Comment by embedding-shape
7 hours ago
Full context:
> Ms Kendall told Nick Ferrari: “I told MPs yesterday I'm going to come back to the House with a statement on the issue of VPNs in July. There are very strong views on both sides of this. For some people, it is about privacy, and it is the ability to use that is really held strongly by people. And for others, they say they should be banned because kids are using them to get around. And so I— the main thing that we've done is we've commissioned additional research on this because I've not been happy with the evidence."
Sounds like they realize there are two sides and no "clear winning argument" in either direction, that's why the additional research is needed. Sounds a bit more nuanced than what I expected based on your snippet.
What is there to research? Yes, VPNs can be used to circumvent geofences (and by extension, regional age restrictions). Yes, attempting to age-restrict VPNs is at odds with strong privacy guarantees. Privacy is a human right, and one which is essential for effective democracy.
It's the UK gov. Rather than do something, it's endless inquiries and 'research'.
Example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lower_Thames_Crossing - the planning application is 360,000 pages and not a single shovel is in the ground. Or HS2. The list goes on. This is a really, really minor example of the same sickness that infests British politics for the last few decades.
> What is there to research?
The trade-offs and how many people care and about what specifically.
E.g., you say "Privacy is a human right", so why is it that half the websites I visit ask for permission to share details of how I use those sites with more corporate "trusted partners" than there were students and staff combined in my secondary school? I'm all on board with just banning this kind of analytics, but there's a lot of people who are more angry with the EU for forcing companies to at least ask for permission before they sell your data to all those analytics firms.
Because they ask for permission, get it?
> E.g., you say "Privacy is a human right", so why is it that half the websites I visit ask for permission to share details of how I use those sites with more corporate "trusted partners" than there were students and staff combined in my secondary school?
Because capitalism itself is the enemy.
And information assymmetry is a potent tool, as is constant and persistent surveillance. All of these enable extracting more money.
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Are there ways of doing age gating while preserving privacy? For whom? How many people need that kind of privacy, would it impact lots of (say) teens seeking help or is this about whistleblowers? Are many under 18s using VPNs for porn? Or have they just shifted to other platforms anyway? If we implemented it “perfectly” would it even do the thing we wanted?
What are the actual numbers here? If there’s lots of fuss about vpns but actually while there’s been a big jump in use it’s not under 18s anyway it wouldn’t help.
> Privacy is a human right, and one which is essential for effective democracy.
And does this get broken enough for age gating something? We age gate alcohol to reasonable success, sometimes that involves showing id.
I’m not arguing for age gating here but I do think understanding the tradeoffs may require more evidence.
>We age gate alcohol to reasonable success,
We shouldn't.
>sometimes that involves showing id.
Then the yokel checkout attendant proceeds to punch the 8 digit birthday into the keyboard, which serializes you as one of less than 30,000 customers in the area. Birthdays are leaky identifiers.
Good thing then that Democracy isn’t gonna defend itself.
But that's the point, circumvent democracy, to set the stage for techno-fascism. The citizen has no rights which the state is bound to respect.
By all means.
For example the vast majority of the UK residents is against the ongoing support and complicity of the UK in the genocide of Palestinians, to which the government orchestrated the whole operation to turn the protest into act of terrorism (!).
Etc.
> What is there to research?
Probably how they can best attach a license to VPN use like they're doing with TV.
"I want to do the thing that gets me the most votes and carries the least political risk". Note this is not necessarily the wisest thing, or even the thing that objectively solves or mitigates the problem the most. Many such cases...
Democracy is a consent [to be ruled] manufacturing system which defuses head-lopping popular rebellions. It is not for the benefit of the people.
More context:
> Elizabeth Louise Kendall (born 11 June 1971)[1] is a British politician who has served as Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology > [sic] graduating with first class honours in history in 1993 > [sic] after graduating from Cambridge, worked at the Institute for Public Policy Research (charity)
tl;dr never worked in the private sector, and utterly unqualified to make judgements on technology.
So of course she's the science minister.
This is what UK parliament is full of, ill qualified, political lifers.
What a depressing time to live in the UK.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liz_Kendall
These people created a law that is catastrophic for privacy, so I don't believe they will be stopped from banning VPN's just because someone claims VPN's are good for privacy.
> they say they should be banned because kids are using them to get around.
Ummm what??? lolll
if they don't want their kids using vpn... why would banning vpn for everyone and requiring ID verification be the answer? LOLLLL
That sounds like they need to control their kids
"it's hard" ...
"WHY DID YOU HAVE KIDS THEN?!?!?!"
>both sides