The Government says it has no plans to ban or restrict Virtual Proxy Networks (VPNs) as part of its under-16 social media ban, after reports emerged that work was underway and coalition partners ACT and NZ First ruled out supporting the move.
ACT leader David Seymour called it a “red line” and warned New Zealand would be adopting “Chinese-style intrusions into internet privacy”.
Multiple sources confirmed to The Post newspaper that work was well underway to restrict VPNs, a report from the Education Workforce Select Committee had also already flagged VPNs as “an area for further exploration by the regulator,” noting concerns that age restrictions could be evaded by young people using the technology.
Education Minister Erica Stanford’s office was in damage control on Tuesday afternoon, emailing The Post saying the Government was “not looking at restricting or banning VPNs”. The denial coincided with Seymour’s comments, and NZ First formalized their opposition by releasing a statement confirming they would block the legislation’s progression entirely. The party revealed they had been communicating concerns to National for months, specifically targeting the policy’s lack of certainty around VPNs and digital ID tracking, while noting the failure of Australia’s identical model.
Seymour said “ACT will prevent any ban on VPNs,” warning any ban strong enough to stop a motivated teenager would be “strong enough to violate all of our privacy”, while anything weaker would be skirted “in an instant”. He pointed to Australia, where 80% of teens are ignoring the ban. “VPNs are legitimate privacy and security tools… New Zealand should not be borrowing ideas from the authoritarian internet playbook,” he said.
The Free Speech Union said the proposal would have been the most significant expansion of state control over online speech in New Zealand’s history. Reality Check Radio (RCR) co-founder Alia Bland backed these concerns, stating that “Everyone want children to be safe online. The question is whether the solution being proposed creates a much bigger problem that the one it’s trying to solve,” she said. Bland described the measures as a Trojan horse, as the systems required to enforce them extent far beyond children.
The NZ Council for Civil Liberties chairperson Thomas Beagle said there is no technical way to implement a VPN ban anyway, short of “Chinese-style mass blocking, possibly coupled with a VPN licensing scheme, which is both oppressive and ridiculously unworkable”.
Stanford is currently designing the proposed under-16 social media ban after a simple National Party Members’ Bill was retracted. She has not yet taken her proposal to Cabinet, but said they are “making good progress” on it. ACT and NZ First will oppose the ban itself when it is tabled.
Read more at The Post (paywalled), Scoop, Read RCR’s full press release on Facebook, NZ First on X and Pillar NZ on X.
This story has been republished with permission from RCR Bites. For news like this direct and free to your Inbox every day, go to biteme.news to sign up for RCR Bites.
The IDF’s Unit 8200 has the ability to hack into VPN’s and Tor.
So…how and who pays for their data-sharing?
Banning Social media for the ‘under 16’s’ is essentially a Violation of the Rights of the Child’ under the U.N. Treaty that New Zealand signed on to.
But, then again, the U.N. Treaty titled ‘The Right to Self-Defence, Chapter 7, Article 51’ was thrashed by Jabcinda post- the Christchurch Massacre…
And in addition to the above, Jabcinda also trashed the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights, Articles 12 & 17..when forced / mandated Covid bio-weapon ‘vaccines’ came into being, with the Uni-Party Government knowing full well that the jabs were untested, poisonous, and did NOT heed the warnings from the Zionist ‘vaccine’ manufacturers!
Jabby can stay out of NZ, and Chippy lives in denial from the thought of maiming thousands of Kiwis, and genociding hundreds if not thousands of ‘mandated’ jab victims, especially when he threatened families and people who refused the jab, and stated that he would ‘hunt us down’! Such psychopathic denials of Chippy thinking that he did nothing wrong should have been proof enough to remove him from poliTICKS and into a 4×6 jail cell at Mount Eden!
While there, he could be fully-jabbed and BOOSTED!…since there is no death penalty here except for treason?…but that shoe has transformed into a Pfizer jandal on the slippery slope of WEF / WHO poliTICKS!
Remember- the Uni-Party did this to us, and voting for their recently-emerged cat-hating Opportunities Party is just another rectal pipe to blow-off political gas for the Zio-Globalists!
Yes you can hack a VPN but what if its 10000 people with a VPN, what about 1 million? I got back from China a while ago and VPN’s are in common use there. People want access to all the sites and search engines we have in the West. Every time the government clobbers one, another springs up to take its place.
My wife bought a really nice new phone and the seller smiled and said “would you like access to Google?” I detest Google but my wife uses it a lot. In any case in matter of minutes the VPN was installed free of charge and Google was up and running.
So its one thing to ban something, its quite another thing to enforce that ban.And I’ll add its expensive too. People, time and resources, hundreds of millions a year.
Exactly. Totally another thing to enforce. NZ Govt did not have the resources to control COVID vaccines, so they outsorced it to “mandate” your employer, who said it was the government who said it was your employer.
Fool me once, shame on them. Fool me twice, shame on me.
But every other party will back National? Or have they not been asked yet?
Egg head is looking for a seat at the WEF.
Great stuff NZ FIRST and ACT.
We want free speech for all , even the crazy lefties.
Why is National not on board? Oh yes – they are GLOBALISTS. They only care about themselves so vote for ACT or Nz First for freedom and free speech.
Is it? Don’t be surprised if in coming years if it becomes evident that we are being increasingly spied upon with newer tech without our knowledge through Five Eyes given trying to do so openly has met with so much opposition. Its not far fetched either. Its alleged Microsoft have stepped up support for Israel by using their technology to collect data on phone usage by the people of Palestine. This data is held in centres in the Netherlands and Ireland. I’m sure you can guess what the IDF does with it. We are a small nation, that makes it so much easier. Ask yourself too, who are these political party’s supporting? Why is the FBI in New Zealand? Why are they allowed to be in New Zealand?
Of course they want to ban VPN’s it part of the globalist plan that both labour and national and all the other been around for far to long parties have been pushing for decades. Only reason they are saying the don’t want to is because they know if they jump to soon there will be a huge backlash. That is why they keep pushing for ID’s for under sixteens first so that it’s already in place through the back door and all they then need to do is just switch it on and and take away through some invented crisis physical cash and the trap is sprung.
Pay the servants enough and they will control the masses for their masters without question.
“If you wish to keep slaves, you must have all kinds of guards. The cheapest way to have guards is to have the slaves pay taxes to finance their own guards. To fool the slaves, you tell them that they are not slaves and that they have freedom. You tell them they need law and order to protect them against bad slaves. Then you tell them to elect a government. Give them freedom to vote and they will vote for their own guards and pay their salary. They will believe they are free persons. Then give them money to earn, count and spend and they will be to busy to notice the slavery they are in”. How I manage my slaves by A. Warbucks.
What a difference an election year makes, eh? Even ACT who backed Labour’s COVID “response” are jumping on board to oppose this totalitarian slow creep. Both can see they are in bed with a party that could easily go the way of the Liberals in Australia and the Tories in the UK.
Yes other party’s like Labour no doubt and the Greens in particular, might go along with this legislated dystopian nonsense “but” what message does this send to Nationals conservative supporter base? “Oh look we are the oppressive WOKE RIGHT now”? I’m sure they will be lining up to vote for that or maybe as I suspect many are already planning to do, they will vote for NZF and ACT instead. Maybe the New Conservatives too, for the more daring risk takers.
Suffice to say, this gradual implosion mirrors what happened in Australia where the arrogant Liberals believed they could simply do what they liked until their partners and voters said “enough”. Now they, like some rare species of animal, can only be found in Tasmania. National could easily find itself in the same place but they seem to be the only ones who don’t see it. History repeats itself for a reason.
“What a difference an election year makes,”?
It shows how vote-buying works.
95% of sheeple still vote accordingly.
Yeah I think that’s pretty obvious isn’t it? Guess its hard to express irony in a comment.
Yes many will vote the same way using the “wasted vote” excuse, to make themselves feel better about their self defeating decision. This sheep has left the paddock and wont be back.
Oh, it’s election year… So look at us! Look at us! All of a sudden after three years of slippery mutual behind-the-scenes/under-the-table establishment agreement and mutual entrenched political agenda teamwork together – the slimy establishment politician parties have bang out-of-the-blue overnight slithered apart from each other and magically become separate entities all hollering plaintively to gullible fool voters that they are the ones now “on your side” yeah fkn right…
Rather than face the prospect of being hit with massive fines for failing to block access to under 16s maybe the social media companies should threaten to block all their content from flowing into New Zealand. I’m sure the backlash from the New Zealand public would destroy the National party.
Then they would need to block an increasingly large number of states in the US too, such as California.Texas, the biggest state in the nation is proposing something similar. This is one of those slow creep things and what’s really interesting is Federal authorities are not stopping it. At least not to date. So much for free speech and freedom of expression, eh? It also lets social media companies off the hook legally, as the ban acts as a legal excuse, “well there are laws in place, its not on us if they did something wrong on our site”. “Oh and their accounts were taken down so if they created one under an alias, as an adult, its on them.”
Luxon does give a toss about children. If he did, he would have ended family court injustice and costs. And costs just isn’t measured in money.
The true reason is digital ID for everyone. All captured by Ai. Zero privacy. Full digital footprint.
Turn off your wifi and get rid of your phones other wise die with the rest of the sheep
1. Keep a landline via fibre optic cable. Get a tap detector from Jaycar and plug it into your landline socket!
2. If you have an old microwave oven that does not leak radiation, place your mobile phones in it, as the walls of the oven act as a Farraday shield! No one can then turn on your microphone remotely or your cameras, but you can still receive text messages.
Be sure to remove the power cord from the microwave so that it isn’t used accidentally!
3. Simplify your phones by making them dumb. NEVER use settings that give away location, microphone off, & camera off!
4. Get a bug sweeper for your home.
5. Turn OFF the WiFi microwave radiation and disable ‘Hot Spotting’.
6. Use Airplane Mode if you can…
7 Turn OFF the ‘Smart Features’ of your TV and associated appliances.
UK starmer protects muslim rape gangs of 250,000 victims. Now his mate Luxtard wants to watch were our kids are in the name of “safety”. Don’t let these scumbags near our kids.