> the main thing that we've done is we've commissioned additional research on this because I've not been happy with the evidence.
Ah, yes, the existing research doesn't agree with our biases, so let's fund new "research" that does.
Ah, yes, the existing research doesn't agree with our biases, so let's fund new "research" that does.
> Ms Kendall told Nick Ferrari: “I told MPs yesterday I'm going to come back to the House with a statement on the issue of VPNs in July. There are very strong views on both sides of this. For some people, it is about privacy, and it is the ability to use that is really held strongly by people. And for others, they say they should be banned because kids are using them to get around. And so I— the main thing that we've done is we've commissioned additional research on this because I've not been happy with the evidence."
Sounds like they realize there are two sides and no "clear winning argument" in either direction, that's why the additional research is needed. Sounds a bit more nuanced than what I expected based on your snippet.
Probably how they can best attach a license to VPN use like they're doing with TV.
The trade-offs and how many people care and about what specifically.
E.g., you say "Privacy is a human right", so why is it that half the websites I visit ask for permission to share details of how I use those sites with more corporate "trusted partners" than there were students and staff combined in my secondary school? I'm all on board with just banning this kind of analytics, but there's a lot of people who are more angry with the EU for forcing companies to at least ask for permission before they sell your data to all those analytics firms.
Because capitalism itself is the enemy.
And information assymmetry is a potent tool, as is constant and persistent surveillance. All of these enable extracting more money.
Most of this end-stage crapitalism was warned by Adam Smith, and then by Marx.
And what did economists do? Fucking ignore it. Or named it trickle down.
So, yeah. When the capitalists control the government, you get all the abuses written about it for the last 300 years. And it fucking shows.
Computation and copyright was just dropping helicopter loads of gasoline on the already terrible fire.
Let's be real here. It's investor-monopoly capitalism that is the problem. Individuals worth less than $100,000,000 owning private property or their businesses isn't the problem, it's the Financial-Industrial-Complex with its Dodge vs Ford ruling (established duty to maximize shareholder returns) that is the problem. People owning their homes, cars, agriculture fields, tractors, semi-trucks, and small/medium business are not the cause of our ills. The cause is the financialization of everything, turning everyone into rent-paying debtors always on the precarious edge. Free enterprise is good, but monopoly enterprise is not. Quit making people race to the bottom in competition for basic survival, and start making the moneyed monopolists do it instead!
For example the vast majority of the UK residents is against the ongoing support and complicity of the UK in the genocide of Palestinians, to which the government orchestrated the whole operation to turn the protest into act of terrorism (!).
Etc.
Polls from Opinium, YouGov, even earlier ipsos, showing that UK general public does not support the genocide, but immediate ceasefire, stopping sale of arms to Israel, back ICC, et.
You'd struggle to find anything that would show that UK public support aiding and abetting.
If anything, (western) governments are late to this game.
What are the actual numbers here? If there’s lots of fuss about vpns but actually while there’s been a big jump in use it’s not under 18s anyway it wouldn’t help.
> Privacy is a human right, and one which is essential for effective democracy.
And does this get broken enough for age gating something? We age gate alcohol to reasonable success, sometimes that involves showing id.
I’m not arguing for age gating here but I do think understanding the tradeoffs may require more evidence.
We shouldn't.
>sometimes that involves showing id.
Then the yokel checkout attendant proceeds to punch the 8 digit birthday into the keyboard, which serializes you as one of less than 30,000 customers in the area. Birthdays are leaky identifiers.
Example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lower_Thames_Crossing - the planning application is 360,000 pages and not a single shovel is in the ground. Or HS2. The list goes on. This is a really, really minor example of the same sickness that infests British politics for the last few decades.
Ummm what??? lolll
if they don't want their kids using vpn... why would banning vpn for everyone and requiring ID verification be the answer? LOLLLL
That sounds like they need to control their kids
"it's hard" ...
"WHY DID YOU HAVE KIDS THEN?!?!?!"
> Elizabeth Louise Kendall (born 11 June 1971)[1] is a British politician who has served as Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology > [sic] graduating with first class honours in history in 1993 > [sic] after graduating from Cambridge, worked at the Institute for Public Policy Research (charity)
tl;dr never worked in the private sector, and utterly unqualified to make judgements on technology.
So of course she's the science minister.
This is what UK parliament is full of, ill qualified, political lifers.
What a depressing time to live in the UK.
Quite often, people in power don’t want to hear the truth, they want to hear their own words/views parroted back to them.
Famously at the exact same time UK was claiming there was no evidence of the medicinal use of the cannabis, the UK was also the biggest exporter of it, and all was then turned into Sativex, a cannabis based medicine, not approved for use in the UK of course (individual import is allowed).
Interesting is that the husband of one of the very prominent Home Secretary and later Prime Minister is a senior executive in the producet.
Of course there's no suggestion of the financial interest of them in keeping a monopoly. See also: https://leftfootforward.org/2021/04/revealed-uk-is-the-world...
It's pathetic how they use sobbing families to push it through, similar tactic like before Iraq invasion.
same players behind the scenes.
This is happening worldwide: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_age_verification_laws_b...
For decades companies like Facebook have been saying you just have to let us groom children, there's no way to have this tech and not groom children. Now the predictable consequences of that are arriving: the tech industry is being turned off, because it grooms children.
And when I say groom children, I'm talking about actual child predators, not the transphobic nonsense point.
Edit because I'm getting limited:
This isn't exactly something old that has been going on for decades in its current form and the usage has increased especially since the lockdowns. Nations have also been copying each other for centuries, you don't need a secret group coordinating for it with a singular ulterior motive.
But sure, all governments suddenly woke up at the exact same time, give or take a few months, and realized that social media should be banned for kids.
Apparently if countries all put an age limit on tobacco it must mean there is a secret group coordinating for it for ulterior reasons.
The fact that you think there's no such group is simply insane.
I mean, the very agenda of their upcoming conference was on the front page of HackerNews a few days ago...