this post was submitted on 29 Jul 2025
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Prominent backbench MP Sarah Champion launched a campaign against VPNs previously, saying: “My new clause 54 would require the Secretary of State to publish, within six months of the Bill’s passage, a report on the effect of VPN use on Ofcom’s ability to enforce the requirements under clause 112.

"If VPNs cause significant issues, the Government must identify those issues and find solutions, rather than avoiding difficult problems.” And the Labour Party said there were “gaps” in the bill that needed to be amended.

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[–] sturmblast@lemmy.world 21 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago) (1 children)

Yeah, businesses will not accept this. Remote work and remote connections rely on VPN for ALL KINDS OF SHIT. If you must adhere to some kinds of government compliance, it is even MANDATED BY THE FUCKING GOVERNMENT. Explain to me how the hell that is going to just poof and not cause all kinds of problems.

[–] Shayeta@feddit.org 3 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

Individual customer VPN providers get banned, corporate VPN providers not banned. It's quite simple really.

Or are you expecting the average Joe to spin up his own VPN server?

[–] sturmblast@lemmy.world 2 points 4 hours ago

And how do you expect that to work on a technical level?

[–] npcknapsack@lemmy.ca 16 points 21 hours ago

People are "at risk"... of what? What a terrible article to not even clarify what the risk is. Because it sounds to me like the government is who put those people at risk by making them go look for solutions to a draconian policy.

[–] minorkeys@lemmy.world 44 points 1 day ago

Funny how its always so important to ban useful and empowering things for citizens in the name of safety but someone we can't ban business practices that cause mass extinctions, change the climate, impoverish the working class or kill enough of us to only be seen as a statistic instead of people. If they actually cared about safety, they would be banning the things that cause mass suffering and death, not VPNs. We should be opposed to these kinds of bans on the principle that it further disempowered us so we are less able to deal with the threats of all the mass suffering and death that they refuse to keep us safe from.

[–] Iambus@lemmy.world 39 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Lol what is going on over there. The UK is becoming more dystopian by the day.

[–] Tattorack@lemmy.world 13 points 1 day ago

They looked at their calendar and thought "Oh shit!" when they saw they were overdue to start V for Vendetta.

[–] commander@lemmy.world 22 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

To me it looks like every government in the world is pro-surveillance and anti-privacy; they're just all at different stages of depth into those ideologies done in practice. Privacy and anti-surveillance against foreign governments and corporations, pro for domestic. And I continue decade after decade to say that you should fear your domestic government far more than any foreign unless you're a country that may have US and allies bombing/droning and paratrooping your country. Countries with a modern enough military mostly have to worry about their own government rather than foreign governments

[–] GladiusB@lemmy.world 6 points 1 day ago

To me it looks like every government in the world is pro-surveillance and anti-privacy; they're just all at different stages of depth into those ideologies done in practice.

Because they are all fuckin crooked and all want to keep their power.

[–] TimewornTraveler@lemmy.dbzer0.com 14 points 1 day ago (2 children)

this is obviously such a dumpster fire that I can't help but wonder, "When will they realize how dumb this is and back out of it?"

then i remember that Brexit happened

fuckin stubbornness is a national identity for you blokes innit

[–] AlpacaChariot@lemmy.world 3 points 21 hours ago (4 children)

We didn't have a referendum on this though, and if we had done I don't think it would have passed

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[–] toothpaste_ostrich@feddit.nl 1 points 19 hours ago

Don't forget the raging alcoholism

[–] phoenixz@lemmy.ca 41 points 1 day ago

If VPNs cause significant issues, the Government must identify those issues and find solutions, rather than avoiding difficult problems

Your law is the difficult problem you daft cunt

[–] inkrifle@lemmy.world 21 points 1 day ago (4 children)

Labour has already spoken out and said they will make no attempts to ban VPNs.

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[–] Bubbey@lemmy.world 29 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Even the CCP can't stop VPNs... good luck UK

[–] imouto@lemmy.world 10 points 1 day ago (4 children)

Most conventional VPNs, e.g. OpenVPN, WireGuard, AnyConnect, PPTP/L2TP, IKEv2/IPsec, etc., actually don't work in China. Technology-wise GFW is quite sophisticated and conventional VPNs are not designed for censorship circumvention anyway.

You'll have to use things like Shadowsocks or V2Ray, which is out of the reach of most people.

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[–] 1984@lemmy.today 14 points 1 day ago (2 children)

You cant ban vpns, its easy for tech people to set up a vpn server on any server on the internet and connect to it. Wireguard for example, super simple.

[–] cley_faye@lemmy.world 23 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Oh, sweet summer child. Of course you can ban them. Lawmakers don't always care about the technicality of things, because in most cases they don't have to.

You can't prevent VPN from existing, and short of a very tightly curated whitelist of services, you can't prevent people from actually using them, sure. Unless you're on the side of the state, the Law, and the enforcement. In which case, you can. A blanket ban on VPN usage is the perfect gateway to "we've seen traffic from your house toward a known VPN server, so, blam, arrest". And it does not have to stop at known server.

Given the regular tries to outright ban encryption, this is the perfect venue to mass target encrypted communications. Depending on the wording, the mere presence of unobservable traffic could be enough for an arrest.

If what I'm saying here sound dystopian to you, just remember that not only most of this was actually tried (and aborted) time after time, but also that until quite recently, the general public actually using strong encryption was illegal in many places, including our western countries, and experiments to make state spyware mandatory are also a recurrent thing (which might take hold with the "ID verification through your phone" apps soon).

[–] xorollo@leminal.space 11 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Thanks for this. I think it's really important to point out that merely having unobservable traffic could be a trigger for this.

We can't avoid taking these threats seriously because we think we are smarter.

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[–] rozodru@lemmy.world 6 points 1 day ago

yup just did it this morning on my server because now I'm moving my stuff, yet again, away from European companies because of all this. it was painfully simple and easy. I just followed a guide I found on a linux blog and within 10minutes I had a VPN of my own up and running.

[–] rozodru@lemmy.world 10 points 1 day ago (1 children)

for those in the UK and/or Other places in Europe just know it's so painfully easy to either set up your own VPN or just use something like Mullvad.

I set up my own VPN this morning for the first time on my server and it took less than 10minutes. plenty of guides online on how to do it.

[–] ohshit604@sh.itjust.works 2 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago)

Bonus points if you can route your personal VPN server through your VPN provider, the flow looks a little like this:

Client <—> Personal VPN server <—> VPN Provider

[–] rob_t_firefly@lemmy.world 24 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

The linked story has been updated. The headline now reads:

Labour rules out VPN ban in UK but issues warning to UK households

Labour won't ban the use of Virtual Private Networks

And the story begins:

Labour has ruled out a possible VPN ban after reports thousands of UK households were at risk following the Online Safety Act kicking in under the government. Labour Party Tech Secretary Peter Kyle has revealed that the Government is "not considering a VPN ban" - after reports in Guido Fawkes suggested it was possible.

[–] phoenixz@lemmy.ca 12 points 1 day ago (2 children)

This shows that this bill has shit all to do with the protection of children, it's just again the over reach of religious zealots

Can we please ban religions instead? This would ACTUALLY protect minors and just in general make the world such a better and more beautiful place.

Convert churches into museums for art and displaying the horrors of religion

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[–] TheOrionArm@lemmy.world 26 points 1 day ago (4 children)

How is this even feasible? People need them for work, business, school etc. The UK is going nuts with the attempts to regulate the internet.

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[–] ColdWater@lemmy.ca 2 points 20 hours ago
[–] MissingGhost@lemmy.ml 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)

What if we all started using I2P for most stuff? The governments couldn't do anything about it.

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[–] Ronno@feddit.nl 31 points 1 day ago (1 children)

"Stop defending yourself, and let me hit you" vibes.

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[–] falynns@lemmy.world 31 points 1 day ago

"Hey! Stop using well known workarounds to my idiot demands! Surely this is brand new technology that no one could have known about!"

[–] TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world 12 points 1 day ago

after reports in Guido Fawkes suggested it was possible.

That's the only source? A far-right conspiracy website?

[–] null_dot@lemmy.dbzer0.com 21 points 1 day ago

I love watching politicians try to understand the internet.

VPNs have loads of vanilla use cases.

It would be infinitely more productive to regulate the predatory practices of stream providers and reduce the incentive for piracy.

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