Next up will be a VPN ban.

Jonah Aragon

RE: https://mastodon.thenewoil.org/@thenewoil/115971195227745876

Next up will be a VPN ban. Many tech-y people will see that and think “lol yeah well that’s not going to stop *me* from using a VPN”

A VPN ban isn’t really meant stop you from using one. It means when they catch you doing so, they’ll use the fact you’re using this harmless technology itself as a *pretense* to lock you up without needing to do any “hard work” (i.e. an investigator’s job) like actually confirming whether you committed a real crime.

Don’t think you won’t be impacted just because you know how to outsmart an ISP filter! This is not a plan to protect children or stop you from consuming adult media. It is a ploy to eventually eliminate ALL freedom of expression and free access to information in the UK.

And the same goes for Chat Control and encrypted messengers, btw

#UKpol #VPNban #PornHub #ChatControl #Privacy #FreeSpeech #SocialMedia

Aral Balkan

@jonah VPN ban -> Ah, people can install WireGuard on a Hetzner droplet -> mandatory age verification for web hosting, etc., etc., ad infinitum.

Paul Wilde :dontpanic2: :smeghead: :archlinux: :freebsd:

@jonah doesn't say anything about SOCKS proxying over a dynamic SSH tunnel though

Jonah Aragon

@paul nice you found the loophole, us tech guys always win after all

Tinkerer 🇪🇺

@aral @jonah This will probably be the next step... Only registered companies will be able to rent a VPS... I hope this gets stuck to the business damage it will cause to VPS/cloud providers

Мя ��

@aral nah, next step would be DPI systems to ban every Wireguard except government-approved corporate systems

I know, I live in russia

@jonah

GreyLinux

@paul @jonah I've never heard of this before. I currently have wireguard as my main way to access my local network services. If they ban VPN's, could SOCKS proxying over SSH perform the same purpose ? Could I for example stream my Jellyfin server the same way I currently do over wireguard?

Kerplunk

@jonah

UK users complaining about vpn blocks.

That is The dream of Keir Srtalin Starmer and Shabhana Mahmood who dreams about total surveillance and knowing the thoughts of every citizen better than the person themselves.

Friends of israel Financed, genocide supporting Repressive Labour must go.

Paul Wilde :dontpanic2: :smeghead: :archlinux: :freebsd:

@Greylinux @jonah technically... Yes. Although it is a bit more technical to set up than a VPN server.
It should work for a Jellyfin server as is, but sometimes I find doing a more specific remote tunnel is better for this (and a lot better if the client does not have proxy settings)

GreyLinux

@paul @jonah have you got a recommended guide for this sort of thing ? I'm just searching now to get ahead of the curve should the worst happen.

LukefromDC

@jonah Part of the problem is not having the Second Amendment to make the government think twice about rounding people up for "porn violations" by VPN.

Here most of the South has age verification laws and is thus blocked, but VPN bans are going nowhere and no proposal has included individual criminalization to my knowledge.

Also note that Tor is a real bear for ISPs or governments to block. Even China's Great Firewall can only stop some Tor traffic, some of the time.

Paul Wilde :dontpanic2: :smeghead: :archlinux: :freebsd:

@rastilin @Greylinux @jonah ah, sarcasm, if only I thought of using that...

But yes, you're absolutely right, any government would have absolutely no idea about the difference between a VPN and routing specifix traffic via an alternative path than it would normally go.
And I'll see them in court.

Christopher Neitzert

@jonah oh are they going to be in for some surprises when they figure out this technology they're trying to govern... .

Paul Wilde :dontpanic2: :smeghead: :archlinux: :freebsd:

@Greylinux @jonah there's probably a nunber of guides out there, but I've just learned things over the years... It's actually how I used to test remote client's internet connections.

Anyway, what you'd do is have a basic, cheap, VPS from any provider and country you desire and set it up for SSH access, and I think it's "AllowTcpForwarding yes" that needs to be set in sshd_config.
Then you'd connect to it with your client machine with the -D $port parameter, i.e. ssh -D 3080 $server
Then in your web browser, you'd set up the proxy settings under SOCKS to your loopback address and the port specified i.e. SOCKS: 127.0.0.1 3080.
And that's it, any traffic from that browser will go through your loopback, to the SSH server, then off to the internet. I believe there's an option of sending DNS requests that way too in the web browser. You do need to leave the SSH session open, for obvious reasons.
Of course, only the traffic from the web browser will use this route, so you'd need to set it up in different applications' proxy config if you want them to use it too.

Obviously, care should be taken to secure the ssh endpoint as much as possible, either through blocklistd, fail2ban, etc. or just allowing connections via a specific IP address

Dibs

@jonah we definitely don't have space to lock anyone up on the pretext they might have committed a crime. But I agree with the sentiment.

ck0

@aral @jonah Datacenters and domain registrars are already under the "know your customers" legislations, like banks.

GreyLinux

@paul @jonah

thanks for this insight, its much appreciated. You have definitely given me something to research and think about.

Fonant

@rastilin @paul @Greylinux @jonah If this law ever does come in, the law makers will have a lot of fun trying to define what a "VPN" is.

At the basic level, it's just an encrypted network tunnel between two computers. Something that is logically and mathematically impossible to ban.

�

@aral @jonah good bye working from home

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@tinkerer @aral @jonah good bye self managed next cloud instance and homepage containing cv and work/skill preview