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[–] 251 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Stop ministers using VPNs to watch child porn.

Told!

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    [+] 102 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 child)
  • [+] 101 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)
    [–] 94 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Dame Rachel de Souza told BBC Newsnight it was "absolutely a loophole that needs closing" and called for age verification on VPNs.

    Saw that coming. Can’t have the populace living their lives without constant, repressive government scrutiny.

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  • [–] 78 points 1 year ago (10 children)

    You ban something, and people will always find a way around it. Always.

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    [–] 74 points 1 year ago (9 children)

    It’s a bit like “my kids will only eat chocolate” and the therapist’s response “where are they getting the chocolate from?”. If the kids are using VPNs then where are they getting the money for the VPN from? Is this parental consent?

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  • [–] 60 points 1 year ago*

    Dame Rachel told BBC Newsnight: "Of course, we need age verification on VPNs - it's absolutely a loophole that needs closing and that's one of my major recommendations."

    If this fucker had any idea what VPN even stood for they'd realize how fuckin stupid this statement is...

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  • [–] 58 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    Ya! Let them watch all that violence on Netflix instead!

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    [–] 57 points 1 year ago* (27 children)

    Do the government ministers understand that setting up your own VPN is literally a 5 minute operation.

    Hire a droplet VM, pre-installed with a server OS. Log in with provided credentials. sudo apt install docker Copy/paste a docker compose file that sets up a wg-easy container. Create a peer. Take a picture of the provided QR code. Connect to the server via a wireguard app. Done.

    Are they going to ban VMs?

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  • [–] 23 points 1 year ago (14 children)

    What a VM? What's a server OS? How do I log in? What the fuck does sudo apt mean? What is docker? Now I'm editing files? A peer? What's wireguard?

    So many of you are disconnected from regular people because you're chronically online.

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    [–] 55 points 1 year ago (20 children)

    If they were really after kids watching porn (or even porn in general) it would be technically somewhat simple to force ISPs to provide filters on their end as a subscription service. I'm pretty sure I've even heard that kind of services in the past. Make it even opt-out if you really want to.

    That way ISPs would just ban everything from pornhub and others unless you spesifically want it allowed or even provide a portal where you could block reddit, twitter, tumblr or whatever you wish on your account. That kind of technology already exists and it's used on many corporate setups.

    There's obviously ways around that, but there's no technical way to block every possible way to move bits between computers. Even if they would shut down the whole internet there's still ways to build mesh-networks or even buy USB-drives from a shady alley.

    But as we all know, it's not about porn and not about children.

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  • [–] 29 points 1 year ago (18 children)

    You can't block porn completely without blocking VPNs. If you connect to a VPN that's all they can see. They can not see what you use the VPN for.

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  • [–] 22 points 1 year ago (11 children)

    You can't block VPNs without blocking the entire internet. You can block known VPN services, but you can't prevent people from hosting their own.

    Some known VPN protocols could be blocked, using introspection tools. However, this would just render corporate VPNs useless. VPN traffic is just bytes, and so is WebSockets. Good luck figuring out whether my HTTPS traffic is legitimate internet traffic, or masked VPN traffic.

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  • [–] 22 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 child)

    VPN, Tor (and similar, like I2P), every imaginable P2P network, proxies, all non-http protocols (smtp, ftp, nntp, xmpp and other instant messengers and so on) can all transfer any kind of data, porn included. And a ton of other things. Heck, I'm quite sure there's a minecraft mod where you can assemble JPG-images out of the blocks and view them that way. And then you can use stuff like uuencode where you can use anything that can move plain text to transfer binary data.

    There's no way to block all of that unless you shut the whole internet down. And even then you can still trade good old playboy-magazines with your friends. VPN in itself has very little to do with the actual problem, beyond that someone apparently noticed that their current "save-the-children" iteration had pretty large holes in it.

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    [–] 53 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    Why are the kids technologically illiterate and undersexed until it comes to matters of government control? I'm not usually into tin foil hats, but this doesn't feel like the kids are the primary concern here.

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    [–] 52 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    How about parent your children?

    What about the crappy late night TV channels with the women waving a cordless house phone like it's 1996?

    I'm perfectly able to watch porn because I'm 45, but I refuse to interact with any of this prove your age bollocks because I know full well that "we won't store your details" and "we will share your details with 1284 trusted data partners" are the same picture.

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    [–] 52 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Clearly it's a parental problem to determine if the VPN they are buying for their kids is being used to wank off, but apparently this party of 'liberty' has an unhealthy obsession with monitoring our children's genitalia these days.

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    [–] 45 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    How much you wanna bet the ministers use VPN to watch porn as well?

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    [–] 45 points 1 year ago (6 children)

    Yeah, it's just all these children with their bank accounts paying for their VPN subscriptions doing it all... Do they think we're that stupid? Don't answer that. 😔

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    [–] 41 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

    FYI, with Mullvad VPN set to UK, sites that require age verification:

    • pornhub.com
    • youporn.com
    • redtube.com
    • porn.com
    • bellesa.co
    • tube8.com
    • thisvid.com
    • quorno.com

    Sites tha do NOT require age verification:

    • hqporner.com
    • xhamster.com
    • youjizz.com
    • alohatube.com
    • qqqporn.com
    • xnxx.com
    • xcafe.com
    • helloporn.co
    • go.porn
    • cartoonporn.pro

    And xvideos.com is a bit special since it shows you the thumbnails of porn videos but won't let you play them.

    But we need to stop VPNs! Think of the whole two children that have VPNs! What if instead of just going to the half of the sites that don't verify age, they figure out how to use a VPN?! Oh the humanity!

    Yeah, UK wants to de-anonymize VPN users as the next step in their attack on free speech. It is laughable to think this is about anything else.

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    [–] 40 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    I think the best way to solve this is to not have kids in the first place.

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  • [–] 39 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    This has nothing to do with porn or protecting children. It's a backdoor way to attach names and faces to VPN usage so movie and music studios can sue specific people for torrenting. They failed in bringing lawsuits previously because they couldn't pin point the piracy to specific individuals. I would bet money that the ministers leading this charge have ties to groups in the movie and music industry. The UK will be the testbed before the full rollout in the EU and then worldwide.

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    [–] 39 points 1 year ago* (10 children)

    Everyone’s scared of Reform getting in and yet Reform are the only ones promising to reverse all this. All this is done based off the back of a 2016 survey where parents said they were worried about kids watching porn on the internet, but the survey gave no indication of what a solution would look like and gave no mention to online age verification and banning VPNs.

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    [–] 31 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Stop fucking but make children.

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    [–] 27 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    if the strategy is to tell children to stop circumventing the rules with a workaround, couldn’t the original messaging just have been “talk to your children about not watching porn”

    it’s so obvious the identification laws have nothing to do with protecting children from porn and everything to do with Big Brother surveillance

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    [–] 26 points 1 year ago (8 children)

    Let's say they do. So people start using non UK VPNs. So you need age verification for any Internet access? For any computer or phone that could connect to the Internet?

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  • [–] 42 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    That's what they're aiming for, yes.

    They want to know where everyone is and what every person is doing at every possible moment of every day, be that in public or on the Internet. They are paranoid and know that their entire system is in danger of collapse with the common man gaining control over the rich and powerful.

    Thus they resort to extreme control of the commoners to ensure that won't happen.

    Child protection and anti-pornography stances are perfect excuses because they're very difficult to argue against.

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  • [–] 30 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    and here we have the heart of the issue, and their end goal. identification required for Internet access. total control.

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  • 100% and as always they boil it down to "well even if all that other stuff is true, it's for the safety of children."

    Yet we have fucking confirmation that exposing networks of wealthy and powerful pedophiles is not on the agenda. Those people are untouchable. Those people are also the ones that we are handing complete control over to.

    So who tf are we really protecting children from by doing this?

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    [–] 26 points 1 year ago* (5 children)

    Streisand effect: the BBC is telling every last kid that VPN is exactly the way to circumvent the prohibition.

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  • [–] 24 points 1 year ago

    This is fascists using "think of the children" to violate everyone's online privacy and spy on everyone worldwide.

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  • [–] 21 points 1 year ago

    Moronic bit is atlast asking parents to be responsible

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  • [–] 20 points 1 year ago

    I remember when my step-son was a teenager. I didn't care that he watched porn. I cared that he infected the family PC with viruses and malware trying to watch porn.

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  • [–] 18 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    When they effectively make the internet a dangerous place, Usenet will rise from the darkness. P2P will also always exist and these politicians dont understand computer math, so a lot of what they're trying to accomplish is bound to fail.

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