Wisconsin to Make VPN Use Illegal in Age Verification Bill

Wisconsin is pushing the bad idea that is age verification. Lawmakers are doubling down with outlawing VPN use in the process.

Age verification laws are a terrible idea. Always have been. They destroy user privacy, are a threat to free speech, are easy to circumvent, and they generally don’t work. The only thing supporters really have in defending these laws is “just trust us, bro” and constantly moving the goal posts as more and more flaws surface.

One well known thorn in the side of age verification laws are VPNs (Virtual Private Networks). This has been one of many long warned about weaknesses in age verification laws. The response has been mostly to ignore these flaws or, in the case of Canada, say that people are too stupid to understand VPNs, so, therefore, the problem solves itself. In a sense, it is not that unexpected. After all, the willing into existence working age verification technology is generally made up of wishful thinking and “believe hard enough” ideologies, so why stop at the technologies themselves? Maybe you can believe hard enough that VPNs aren’t going to defeat them either and that problem will solve itself too, right?

Well, all this magical thinking ended pretty much exactly how you would expect. Some bills got passed, VPN use soared, and lawmakers got humiliated. Let’s face it, those lawmakers that chose to ignore reality really only have themselves to blame for that one.

So, some lawmakers found themselves left scrambling to figure out what to do to salvage their awful age verification laws now that they realized that people weren’t joking when they said their laws have more holes than a cheese grater. In the UK, for instance, the solution they came up with was to mandate that age verification technology must be applied to all VPNs. To this day, you really have to take a step back and marvel at the pure stupidity of that. A law demanding that you reveal your identity in order to use anonymous tools – many of which don’t even reside in the country this law is being implemented. This isn’t even getting into the technological side of how much of a “WTF?” concept that even is. Not exactly the brightest people we are dealing with when discussing age verification laws.

Still, this is a constant and persistent problem that has no real solution. Yet, that isn’t stopping lawmakers from trying to find ways to deal with VPNs (and really stupid ways to boot). In Wisconsin, a crack team of lawmakers have decided that the have found the solution to all of this: make VPN use illegal. Like I said, we are dealing with really stupid people, here. So, how are they going to go about this? Simply put, they are demanding that websites block all VPN use whenever they have to use age verification laws. You know, because that’s totally not asking the impossible there. Really, the TechRadar article has to be read to be believed:

Using a VPN to access adult-only sites could become illegal in Wisconsin if a proposed age verification law passes

First introduced in March, what’s known as Wisconsin AB 105/SB 130 is quietly moving up the legislative process. The proposal has already passed the debate in the Assembly and had its first public hearing in the Senate held on October 8.

The bill seeks to introduce an obligation for all service providers operating in Wisconsin, “that knowingly and intentionally publish or distribute material harmful to minors on the Internet,” to prevent anyone from accessing their content when connected to a VPN.

In September, Michigan lawmakers introduced a new adult content bill that would not only force internet service providers to monitor and block VPN connections, but also ban the promotion or sale of circumvention tools to access prohibited material. A proposed legislation that Proton defined as “a danger for the political discourse.”

This should go without saying: VPNs have legitimate use and are used by businesses. It’s not reasonable to expect websites to just block all VPN use. It is also not reasonable to expect ISPs to monitor and block all VPN connections. Asking websites and ISPs to fight your age verification battles is ridiculous. Both of these ideas are just really bad ideas all around for a whole variety of reasons.

Still, this is the continuation of magical thinking that has long been a theme throughout the age verification debates. If you can come up with magical technology that keeps minors from accessing “bad things”, then you can also come up with magical technology for websites to employ that stops all VPNs from working too. All I can say is that when the magical thinking shit hits the reality fan, things are not going to be pretty – assuming these bad laws pass of course.

Drew Wilson on Mastodon, Twitter and Facebook.