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.
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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!
But every other party will back National? Or have they not been asked yet?
Egg head is looking for a seat at the WEF.