We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
|
Say no to police state Britain The BBC says “According to Ofcom, platforms must not host, share or permit content encouraging use of VPNs to get around age checks.”
I encourage the use a VPN to get around all state abridgement of people’s right to access the internet, including age checks. Say no to police state Britain, not to mention a VPN enhances your security online.
|
Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
|
Recommendations?
I kinda want an anonymous free service too: I’d rather not give such a service my real identity…
Click the link above to learn about VPNs!
To actually ban VPNs? I’m sure the starmsi would love to, but the actuality would be another matter.
I suspect they will go the lie and propaganda (aka TV licence route) – lots of officious and threatening pop ups etc advising of “consequences” for VPN use.
It depresses me to think how many might fall for it.
My university employer insists that I use a VPN to access its web-based services when not in the office.
I wouldn’t recommend a free VPN service. You don’t know just how secure it is. That’s why I use a paid service, namely, ExpressVPN. It’s excellent.
I first started using it when the EU brought in the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Many of the major newspapers in the US, which I read to keep track of things back there, didn’t see the use of making significant changes to their websites to comply with the EU’s law, so they simply blocked me. The VPN allows me to carry on reading them.
There’s also another benefit: what Netflix offers depends on the country it’s being watched from. Want something else? Just change your country setting.
@Clovis Sangrail
My university employer insists that I use a VPN to access its web-based services when not in the office.
Perhaps, but it is also quite possible that the UK government will do these things:
1. demand that all access through a VPN be logged, so that they can map from the virtual IP to your actual physical IP
2. demand that the VPN be compromised with a back door for security services allowing them to defeat the encryption
3. demand that VPN hosts are in the UK, so that your IP address, virtual or not, is always a UK one, and subject to UK jurisdiction.
All of these are quite simple things to do technically, and would neuter the use of a VPN to protect your privacy.
Fraser,
All of these are quite simple things to do technically
You are aware of the UKGov’s track-record on anything IT related? I wouldn’t trust those fuckers with a box of Cuisenaire rods.
@Fraser Orr
Well, yes.
I use Proton Mail’s VPN. Not sure how good it is but they have a good track record for privacy.
@NickM
You are aware of the UKGov’s track-record on anything IT related? I wouldn’t trust those fuckers with a box of Cuisenaire rods.
Two things:
1. Although I could not agree more on the general level of incompetence of the UK government, the security services technical people are actually quite competent. For sure they can do this sort of compromise work.
2. Most changes are more mandates that private companies are required to do, and subpoena demands that that do it correctly or else get it trouble (“subpoena” after all means “under threat of punishment”).
@Clovis Sangrail
I use Proton Mail’s VPN. Not sure how good it is but they have a good track record for privacy.
You mean Proton Mail that is used by kiddie pornographers and drug cartels to move their money? Or so their argument would go. It is very easy for the government to ban non cooperating VPN services — just block the IP routes at the international borders.
FWIW, Proton does seem to be excellent, but they can easily be excluded from the UK for not following the rules.
Best marketing for VPNs from ofcom, even I just got one and I don’t even know how it can help me in my case as I’m usually logged in to google. Nevertheless, I now have one.
Fraser,
Your first point. Yes, probably if the likes of GCHQ take on the job. If it’s Whitehall…
Your second point. Agreed. That is probably the path they will take and the companies will probably over-comply to keep on the safe side. The likes of MS Co-Pilot already acts like a pearl-clutching maiden aunt.
Going after VPNs was the obvious next step for the establishment – and it is what they are doing.
No one believes this is anything to do with protecting children from porn – the establishment have made it very clear that they do not care, and have not cared for many years, about the rape of children (let alone children seeing porn) – supposedly this is a price worth paying for the Cultural Enrichment of Diversity and Inclusion.
All these laws and regulations are not about “protecting the children” they are about political and cultural control. As is the mass immigration itself – which could have been stopped at any time by a government who wanted to (Hungary shows this), the mass immigration is a deliberate policy (it is nothing to do with the free market – there was NOT mass immigration in the 19th century when there actually was something like a free market in Britain) – pushed by benefits and public services.
The leftist establishment decided as far as the 1960s (if not before) that they did not like British society, or the society of Western nations in general, so they decided to SMASH these societies – that was the case in the United States, the United Kingdom and many other nations. With many “conservative” politicians, in many Western countries, either being puppets of officials and “experts” or just going with the flow.
The difference between the United States and the United Kingdom is that in the United States people are allowed to protest against leftist policy (although they may lose their jobs, and have campaigns of harassment directed at them) – and here in the United Kingdom dissenters wait for arrest.
I have often pointed out (and make no apology for doing so) that you can-not-get the politics of the Bill of Rights (including the First Amendment) from the philosophy of Sir Francis Bacon, Thomas Hobbes, David Hume and Jeremy Bentham – and these thinkers are the favorites of the British establishment, they do not need Dr Karl Marx (or even my half brother Dr Tony Marks) to provide them with the intellectual underpinnings of tyranny – they have them already.
@Paul Marks
The difference between the United States and the United Kingdom is that in the United States people are allowed to protest against leftist policy
You are right, I have often argued that this is the one remaining thing that is special about the USA, than and perhaps the second amendment. The courts take the first amendment very seriously and it has suffered endless attacks from all sides for years and has stood strong through them all.
Somehow I am hearing Lee Greenwood singing in the background of this comment.
What about Starlink? Avoid terrestrial hardware altogether, and just talk to the satellite.
There is a phrase in the cellars of my memory. What is it? Let me try to remember … Oh, yes I recall it now.
“If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear”.
Most famously used by the Gestapo but if the tine foil hat fits and all that …
We – you all, actually – can find fun and techie ways around this. The problem is, this effectively ends the MASS communication aspect of it all – bringing important news to the masses.
We might feel cool that we have our individual work-around for this outrageous situation, but if Joe or Mohammad Blow can’t easily and cheaply access news the government dislikes, the government has won.
It puts us back on “alternate media” status, where we talk to ourselves again, like during pre-Musk Twitter.
@Bloodwood
What about Starlink? Avoid terrestrial hardware altogether, and just talk to the satellite.
Starlink operates under a national license and so must follow the country’s rules both to broadcast into the country (violating this can get you in all sorts of trouble with international telecoms bodies) or, perhaps more relevantly, the right to buy starlink boxes within the UK, and similarly the ability of Starlink to charge British consumers for a license. So, unfortunately, I don’t think Elon is riding to the rescue.
@Phil B rightly points out the dishonest phrase:
“If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear”.
To which I reply: “The thing I fear, Sir, is you, the government.”