EFF to Wisconsin Legislature: VPN Bans Are Still a Terrible Idea

Wisconsin’s S.B. 130 / A.B. 105 is a spectacularly bad idea. It’s an age-verification bill that effectively bans VPN access to certain websites for Wisconsinites and censors lawful speech. We wrote about it last November in our blog “Lawmakers Want to Ban VPNs—And They Have No Idea What They're Doing,” but since then, the bill has passed the State Assembly and is scheduled for a vote in the State Senate tomorrow. In light of this, EFF sent a letter to the entire Wisconsin Legislature urging lawmakers to reject this dangerous bill. You can read the full letter here. The short version? This bill both requires invasive age verification for websites that host content lawmakers might deem “sexual” and requires that those sites block any user that connects via a Virtual Private Network (VPN). VPNs are a basic cybersecurity tool used by businesses, universities, journalists, veterans, abuse survivors, and ordinary people who simply don’t want to broadcast their location to every website