On Sept. 11, Michigan representatives proposed an internet content ban bill unlike any of the others we've seen: This particularly far-reaching legislation would ban not only many types of online content, but also the ability to legally use any VPN.
The bill, called the Anticorruption of Public Morals Act and advanced by six Republican representatives, would ban a wide variety of adult content online, ranging from ASMR and adult manga to AI content and any depiction of transgender people. It also seeks to ban all use of VPNs, foreign or US-produced.
Main issue I have with this article, and a lot of articles on this topic, is it doesn't address the issue of youth access to porn. I think any semi-intelligent person knows this is a parenting issue, but unfortunately that cat's out of the bag, thanks to the right. "Proliferation of porn" is the '90s crime scare (that never really died) all over again. If a politician or industry expert is speaking against bills like this, their talking points have to include:
- Privacy-respecting alternatives that promise parents that their precious babies won't be able to access that horrible dangerous porn! (I don't argue that porn can't be dangerous, but this is yet another disingenuous right-wing culture (holy) war)
- Addressing that vagueness in the bill sets up the government as morality police (it's right there in the title of the bill, FFS), and NOBODY in a "free" country should ever want that.
- Stop saying it can be bypassed with technology. The VPN ban in this bill is a reaction to talking points like that.
- Recognize and call out that this has nothing to do with protecting children and everything to do with a religious minority imposing its will on the rest of the country (plenty of recent examples to pull from here).
Unfortunately this is becoming enough of "A Thing" that the left is going to have to, once again, be seen doing "something" about it. So they have to thread a needle of "protecting kids," while respecting the privacy of their parents who want their kids protected and want to look at porn, and protecting businesses that require secure communications.
NO VPN!
And the corporate world comes to a screeching halt.
These fuckwads don't even understand anything about what they're trying to legislate.
When shit starts being monitored, I want to see the legislators' traffic public first.
In theory, businesses would be required to register their VPNs and... idk, this would limit access to them somehow?
Much like with the Assault Weapons Ban and the assorted online porn bans and strip club bans and dry counties and SEC rules on insider trading, etc, etc, etc a lot of this boils down to "how hard do you want to work in order to enforce this?"
And the short answer is "we only want an excuse to arrest people arbitrarily". So a VPN can quickly because a "everyone with an Internet connection is a criminal suspect". And then you just harass the people you want to harass under cover of "we thought you had kiddie porn" as an excuse
I once worked for a banking transaction company (or something like that, I did their network and telecom support, none of the actual business) and they had offices in Russia. I was told that since VPNs are more restricted there, but required for the business, they had to have a special application with the government to be allowed to have the site to site VPN work.
I imagine they'd try to do the same, as well as grant them another way to be in the pocket of or have some control over businesses. If the government has to approve your necessary security software, you'll want to stay on their good side.
That doesn't sound like they plan on any exceptions. That sounds like the end of all business in that state.
Oh my sweet summer child. Of course these laws won't apply to them.
And if they do, they will make up shit to use the dirt you dug up against them against you.
Kind of like how when a cop shoots a black guy they look for whatever parking ticket they got 10 years prior as proof he is a cracking smoking cap busting gangsta who was itching for a bullet. Never being slightly concerned for the cop's violent history or misconduct in various police forces.
Now now I didn't say they were going to allow that.
Corporate VPNs generally don't route www traffic, keeping that separate is kind of the point.
So unless you can convince your job to provide you porn, you're out of luck.
Few corporate VPN's don't route www traffic. split tunnel in a large corporation It's an infoleak waiting to happen.