Next up will be a VPN ban.

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

�

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

�

@paul @Greylinux @jonah beat me to it

Tinkerer 🇪🇺

@utf_7 @aral @jonah Mankind is headed (due to the will of the powers that be) to some dramatic shift of things. I hope this whole thing won't be the least of our worries. As always, bad times for the ordinary people. On the US front (and as a lesson to the whole wolrd that still has some form of elections) be careful what you vote and for those who don't... tell us what you think about your mantra "things can't get worse" or "nothing changes".

Tim Ward ⭐🇪🇺🔶 #FBPE

@jonah Lots of people use VPNs all day every day. There's this thing called "working from home".

Davey

@TimWardCam @jonah I've twice worked in offices where everything was routed through the mothership via VPN.

Looking forward to seeing the gov call international banks a bunch of child endangering bastards any day now.

Henrik Pauli

@LukefromDC @jonah As demonstrated by the entire country in the last few weeks/months, the second amendment is worth exactly nothing.

3dcandy

@jonah they don't lock up sex offenders and killers any more so incredibly doubtful. Mahoosive fine more like, which makes zero difference

Dianora (Diane Bruce)

@jonah You are talking about DPI being used as well eh?

Bent Chinrest

@jonah I suspect it's much, much less about locking people up than about having legal cause to shift from the "mass surveillance" VPNs help evade to "targeted surveillance" to extend the state's coercive powers

Govs have learned that "national security" has lost some power, but "protecting children" endures, especially while Epstein affiliation can still take down national figures

chrisgj198

@Fonant @rastilin @paul @Greylinux @jonah I guess they could try. Without https, online banking could be interesting!