I just feel like using a VPN, while legal, might already put you on some list of "suspicious" users. Surely, if you have something to hide, then you are worth investigating closely.
Which is why we need to push as many people as possible to use VPN's, they already have too much straw and too few needles so lets give them even more straw.
The reality is that no one in the know thinks this has anything to do with terrorism and everything to do with political control.
If you don't have the right to privacy then all other rights are subverted, previous governments have used the state security apparatus to monitor perfectly legal political activities, they've proven again and again they can't be trusted with this kind of power and we let them give themselves more (and legalise all the illegal shit they where already doing).
The reality is the UK (which traditionally has been a less free society for a 'free' society) is rapidly sliding into something you can't realistically call a free society.
I'm using SOCKS over SSH. SSH is kinda part of my job, so it shouldn't be suspicious, right? Oh. I forgot. I'm a linux user, who runs custom firmware on his router, probably already treated as dangerous.
Been using these guys for a few years now, best use of $40/yr. You'll occasionally get blocked on certain sites (which you can often fix by simply changing location), but their infrastructure is definitely impressive. I get to use the full speed of my connection, which ironically is not always the case when I'm not connected through PIA (there's definitely some selective throttling going on, even though my ISP pretends there isn't).
So sure, I'm probably on a bunch of watch lists, but at this point it's hard to care anymore, it feels like everybody is in one way or another, everybody will be found guilty should someone decide so... I actually have legitimate reasons for using VPNs, but moves like this from governments around the world just give me even more of an incentive to use VPNs.
One can only hope that politicians will be done in by the very same rules they're blissfully pushing through.
I've had PIA, AirVPN, and now iVPN. Definitely a fan of iVPN. They are organizational members of the EFF (for what it's worth), and their service has been the fastest I've used thus far. A bit pricey though.
That would be a very hard fight for them since enforcing it without fundamentally breaking the way the internet works would be very expensive to a lot of very wealthy companies and sadly in this 'democracy' the people with the money are heard the loudest.
then people would just resort to steganography. it wouldn't be terribly difficult to mask asymmetric traffic that appeared to come from a youtube-like "site", or symmetric traffic that looks like skype video but with encrypted packets inside the compressed video transport layer. This is an unwinnable fight and I can't believe anybody would be stupid enough to try.
A VPN like Private Internet Access is among the best things a consumer can do to protect their privacy.
PIA is $3.33/month. My internet bill is $50/month.
I like to think of it as a $3 upgrade from an open line to a secure line. It's a no-brainer for me. Really it should be a default option from your ISP, only they can make a hell of a lot more than $3.33/month from you if they can read all of your data.
gambiting|9 years ago
noir_lord|9 years ago
The reality is that no one in the know thinks this has anything to do with terrorism and everything to do with political control.
If you don't have the right to privacy then all other rights are subverted, previous governments have used the state security apparatus to monitor perfectly legal political activities, they've proven again and again they can't be trusted with this kind of power and we let them give themselves more (and legalise all the illegal shit they where already doing).
The reality is the UK (which traditionally has been a less free society for a 'free' society) is rapidly sliding into something you can't realistically call a free society.
NetStrikeForce|9 years ago
Targeted attacks by intelligence agencies and police forces are probably a lost battle anyway.
pmlnr|9 years ago
grownseed|9 years ago
So sure, I'm probably on a bunch of watch lists, but at this point it's hard to care anymore, it feels like everybody is in one way or another, everybody will be found guilty should someone decide so... I actually have legitimate reasons for using VPNs, but moves like this from governments around the world just give me even more of an incentive to use VPNs.
One can only hope that politicians will be done in by the very same rules they're blissfully pushing through.
lucaspiller|9 years ago
_qbxp|9 years ago
cjrp|9 years ago
noir_lord|9 years ago
digler999|9 years ago
dx034|9 years ago
But this is much cheaper, any experience? Especially using it in the UK, does it increase latency significantly?
smnplk|9 years ago
JohnStrange|9 years ago
ryanlol|9 years ago
ryanlol|9 years ago
duaneb|9 years ago
danielpatrick|9 years ago
PIA is $3.33/month. My internet bill is $50/month.
I like to think of it as a $3 upgrade from an open line to a secure line. It's a no-brainer for me. Really it should be a default option from your ISP, only they can make a hell of a lot more than $3.33/month from you if they can read all of your data.