And that’s all it should be. Currently, the US government does not have the facilities to block traffic to specific websites or IP addresses on a country-wide basis. We don’t have a “great firewall” the way China does, and we should keep it that way.
Yes it does? All it would take is a single piece of legislation and a couple of hours for all ISPs to block all traffic to certain IP ranges.
Sure, it doesn’t prevent VPNs but it would block 95% of access. The remaining 5% can be blocked through banning VPNs and deep packet inspection, the latter of which doesn’t require that much new infrastructure.
I said “currently”. Sure, the US could pass legislation that would require ISPs to implement that ability. I said they do not currently have that ability, and you seem to be disagreeing because it is hypothetically possible for the US to build its own great firewall. I do not want to assume your intentions but it appears you may have misinterpreted my message.
What I said is still correct. The point of my comment was that the US should not pass legislation to build a great firewall.
Oh, I thought you meant physically unable (for some time) - meaning they’d have to upgrade their router hardware or something which would take a couple of weeks/months.
But yes, right now the US is unable to implement a firewall. Though with the current Supreme Court it might as well decide tomorrow that free speech doesn’t extend to communication via electrons or something.
Except banning vpns would kill the economy immediately. Pretty much every big corporation is utilizing vpns to facilitate their work from home infrastructure. Hell, often even internally. Not to mention state and federal governments also use them. Suggesting they could do that is a joke.
They’ll just make legal carveouts for government and commercial use, and go after consumer-facing VPN providers that refuse to comply. For VPN providers based outside the US, they could delist their websites from DNS or block their IPs. They can’t stop someone who’s determined from finding a way, of course, but just a few simple barriers prevents most people from putting in the effort.
I wasn’t talking about the technology behind VPNs. Every single country that “bans VPNs” still uses them commercially to some extent.
What I consider a ban on VPNs is a ban on commercial B2C VPN providers that do not comply with US legislation - meaning they’d allow customers to access banned sites.
Add the fact that pretty much all major payment providers happen to be US companies and I’d wager 99% of “normal” access could be blocked.
They cannot take down a domain registered with a registry and registrar outside their jurisdiction. They could try and compel domestic DNS providers to block queries for that domain, but there are numerous providers who are unlikely to comply with that request on grounds of the 1st amendment.
Given that the OP is about TikTok (a foreign website) being blocked in the United States, your point has limited relevance here. Further, if the website was hosted stateside they could just physically seize the servers themselves.
Correct, but that doesn’t mean TikTok would be inaccessible if they didn’t have servers in the US. My point is that the federal government doesn’t have the ability to completely limit access to a foreign website. It would be very slow and they’d lose users, sure, but they could keep running as usual from outside the US and still remain accessible to people inside the US.
Essentially yea, the laws enforcement mechanism as-is is just having the app delisted from app stores
Everything else is of TikToks own doing
And that’s all it should be. Currently, the US government does not have the facilities to block traffic to specific websites or IP addresses on a country-wide basis. We don’t have a “great firewall” the way China does, and we should keep it that way.
Yes it does? All it would take is a single piece of legislation and a couple of hours for all ISPs to block all traffic to certain IP ranges.
Sure, it doesn’t prevent VPNs but it would block 95% of access. The remaining 5% can be blocked through banning VPNs and deep packet inspection, the latter of which doesn’t require that much new infrastructure.
I said “currently”. Sure, the US could pass legislation that would require ISPs to implement that ability. I said they do not currently have that ability, and you seem to be disagreeing because it is hypothetically possible for the US to build its own great firewall. I do not want to assume your intentions but it appears you may have misinterpreted my message.
What I said is still correct. The point of my comment was that the US should not pass legislation to build a great firewall.
Oh, I thought you meant physically unable (for some time) - meaning they’d have to upgrade their router hardware or something which would take a couple of weeks/months.
But yes, right now the US is unable to implement a firewall. Though with the current Supreme Court it might as well decide tomorrow that free speech doesn’t extend to communication via electrons or something.
Idk why you are downvoted. They have that yes
Except banning vpns would kill the economy immediately. Pretty much every big corporation is utilizing vpns to facilitate their work from home infrastructure. Hell, often even internally. Not to mention state and federal governments also use them. Suggesting they could do that is a joke.
They’ll just make legal carveouts for government and commercial use, and go after consumer-facing VPN providers that refuse to comply. For VPN providers based outside the US, they could delist their websites from DNS or block their IPs. They can’t stop someone who’s determined from finding a way, of course, but just a few simple barriers prevents most people from putting in the effort.
That many carveouts pretty much renders the entire thing pointless.
Are you seriously trying to predict the actions of the US federal government using an argument based on logic and common sense?
I wasn’t talking about the technology behind VPNs. Every single country that “bans VPNs” still uses them commercially to some extent.
What I consider a ban on VPNs is a ban on commercial B2C VPN providers that do not comply with US legislation - meaning they’d allow customers to access banned sites.
Add the fact that pretty much all major payment providers happen to be US companies and I’d wager 99% of “normal” access could be blocked.
From what I understand, in my country OpenVPN and Wireguard work fine within the borders, but the protocols are blocked to foreign servers.
Actually…
I think if people in the US had the capacity for introspection and empathy we would have had a collective
moment every year for the past 250y…
False, feds have taken down whole domains for violations
They cannot take down a domain registered with a registry and registrar outside their jurisdiction. They could try and compel domestic DNS providers to block queries for that domain, but there are numerous providers who are unlikely to comply with that request on grounds of the 1st amendment.
Given that the OP is about TikTok (a foreign website) being blocked in the United States, your point has limited relevance here. Further, if the website was hosted stateside they could just physically seize the servers themselves.
They have servers here otherwise it would be a laggy mess to use tiktok
Correct, but that doesn’t mean TikTok would be inaccessible if they didn’t have servers in the US. My point is that the federal government doesn’t have the ability to completely limit access to a foreign website. It would be very slow and they’d lose users, sure, but they could keep running as usual from outside the US and still remain accessible to people inside the US.