
Senators want potential VPN threat investigated by DHS - parker55
https://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/news/252457477/Senators-want-potential-VPN-threat-investigated-by-DHS
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Mirioron
Are they interested in finding justification for limiting VPNs?

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salawat
This is actually Standard Operating Procedure for Congress. You have a bunch
of non-technically literate people in theory delegating the responsibility for
educating them to an agency who is responsible for either rounding-up/hiring
experts to educate Congress or to collate whatever required reading is
necessary.

I have difficulty understanding why this type of research isn't done by
Congressional research assets though, which are free of the bias towards
making operating easier which the Executive isn't.

Congress has subpoena power and budget for research staff for a reason. They
should use it.

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gumby
Congress used to do its own research via the Office of Technology Assessment
but because the results often contradicted the positions of lobbyists it was
eliminated under Gingrich in the mid 1990s.

The drug side of the FDA used to have its own research labs but they were
eliminated by the same congress because their results constrained and informed
the scientific demands they placed on drug development trials.

It's not solely the current government that has its (or maybe somebody else's)
fingers in its ears.

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salawat
That is...incredibly depressing to hear.

How is the legislature supposed to actually hold the Executive and special
interests in check then? It sounds like the entire federal government has been
neutered in terms of being able to actually do it's own footwork to guard
against encroaching agendas..

This actually explains a lot, now that I think about it.

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tivert
Dupe:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19138112](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19138112)

The title is also misleading. The "VPN threat" they're concerned about is not
the about VPN's per se, but VPN's _that spy on their users._ Such things are
real, as was recently made clear when Apple revoked Facebook's enterprise
certificate over one.

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djohnston
if you're an analyst, and someone voluntarily lets you into their house
knowing you're there to collect information about their house, are you spying?
doesn't spying require some element of attempted secrecy?

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Cacti
Burying the spying disclosure in the TOS, and obfuscating the language used to
describe that spying, is attempted secrecy. Also, it’s irrelevant, because
disclosure of potentially illegal acts doesn’t make them any more legal (“but
I told them I was going to steal their money, and they put it in my safe
anyway” is not a legal defense).

