During an appearance on public broadcast service Franceinfo, Minister Delegate for Artificial Intelligence and Digital Affairs Anne Le Hénanff said VPNs might be the next target.
“If [this legislation] allows us to protect a very large majority of children, we will continue. And VPNs are the next topic on my list,” she said.
Banning VPNs is such a foolish move. Sure people use or need it for work and there’s a lot of legitimate reasons. Sure it protects the lives of whisteblowers and critical media but you know whats more important?? Minors on social media! Yes we should ruin the entire internet anonymity for everyone because we NEED this to protect minors (we don’t actually care about them)
The point is surveillance. If you start with the premise, “we must be able to see and read everything the public does” then this all follows. And it may have been agreed internationally in secret, since all of a sudden every country is introducing laws to require ID online and ban VPNs. It doesn’t protect children, and it doesn’t help the general population, but it does help the project of total surveillance.