On Sept. 11, Michigan representatives proposed an internet content ban bill unlike any of the others we’ve seen: This particularly far-reaching legislation would ban not only many types of online content, but also the ability to legally use any VPN.
The bill, called the Anticorruption of Public Morals Act and advanced by six Republican representatives, would ban a wide variety of adult content online, ranging from ASMR and adult manga to AI content and any depiction of transgender people. It also seeks to ban all use of VPNs, foreign or US-produced.
Main issue I have with this article, and a lot of articles on this topic, is it doesn’t address the issue of youth access to porn. I think any semi-intelligent person knows this is a parenting issue, but unfortunately that cat’s out of the bag, thanks to the right. “Proliferation of porn” is the '90s crime scare (that never really died) all over again. If a politician or industry expert is speaking against bills like this, their talking points have to include:
- Privacy-respecting alternatives that promise parents that their precious babies won’t be able to access that horrible dangerous porn! (I don’t argue that porn can’t be dangerous, but this is yet another disingenuous right-wing culture (holy) war)
- Addressing that vagueness in the bill sets up the government as morality police (it’s right there in the title of the bill, FFS), and NOBODY in a “free” country should ever want that.
- Stop saying it can be bypassed with technology. The VPN ban in this bill is a reaction to talking points like that.
- Recognize and call out that this has nothing to do with protecting children and everything to do with a religious minority imposing its will on the rest of the country (plenty of recent examples to pull from here).
Unfortunately this is becoming enough of “A Thing” that the left is going to have to, once again, be seen doing “something” about it. So they have to thread a needle of “protecting kids,” while respecting the privacy of their parents who want their kids protected and want to look at porn, and protecting businesses that require secure communications.
Banning VPNs would be an unmitigated disaster and anyone who suggests that it’s a good idea has absolutely no idea what they’re talking about and should never be allowed to make tech policy again because they are a massive idiot.
Businesses, institutions, and even the government itself all require the use of VPNs to remain secure. VPNs are vital to functioning IT infrastructure everywhere.
Additionally, such a move wouldn’t even stop people from accessing porn (which isn’t even what VPNs are for), all it would really do is break IT security everywhere.
The problem is that influencers have shilled stupid VPN services so much that even legislatures think they know what they are and think the primary use for the technology is circumvention and privacy.
They have no idea about all the IPsec tunnels providing site-to-site VPNs for all their businesses. Or how VPN protocols like GRE, which while providing no security on their own, are still very useful for tunneling protocols through different network stacks.
You’re right. Sadly, this have no bearing on the people actually deciding federal laws in the US, if I am to trust the news cycle from the last 10 or so months.
The damage that would stem from such things is guaranteed to span far and large :(
Take a look at the UK’s current attempts to do similar.
Old bigots completely divorced from reality making the rules everyone (else) has to follow.
I suspect what will actually happen is this bill will go nowhere. If it starts to go somewhere, business interests will step in and squash it because of the many, many, many problems it would cause.
I want to see one state pass this (not mine ofc) just to see the carnage of an entire state full of companies that suddenly cease operations.
This is the first thing I thought about. Bills like these always allow for vulnerabilities that would affect the entire nation, themselves included. It’s extremely short sided.
I mean. They’d only enforce the ban on VPN providers that don’t provide logs to the government. I get what you mean from a technology standpoint. But, in actual implementation of the law it would do exactly what they want. They’re not gonna ban your work VPN. They just want to track what everyone is doing online.
That in itself introduces numerous security problems, still incredibly stupid and all this surveillance data makes for a hacker goldmine. Not like governments have a great IT security track record.
It’s not government. It’s about passing tech infrastructure entirely into the hands of the tech Oligarchs. Forcing VPN companies to sell or integrate Palantir/CIA/FBI backends in order to keep operating in the US.
You’re thinking too much about how the legislation is worded. It doesn’t matter when the actual implementation will just be to increase the ability for tech oligarchs to spy on all citizens. That’s the material goal. Your security doesn’t matter. The oligarchs will implement it to protect their own security and monopoly on data. That’s it. That’s all that this is meant to do. The old fucks in the legislative branch don’t have to actually understand it or write that down. They will just pass it off to tech companies to implement how they see fit. And enforce it on providers when they are told to by the Oligarchs. It’s not smart. It doesn’t have to be. It’s malicious handoff to tech oligarchs to handle and enforce as they see fit.
This is exactly the color of the issue. Everyone should read this.
The wording of legislation is how legislation works?
Might want to look up the Chevron deference. Something that was actually of topic in a recent 2024 supreme court ruling. Can rant about how and why the change to it occurred but that’s a little off topic.
The TLDR is that federal agencies have the power to interpret and defer technical parts of legislation to experts within that agency to enact the “purpose” of the legislation.
In reality this is a good thing in a well operated federal government. The FDA doesn’t have to defer to a judge for every specific implementation. But we are not in a well functioning federal government. We are passing off power tech Oligarchs to control things how they see fit.
WHEN, HOW, and WHO the law is enforced to is significantly more important that how legislation is worded when it passes. I’m trying to explain what the material result of the law will be to my best ability. The law will be enforced in favor of tech monopolies. It’ll be another tool for them to use state power to their benefit.
Most VPNs do not use a separate VPN provided. What about places that host their own? My employer would never open their logs to the us government (hosted outside the us). I would never willingly open my own logs to the government - they have to not only physically invade my house but have to decrypt my drives, and hope they did it quickly enough that any incriminating logs haven’t been purged
It’s not about stopping random people hosting their own VPN. It’s about collecting data on the majority of the population. You’re thinking too hard about it.
yeah a vpn ban would fuck up networks
Just like world-wide tariffs will disrupt supply chains.
They don’t care, they are dumber than rocks and twice as corrupt.
What the hell are rocks up to? Whats next, youre gonna tell me stones are up to no good.
For rock and stone!
How do you even define a VPN? Is SSH tunnelling allowed then?
For that matter, how do you define porn?
10 hour video of a woman encouraging you to be a better person.
So what you are saying is this is a fantastic RTO strategy. /s
But yeah, I work for an international company, setting up the IT infrastructure so that each of those individual offices have a standard security policy and connection whitelists, and then requiring an on-site IT person to manage each of those sounds horrible.
VPNs is not just for remote workers. It’s used by corporations who don’t want to pay for a direct connect to federate with their work sites.
The only way a VPN ban is going to work is if they make a carve-out for corporations.
Which, let’s face it, it’s Republicans so there’s a one-to-one chance that language will be there.
Couldn’t a VPN service make a corporation and attain exemption?
VPNs are needed for way more than people working from home. It’s hard to understate how spectacularly stupid banning VPNs would be in terms of business alone, never mind all the other problems it would cause.