tech
The war on online privacy comes for VPNs
Imagine a statute criminalizing the placement of curtains in home windows. After all, people regularly commit terrible crimes in the privacy of their own homes — perpetrating domestic violence, cooking up deadly drugs, storing illegal contraband, harboring fugitives, running kitchen-table scams, etc.
TL;DR
- Lawmakers are increasingly proposing intrusive legislation targeting technologies that protect online privacy, such as VPNs.
- VPNs hide user IP addresses and locations, safeguard data, and enable users to circumvent jurisdiction-specific digital mandates.
- Recent legislative proposals in Michigan and Wisconsin aimed to ban VPNs, with the Wisconsin provision removed after backlash.
- The UK's Online Safety Act has led to increased VPN usage as people sought to avoid compliance with age verification requirements.
- Regulators in the UK and France have expressed concerns about VPNs and advocated for action against them.
- The author draws parallels between efforts to restrict VPNs and past attempts to fracture encryption technologies, arguing that disabling privacy tools undermines online security.
- The digital world lacks the physical constraints that naturally limit surveillance, allowing for less obvious and unconstrained intrusions into users' lives.
- The article concludes that pursuing safety and law enforcement should not come at the exclusion of all other values, and that privacy-preserving technologies must be strengthened, not endangered.