It's official: Utah is the U.S. state closest to banning VPNs

close04

> It's official: Utah is the U.S. state closest to banning VPNs > The law, which takes effect May 6, doesn't make VPNs illegal — but it's a blow to your rights, even if you don't live in Utah. > websites subject to the state's age verification law will be legally barred from explaining how to use a VPN to get around age restrictions. They'll also be liable for enforcing age verification for any user within Utah's physical borders — regardless of their apparent virtual location. The title is disgustingly clickbaity.

allears

"Subject to the state's age verification law" -- does that mean any site hosted by a Utah ISP? Any site with a server in Utah? The boundaries get hazier the more you think about them. The intertubes are a global thing, how they gonna enforce that?

OutOfHere

This ban has got to be challenged in the Supreme Court for various reasons, not limited to the First Amendment and technological infeasibility. It is quite the coincidence that the NSA has their datacenter in Utah.

jespinel

IMO, this is one of the main strengths of the US: you have 50 different options to live according to your values and beliefs, and relatively little friction if you decide to move to a state that better reflects them.

jmclnx

Too bad companies did not have 'ba*s' to block their sites from being accessed in Utah. If all companies did that, it would stop all these crazy laws instantly. Where I live, one site I log into started asking for my birth date. That is in a State were age verification is not yet even being talked about. So my response is to never go to that site again. I believe it will change once users start dropping off that site.

shevy-java

They have no valid reason to want to ban so - all illegal corporate laws. This is Palantir wanting to sniff after everyone.

bena

Uh, that's not going to fly. We use a VPN to enable remote users to access our internal network for things we don't want exposed to the public at large. And we're not a tech company. This really sounds like someone who has no fucking clue trying to legislate away all the loopholes to their other shitty legislation.

0xbadcafebee

This is the next part of the national Orwellian surveillance system that is "age verification". The first part installs spyware in every operating system. The second part makes it illegal to work around it or find any alternative means of privacy. The final step is a government-mandated ID for logging into these devices with the OS controls, so the government can track everything you do on every device. This is the most wildly dangerous threat to liberty in this nation's history. And yes I know that sounds weird, but it's true.

darknavi

> When Utah's Senate Bill 73 goes into force on May 6, websites subject to the state's age verification law will be legally barred from explaining how to use a VPN to get around age restrictions. This will definitely work. It sounds like it's time for some "How not to use a VPN" articles. https://www.grapecollective.com/prohibitions-grape-bricks-ho...

jonathanstrange

"websites subject to the state's age verification law will be legally barred from explaining how to use a VPN to get around age restrictions" I thought the US has free speech?

anthk

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html

Barbing

“The internet is built to, and will always, route around censorship. If Utah successfully hampers commercial VPN providers, motivated users will transition to non-commercial proxies, private tunnels through cloud services like AWS, or residential proxies that are virtually indistinguishable from standard home traffic. These workarounds will emerge within hours of the law taking effect. Meanwhile, the collateral damage will fall on businesses, journalists, and survivors of abuse who rely on commercial VPNs for essential data security. These provisions won't stop a tech-savvy teenager, but they certainly will impact the privacy of every regular Utah resident who just wants to keep their data out of the hands of brokers or malicious actors.” https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/04/utahs-new-law-regulati... (incl. donation link) Utah legislators should know the reason the EFF makes this statement is that it’s true.

eth0up

I remember watching the news right after the C. Kirk event and listening to governor Cox refer to social media as "worse than a cancer" I pretty much foresaw this and much more that very moment. Not that I think social media isn't partly carcinogenic or worse, but I think monopolies and censorship are worse. And sometimes, for best results, we must accept some bad with the good...

ohnei

It's a liability to businesses not to know who may physically be in Utah so they should probably ban together to exclude Utah from all networks. I.e. ISPs caught dealing with Utah should have their peering revoked.

soperj

How does this work with VPNing into work?

burnt-resistor

Speed running becoming Russia.

mindcrime

I'd like to take this opportunity to remind everyone to read Cory Doctorow's novel Attack Surface and to think deeply about the message contained within. He has something significant to say, IMO, about the need for people like "us" (that is, people who care deeply about these issues) to use our knowledge, resources, skills, etc. to help effect changes in public policy through the legislative process as opposed to trying to "out tech the bad guys". And that's rooted, as I understood it, in an argument that you can't "out tech the bad guys" over the long run, because they (the US government and other nation states) can always just beat you on resources and volume. Anyway, I hate trying to summarize that, because I'm afraid I'll mis-state things and fail to do it justice. Seriously, just read the book. It's worth it. And if you don't want to read the book, a reasonable proxy might be to suggest "just donate some money to the EFF".

incomingpain

VPNs communicate via text. Text is protected by first amendment. Best of luck with your unconstitutional ban on speech.

grahamburger

Living in Utah is so frustrating. On the one hand, we have a law that protects 'free range parenting': https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2018/03/2... as a parent, I genuinely appreciate this, especially when compared to stories from other HNers here of pearl-clutchers calling CPS for kids doing regular kid-stuff outside: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47815127 On the other hand, in addition to this draconian (and almost certainly unconstitutional, not that that's worth much these days) law, we also have a legislature that absolutely refuses to do anything the people want. Back in 2018, Utah voters forced Prop. 2, an initiative to legalize medical cannabis, onto the ballot. The ballot initiative passed with 52% of the vote and polled with even higher support. Nevertheless, the Utah legislature, who somehow always knows better than the voters, replaced Prop 2 with their own, heavily modified and far more restrictive version, HB 3001. https://ballotpedia.org/Utah_Proposition_2,_Medical_Marijuan... Also in 2018, voters passed Prop 4, which created an independent redistricting commission to create fair maps. The Utah legislature promptly gutted the commission, passing HB200 in an attempt to continue creating heavily gerrymandered maps. Fortunately, the Utah supreme court ruled that the legislature had overstepped their constitutional authority with HB200 and required the legislature to draw new maps or accept those proposed by the committee. When they refused, a judge put one of the committee's maps in place. Utah Republicans have been whining about this ever since. They tried to run a petition of their own, but could only gather signatures through fraud and deceit, with many signers reporting that signature gatherers told them they were signing in support of the judge's ruling when the opposite was true. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Utah_Proposition_4 And then, on the other hand, driven by Utah's highly conservative Mormon mono-culture, there is a rich and thriving counter-culture ready and waiting to accept folks who don't fit the standard mold.

ChrisArchitect

[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47997358