Ask HN: The government of my country blocked VPN access. What should I use?

Don't worry, you shouldn't underestimate the capability of society.

I grew up in a pretty deprived area of the UK, and we all knew "a guy" who could get you access to free cable, or shim your electric line to bypass the meter, or get you pirated CD's and VHS' and whatever.

There will always be "that guy down the pub" selling raspberry pi's with some deranged outdated firmware that runs a proxy for everything in the house or whatever. To be honest with you, I might end up being that guy for a bunch of people once I'm laid off from tech like the rest. :)

Don't worry, you shouldn't underestimate the capability of society.

You should be worried. Don't underestimate the capabilities of the government bureaucrats. That "guys down the pub" will quickly disappear once they start getting jail time for their activities.

That absolutely sounds like a world I should be worried about, where our only choices are dodgy ones

Yes, it's also dystopian to pin one's future on such hopes. People need to stick it to the government and demand their freedoms. Far too many things are being forced on us in the West that go against fundamental values that have been established for centuries.

Somehow, things that could be unifying protests where the working class of every political stripe are able to overlook their differences and push back against government never seem to happen. It is always polarized so that it's only ever one side at a time, and the other side is against them. How does that work?

I think you really overestimate the capability of the UK to enforce laws. Yes, they can write them and yes they can fine large corporations, that's basically it.

They cannot enforce laws against such "petty" crimes, the reason society mostly functions in the UK is because most people don't try to break the law.

Pretty sure the local punters would kick the cops out if they came for one of their own, especially if he got them their porn back.

Normally I would agree with you, but the ability to pull this kind of thing off hinges on there being enough shadows that the Eye doesn't look at for prolonged periods of time. And the overall trajectory of technological advance lately is such that those shadows are rapidly shrinking. First it was the street cameras (and UK is already one of the most enthusiastic adopters in the world). And now comes AI which can automatically sift through all the mined data, performing sentiment analysis etc. I feel that the time will come pretty soon when "a guy" will need to be so adept at concealing the tracks in order to avoid detection that most people wouldn't have access to one.

I wouldn’t worry about it.

They can barely handle wolf-whistlers let alone pedophile rape gangs consisting of the lowest IQ dregs of our society.

I know it’s only painfully stupid people who think the law is stupid, but dodgy Dave down the way tends to fly under the radar. Otherwise there wouldn’t be so many of them.

Reflex. People's opinion on a subject changes if you tell them which political group supports it, sometimes even if they get asked twice in a row. Tribal identity determines ideology more than the other way around for a lot of people.

So as soon as Labour comes out for something, Cons are inclined to be against it and so on. The only way to have neutral protests is if no one visibly backs them and they don't become associated with a side, but then how do they get support and organization?

It's not just about UK abilities to enforce laws, but also about other factors. The described activities are extremely unattractive as criminal: small market, small margin, the need for planning, preparation and qualification.

There is no need for special efforts to enforce the law. Put a few people in jail - and everyone else will quickly find safer and more legal ways to spend their time. No one will do something like that unless they are confident of their impunity.

It's not that they couldn't handle the rape gangs; it's that they turned a blind eye towards them.

The eye doesn't care as long as you're not politically efficient in opposing their narratives or power.

Authoritarianism in the UK doesn't correlate with crime. The economy does.

The point of these things is not really to help citizens. "there's no money for that" like there's no money for healthcare or education (although there is for bombings in foreign countries). The point is protecting power from any threat that could mount against it.

> People need to stick it to the government and demand their freedoms.

It will only work if they admit that they supported this and all forms of totalitarianism during COVID. You can't fall for that and then be surprised when the world keeps going down that obvious path.

I think both sides of this are fair. Power is interested in stability of itself, to keeps its back to the wall so that nobody can sneak up on it. But also political power has teamed up with corporate power/determination to create a far more nasty beast.

Seeing companies like Palantir (and many lesser known ones) buddy up to everyone that wants it, its a clear statement on how they want to monitor and control the populace.

Long term I don't think it can be done, but the pain mid term can be vast.

I suppose that for this case, an underground black market of VPN providers might emerge - average individuals setting up VPN software on a cloud service provider, and then selling monthly access to people. Aside from the obvious danger of getting ripped off (someone might put you on a slow shared VPN with many other people, or shut down the server at any time), there is also the possibility of someone monitoring all your Internet activity.

In matters of public health, you cannot trust the public to do the right thing.

The problem with covid is that we weren't totalitarian enough. Regulations you could drive a coach & horses through and no way to enforce is a sop.

The first lock down needed to be a proper 'papers, please' affair. When we get a properly lethal pandemic, we're fucked. Hopefully Laurence Fox and Piers Corbyn will catch it quickly and expire in a painful and televised way, it's the only hope of people complying with actual quarantine measures.

I'd default assume black market VPNs will monitor internet activity since it's both easy and profitable

One of the problems with authoritarianism is that even though most dodgy Daves will be fine because the political apparatus doesn't have the time or energy to arrest everyone for everything, they retain the ability to arrest anyone for anything.

The moment your dodgy Dave offends your local cadre, even for reasons entirely other than being dodgy, they'll throw the book at him. And because there is now unpredictability around who will be arrested and for what reason, it acts as a chilling effect for everyone who values some degree of stability in their lives. So the arc of dodgy Daves bends toward compliance.

Very well explained

What do you mean? They already arrest thousands of people a year for posting (or even retweeting) things online in the UK.

What makes you think, if the Gov was to implement some sophisticated DPI firewall that blocks a million different things, they won't come after the people who circumvent it? They already enforce petty crimes. I could report you for causing me anxiety and you would have a copper show up at your door.

> They cannot enforce laws against such "petty" crimes

No, they aren't interested in enforcing laws against petty crimes. The establishment literally don't give a toss if someone breaks into your house and nicks your telly.

They are very interested in enforcing the kinds of infringements we're talking about here.

This type of thinking is why we are heading in a direction of authoritarianism everywhere.

And COVID was not "totalitarian enough"? Yet people were forbidden from leaving their homes for a time.

It was really amazing what fear could do to a population, how it rallied mostly together.

People assess real risk all the time. The fact that you had to punish people and make them do performative acts was hygiene theater.

You're the kind of person that said that "measures didn't work because we didn't close hard enough, if we do 2 weeks of REAL lockdown...". It's ridiculous. You have absolutely no perspective of how the world work and how things break, people need health, food, working pipes.

You have an absolutely authoritarian mindset and an inability to asses risk. You also have deep contempt for your fellow human being who are "not deserving of democracy".

Lastly, it's funny to hear you admit this pandemic wasn't lethal because people don't actually comply the way you want, which means that the actions were theater and unneeded.

Lol, if you like.

Individually, the people of the UK are generally kind, thoughtful and considerate. As a mob, they're an absolute nightmare especially when wankers like Fox and Corbyn get involved.

Anyone who thinks otherwise has never had to tell people 'no'.

>Lastly, it's funny to hear you admit this pandemic wasn't lethal because people don't actually comply the way you want, which means that the actions were theater and unneeded

This pandemic was lethal, but it wasn't bubonic plague lethal. When we get something that cuts like a knife through hot butter, you'll soon be holed up inside screaming at strangers through the letterbox.

I've seen a technique where you tell someone $politician_they_hate is doing X, and they'll get mad - then you reveal the news story where it's actually $politician_they_love and the cognitive dissonance usually results in the anger getting redirected towards you for tricking them.

Seems to vary greatly by region, of course. Where I live, we barely had anything you could call a lockdown, but they got really insistent about vax passports for restaurants etc.

Sometimes I think about that: vax aside, they actually managed to provision trusted certificates for a huge percentage of the population in a short period of time. Could have actually been useful for online ID, though we know of the dangers there; but look, here I am signing into my government's website using my bank as a 3rd party IDP. Shouldn't I sign into the bank using the gov't instead??

> Individually, the people of the UK are generally kind, thoughtful and considerate. As a mob, they're an absolute nightmare especially when wankers like Fox and Corbyn get involved.

This is true everywhere, mobs devolve us to primate behaviour; if you've been in a crowd that ever got angry, you know this - it drives the hindbrain in amazing and terrifying ways. Happy crowds can give you elation you'll never feel anywhere else; angry crowds can make a man kill, even though normally he'd never dream of it.

Of course, most countries don't need to have Anti-Social Behavioural Orders or ban people from buying butter knives, so there's something else going on in the UK that is a bit harder to put a finger on.