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.
The problem is that content filters don’t work all that well in the age of https everywhere. I mean, you can block the pornhub.com domain, that’s fairly straightforward … but what about reddit.com which has porn content but also legitimately non-porn content. Or closer to home: any lemmy instance.
I think it would be better if politicians stopped pearl clutching and realized that porn perhaps isn’t the worst problem in the world. Tiktok and influencer brainrot, incel and manosphere stuff, rage baiting social media, etc. are all much worse things for the psyche of young people, and they’re doing exactly jack shit about that.
They know. The “think of the children” angle is just cover to enrage the tabloid readers and to be used as a straw man against anyone criticisng the law (“you’re a pedophile”). The real purpose is “let’s enumerate the IDs of everyone who uses the internet for anything we don’t like” and “let’s censor anything we don’t like starting with LGBTQ content”
That’s a problem is for ISPs and content providers to figure out. I don’t see why the government has to care other than laying out the ground rules - you must offer and implement a parental filter for people who want it for free as part of your service. If ISPs have to do deep packet inspection and proxy certs for protected devices / accounts then that’s what they’ll have to do.
As far as the government is concerned it’s not their problem. They’ve said what should happen and providing the choice without being assholes to people over 18 who are exercising their rights to use the internet as they see fit.
No, there are very good technical reasons why this approach can’t work.
There is no deep packet inspection on properly encrypted TLS connections. I know TLS termination and interception and recertifying with custom certificates is a thing, but even if it were feasible to implement this on millions of client computers that you don’t own, it is an absolutely god awful idea for a million reasons and much worse for privacy and security than the age-gate problem you’re trying to work around.
Actually it can be done and is being done. Software like Fortigate Firewall can do deep packet inspection on encrypted connections by replacing certs with their own and doing man in the middle inspection. It requires the browser has a root CA cert that trusts the certs issued by the proxy but that’s about it. Filtering software could onboard a new device where the root cert could be installed.
And if Fortigate can do it then any filtering software can too. e.g. a kid uses their filtered device to go to reddit.com, the filter software substitutes reddit’s cert for their own and proxies the connection. Then it looks at the paths to see if the kid is visiting an innocuous group or an 18+ group. So basic filtering rules could be:
This is eminently possible for an ISP to implement and do so in a way that it ONLY happens when a user opts into it on a registered device while leaving everything open if they did not opt into it.
And like I said this is an ISP problem to figure out. The government could have set the rules and walked away. And as a solution it would be far more simple that requiring every website to implement age verification.
I know how it works, so spare me the explanation. It’s not that as easy as you make it out to be. OS and browser companies are actively fighthing “rogue” root CAs and making it harder and harder to use custom CAs, especially on mobile devices.
And for good reason, because by accepting a rogue root CA that’s not your own, you’re basically undermining the whole trust system that SSL is based on and surrendering all your online privacy and security to the government and your ISP. Whoever has control over that custom root CA has the keys to your online life.
Rolling such a system out countrywide is utter madness.
You obviously didn’t know how it works if I had to explain it was already possible. And I am not aware of any mobile device that prevents you installing a new root CA.
And it isn’t “madness”, it’s a completely workable way to offer filtering for people who want it for kids and have no filtering or censorship for anybody else. It is a vastly better option than onerously demanding adults provide their identity to random and potentially adult themed websites where they could be victims of identity theft or extortion
If you read my comment properly, you’ll see that I wrote: “I know TLS termination and interception and recertifying with custom certificates is a thing”
Yes it is. TLS interception should never be normalized because it breaks the chain of trust upon which TLS is based. It can be useful in some situations, like the fortigate firewall where you control the certificate, but ISPs nor the government should be trusted to wield this power over virtually the whole country. It is a very slippery slope.
On Android, apps can’t install their own root CA. The user has to manually download it, then jump through a bunch of hoops and deeply nested menus to install it and in the process ignore all the scary warnings that their communication may be intercepted if they install and trust this certificate, and (at least on Pixel phones) they get a permanent warning in their notification tray that someone may be eavesdropping on them. Which is correct.
I’m strongly against government mandated age gates myself, but you’re objecting for the wrong reasons. You’re not providing your identity to the adult website. You’re providing it to the third party identity verifier, who then certifies to the adult website that you are an adult without passing on your actual identity. Keep this in mind when you’re arguing against it, because pro-age-gater puritans can use it to undermine your argument.
I object to it first and foremost on principle. I shouldn’t have to request permission from a third party or the government to do perfectly normal legal adult things in the privacy of my own home.
Secondly, there is still a privacy problem at the “identity verifier”. They may swear up and down that they do not store my identity data, but there is no way to prove that one way or another so I cannot trust that my data can’t be leaked through them.
Thirdly, when viewing adult content, I don’t want there to be any association between my real identity and the adult content whatsoever, even through a third party, and I don’t want there to be anything that uniquely identifies me.
Finally, I object to the (re)demonization of all things sexual in our societies. We seem to be backsliding into puritanism under the guise of protecting the children, while we’re doing nothing to protect them from real actually harmful online things that are damaging the younger generations beyond repair.
I have a Gen Z stepson, and all the ways in which he is fucked up by the online world (no attention span, permanent online-ness, no real world friends, always seeking instant gratification, unrealistic expectations about life, an overly materialistic worldview, plenty of manosphere bullshit, … ) have precious little do do with viewing porn.
@arc99 @SpaceCadet thats basically allowing the Government to force the ISP’s to build a solution which is able to sensor every content. Sorry there is alot of reasons why you should be against it.
PS: even your deep packet inspection falls short to end 2 end encryption / decryption …
Deep packet inspection already happens on encrypted traffic (Fortigate Firewall) so it’s eminently possible for filtering software to do the same.
@arc99 please inform yourself about end to end encryption and decryption.
All i say is you haven’t understand what is happening on this firewall and what this firewall can do and what the firewall can’t do.