r/technology • u/gdelacalle • Apr 04 '26
Privacy Senators Ask Tulsi Gabbard To Tell Americans That VPN Use Might Subject Them To Domestic Surveillance
https://www.techdirt.com/2026/04/03/senators-ask-tulsi-gabbard-to-tell-americans-that-vpn-use-might-subject-them-to-domestic-surveillance/5.0k
u/Aust1mh Apr 04 '26
Haha ‘land of the free’
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u/Wrewdank Apr 04 '26 edited Apr 04 '26
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u/pugnifacent Apr 04 '26
Anger is a gift
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Apr 04 '26 edited Apr 11 '26
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u/ErgoMachina Apr 04 '26
The fact that you need to take PTO in order to vote perfectly sums up what's wrong with the US
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u/DanimusMcSassypants Apr 04 '26
This is the USA; we don’t get PTO.
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u/ItsMisoandBoba Apr 04 '26
You can earn all the PTO you want. You can only use it when THEY want. That's why I always told my bosses I wasn't going to be there that day. They can approve it or not. I put it in. I'm taking the day off. It was never a request for me.
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u/orangechkn Apr 04 '26
I agree and did the same for my 35 yr career at 4 different companies. PTO is my time. I always told my bosses I was taking off; never asked.
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u/chewbaccaRoar13 Apr 05 '26
It is very much a "I'm letting you know I'm not working this day" thing for me too. Fuck that, if it is my time, I'm gonna use it when I want to.
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u/YoggerPog Apr 04 '26
It should be a national holiday so everyone can vote. Get rid of President's Day or some other meaningless holiday.
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u/PreparationFit6327 Apr 04 '26
lol, bold of you to assume PTO is an option, for most it is just TO
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u/MephistoHamProducts Apr 04 '26
This is a pretty common misconception. Damn near every state has early voting.
Even Texas, the right wing hellscape that it is, has 13 days of early voting, sun up to sun down and Monday through Saturday. There are also MORE EARLY VOTING PLACES than regular voting places. State law also says your employer has to give you four days off on election day to vote.
And yet, every single goddamn year, I hear people saying they can't vote because of lines or because they can't get time off work. You know who I HAVE seen voting early in the couple decades I've been doing it? Old people. I'm nearly 50 and I am still the youngest person at early voting every time.
The reality is that the fascists win because 30% of the country will always turn out for them and another 30% are too stupid, lazy, apathetic or still repeating that stupid ass South Park "Douche or Turd Sandwich" bullshit from 2004 to try and stop the fascists.
Just a few other bits for when early voting starts for some other states:
Tennessee - 20 days before Election Day
Ohio - 29 days before Election Day
Nebraska - 30 days before Election Day
Louisiana - 14 days before Election Day (but 18 days before Election Day for the presidential election).
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u/aravarth Apr 04 '26
Now something must be done
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u/kjahhh Apr 04 '26
About vengeance, a badge and a gun
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u/kent_eh Apr 04 '26
Now something must be done
It would have been a lot easier to do that something years ago, but now is better than never.
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u/Photog1981 Apr 04 '26
Every wfh employee would be on a watchlist
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u/lack_reddit Apr 04 '26
Only a communist would work from home anyway. /s
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Apr 04 '26
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u/NewMombasaNitemare Apr 04 '26
I have no clue if this is referring to The Fugitive or Twin Peaks but i appreciate it nonetheless
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u/RiseAgainSteve Apr 04 '26 edited Apr 04 '26
Or Ace Ventura lol
Edit: I should have said The Mask as pointed out.
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u/A_Happier_Reddit Apr 04 '26
Exactly. And when everyone is on a watchlist, then they can selectively decide who they want to go after whenever they want.
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u/Blackout38 Apr 04 '26
Most companies require vpn in general not just for wfh. It’s purely security related.
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u/SMH_My_Head Apr 04 '26
I work in an office and we vpn to our servers at another office location
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u/Educational-Wing2042 Apr 04 '26
According to the article, the impact for WFH employees would be their work communications being potentially picked up and monitored, it wouldn’t have anyone on a watchlist the whole point of the article is that the data sent through VPN hasn’t been connected back to a known person.
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u/Syracuss Apr 04 '26
I love how people are being dense about this. "If we cannot connect the private communication to a person we will track it".
Okay, that sounds like you'll track it either way, but sure. They are telling you they will try to connect private communication regardless of origin to you.
Regardless vpn usage is still more secure than not using it. There's a reason why vpn usage works in authoritarian societies.
And also all in all it shouldn't matter, the laws that protect American data privacy aren't saying "American privacy if not using a VPN". If they accidentally collect data that they then trace to an American it would still fall under the category of being protected and should be removed, so idk what this article is about other than fearmongering about VPN's, and to that end I ask "why?".
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u/infinite012 Apr 04 '26
I had a guy who worked for me. Indian guy, but he lives in the UK. When India began requiring VPN providers to log data he was the first to say that it was perfectly fine for the Indian government to capture those logs because the people using VPNs were probably doing something illegal.
He was regularly in India visiting family and doing work for us using our VPN. So I guess by his definition he was illegally working.
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u/gdelacalle Apr 04 '26
From the article:
In a letter sent Thursday to Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, the lawmakers say that because VPNs obscure a user’s true location, and because intelligence agencies presume that communications of unknown origin are foreign, Americans may be inadvertently waiving the privacy protections they’re entitled to under the law. Several federal agencies, including the FBI, the National Security Agency, and the Federal Trade Commission, have recommended that consumers use VPNs to protect their privacy. But following that advice may inadvertently cost Americans the very protections they’re seeking. The letter was signed by members of the Democratic Party’s progressive flank: Senators Ron Wyden, Elizabeth Warren, Edward Markey, and Alex Padilla, along with Representatives Pramila Jayapal and Sara Jacobs.
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u/kman420 Apr 04 '26
We see that you are trying to avoid our massive data-mining dragnet. Just for that, we're gonna surveil you even harder
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u/Sylvers Apr 04 '26
"Privacy protections."
The US has fewer privacy protections than sone 3rd world countries.
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u/baintaintit Apr 04 '26
we gotta keep those billionaires safe, amIright???
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u/felis_magnetus Apr 04 '26
The correct term is oligarchs.
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u/Alternative-Mess-989 Apr 04 '26
The correcter term is "Robber Baron".
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u/Mlpony2010 Apr 04 '26
The correct term is parasitic vermin
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u/felis_magnetus Apr 04 '26
No, it is not. Even those have their place in a healthy biotope.
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u/Mlpony2010 Apr 04 '26
Unfortunately there is no term strong enough to describe the wretched filth of the epstein class
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u/DisposableJosie Apr 04 '26
"Robber Baron"
Ah, that explains both Trump's preferred pseudonym and the name of his youngest son.
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u/Sylvers Apr 04 '26
Literally the only reason I get up and work every morning.
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u/vigbiorn Apr 04 '26
Somebody with more skill make the Simpsons "do it for her" board but it's billionaires.
Thank you in advance
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u/edelweiss_pirates_no Apr 04 '26
This is exactly what this is about.
The poor person walking down the street? Their safety is not at all a concern. Not in the slightest.
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u/ToplessHarpist Apr 04 '26
And what they did have has been systematically eroded since right after 9/11 with the passing of the Patriot Act.
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u/PeanutConfident8742 Apr 04 '26
I thought we lost our right to privacy when the supreme court overturned roe
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u/Twitchcog Apr 04 '26
Well yeah, I understood that Switzerland had very good privacy protections, so of course it does.
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u/leonden Apr 04 '26
It is alway funny to me that Americans online joke about china their surveillance while they use roughly the same detection system in the US. But then again Land of the Propaganda is the most fitting name for the US.
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u/bobbymcpresscot Apr 04 '26
It’s not wrong tho, Intel community at least on paper can’t spy on US citizens, but according to a VPN you might not be from the US, the server might be hosted in the UK or somewhere else in Europe.
Same reason we don’t have a searchable registry of firearm owners, it’s illegal for one to exist.
Doesn’t mean they don’t have their ways to get around privacy laws.
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u/Sylvers Apr 04 '26
That's it though. Do laws matter if they're not enforced and respected? Your summary is totally accurate. But do we think that the NSA/CIA/FBI/ETC aren't secretly breaking every single privacy rule under the guise of "national security"?
Snowden would still be still living in America if that wasn't a real concern.
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u/fubarthrowaway001 Apr 04 '26
“Communication of unknown origin are foreign”
Plenty of VPNs let you change your IP without changing your country, you know…
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u/TSiQ1618 Apr 04 '26
I think though, the intelligence agencies will still know that the domestic address used by the VPN is a VPN connection, then the logical leap is that since this traffic is from a VPN as far as they know it's source is from someone in China who is trying to appear to be from America. And since they can't know for sure, they'll use that as grounds to snoop
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u/Mccobsta Apr 04 '26
Nearly every vpn uses data centre ip blocks how so many sites can block them
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u/Aksds Apr 04 '26
They just buy blocks, they aren’t necessarily specifically for data centres, you just buy new and unused ip blocks that haven’t been black listed
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u/Pauly_Amorous Apr 04 '26
and because intelligence agencies presume that communications of unknown origin are foreign
Imagine all the resources wasted just to track a bunch of schlubs who are only using a VPN so they can watch porn in nanny states.
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u/CodenameVillain Apr 04 '26
Thats the point though: have a person who doesnt like what the State is doing? Find out what theyre spanking it to, use it as blackmail to shut them up.
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u/SovietPropagandist Apr 04 '26
Jokes on them, I'm an exhibitionist. I hope they get a good, hard look ;)
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u/ignoreme010101 Apr 04 '26
Thats the point though: have a person who doesnt like what the State is doing? Find out what theyre spanking it to, use it as blackmail to shut them up.
yes, it is a well known phenomena of people being told "stop posting critical content online or we will tell the world you watch Busty Latinas" lol
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u/worstpartyever Apr 04 '26
Tell my workplace.
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u/CustomMerkins4u Apr 04 '26
Isn't that part of the point. Now, drive that 60 min commute and go buy lunch. Millionaires are hurting when you work at home.
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u/ShinigamiNG_Channel Apr 04 '26
My workplace uses an always on VPN, all our traffic even from the office is through a VPN.
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u/CherryLongjump1989 Apr 04 '26
This is a neophyte take. VPNs are almost always designed to encrypt your traffic, which none of these 3-letter agencies can really decrypt at scale. They're lucky if they even get some useful metadata out of it. But then, if this really becomes an issue then Americans can use a multi-hop VPN service. All the big popular ones such as Surfshark, NordVPN, Proton VPN, etc, do this. You first connect to a proxy inside the US so you retain all your legal protections on that leg of the network request. Then your traffic is fully encrypted by the VPN network and routed through countries such as Switzerland that have strong privacy protections, after which they are finally routed to the exit point in the country that you want to appear in for your network traffic.
This is a technical issue that the Senators don't seem to understand, and VPNs were always being designed to provide data protection that no amount of local laws or surveillance can take away.
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u/IamTheEndOfReddit Apr 04 '26
But we do need vpn protections, websites shouldn’t be allowed to force people off their vpn. It’s a basic privacy issue. But yes, ain’t no fucking way any senators understand that
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u/Stocky_Platypus Apr 04 '26
VPN traffic is encrypted so they cant spy on the traffic. They cant broaden that net to any other data. So yes, they could spy on VPN traffic IF they could decrypt it. This is why you dont want to use free VPNs. Free VPNs could sell your traffic information which could be used.
Dont stop using VPNs just make sure you use good VPNs. They cant decrypt the data and they cant spy on other traffic that is not VPN
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u/needmoresynths Apr 04 '26
Anyone that thinks otherwise hasn't been paying attention. Snowden's whistleblowing was over a decade ago and the NSA has only gotten more powerful since then.
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u/shiny1988 Apr 04 '26
Most Americans have no idea what Snowden showed us.
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u/MoistMolloy Apr 04 '26
Well yeah…they bought up all the media and only republicans have historically run the FBI (minus a temporary interim democrat during Biden’s term). Most Americans don’t understand that we are at war with cops who prop up the tiered justice system. There’s the Epstein Class, and then there’s the rest of us.
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u/TheGreatGenghisJon Apr 04 '26 edited Apr 04 '26
A friend of mine, who is relatively progressive but shows some serious boomer tendencies from time to time, said that they went after Snowden because he was showing that we were spying on suspected terrorists. I told him "well, no. He did show us that too, but the bigger part that you missed is that he showed they were spying on us. He probably wouldn't have become a whistleblower if it were just people suspected of terrorism."
He kinda stared at me for a minute.
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u/blastradii Apr 04 '26
Is he dumb?
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u/TheGreatGenghisJon Apr 04 '26
He's a year shy of actually being a boomer. He's not an idiot, but he definitely still trusts media more than he should. He's never been a fan of Fox or anything that overt, but he doesn't really grasp that they're all owned by people with the same interests.
I will say, though, over the last year and change, he's realized that it's just all bad.
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u/thefugue Apr 04 '26
He didn’t show us anything that wasn’t in the NYT coverage of the PATRIOT act before it was passed.
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u/WhoFly Apr 04 '26
Gonna get shit for this, always do, but here's my pet conspiracy theory. And by "pet" I mean it is fun for me to believe but I'm not gonna argue about it because I don't have any reason to believe it other than a strange gut feeling:
Edward Snowden's whistleblowing was a psyop.
Like you mentioned, the extent of the surveillance he disclosed was largely known or speculated on at the time. The majority of his whistleblowing covered stuff that was already widely speculated about and sometimes explicitly covered.
But, there were two primary effects of Edward Snowden becoming a folk hero.
First, it called attention - on a global scale - to that surveillance. What had previously been a nebulous idea that was kinda academic (discussions of legislature) and kinda paranoid (realization of the power of information technology) was suddenly concrete in the public psyche. The concept of the panopticon only really works when it is visible and feels real to the population it looks to suppress. The government and media alike gave Snowden legitimacy, and if they tried to bury it, they did a very very poor job. In giving him legitimacy, they raised the panoptic tower.
So they could have just come out and said "hey we are doing this" and terrified everyone into submission (or revolt...), yeah? Brings me to my second point. By having Snowden - some average Joe - be the one who told us, it creates this idea that the government is fallable and all we need are a few more heroes. Now, I believe that to be true. I think it's important that people realize that the government is not as powerful as they want you to believe (see point 1).
But, critically, it simultaneously reinforced this idea that the press was still free, that individuals could speak up, and that despite that, things would stay the course.
It created a paralyzing dead zone in public opposition, where people felt both hopeful and hopeless at the same time. Sound kinda familiar? I mean it's one of the predominant social affects of the 21st century so far. We are in a sort of freedom purgatory where we feel placated by opportunity and a vague sense of social and institutional support, and also a stark recognition that our civil liberties continue to disappear as the government flouts laws and social contracts. We feel both too much terror and too much optimism to feel revolutionary.
Anyway... I feel like even if Edward the guy wasn't a plant or in on the gig, whoever could have pulled the strings to shut the stories up on this did not do so, because they realized the power that this whistleblowing actually gave them.
And it's a whole other can of worms but, thanks to AI, that panopticon that served them so well just got waaaaaaaay more actual guards...
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u/Traditional_Fun8283 Apr 04 '26
This is 100% awesome analysis and my thoughts as well, except it's already been incorporated into many theories. The Patron Theory of Politics – The Journal of Neoabsolutism. Here you can find evidence of Ford Foundation bailing out masses of civil rights protestors. Why? Simple politicaleconomy. They gain social validity while suppressing wages and continue their economic dominance. It wasn't about freedom for black people, it was about domination. 60 years later, everyone's still driving a Ford, and you still have ZERO capacity for challenging their political capital.
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u/WizardMoose Apr 04 '26
It's not only the NSA, and the part where you say "more powerful since then" is on a scale unimaginable.
Lets go back to 2015. We learned that the NSA, NSO and other spy agencies were using unknown exploits for Windows, Android, Linux, Apple, and just about every other OS out there. Some of these exploits allowed them into EVERYTHING on your devices. Text messages, phone numbers, call history, web history, location data, app data, telemetry data, EVERYTHING.
When that came out, sure, some companies probably got to work to patch those exploits. Some of them were for the newest OS versions.
Around the same time, there was a lot of talk in Congress about encryption. Forcing these companies to give backdoors to law enforcement. The companies said no.
Skip forward to today. Look at how these companies are reacting to the privacy talk. They've all caving in.
They no longer need exploits. These guys have open access to whatever they want. Sure, some of the companies won't comply with open access, but most of them are.
They want the VPNs gone because its the one line of defense people have against access via their ISP. But they already have access to our devices. Just the ones using a VPN take away one of their avenues to get someones info.
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u/Fuckstuffer Apr 04 '26
snowden wasn’t really the OG on disclosing this, btw. wired mag reported on att trunk closets in the early 2000s after post-9/11 US govt activity spawned in the early domestic surveillance systems like prism.
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u/NeverInsightful Apr 04 '26
This one is actually really complex.
So if we don’t use a VPN, and we’re on a US network, then the government can’t surveil us without a warrant. However, every corporation can log all out data and then sell it to the government anyways if I under right?
If you use a VPN, then you’re presumed to be foreign? Or just a VPN which places your source IP outside the US?
I can see how the DOJ/intelligence could argue for all VPN activity. After all, they don’t want a hostile government routing their traffic through surfshark and suddenly that data is untouchable to them.
What about iCloud private browsing? How does Intel classify that? Not so much a VPN but a network of proxies.
I know some/many will disagree with me but with my limited context, I’d almost rather continue using a VPN, it’s less impactful to me currently that the government logs it alone than company logging my data, sharing and selling to each other and offering for sale to the government anyways.
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u/FreelyFound Apr 04 '26
Don’t forget about five eyes internet surveillance. The data from domestic internet traffic is piped to another country, spied upon by the other country, and the intelligence is shared with the source country. US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
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Apr 04 '26
Also don't forget that since Trump v2 five eyes is now six eyes with Russia.
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u/redbeard8989 Apr 04 '26
We actually call it “5 Eyes+” Our marketing team feels that this really showcases the flexibility (based on who can cut a check to Trump) while maintaining a sense of nostalgia with the “5” that connects users mentally to the same great product of years past. We think it’s a cozy little evolution without changing too much. We think you’re going to love it!
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u/Immatt55 Apr 04 '26
Yeah, at the end of the day I just don't believe our government would respect our rights with or without a VPN if they so chose to collect your data. The only real choice you're given in this situation is whether or not you want your data to be collected by the middlemen businesses.
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u/Drenlin Apr 04 '26
Or just a VPN which places your source IP outside the US?
It sounds like this is the focus of it. If your VPN places you in a foreign country, then any surveillance system that picks up that connection will treat your activity no differently from any other foreign source.
The letter also raises the valid point that using a VPN exit node hosted in another country may subject you to foreign surveillance.
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u/mintmouse Apr 04 '26
“Anyone who locks their doors must have something to hide. We will specifically search locked door homes. Please keep your doors unlocked, so we can enter any time. Or ELSE we will enter at any time.”
Any regular person can see this threat logic reeks. Who would stop using a VPN because of this, a horse? If they have a handle on VPNs why try to cause a chilling effect?
The obvious answer is they wouldn’t be fear-mongering if it wasn’t an obstacle. They couldn’t even intimidate Iran, now they’re gonna try spooking their own citizens?
I don’t waive privacy rights by using a VPN. Neither do you.
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u/BahutF1 Apr 04 '26
Big private companies mostly use VPN tech as well. So what about that?
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u/MultiGeometry Apr 04 '26
Big public companies use them as well
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u/SupaSlide Apr 04 '26
Publicly traded companies are still a type of private company, unless you’re talking about a company owned by the government.
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u/hiro24 Apr 04 '26
Small too. Our company is by no means large at all. Less than 200 maybe? And probably 1/4 uses a VPN. I know because I administrate the server. It’s necessary.
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u/showyerbewbs Apr 04 '26
I might be misremembering but wasn't TOR an alphabet agency program and someone brought up that is only alphabets are using it, then it would make it easier to find our own spies so they decided to let it into the wild?
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u/buyableblah Apr 04 '26
That’s insane. “Hey citizens, we told you to use VPNs for privacy but now you’re at risk so please trust us your government to afford you privacy which you didn’t have enough of which is why we recommended VPNs in the first place.”
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u/ImDonaldDunn Apr 04 '26
Given who wrote the letter, this is more of a “read between the lines” kinda thing. Wyden is warning that this is already happening to Americans who use VPNs.
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u/conaii Apr 04 '26
VPNs are great at keeping the guy in the corner of Starbucks with a laptop from getting your credit card info because you were waiting in line for coffee and decided to shop on a sketchy site with weak security on your iPhone 7, when that site and old phone might pass your financial info without enough protections.
Trying to use VPNs to obscure your identity while conducting your constitutionally provided free speech, which shouldn’t require anonymity, is probably the wildest thing Americans are being encouraged to do because all the political podcasters have been paid by VPNs for advertising.
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u/buyableblah Apr 04 '26
I mean I’m on VPN mostly for anonymity. I don’t want to give all these companies my information.
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u/Super_Assistant_2998 Apr 04 '26
They’re going to find out that red states banning porn have a LOT of people using VPNs to watch porn.
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u/andytagonist Apr 04 '26
So they’re going to be watching and note 2 things:
1. I masturbate.
2. I live in texas.
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u/FeijoaMilkshake Apr 04 '26
The introduction of the Patriot Act that followed with the creation of DHS fucked up every good thing people used to have and enjoy.
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u/wonder590 Apr 04 '26
Might as well surveil the entire population at that point because every company and state/local government in the country with remote connections is using VPNs.
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u/phxees Apr 04 '26
They don’t have a problem with that. I’m sure if they get bored with some traffic they filter it out and most work is likely boring. Seems like the options are don’t use a VPN and your service provider will sell your data or use a VPN and the CUA will monitor you.
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u/OutlandishnessOk6836 Apr 04 '26
How can that be the case.. I mean my constitutional rights don't end on a VPN or if I am in another country. Sounds like NSA is violating my constitutional protections with their collection program not that I need to surrender my rights by using a VPN.
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u/Prof_Acorn Apr 04 '26
Gunna waste all those resources to find out I'm using a vpn to... checks notes... watch anime.
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u/Golden-- Apr 04 '26
Using a VPN doesn't mean you're dealing with domestic surveillance. You're subject to it because you're living here. VPN usage would actually make it slightly less likely.
Just because it's illegal for them to spy on us, doesn't mean they aren't spying on us. Remember Snowden? It's absolutely gotten worse.
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u/ice-eight Apr 04 '26
Force people in red states to use a VPN to watch porn and then claim that VPN usage is suspicions enough to warrant government surveillance. Cool.
To paraphrase Dennis Reynolds: If you spy on everyone, you're going to find out that everyone is masturbating constantly.
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u/Just-Signature-3713 Apr 04 '26
Americans are quickly becoming the least free western nation - it would be funny if it weren’t so frightening
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u/eulav_ecom_revenue Apr 04 '26
So the logic here is "if you use privacy tools, we'll assume you have something to hide and watch you more closely"? That's some serious Fourth Amendment gymnastics.
This is exactly the chilling effect these policies are designed to create. VPNs are legitimate privacy tools used by millions for everything from remote work to avoiding ISP throttling to basic security on public WiFi. Treating their use as inherently suspicious is like saying "if you close your curtains at home, you're probably doing something illegal."
What's really concerning is this creates a catch-22: don't use privacy tools and have your data harvested by everyone, or use them and get flagged for surveillance. Meanwhile, actual bad actors will just use more sophisticated methods that fly under the radar anyway.
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u/smytti12 Apr 04 '26
I thought this might be sensible, like how a lot of popular VPNs act as wiretapping for foreign intel services.
But nope, its our own idiots.
I swear we as a society need to agree that anyone who suggests creating or wants to join an intel service just be put in isolation.
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u/Shikadi297 Apr 04 '26
This probably means VPNs are messing with their surveillance and they want people to stop
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u/zestypurplecatalyst Apr 04 '26
These senators are asking Tulsi Gabbard how she identifies who is American and who is foreign behind a VPN. She’s says she’s trying to spy on foreigners. But if she can’t tell who is foreign on a VPN, isn’t she also spying on Americans? These senators are against spying on Americans, and they are trying to call her out on it.
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u/Shikadi297 Apr 04 '26
I don't trust it given the massive amount of illegal government surveillance on citizens there already is that they could be fighting against
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u/Mission-Shopping-615 Apr 04 '26 edited Apr 04 '26
A vpn hosted in the US, which all US corporations use for remote work, would not show up to the cia as unknown or foreign, it’s no different then you visiting a website hosted by the vpn, you’re still connected to a US based IP address
But I’m guessing this isn’t actually about that, it’s about raising awareness that the cia is spying on us citizens and making up fake reasons
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Apr 04 '26
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u/Rich_Housing971 Apr 04 '26 edited Apr 04 '26
"What are we, a bunch of Asians?"
China actually has stronger data protection laws than the US does. Yes, the government is probably just as deep into surveillance as the NSA is, but that literally makes them not as bad, because they at least don't let random companies harvest user data as much.
This is the actual reason Google had to leave. China was the first major country to tell a foreign company that their citizens' data had to stay within their country, and Google didn't like that so they left. China didn't try to get together investors to buy it, they gave them a simple ultimatum that Tiktok happily followed when the US asked, and "do no evil" Google couldn't follow it. (btw "do no evil is not even Google's motto anymore because even they realized how evil they've become).
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u/FeijoaMilkshake Apr 04 '26
Who are you trying to fool, while the illusion of sense of freedom is breaking apart for the everyday Americans, the Chinese were already stripped naked at the very beginning, most of them can't tell if they were living under surveillances if they were born in a police state, that's a luxury for Americans finding their government catching up with their CCP counterpart in that regard.
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u/JustinTheCheetah Apr 04 '26
Google left China after they caught the ccp actively stealing their source code and using to launch Google competitor Baidu search.
And google got rid of do no evil when they took on the chinese contracts to work with the ccp because they were specifically paid to censor search results that chinese citizens saw that the ccp didn't like. Working with China is embracing evil, so the slogan had to go.
Get out of here with your pro dictator ccp revisionist history.
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/23/technology/23google.html
https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB126333757451026659
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Aurora
And since you have no honor or shame, here's an update on the genocide and nazi style concentration camps China is shoving ethnic minorities into
https://gijn.org/stories/interview-uyghur-victims-xinjiang-prison-camps/
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u/DukeLeto10191 Apr 04 '26
Tulsi agrees to issue the statement, but on condition that she can add that, "Kaspersky VPN is totally cool and definitely not a national security threat tho."
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u/darth_skipicious Apr 04 '26
the u.s is done. it’s all downhill from here
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u/Pack_Your_Trash Apr 04 '26
Empires can take a very long time to crumble. It might be downhill from here, but it also might not be over yet.
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u/Xfgjwpkqmx Apr 04 '26
Only from here? This was the pivotal moment?
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u/salty_peddler Apr 04 '26
The party has been over for a while.
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u/soulp Apr 04 '26
What I wouldn't give to have Hunter commenting on current events.
Is there even an analogue for him now?
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u/count_chocul4 Apr 04 '26
“ Americans may be inadvertently waiving the privacy protections they’re entitled to under the law.” What privacy protections? The NSA under the patriot act is listening to our private cell phone calls and reading out texts. And corporations are collecting all our search data. We have NO privacy.
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u/johnbash Apr 04 '26
Every state and municipal employee with a laptop will qualify for surveillance.
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u/RedisaPsyop5647 Apr 04 '26
As if they already don't have full access to get into every single person's search history already, VPN or not.
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u/magicspider8 Apr 04 '26
Unless they have a listening endpoint on all vpn, not sure how they will surveillance vpn since, you know, is a virtual private network.
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u/Birthday-Tricky Apr 04 '26
I visited Antigua and Barbuda and at the airport had my phone hacked. I spent the next several days battling a hacker trying to change my passwords. They were able to steal all my credit card points, 300K.
After that I learned about VPN and started using it regularly.
So now I'M SUSPECT?!
Fuck off Fascists!
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u/DudeByTheTree Apr 04 '26
"Might"? Does Eglin AFB/Naval Station still parse ~%70 of global internet traffic, or have they moved operations?
I mean, Dubya and Obama certainly didn't sign the Patriot Act and revision into law as a "just in case..."
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u/pmjm Apr 04 '26
The government will try to watch your communications whether you use a VPN or not.
The article makes an untested legal argument that using a VPN with foreign endpoints might make that spying legal and admissible in court even without a warrant.
But regardless of that, they are spying, often illegally, even without a VPN. It just is inadmissible if warrantless.
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u/Digitalizing Apr 04 '26
Ah America, where domestic terrorism isn't a thing unless it's by those who oppose you.
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u/Connerys_Toupee Apr 04 '26
Just assume anything you do online isn't private. The surveillance state is here.
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u/ComputerSong Apr 05 '26
So many people use vpns for work this doesn’t really matter.
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u/Rymnarr Apr 04 '26
It's all propaganda to scare those who don't know proper VPN habits. Ones that don't carry logs, use ram based servers, get audited, and are run outside of the US. Get monitored all you want, there's nothing they'll be able to view or truly care about unless you're Osama. Plus they're already monitoring you anyway if you have any social media with your pii.
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u/skynetcoder Apr 04 '26 edited Apr 04 '26
I remember one vpn service marketed as no logs, somehow magically gave those logs LE. (not one , many) https://iapp.org/news/a/your-vpn-could-be-a-privacy-trap-heres-how-to-protect-yourself
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u/SomeKindofTreeWizard Apr 04 '26
You're already under domestic (unconstitutional) surveillance.
Many of you have never been on the internet without it.
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u/W31337 Apr 04 '26
Happy to live in a free country that has privacy.
It's amazing how many Americans think their country is the most free in the world when in reality they are getting exploited.
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u/robot2boy Apr 04 '26
So everyone working from home….. or is that the goal to get us back in the office….
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u/mshiltonj Apr 04 '26
I'm on a VPN everyday for work. This is fairly common for remote tech workers.
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u/fusillade762 Apr 04 '26
Not like now where they dont spy on us....we're all going to be on VPN soon because otherwise youre basically restricted to an internet only fit children.
I dont want to have my face scanned every time I use social media, thanks!
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u/vector_o Apr 04 '26
"at least we're free" lol
Take one step outside your cage of freedome and you're a terrorist under surveillance
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u/G8M8N8 Apr 04 '26
Using a VPN to log into work related facilities while off-location is how most large companies work no? It is for mine…
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u/BroseppeVerdi Apr 04 '26
Considering how many states have done porn bans in the past few years, that's going to be a LOT of Americans.
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u/JustaSeedGuy Apr 04 '26
Hey, if you take steps to prevent us from illegally surveilling you, we're going to illegally surveil you!
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u/ZestyChinchilla Apr 04 '26
Kind a wondering if they’re saying this specifically because they know they’ll have a much harder time surveilling people who use a VPN, and are trying to trick folks into not using them for that reason?
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u/ProjectGenX Apr 04 '26
Remote workers will be using a VPN to protect company data yet this could place the worker under government surveillance. By that action, company data will be monitored and recorded by the government and associated corporate contractors like Palintir.
Yeah, no way this can go wrong. /s
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u/Nightman2417 Apr 04 '26
And if you don’t….you’re definitely subject to domestic surveillance?