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No working-class citizen is advocating for this.
Also, has the UK prosecuted Prince Andrew for raping those kids?
I love the juxtaposition of the ads and the content of the article (on work laptop which manages the browser & controls extensions before anyone chimes in about adblockers)
It'd be a good idea to read the article before complaining about this being another instance of Labour authoritarianism (of which there are admittedly already too many). This was a Lords revolt against the Labour position of not banning VPNs for under-18s.
It now goes to the Commons, where Labour has a large majority, and where it will almost certainly be decisively defeated.
What the fuck even is the lords!?
Old politicians that overstay their welcome get shunted to the lords. They are like the senate, but not powerful.
A second parliamentary chamber whose members are not elected but instead get their seats by being nominated for life for one by a sitting government or inheriting it.
And the hereditary contingent is gradually shrinking, and with luck, should disappear entirely after another round of reforms. Fingers crossed.
It's the upper house of parliament.
its to control dissent against conservative govt, nothing to do with protecting children or dealing with porn.
precious little done under the cry of "but wont someone think of the children?!" has ever, actually, been done with the children in mind.
Politicians decades ago just found out its easy to demonize opposition, if you masquerade your bullshit power seizing in some child protection lie.
Why do they want this so badly.
Surveillance. Control of all messaging. Consolidation of the british internet into government friendly hands.
The age verification law caused the collapse not only of smaller websites unable to afford to perform the necessary checks, but also of LGBTQ resources, support communities for bullied and abused children. Force ID verification, make it easier to track people across the internet. VPNs make it possible for british people to circumvent those ID checks, so now they have to go.
That's fucked up. Inb4 they make meshnets illegal too.
Yes, grab your meshtastic (or similar) gear now before you can't any more.
They can't stop Tor, which is run by volunteers is free to use and cannot steal or log your data -- which VPNs can
Tor has its own problems and is not infallible.
Tor gets better the more people run nodes. The main danger with Tor is that someone can control enough nodes to analyze traffic back to its source. The best insurance against that is loads of independently run nodes. I2p is less convenient than Tor but actually a little more secure against that kind of traffic analysis I believe.
These powerful people don't need VPNs for their pedophilia, terrorism and privacy.
Isn't this part of the same amendment that will make government spyware mandatory on all devices? So does that mean that part passed as well? VPNs are not the most concerning part here yet that's the only bit that seems to be getting reported
The “CSAM requirement” is that any relevant device supplied for use in the UK must have installed tamper-proof system software which is highly effective at preventing the recording, transmitting (by any means, including livestreaming) and viewing of CSAM using that device
So that means mandatory spyware and effectively makes alternative OS's/unlocked bootloaders illegal
tamper proof system software
Lol, tell me you're an ancient idiot with zero understanding of computers without telling me that you are an ancient idiot with zero understanding of computers
So that doesn't exist and is basically pretty much impossible
Then, how about Linux? That goes exactly against the point of why Linux exists in the first place.
So no more Linux computers then? No more Linux servers, then? No more IoT devices?
That rule is bizarrely dumb. Not just bad, just dumb dumb dumb.
So in other words, a perfect law to come from the UK government!
They'll get a surprise when they realize they just made every server in the UK illegal and stopped the economy. But perhaps "relevant devices" are only those owned by the plebs.
Even if they only targeted the plebs, it will completely tank the economy. One of the problems is that they will singlehandedly reduce the capacity of techies and engineers within this country.
New technical people will be hard to come by as there is no means/tools to pursue that passion, other than spending heaps of money.
It'll be all about selective enforcement against the usual suspects.
The operating system is not the only way of spying, there is already firmware on your device running without your permission, pretty much impossible to see what code its running, and requires expert level knowledge to disable (or tamper with :)) if a third-party firmware implementation that allows disabling the IME doesn't support your device.
Most phones today also just have a non-unlockable bootloader with a spyware Android skin installed. Locking something down to this level is not really impossible.
Banning VPNs for under 18s. Wonder how they'll get around kid's using their parents VPN.
At this point I have to assume they want the illusion of control rather than actual control. That or maybe they're as stupid as they appear.
Oh they are stupid.
The name of the game of 90% of politics in the UK is "Pleasing the Dailies (Daily Mail, Daily Express, Daily Telegraph, right wing papers here). Young people on social media and young people accessing porn are big moral panic issues so kneejerk reactions are what are expected and demanded.
Do I believe there is an element of "silencing opposition"? Of course there is! Be it silencing opposition to the government or stopping "woke", there is an element of that, but a good number of MPs and Lords don't know shit about fuck about technology and are just going with what Mumsnet are telling them. During the debate on the OSA in the Lords Baroness Fox of Buckley said, and this is a direct quote from Hansard:
My Lords, I would like to say something very quickly on VPN. I had a discussion with some teenagers recently, who were all prepared for this Bill—I was quite surprised that they knew a lot about it. They said, “Don’t worry, we’ve worked out how to get around it. Have you heard of VPN?” It reminded me of a visit to China, where I asked a group of students how they dealt with censorship and not being able to google. They said, “Don’t worry about it”, and showed me VPN.
This is the kind of people we're up against. The "something must be done" type who don't know what the fuck they're talking about, get most of their information from people who either actively want to censor the internet or don't know what they're talking about themselves and believe "something must be done" regardless of if that thing actually works or the type of person who ends the dumbest rant you've ever heard with "it's just common sense" like that somehow makes them right.
You have no idea how dumb but also insidious UK politicians are and how resistant they are to actual reason.
Baroness Fox is a well-known nutcase, having at various times been a Trotskyite, a libertarian, a supporter of UKIP, and a so-called independent who supported Boris Johnson. She belongs to no party, and has essentially zero influence.
Man reading this makes me realise this is exactly how an out of touch aristocracy works. It's just so bizarre how it's ticking away affecting millions of people, despite how divorced from reality it's reasoning is.
this is exactly how an out of touch aristocracy works
Most members of the House of Lords are not aristocrats, and are appointed to the position.
Yeah, I think I was going for they are more like aristocracy than actual public service. It bamboozles because you'd think they would be able to understand basic things.
I mean I don't personally expect it, but it would be nice
Do you want to know what's worse?
Most MPs aren't from the aristocracy. Most are just middle class or upper middle class.
They're just that disconnected.
Are labour doing a speedrun to give reform the next government?
They already have. Now they’re rolling out the red carpet for them by setting up totalitarian controls for them to abuse.
Well it's not like there are any glaring examples on the world stage of exactly how this combo can cause your country to plummet very rapidly into misery and violence from which it won't recover.
They're giving Reform tools that will be used even more oppressively by Reform than by Labour.
The UK might genuinely be more fucked than the US is in certain ways. Your new overlords will probably hold onto power better than any one group in the US, meaning while we will deal with decades of internal strife that could even result in civil war, you'll be living under totalitarianism more complete that will probably last longer. Your elites seem far more united than ours will probably be.
No free access to information or private conversations. That could cause issues for the people in power.
This will be used against the citizenry.
Someone tell them 1984 wasn’t a manual.
Who knew that real-life Big Brother would turn out to be as dreary and limp as Keir Starmer?
When have Brit fascist knobheads ever been anything but dull wet blankets?
Some of them are frog-faced loudmouth wankers.
Since they broke off from the EU it seems they floated all the way to China.
Tor browser it is
Honestly this Is 100% a silver lining, as more governments crack down on freedom tor and I2P will get more users, more development, better features, and more services and tools available through them. This is a win in this small area.
We got this fam
Badenoch promises an immidate ban for under 16s... Wow!
How exactly?
Ah right, tory magic