**Governments in the West Turn Their Sights on VPNs as Online Privacy and Anonymity Come Under Assault**

The Danish government's recent proposal to ban the domestic use of Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) has sparked widespread concern among digital rights advocates and the general public. The move is part of a broader effort by Western governments to impose increasingly draconian restrictions on Internet use, threatening the very foundations of online privacy and anonymity.

As we noted in our previous article, the proposed Regulation to Prevent and Combat Child Sexual Abuse – also known as the "Chat Control Law" – was met with widespread opposition due to its invasive measures. The original proposal mandated the scanning of private communications, including those protected by end-to-end encryption, effectively transforming the Internet into a more centrally controlled, surveilled environment.

Despite being opposed by enough member states, including Germany, the Danish government went back to the drawing board and came up with a compromise bill that still raises serious concerns. Former MEP Patrick Beyer warns that three major problems remain unsolved: the lack of court-ordered access to communication channels, the ban on children downloading messaging apps, and the outlawing of anonymous communication.

The Danish government's proposal would effectively ban users from accessing geo-restricted streaming content and bypassing website blocks using VPNs. The current wording of the bill could be interpreted so broadly that it would not only criminalize streaming but also hinder the sale and legitimate use of VPN services across Denmark, echoing Lund's comments.

However, the proposed measure drew significant flak from digital rights advocates and the general public, prompting the government to withdraw it – at least temporarily. The Danish Minister for Culture, Jakob Engel-Schmidt, announced that he was cutting the contentious section from the bill, admitting that the initial text was "not formulated precisely enough" and led to a fundamental misunderstanding of its purpose.

But Denmark is not alone in its efforts to restrict VPN use. Since VPNs essentially function as anonymity masks allowing users to hide their online activity and access restricted content, their popularity has grown as governments have sought to impose increasingly draconian restrictions on Internet use.

As we reported earlier, when the UK's Starmer government made age verification checks mandatory for accessing pornography and other supposedly adult content online in July, it sparked an explosion in VPN use. The Starmer government's predictable response was to buckle down by including amendments to its Orwellian-titled Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill that seek to ban children from using VPNs, among other things.

The UK Parliament recently debated a petition with 550,000 signatures calling to repeal the Online Safety Act. Instead of defending free speech, MPs used the opportunity to demand even more control over the internet. They claimed it's "not about controlling speech," while... (Twitter thread)

But this is not just a bout of madness on the part of Europe's political class; the same thing is happening throughout the so-called "Collective West." Australia recently introduced its long-awaited age verification legislation, which blocks under-16s from joining social media platforms. The rules would require all adults to submit ID to access platforms.

As we warned in November 2024, online age verification appears to be the Trojan Horse for the mass rollout and enforced adoption of digital IDs. Other Western jurisdictions, including the UK, the EU, and the US, are now treating the Australian rules as a blueprint for their own legislation.

In the United States, Senator Katie Britt of Alabama said she hopes "Australia taking this step...leads the US to actually doing something." Britt is one of the sponsors of the bipartisan Kids Off Social Media Act, which would prevent children under thirteen from using social platforms.

The Starmer government's proposed amendment to the Online Safety Act also calls for requiring social media to use "highly-effective" age assurance measures to prevent children under 16 from using such services. However, most age assurance measures are anything but effective, and teenagers in both Australia and the UK have found embarrassingly easy workarounds.

According to Information Age, tech companies, including SNAP, Meta, and Reddit, are confident of being able to comply with the new age restrictions – failure to do so could result in eight-figure fines. However, this raises concerns about the role of VPNs in bypassing these restrictions.

The same Israel whose companies and intelligence agencies have created many of the world's most advanced online surveillance programs and hacking tools now controls many of the world's VPNs, with which it could "create backdoors for Israeli intelligence to carry out a vast kompromat operation on users around the globe." This is an obvious cause for concern, warns Mcleod.

As EFF warns, politicians have discovered that people are using VPNs to protect their privacy and bypass invasive laws. Their solution? Entirely ban the use of VPNs – a battle being fought by those who clearly have no idea how any of this technology actually works.

The US' cyber defense agency, CISA, has even published a warning for Android and iPhone users: "Do not use a personal VPN." This reissued advice first surfaced a year ago, now it will resonate given the VPN surge seen since. Virtual Private Networks work by tunnelling data to and from a device via third-party servers, masking location and specific activity (sites and platform visited) from networks and ISPs carrying the traffic.

However, as NC reader Baron Aroxdale notes, VPN bans are unlikely to work – at least not without causing serious damage to the internet along the way. VPNs are a standard part of business IT, providing a means to connect remote computers together on the same virtual network. Support for them is normally inbuilt into operating systems, and hardware network companies will provide desktop applications to support VPN setup on their routers.

That didn't prevent the Danish government from trying, however. It was forced into a retreat by the ferocity of the public backlash. This may hold an important lesson for us all in the so-called "liberal" West: if we are to have any chance of preserving any degree of privacy and anonymity online, we're going to have to fight tooth and nail for it.

Over a decade ago, popular grassroots movements in the US were able to halt the passage of the SOPA and PIPA bills that threatened free speech, internet security, and online innovation. Similarly, one of the main reasons why the EU couldn't push through the Chat Control legislation in its original form was a one-man grassroots online campaign that brought pressure to bear on Europe's elected representatives.

The problem today is that governments keep learning from these failures and adopting their strategy. They are also more determined than ever to bring the internet under their control, even if it means doing so in a salami slicing way – something the EU is particularly adept at.