‘Leave VPNs Alone’: Thursday’s Day of Action Against Possible VPN Bans
“Leave the VPN quiet.” This is the advocacy of the censorship and anti-en line monitoring group Fight for the Future, which designated Thursday as a day of VPN action, to put pressure on the legislators not to prohibit virtual private networks.
The group of activists, artists, engineers and technologists asks people to sign an open letter encouraging politicians to preserve the existence of VPN and “defend confidentiality and access online knowledge and information”. VPN encrypt internet connections and can hide your physical location.
Thursday, the VPN Trust Initiative – composed of NordVPN, Surfhark and ExpressVPN – and the VPN guild, which includes Amnezia VPN.
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The open letter refers to the recent laws on “age verification” proposing legislative measures to prohibit or restrict the use of VPNs. Such measures would lead to an increase in surveillance and online censorship, which “has a huge scary effect on our freedoms, in particular the freedoms of traditionally marginalized people”, notes the letter.
Lia Holland, fighting for campaigns and director of communication for the future, said that VPNs are essential to “people living in authoritarian regimes” to avoid censorship and surveillance, and have become an essential tool to exercise fundamental human rights.
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Half of all American states have adopted age verification laws forcing Internet users to prove their age with government identifiers, credit card checks and other methods. The laws have encouraged consumers to register for VPNs to avoid providing sensitive information, with a recent PIC registration in the United Kingdom.
Michigan is considering a bill prohibiting adult content online and VPNs. If it becomes law, Michigan would be the first US state to ban VPNs. Many countries, including China, India and Iran, already prohibit or restrict VPNs.
“In the midst of a moral panic, ignorant politicians of the” savages “are very close to kicking the nest of millions of people who know how important VPNs are,” said Holland.
Could a VPN ban occur?
The prohibition of VPNs would be “difficult”, according to lawyer Mario Trujillo from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an international group for the defense of digital rights.
Trujillo told CNET that VPNs are the best to transport your network connection via a different network. “They can be used to help avoid censorship, but they are also used by employees in each sector to connect to the network of their business,” he said. “It is a practical reality that would make any ban difficult.”
Trujillo added that the United States is lagging behind the rest of the world in privacy regulations, and that legislators should focus more on privacy than VPN prohibitions.
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The fight for the future identifies local legislators and provides models to contact them. This information is on the same wavelength as the open letter.
