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Denmark wants to ban VPNs to unlock foreign, illegal streams – and experts are worried (www.techradar.com)
submitted 8 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/55094411

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[–] 143 points 8 months ago (25 children)

How do you "ban VPNs"? That's not how software works, and VPNs are... you know, a key part of a bunch of online infrastructure. I get that they mean "ban them to bypass restrictions", but the entire point of a VPN is you can't tell from the outside what it's being used for. You may as well ban thinking about butterflies. You can write it down, but you can't enforce it.

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  • [–] 65 points 8 months ago (15 children)

    I actually want one country to ban VPNs just so every other country can see the fallout or complete lack of enforcement

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  • [–] 81 points 8 months ago (14 children)

    VPNs are banned in some countries. At least in practice. China comes to mind and please nobody tell me „I have a friend in China and they use one!“ That friend is either breaking the law, or a state agent or foreigner where that law doesn‘t apply. Hotels have that as part of their service for tourists because why the hell would anyone travel to a country with basically no internet? Of course they are exempt.

    But Chinese citizens are absolutely not allowed to use VPNs to break through the great firewall. The overwhelming majority wouldn‘t even know how. But of course most of them know at least one person who can.

    So in theory the law is useless but in practice it‘s very effective to control information. Whatever the case it‘s nothing a democracy should pursuit. Ever.

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  • [–] 47 points 8 months ago

    This is such an important message. We should not lull ourselves into complacency. Banning vpns will be yet another step towards a closed, non-anonymous internet where governments (and by extension companies) will force you to give up access and control over your digital life

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  • [–] 38 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (3 children)

    Let me tell how how much people actually follow laws in China.

    I was born while the One Child Policy was in effect. My mother already gave birth to my older brother. Basically, my existence is illegal.

    As you can see, clearly I'm not dead. They didn't manage to kill me, just demanded my parents paid a massive fine and denied legal papers until they did so.

    Honestly if you just browse and don't post anything too serious, are they really gonna go after everyone who use a VPN. I mean, say even if just 1% uses a VPN. That's 1,400,000 people. Are they gonna lock up a million people? Really? Surely they have bigger fishes to catch. (Edit: 1% of 1.4 billion is actually 14 million, good luck locking that many people lolz)

    As for control of information, internarional phone calls aren't blocked, you can send letters. My mom regularly call my aunts (aka: her sisters) in China. I heard the Covid QR codes being mentioned, afaik, the didn't lose their teaching jobs nor ever got arrested.

    The overwhelming majority wouldn‘t even know how.

    It's like adblocking. Do you know anyone irl that use adblockers? Seriously, I don't know anyone that does except like maybe 1 perdon.

    But here we are, on a platform where practically everyone uses adblockers.

    Or in another analogy. Mainstream social media is like inside the GFW and Lemmy is like using VPN to bypass it.

    TLDR: Okay sorry if my point isn't concise, I guess my point is: NPCs will just follow the wind, those who have the will to dig deeper will probably be able to bypass the censorship (provided that it's not completely cut off from the outside internet)

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  • [–] 9 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    Thanks for posting this and I believe a lot of people think that when you're online in China you're CONSTANTLY monitored by someone assigned SPECIFICALLY to you or something.

    There used to be like I guess a modern day old wives tale where if you're playing an online game with someone from China and typed into in-game chat "Tianamen Square Massacre 1989" it would knock the person from China offline. I remember doing that a few years ago and the other guy, from China, took awhile to respond and when he did he simply said "that's our history".

    It's like you said, the vast majority will follow the rules and won't use a VPN but others will just be like "ok, what are you going to do?" and do so. It's like pirating stuff in the US. I've heard stories of people getting sued out the wazoo by movie studios for pirating and sharing but those stories are few and far between and generally the people doing it aren't smart about it. I've been pirating content for decades and have never gotten a notice or email or letter about anything.

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  • [–] 10 points 8 months ago (3 children)

    When companies offshore dev or IT to China, do those employees get full VPN access with access to the “western” internet?

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  • [–] 5 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

    Good question! I‘m not that deep into the technical aspects but Chinese companies that work with foreign companies would have to work with the government and other Chinese companies that control internet access in China to circumvent the firewall legally. The process is likely limited and heavily monitored by authorities. Same would go for Chinese companies with storefronts in the global web. They would need to access our internet regularly but I assume their access is limited to some degree.

    I imagine unless you‘re a big player it can be quite the hassle so many Chinese companies would rather work with domestic companies than with foreign ones. I think this is one major reason why many contracts with Chinese companies can only be done through middlemen. As an outsider, you can‘t get full access to their industry because you have no means of contacting all these little manufacturers yourself.

    But again, I don‘t actually know for sure what these processes look like. Maybe someone with actual experience can shine a brighter light on this.

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  • [–] -4 points 8 months ago (3 children)

    You are being absolutely ridiculous. VPNs may be de jure forbidden in China (idk about this even), but de-facto they're absolutely allowed, nobody is prosecuted for using them, and every young Chinese person can tell you this. You haven't talked with a Chinese living in China in your entire life.

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  • [–] 4 points 8 months ago (2 children)
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  • [–] -2 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    From the article:

    Ma [the one ordered to pay] said the police seized his phone, laptop and several computer hard drives upon learning that he worked for an overseas company, holding them for a month. He was later asked to provide details about his work, his bank details, his employment contract and other information, before being issued with the penalty in August

    This person was not "using a VPN", he was lying to the government about his working status and working for an overseas firm illegally.

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  • [–] 14 points 8 months ago (6 children)

    They'll do what Russia does with their online services. Have a registration scheme with noncompliant VPNs being outright banned.

    Simple when you know which dictator to copy.

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  • [–] 10 points 8 months ago (5 children)

    I guess that works for VPN services offering servers outside the country. That's not what VPNs are, though, and you still can't ban the concept of VPNs having a connection outside the country. VPN software is available open source and all it takes for it to connect abroad is my phone with a VPN connection to my home computer being abroad.

    I mean, Russia (and even China) still have people using VPNs all over the place. This (and a lot of the push for age verification and comms backdoors) reeks of barely understanding the desired result and entirely misunderstanding how the tech works.

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  • [–] 3 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    I believe China does statistical analysis to do stuff like detecting and blocking VPNs, suspicious looking ssh traffic, etc from home Internet connections not going to an approved business. It's my understanding it's very hard to get around the GFW at the moment, and pretty complex stuff is needed to mask VPN traffic to make it look normal (Project X, Xray, Reality, etc).

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  • [–] 3 points 8 months ago

    Yeah, I read about some of the tightening at the time and I'm not disputing that there are technical ways of... you know, making your country's Internet a mostly separate bubble for non-techie users.

    The point is it's both hard and extremely invasive to get there. You can't just wish upon a star for VPNs to not be used for a particular application without going to those extremes. Especially if the thing you're trying to prevent is people watching Superman two weeks early or wanking to a mainstream porn page.

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  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    They just block encrypted connections out of Russia to unknown servers

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  • [–] 10 points 8 months ago*

    VPN bans amount to only allowing private companies to operate vpns for the purpose of infrastructure and commerce. It wouldn't ban vpns entirely, but no average person would have the means within his country to be able to purchase or use one... legally.

    While it would be sorta bad, it's like taking the top layer off of the cake while leaving the rest.

    There's ways out, still, and there always will be. They can't ban buying a vps from next door, and putting wireguard on it.

    I am a relatively cheerful if a bit offputting person, I do not mean to say this is good news by my tone. This fucking sucks lol. Sorry.

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