“UK House of Lords Votes to Extend Age Verification to VPNs”

@gamingonlinux This House of Lords, by far the most democratic institution in the UK... I really don't get how people in UK are living with that.

@jamesravey @gamingonlinux You're right, these petitions often get ignored. But ignoring petitions with high signature counts undermines the gov's position, and if they do get to a debate stage that at least allows the opposition an official chance to confront the government.

@gamingonlinux This is impossible, unless they're only talking about a few of the biggest general-purpose VPN providers. In which case they'll simply redirect users to smaller or self-hosted VPN servers.

You can't restrict access to VPNs any more than you can restrict access to encryption algorithms.

@Fonant @gamingonlinux well, it's ridiculous on its face. How does banning children from VPNs keep them safe in any way? This is either a knee-jerk response to people mocking their last law by pointing out that it can be circumvented with a VPN, or it's another step towards total surveillance of all internet traffic. I'm not sure which is worse. It can be both, of course.

@mspcommentary @gamingonlinux It's just politicians pretending that they can "do something" when in practice it's impossible. Security Theatre.

@gamingonlinux good type to have your own VPS

@MutuallyPrecautionary @gamingonlinux Or learn about TOR.

@gamingonlinux I can't wait until DHCP servers require age verification too

@gamingonlinux as anyone with half a brain has predicted

@Fonant @mspcommentary @gamingonlinux Lords is not even politicians for the most part. Closer would be "angry mostly white male old people's home residents"

Sooner they get abolished for something democratic the better.

@gamingonlinux@mastodon.social How long until I'll have to verify my age just to be able to step out of my fucking front door?

@Fonant It's what you get when you put a bunch of likely tech illiterate old farts in charge.
They don't really understand tech or feasibility, they just say "let it be done".

Ask any of them what a VPN roughly is and they will likely give a very inaccurate answer.

@gamingonlinux

@gamingonlinux @cstross Oh FFS.

@gamingonlinux I wonder how this will work with Mullvad. I guess they will simply stop selling their vouchers on amazon UK, as they collect no user id data, making them still available from neighbour countries ? Their servers can't be blocked, most of the major providers have servers in the same networks.

@LonM @gamingonlinux

Just signed.