Poll of the Day > Let me fill you in on the truth behind VPNs and the RESTRICT Act.

(+) Yeah! (+)

Please unsubscribe to any wack job that is saying that the RESTRICT Act would ban or criminalize the use of VPNs.
They are saying this out their ass, and the act doesn't support these claims.
Companies RELY on VPNs for telework. There are open standards such as IPSec that facilitate the creation of VPNs. Basically anyone can create a "VPN", it is well established technology that only requires someone to create a secure tunnel between two points and to forward network requests through that point.
Nobody is going to take this from you. A ban on VPNs is essentially a ban on encryption.
A ban on encryption is literally the end of the modern era. Everything we do relies on encryption to work.
The worst thing that could even happen is that very large VPN providers which move data through countries like China and Russia could be banned, and I'm not even sure that this act would even be able to do that.
Also it doesn't put any penalty on the end user. The current discourse in Washington is for consumer protection, especially the protection of minors from companies who are data harvesting for algorithms which are being designed to manipulate their target audiences.

And yea, that's a lot of words, but holy shit, fuck the media for protecting their sponsors.

So what does the act do?

I'd google it, but you say they're being sensationalist.

It's also kind of info-dense.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RESTRICT_Act

It seems like a bipartisan issue, with Democrats and Republicans split on opinions.

After reading this I'm wondering what this has to do with VPNs as well, doesn't seem like it does. It seems more like a "don't let adversary countries run social media apps as they pose a national security risk".

https://www.expressvpn.com/blog/the-u-s-restrict-act-explained/

I see that as a good thing, but I also understand why some people would be opposed to banning social media apps with the reasoning being they're from another country. The US wants to enforce privacy regulations, but can't if those servers are in china, which is a completely unregulated door to the Chinese government.

Judgmenl posted...

Nobody is going to take this from you. A ban on VPNs is essentially a ban on encryption.
A ban on encryption is literally the end of the modern era. Everything we do relies on encryption to work.

You know that, and I know that, but a substantial number of the dinosaurs running the country don't understand why Tiktok needs to be able to access home wifi networks. Expecting the most basic modicum of technical competency from Congress may be a little too optimistic.

Yellow posted...

After reading this I'm wondering what this has to do with VPNs as well, doesn't seem like it does. It seems more like a "don't let adversary countries run social media apps as they pose a national security risk".

Congrats, you came to the same conclusion I did (although I only skimmed it). It's about preventing adversary countries from providing software services to users.
adjl posted...

Expecting the most basic modicum of technical competency from Congress may be a little too optimistic.

From what I listened to they actually seem to understand enough. I should really listen to the hearing that happened a few weeks ago.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_E-4jtTFsO4

adjl posted...

You know that, and I know that, but a substantial number of the dinosaurs running the country don't understand why Tiktok needs to be able to access home wifi networks. Expecting the most basic modicum of technical competency from Congress may be a little too optimistic.

I think the issue is that all user data being stored is in an offshore country that Congress doesn't trust enough to leave it up to their own regulations. It might just be currently used to create a database of American citizens or push algos that influence public opinion. The level of trust with China is the biggest driving force here.

I think AOC disagrees with me, which is probably a first.

Judgmenl posted...

From what I listened to they actually seem to understand enough. I should really listen to the hearing that happened a few weeks ago.

Possibly. I'm saying this having paid zero attention to any of the matter and harbouring no actual fear that VPN's will disappear and modern computing as we know it will collapse. I'm just not about to assume that Congress knows anything about computers until proven otherwise.

Yeah, it looks like some members of Congress are actually pretty knowledgeable about it. It's not something you would expect a 70-year-old man to understand, but databases have been around for decades and I think your average person understands how they function on a very broad level.

But yeah I'd like to see some examples of people explaining this as a VPN-blocking bill unless they're going into the implementation of the bill being poor, and having side effects other than preventing China from collecting a lot of US user data.

Judgmenl posted...

Nobody is going to take this from you. A ban on VPNs is essentially a ban on encryption.
A ban on encryption is literally the end of the modern era. Everything we do relies on encryption to work.

You say this as if the people who make decisions understand technology or care about consequences.

There's a reason why stuff like SOPA and the CDA keeps getting proposed, and then people keep fighting back against them.

Most bills these days wind up being like a thousand pages long and reps just tell their interns to read them and summarize what it says.

VPNs always seemed to me like just a grift to get money out of paranoid people