Court Agrees with EFF: Utah’s VPN Law Demands a Technical Impossibility

submitted by
edited

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/10/court-agrees-eff-utahs-vpn-law-demands-technical-impossibility

29
431
5

Log in to comment

Hot Top New Old

As we’ve said time and time again: the internet will always route around censorship.

Of course it will. I don’t understand why Utah thinks they can censor content when countries like North Korea and China demonstrate that a circumvention is always found.

 reply
94

I use VPNs when I’m in China just to download anime, grim.

 reply
3

The last time I checked, no person under the age of 18 can purchase internet access from an ISP. An adult has to enter a contract before a single byte can be transferred across the internet. All the content you see online was put there by an adult, or the responsibility of an adult. The internet itself is already an age gate.

This shit is like a nightclub sueing the government to have the bus driver check id’s

 reply
93

You can find an open Wi-Fi network

 reply
10

EFF to the rescue.

 reply
81

Omfg just talk to your kids and fucking be a parent. It’s not that hard. Fucking puritanical shitlords.

 reply
51

These laws have nothing to do with children but on paper..

 reply
24

Fuck age verification

 reply
50

*on the Internet

 reply
10

More like *that empowers the surveillance state.

Honestly, I have nothing against age restricted spaces (within reason). When a bouncer checks your ID at a bar, they historically haven’t been logging that interaction. Its not used to track your movement, reported to your health insurance company, etc…

If you assigned the death penalty to CEOs who store or sell verification information I could maybe be talked into providing my ID to an online company.

 reply
37

Everywhere, stuff should have a knowledge or “maturity” test. People age and mature differently, they shouldn’t be limited due to arbitrary distinctions like an age.

 reply
3

Problem with that is different people have different ideas as to what’s “mature enough,” or even “mature” at all.

 reply
15

and since the point is the tracking and not the age at all there’s no reason to even try a maturity test. it’s about your identity, nothing more and nothing less, every single time it’s brought up. If they cared even a shred about kids we’d have universal healthcare so as usual it’s just flat out lies to our face.

 reply
8

Do… I need to point out why this is a dumb statement?

“She may be 10 but she passed the maturity test!”

“Yes officer, I’m nine, but I passed the maturity test so it’s fine that I’m smoking and drinking.”

Age isn’t a great indicator in all respects, but “maturity” is arbitrary and subjective, and makes no damn sense in so, so many instances.

 reply
10

Tell that to a girl’s father.

 reply
2

“You’re very mature for your age”

  • some pedo arguing that age is just a number
 reply
2

 reply
19

what movie is this?

 reply
5

This is real life now. But also Idiocracy.

 reply
19

It’s got what plants crave.

 reply
9

Water? Like from the toilet?

 reply
8

I ain’t never seen no plant growing out of no toilet

 reply
6

But Jesus told them to pass the law.

/s

 reply
11

Comments in Microblogs

@eff A privacy rule should not force services to inspect the tools that protect users. The technical impossibility is a useful line in the debate.

 reply
1

The rule fails twice: it weakens privacy and demands a filter that cannot reliably tell a VPN from ordinary traffic. Technical impossibility is a security problem, not a loophole.

 reply
1

@eff Good to see the court call out the “technical impossibility” instead of treating privacy tools as a loophole. Any rule that requires services to inspect or reliably classify protective tooling risks making privacy the exception.

 reply
1

@eff I can see alternative infrastructure powered by mesh networks like B.A.T.M.A.N and Yggdrasil taking off if they try locking down the internet like this...

 reply
1
Insert image