Since the Online Safety Act came into force last week, virtual private networks (VPNs) have soared in popularity. At the time of writing, four of the top five slots in the Apple App Store are filled by VPNs, which have quickly become indispensable for ordinary citizens who want to access blocked parts of the web, from Reddit forums to NSFW subcultures.
Inevitably, this has invited the Government to consider a ban on VPNs this week, though Technology Secretary Peter Kyle yesterday downplayed the possibility. But with all the OpSec tools at a sophisticated user’s disposal, can a democracy really expect to zip-lock the entire internet?
The answer is “No, but they don’t have to.” There is already a pretty good authoritarian regime playbook, and it only needs a few nips and tucks to be useful to a nominally liberal government. Britain would simply continue to boil an already half-poached frog.
In China, VPNs must register with the state. Some are allowed, albeit only with a back door: the CCP has never acknowledged that companies have their own rights to data privacy, so users must take their chances.
If the VPN route is no longer viable, the next step up is Tor, or The Onion Router. This is a system for distributing traffic through a swarm of “nodes” and carries more end-to-end security. But the downside is that it is often patchy or painfully slow. Accessing X, for instance, becomes an endless jump-rope of captchas, failed logins and one-time-password requests.
While not formally banned in Russia, VPNs there are heavily throttled at their entry and exit nodes; the state plays a constant game of cat and mouse, as new nodes are established, then identified and plugged. Crucially, the Kremlin takes an interest in payment processing. Gaining intelligence on citizens means following the money. The internet might be wild and international in the abstract, but someone is going to have to put down a credit card number, and that will be linked to a transaction in the local banking system.
Britain’s own mealy-mouthed version might work by asking VPNs to submit to a voluntary code, to be badged by Ofcom on the basis of being “responsible service providers”, then leaning on the likes of Visa and Mastercard for further responsibility. A precedent is already well-established in the West for the state to coordinate with payment processors — see the debanking of Nigel Farage, or the treatment of protesting Canadian truckers.
Overall, the war will not be technological as much as it is rhetorical. In the near future, the state will simply assume that traffic routed via private means someone is up to no good. It’s like being found in possession of a lock-picking set: though no crime has taken place, why would an honest citizen want to have all of these tools at their disposal?
For 90% of the British public, this debate will be a distant echo in a far-off room. Witness the binary between those who still get their news from mainstream TV channels and those who seek it out on YouTube and X. While outrage reigns online, the likes of ITV have produced numerous reports about how the bill doesn’t go far enough. The campaign for this law began with the suicide of a teenage girl being held up in front of the press as a symbol that something must be done. In that context, can a libertarian fightback ever cut through?
As Britain’s fiscal position worsens, the state will find further solace in tinkering with the information economy. The Government has shown it can’t meaningfully pass its benefits reform bill with 400 MPs — but it can reliably walk new safetyist legislation through the House. If you can no longer shape reality, you can at least shape the narrative.