Thread

Court agrees with EFF: Utah's VPN law demands a technical impossibility

802 points · 405 comments · hn_acker

SoftTalker · 1790960547 · focus · HN ↗
> platforms are left with an impossible choice: completely block all VPN traffic nationwide or withdraw access from Utah entirely
Is it even possible to reliably know that a connection is from a VPN? Anyone can proxy through a random hosting provider.
1. TeMPOraL · 1790961956 · focus · HN ↗
  All it would take is for a major ISP in Utah to route everyone through a VPN, and boom, it's the same picture.
  1. irenaeus · 1790963654 · focus · HN ↗
    Yeah but the state of Utah could just tell them to knock it off because they're the state.
  2. michaelbuckbee · 1790964692 · focus · HN ↗
    Isn't this kind of what Apple's Private Relay is?
  3. someonebaggy · 1791027971 · focus · HN ↗
    Well no, because the laws for ISPs and VPNs are different.
    Most ISPs are already VPNs. Your connection is tunneled from your router at home, through some expansive DSL/ATM or GPON/PPPoE network, to a box at a data center that serves five neighborhoods with a single link by establishing a tunnel to each individual consumer router.
    But the ISP has to make sure the geolocation databases have accurate information about it, and it has to retain logs of which user used which IP address at which time because the law says so. That's why it's not a "VPN".
    olyjohn · 1791043983 · focus · HN ↗
    I don't think that's how it works.

Unofficial Hacker News client; not affiliated with Y Combinator.