terrible law is attempting to break VPN access for the entire internet, and the unintended consequences of this provision could far outweigh any theoretical benefit.

Trying to ban VPNs is an absurd idea and would break a heck of a lot of things in the process. It’s completely idiotic that this is even being tried at all. After all, age verification laws for pornographic material was already a stupid idea. Banning teenagers from social media doubles down on that stupidity. Throwing in efforts to ban VPN usage pretty much quadruples down on this stupidity.

The only thing such laws would ever be able to do is make the internet a more dangerous place. Even that is questionable as people in other jurisdictions will likely just tell law enforcement to pound sand when they try and shut them down. All one has to do is look at the history of The Pirate Bay to see how long such battles can last.

At any rate, one can only hope that the stupid lawmakers finally admit that they’ve had enough smashing up the internet. Only time will tell if that actually happens.

Drew Wilson on Mastodon, Twitter and Facebook.