Dame Rachel told BBC Newsnight: “Of course, we need age verification on VPNs - it’s absolutely a loophole that needs closing and that’s one of my major recommendations.”
I expect Dame Rachel will be subsequently calling for age verification on providers of VPSes and physical servers when she’s made aware that anyone might just set up their own VPN server on any of those. And on anyone providing OpenSSH access, since that can provide a tunnel to an integrated SOCKS server. Then the Tor network — and given that that’s noncommercial and since US-based nodes aren’t doing business in the UK, the US at least doesn’t recognize UK jurisdiction over US Tor nodes and isn’t going to enforce anything against them.
Don’t get too comfortable with the idea of the US in any way being a roadblock to the UK. Our government is extremely interested in exactly the same kind of bullshit.
EDIT: To clarify: the bounds on legal jurisdiction aren’t tied to policy on pornography or anything like that. They just state that there are machines that the UK can’t make legal rules for. The UK could try blocking traffic to them on the UK’s side, but the US won’t enforce rules against them.
For that to not be a loophole regarding the UK, the US would have to have identical policy on age verification for social media in all of the US. But in the US, age verification law on social media is something that is set at a state level.
I bet they’re gonna try and require VPN websites to put age checks on them.
Oh boy, I can’t wait for the thriving trade in VPN accounts made outside of the UK then sold to UK citizens by a third party.
Don’t touch my bag!
That seems like a very safe bet:
I expect Dame Rachel will be subsequently calling for age verification on providers of VPSes and physical servers when she’s made aware that anyone might just set up their own VPN server on any of those. And on anyone providing OpenSSH access, since that can provide a tunnel to an integrated SOCKS server. Then the Tor network — and given that that’s noncommercial and since US-based nodes aren’t doing business in the UK, the US at least doesn’t recognize UK jurisdiction over US Tor nodes and isn’t going to enforce anything against them.
I expect that there are quite a few others.
Don’t get too comfortable with the idea of the US in any way being a roadblock to the UK. Our government is extremely interested in exactly the same kind of bullshit.
Nah, those are individual states.
EDIT: To clarify: the bounds on legal jurisdiction aren’t tied to policy on pornography or anything like that. They just state that there are machines that the UK can’t make legal rules for. The UK could try blocking traffic to them on the UK’s side, but the US won’t enforce rules against them.
For that to not be a loophole regarding the UK, the US would have to have identical policy on age verification for social media in all of the US. But in the US, age verification law on social media is something that is set at a state level.
Tor has nodes all over the world: https://tormap.org/