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.
Couldn’t people just hire a VPS in another country and VPN with that using Wireguard etc, or even use RDP etc to it? Is it even a VPN if you’re remotely operating a computer in another country?
There will always be a way to bypass laws that do not serve the people.
WireGuard would be illegal. ISPs would monitor for encrypted traffic streams. All remote workers must now come back to the office. ofcom can see any and all traffic. Your loyalty to the king shall be examined. You choices of media will be scrutinized. The threat of losing your children will be used to force compliance. Welcome to the machine.
Pretty much every single website uses HTTPS these days which means all traffic is encrypted anyway. Instead of a VPN you could use an encrypted proxy that connects over HTTPS. I doubt the UK is just going to completely cut itself off from the rest of the world’s internet (because all it takes is one path out).
Oh man, they’re going to come visit everyone that didn’t do the “optional” affirmation thing at his coronation, aren’t they?
Can we develop a new VPN protocol where the encrypted traffic is disguised as a 24 hour continuous stream of Never Gonna Give You Up
RickGuard
I remember in Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother (Great read, Free e-book here.) they had an insider at the ISP who just encrypted all the traffic that came through, so it just became the “new normal”.
Tempora already snoops on traffic.
Work based VPNs would likely have to obtain a license from Ofcom, it would be highly unlikely to block them completely. Probably be requesting a back door into the work VPNs at the same time just like they have for other encryption, lol.
Refer to other comment. They don’t see “VPN traffic”, they see encrypted tunnels between two ports to some offshore vps. At best, they see a header saying “openvpn”. The article is alluding to the country effectively wanting to crack down on encrypted tunnels (because you cannot discriminate VPNs from them). At best, maybe they’re just christofascist idiots.
At best, they see a TLS handshake that gets upgraded to an encrypted websocket which hides VPN traffic…
And make sure to keep videos running 24/7 through said VPN so they don’t know when the packets are interesting vs just YouTube or something
I have a Digital Ocean droplet in Amsterdam, runs OpenVPN server. $6/mo., no one sees my activity, haven’t logged into it in years.
Netherlands is part of the Nine eyes. They know exactly what your activities are.
Whether they choose to chase you down is a different issue.