Utah Proposes VPN Ban Law, Taxing Pornography

Utah is apparently the latest state to ban VPNs as it relates to age verification. They also threw in porn taxes as well.

Age verification is a complete and utter failure. Experts warned that it would be a failure because the technology would be easily circumvented (along with the absolute privacy nightmare that they represent among other things), but the experts were by and large ignored in several jurisdictions. Lawmakers pushing these laws basically concluded that experts don’t know what they are talking about, are just being mean to them, and that all you have to do is just believe hard enough and things will just magically resolve themselves and we will all live happily ever after.

Then reality hit.

People began flocking to alternatives, people’s identities got stolen in hacks, and people found creative ways to get around the technology. What’s more, VPN usage soared. In short, envision every possible way age verification can fail and it not only failed in that way, but found ways of failing even harder then you could have imagined.

Now, in response to all of this, lawmakers pushing these laws saw their reality bubble pop and were left shocked that all of this could’ve happened. After all, who outside of people who have an understanding of technology could’ve seen this coming? So, they were left scrambling. Obviously, the logical response to all of this is to just rescind age verification laws, admitting that it was a huge mistake to even contemplate this in the first place. Of course, these are lawmakers who drank the age verification Kool-Aid. Logic and reason is the last thing they want to do in response to this disaster of their own making.

So, in response, some of those lawmakers decided double down on idiocy and push to have VPNs banned. Examples of this include Wisconsin and Michigan. Fortunately, the Wisconsin effort was ultimately dropped later on, but it did show the extreme levels of stupid lawmakers were willing to go to try and make their failed age verification laws work.

Today, I learned of another state proposing to ban VPNs. That just so happens to be the state of Utah. This proposal was also apparently mixed in with another proposal that would tax all pornography (however the heck that’s supposed to even work). From TechDirt:

Originally proposed by a pair of Republican lawmakers in the Utah state legislature earlier this year, Senate Bill (SB) 73 would levy a so-called “material harmful to minors” tax at 2 percent on revenues generated by the sale of online porn (it was originally 7 percent). Having been amended and passed through the state Senate with considerable support, SB 73 is on track to clear the hurdles of the House of Representatives and be signed into law by Gov. Spencer Cox, a Republican and staunch anti-pornography activist like the bill’s sponsors.

This activism from Gov. Cox and the sponsors of porn tax bill—Republican state Sen. Calvin R. Musselman and state Rep. Steve Eliason—could presage a far more corrosive and expansive campaign against civil liberties and key freedom of expression protections that cover sexually-related speech.

First off, SB 73 would fund a variety of efforts for Utah’s state government. Such efforts benefiting from the funds under the proposal would include enforcement efforts for the state’s social media and pornography age verification laws.

But the bill goes further, especially after several rounds of being amended in the Senate and the House to include the mention of web traffic sourced from virtual private networks (VPNs) and other proxies. This bill would make it illegal to circumvent content blocks implemented by platforms due to local age verification laws, making it punishable by a bevy of civil penalties. Nonetheless, what goes well beyond extreme is that there is a provision in the bill that would also make it illegal for websites covered by age verification laws (e.g., a porn site) to offer Utah-based users information about using VPNs to get around any content blocks securely.

Consider the following language in the current form of Senate Bill 73 regarding VPN “facilitation”:

“A commercial entity that operates a website that contains a substantial portion of material harmful to minors may not facilitate or encourage the use of a virtual private network, proxy server, or other means to circumvent age verification requirements, including by providing: (a) instructions on how to use a virtual private network or proxy server to access the website; or (b) means for individuals in this state to circumvent geofencing or blocking.”

This goes far beyond anything I’ve seen in recent legislative trends in state legislatures controlled by conservative GOP politicians. The bill is similar to a law that is on the books in Alabama which levies a 10 percent levy on all porn websites in that state’s digital space, paired with the extra set of legal requirements for adult performers to have notarized consent forms that contradicts existing federal record-keeping laws.

(emphasis mine)

This is just the latest example of big government trying to control your daily lives. People have very VERY good reason not to trust the security of age verification systems. After all, these systems have a very long and storied history of being an absolute clusterfuck in the short time they have existed in their current form. People don’t want their facial recognition scans and government issued ID to fall into the hands of hackers. Submitting that to these vendors is basically an open invitation to black hat hackers to just come on in and take it. So, people choose to protect their information by simply using a VPN service to avoid such government mandated mass surveillance.

This activity is giving some lawmakers the sads because they want to know who you are and what you do online at all times. After all, they’ve basically straight up admitted to such in the first place.

A major problem with this bill is also the usage of the term “harmful to minors”. Will this always just refer to explicit pornography or will this also be used to target the LGBTQ+ community? Given the oppressive nature of far right wing politics these days, that isn’t just a remote possibility, but rather, an expectation. Have a website that says that transgender people exist? Bam, your website is ordered to implement age verification.

What’s more, how is this even supposed to be enforced in the first place? If someone accesses your website through a VPN, how are you, as a webmaster, to know that they are coming from a jurisdiction that has oppressive age verification laws? Some VPNs that claim they don’t track your information, but ultimately do, might, but who knows if that information is going to be forked over to authorities in the first place? Unless police are going to be knocking on your door and getting access to your computer directly or hacking your computer to install state sponsored spyware (or possibly someone snitching on you), I really struggle with the whole enforcement aspect of this. That’s not even getting into the obviously unconstitutional nature of such a law.

I honestly doubt this will be the last attempt to ban or otherwise restrict VPN usage. After all, we’ve seen at least two states try it (with at least one backing down) and now we have a third state making a similar attempt. Let’s hope such a bill doesn’t become law so we can avoid a nightmare scenario where other states seek to copy such laws.

Drew Wilson on Mastodon, Twitter and Facebook.