Comment by nebben64
8 days ago
how would that work? Besides blocking the websites to download some VPN. Or if someone already has a VPN installed.
8 days ago
how would that work? Besides blocking the websites to download some VPN. Or if someone already has a VPN installed.
I see you’ve never been anywhere that blocks VPNs.
First they will make it seem like only criminals would use VPNs, then they’ll target some actually shady VPN services to use as a scapegoat, then they’ll apply punitive measures to them specifically; then they will use the fact that they have already used punitive measures as a reason to use them blanketly.
Technically: it’s pretty trivial to block almost all VPNs at an ISP level. I think only anyconnect/openconnect is difficult (not impossible) to block.
That this would affect businesses is of no consequence.
DPI can figure out standard VPNs, including anyconnect, pretty well based on timing and packet sizes.
There are tools designed to evade DPI detection, but even those don't make out out of the Great Firewall of China most of the time.
Technical solutions to political problems only go so far.
> That this would affect businesses is of no consequence.
This is a historically unpopular government, where a significant proportion of their own membership is opposed to the government as well, dependent on business donors because its membership numbers has crashed.
I think the effect on businesses would make going after VPNs entirely dead in the water.
What about using ssh and a SOCKS5 proxy? I would be surprised if the UK government blocked that.
Honestly as long as you can connect two pcs together, you can theoretically create a proxy.
Its theoretically possible to create a proxy from one pc to another using iroh/quic/(dumbpipe, which got like 880 upvotes I think on HN and I think is trending which is nice)
I feel like Its a cat and mouse game but that's just my 2 cents
It doesn't have to work on a technical level. Just grab a few people at random, torture them until someone admits guilt, then televise the guilty verdict and life-destroying sentence. Do this two or three times and fear will do the rest of the work for you.
The goal here is compliance, and nothing more.
Doesn’t need to be workable to outlaw it. Turning everyone into a criminal on paper and selectively enforcing is a win for gov
Get the websites blocked too, some kinda minor fine if you're identified as using one, make it seem scary in the public eye to discourage it, ban advertisements?
You can't really stop it, but you can start treating it like Piracy. Maybe ISPs could snoop and report traffic that seems to be going to a VPN even if they can't inspect it.
They could probably manage to deal with the big players (who have enough advertising reach to be used by "ordinary" people). I doubt they could ever block the long tail of non-standard VPNs, especially those that share infrastructure used for legitimate purposes (are they going to ban SSH connections to AWS?).