Banning VPNs: Why Governments Are Stuck Drafting Legislation Against 'The Concept of Privacy' Instead of Tools
The consensus is that outright VPN bans are functionally impossible and would create immediate operational chaos for businesses. Users repeatedly point out that traffic can be masked to look normal, making technical enforcement a pipe dream.
The battlefield splits sharply: some tech proponents assume novel tools like Tor, I2P, and SSH tunnels offer permanent escape routes. Conversely, cynics like golden_zealot argue governments know everything already, predicting sweeping legislation targeting the abstract concept of hidden traffic rather than specific, current protocols.
Overall, the community consensus is that any attempt at a total ban will fail technologically. The real threat, the weight of the opinion suggests, is sweeping legislation targeting the *idea* of privacy itself, effectively criminalizing the concept rather than the specific software.
Key Points
Banning VPNs causes immediate, massive business disruption.
Multiple users, including _haha_oh_wow_, stated that banning VPNs is an 'absolute disaster' for legitimate operations.
Technical workarounds make an outright ban nearly impossible.
Users pointed to traffic obfuscation and advanced tunnels as persistent bypass methods.
Governments already know every privacy protocol.
golden_zealot asserts that because protocols like Tor, I2P, and Signal are public knowledge, any ban must target legislation abstractly, not the tools.
Legislation must target concepts, not specific tools.
eleijeep suggested the law should ban 'Any product or technology which hides internet bound network traffic' rather than listing banned software.
SSH tunnels offer viable technical bypasses.
slothrop detailed using SSH (`ssh -D`) or dynamic port forwarding as established technical workarounds.
Source Discussions (3)
This report was synthesized from the following Lemmy discussions, ranked by community score.