[HN Gopher] Macron wants social networks to detect and stop VPN ...
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Macron wants social networks to detect and stop VPN users
        
       Author : Raed667
       Score  : 31 points
       Date   : 2023-09-15 18:27 UTC (4 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.linforme.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.linforme.com)
        
       | Raed667 wrote:
       | Article (French) https://pastes.io/kpdm5ymini
       | 
       | Article (English - Google Translate) https://pastes.io/r9zrxwnay1
        
       | sunshine-o wrote:
       | Next step is to detect or forbid the use of a set of VPN
       | providers at the ISP level. They already did it in 2009 for P2P
       | file exchanges [0]
       | 
       | Anyway, the web is getting more and more restricted if you use a
       | VPN and it is accelerating.
       | 
       | For example you just can't anymore:
       | 
       | - see the price of a product on Amazon,
       | 
       | - download most podcasts,
       | 
       | - or surprisingly, access https://forums.freebsd.org/
       | 
       | [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HADOPI_law
        
         | KomoD wrote:
         | I just did all those without a single issue
        
           | sunshine-o wrote:
           | Depends on your VPN provider. Also on Amazon you will see the
           | prices if you are logged in.
        
             | KomoD wrote:
             | I tried both Mullvad and Google's VPN. I wasn't logged in
        
       | aatd86 wrote:
       | That can't work. However X and Meta seem to be rolling down ways
       | to authenticate people.
       | 
       | Instead of banning VPNs, they should find ways for people to
       | identify themselves if they want to.
       | 
       | It's not because someone is behind a VPN that they should
       | automatically be considered a pariah of the net. There are plenty
       | legitimate reasons to stay behind a VPN.
       | 
       | That smells a bit autoritarian.
        
         | TacticalCoder wrote:
         | > That smells a bit autoritarian.
         | 
         | I'm from the EU and nearly the entire EU stinks like a softer
         | version of the USSR (I'll agree though that France is one of
         | the worst country to live in in the EU though: and I know it
         | very well... My kid has been schooled in France for about 18
         | months but we did GTFO of that country).
        
         | sgu999 wrote:
         | > That smells a bit autoritarian.
         | 
         | That's very much in character for him...
        
       | ChrisArchitect wrote:
       | Know this is early news but there's no english/other decent
       | source for this report? Not seeing anyone writing about it
        
         | Raed667 wrote:
         | The only other place i have seen this being discussed is the
         | french sub-reddit
         | 
         | https://old.reddit.com/r/france/comments/16jjgzo
        
       | Avlin67 wrote:
       | ok, but how ?
        
         | lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
         | A given VPN provider will have some list of IP addresses from
         | which traffic will exit. The detection would be an IP banlist
         | and stopping would be refusal to serve requests.
        
           | chaxor wrote:
           | Pretty much every company, and many homes run vpns. I guess
           | those should also be added to the list.
        
             | lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
             | I get the point but the reason a government will want to
             | ban VPNs is that the VPN will provide some level of
             | anonymity. A corporate VPN plausibly might run afoul of
             | that want but a home VPN will pretty accurately identify at
             | least the home from which a request was made. I'm sure
             | that's sufficiently identifiable.
             | 
             | "VPN users" is a phrase which generally refers to "users of
             | VPN services" and not "people who manage their home
             | network".
        
             | thefurdrake wrote:
             | They're probably going to be banning consistent connections
             | coming from datacenter IPs. That was the impression I got
             | from how other entities have handled this.
             | 
             | Once you rule out VPN usage, there are (probably?) very few
             | reasons a post on TPFKAT should come from anything other
             | than a residential or mobile device IP.
        
       | Raed667 wrote:
       | https://www.assemblee-nationale.fr/dyn/16/amendements/1514/E...
        
         | Dig1t wrote:
         | "The people mentioned in paragraph 2 are required to put in
         | place detection mechanisms to identify connections from a
         | virtual private network used by users of their platform.
         | 
         | In the event of detection of a connection from a virtual
         | private network, the people mentioned in 2 must block the user
         | concerned from the opportunity to publish, comment or interact
         | on the platform."
         | 
         | later:
         | 
         | "These two articles have constitutional value and freedom of
         | expression is a fundamental freedom. Nevertheless, this freedom
         | still has limits"
        
           | phero_cnstrcts wrote:
           | You can say what you want as long as they agree with it.
        
       | Kretinsky wrote:
       | France is becoming less and less democratic, and more akin to an
       | authoritarian regime, similar to what you would see in Singapore
       | or Russia.
       | 
       | France was already on the top of the list for the countries
       | banning content on Twitter[0], it recently passed a law allowing
       | to use smartphone backdoors to spy on everyone (including
       | lawyers).
       | 
       | A particularly infuriating evolution is the current push to
       | require citizens to ask the permission to organize protests, and
       | prosecute those who do not comply. For the record, this is
       | textbook what Putin does to harass political opponents.
       | 
       | So currently, state-affiliated media will often talk about an
       | "illegal protest", while everyone should know that protesting is
       | free and doesn't require any permission. Actually, an
       | authoritarian party coming to power today would have to change
       | very little things to assert a full grip on the French society.
       | 
       | [0]:https://www.fastcompany.com/4032890/turkey-and-france-top-
       | th...
        
         | jofla_net wrote:
         | This too, I recalled recently...
         | 
         | https://blog.mozilla.org/netpolicy/2023/06/26/france-browser...
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2023-09-15 23:02 UTC)