Obviously they’ll have a carve-out for businesses that apply for a VPN licence and have the other end of the VPN remain in the country. Not because they listen to the public saying that VPNs have legitimate uses, but because the megacorp they consult with before drafting the law says it’s the only legitimate use-case and has a VPN product they can sell to small businesses that can’t afford to wait for their self-hosted VPN to be certified by the one overworked civil servant who has sole responsibility for approving every VPN licence.
And how are they to determine whats a “vpn”? Just rent a server in another country and ssh tunnel to it, and there you go. Impossible to know your using a ‘vpn’.
The UK government certainly don’t know. I wouldn’t put it past them to do something stupid like banning it on the household level, which would really fuck things up for people who need to use VPNs for their job.
It’s just not that simple, as private individuals do contract work and manage private businesses, large residential and commercial complexes use VPNs to manage high network traffic and guarantee security, and off-site IT support regularly use VPNs for elevated access.
Retail VPNs don’t even strictly evade ISPs. They simply route traffic through their own hubs and then on to the destination. If the UK were to “ban VPNs” that wouldn’t really stop me from connecting to a US or French based VPN service. And that’s what I’d want anyway, since my goal is to not appear to be a UK resident while trafficking data.
I see it being a law that’s not generally enforceable, but whose purpose is to empower the authorities to enforce it selectively against targets chosen for political reasons.
If it’s anything it’ll probably be age verification at point of sale for the VPN for retail VPN providers. Pay with a credit card kinda deal. I know that’s not ideal, hell none of it is, but I think it’s how steam dealt with it and that worked OK.
If they do figure it out their conclusion will be something like outlawing VPNs while handing more infrastructure to Peter Thiel.
No way they will ban VPNs as it will get in the way of businesses that rely on it / those terminally working from home
Obviously they’ll have a carve-out for businesses that apply for a VPN licence and have the other end of the VPN remain in the country. Not because they listen to the public saying that VPNs have legitimate uses, but because the megacorp they consult with before drafting the law says it’s the only legitimate use-case and has a VPN product they can sell to small businesses that can’t afford to wait for their self-hosted VPN to be certified by the one overworked civil servant who has sole responsibility for approving every VPN licence.
And how are they to determine whats a “vpn”? Just rent a server in another country and ssh tunnel to it, and there you go. Impossible to know your using a ‘vpn’.
It’s possible to probabilistically determine when an SSH connection is being used like a VPN, then block that traffic. If they go full Great Firewall.
Oi! You got a loicense for that VPN, mate?
What would that even look like?
No two computers can talk to each other without an ISP intermediary?
The UK government certainly don’t know. I wouldn’t put it past them to do something stupid like banning it on the household level, which would really fuck things up for people who need to use VPNs for their job.
They’ll ban it for private individuals and home ISP connections, and allow businesses to pay for a commercial VPN licence.
It’s just not that simple, as private individuals do contract work and manage private businesses, large residential and commercial complexes use VPNs to manage high network traffic and guarantee security, and off-site IT support regularly use VPNs for elevated access.
Retail VPNs don’t even strictly evade ISPs. They simply route traffic through their own hubs and then on to the destination. If the UK were to “ban VPNs” that wouldn’t really stop me from connecting to a US or French based VPN service. And that’s what I’d want anyway, since my goal is to not appear to be a UK resident while trafficking data.
I see it being a law that’s not generally enforceable, but whose purpose is to empower the authorities to enforce it selectively against targets chosen for political reasons.
Nothing more British than selectively enforcing overbroad legislation against minorities and dissidents.
If it’s anything it’ll probably be age verification at point of sale for the VPN for retail VPN providers. Pay with a credit card kinda deal. I know that’s not ideal, hell none of it is, but I think it’s how steam dealt with it and that worked OK.