The issue being that governments in the west have repeatedly demonstrated they will implement blanket surveillance and not follow due process in using it.
Further those who do wish to break the law could still utilize cryptography to avoid backdoors so this would only really apply said surveillance to those not breaking the law.
Perhaps this is also different for digital activities due to the history of the digital space and the scale/ease at which if allowed it can be surveilled.
I think they're referring to the verification end, in terms of being required to hand over personal info to various parties, a certain percentage of which will have insufficient security and be compromised resulting in your info being leaked.
Or otherwise that if you want to effectively ban VPNs you'll end up at the point where secure encryption is effectively banned, because there are ways to tunnel traffic over pretty much any protocol eg. SSH, HTTPS if you're creative.
> All it does is make it easier for the Government to monitor VPN connections.
That is not all it does. We're talking about them banning VPNs.
> They already can request logs from providers.
Most claim they do not keep logs. This has been proven for certain providers. Providers operating in different jurisdictions are not necessarily obligated to provide these logs.
> Most, if not all VPNs require a proof of identity...
I have never been asked by a VPN for proof of identity.
> Next up is device security itself...
This is by far a separate issue. Yes it is true mitm attacks are still possible when using a VPN, they do however provide an extra layer of security and shift trust to an entity you should consider trustworthy (your VPN) from a possibly untrustworthy LAN, ISP, or country.
This is ignoring the primary use which is of privacy. Governments have shown time and time again when possible they will implement blanket surveillance and often not follow due process. Just as someone, some organization, or some government should require a very good reason to open your mail, or obtain a warrant to search your house, they should too require this to eavesdrop on your digital communications.
VPNs and similar technology are also useful to those under oppressive regimes to communicate privately. While this is not currently the case in the US, the mechanisms to retain the freedoms currently enjoyed should be upheld in case they are ever required.
Further, you ignore the benefits VPNs provide in terms of geoblocking.
Finally, VPNs are also useful in corporate, education, and other networking settings including accessing your home network from elsewhere or remote services you host.
Sorry for missing this question. I personally use a mix of GPT-4V and uncensored Llama-2 70b running locally on my MacBook Pro. Professionally, I appreciate models that I fully control: Llama family models like quantized Orca-2, Yi 34B, etc.
For user-facing applications, cloud models are a nonstarter. Their LLMs lack basic, foundational service requirements:
1. Consistency - their models change frequently and without notice, so good luck getting reliable results even with low temperatures.
2. Reliability -- these opaque models have prompts/responses which are packed with landmines, found only by triggering them. SomeCorporation's models are exclusively aligned with SomeCorporation, never aligned with you. So make sure to align yourself with SomeCompany's tool, rather than the opposite. And also, hope that the company doesn't suddenly implode, because apparently that's a plausible thing.
3. Maintainability -- you get a handy black box around what's already a black box. So good luck understanding/maintaining/extending the model. Unless your needs never extends beyond filling out an (alleged) system model text field, or uploading a few files.
4. Security -- sending sensitive data directly to people with enormous incentive to (mis)use it is probably not a stellar idea
So I'm all in with open source. I'm eternally grateful for Facebook's charity here. I'll take "good enough" models that I control over the horrifying "intelligence as a service with builtin thought crime policing."
Further those who do wish to break the law could still utilize cryptography to avoid backdoors so this would only really apply said surveillance to those not breaking the law.
Perhaps this is also different for digital activities due to the history of the digital space and the scale/ease at which if allowed it can be surveilled.