Education Minister Erica Stanford says she is not pursuing restrictions on Virtual Private Networks as part of her under-16 social media ban, soon after ACT said this would be a red line for it.
The Post reported on Tuesday morning that the Government was pursuing some kind of restriction on VPNs as part of its work on an under-16 social media ban, after being told by multiple sources with knowledge of the work that this was the case.
It had put this to Stanford’s office on Monday morning and not received any denial.
But on Tuesday morning, soon after ACT leader David Seymour made clear that ACT would never support such a move, Stanford’s office emailed The Post to say it was “not looking at restricting or banning VPNs”.
It seems the Government was looking at doing so, but ACT has stopped it. Regardless of why, it is good there will be no attempt to ban VPNs, such as China does.
VPNs have many many legitimate uses. They provide extra security. I use one sometimes for a legitimate purpose. I do a monthly newsletter which includes in it the odds on governments getting re-elected in Australia, Canada, NZ, UK and US. Since the Government banned NZers from overseas online gambling sites, I am unable to even browse those sites to find out the odds. A VPN allows me to do this – and I have a legal right to browse these sites – just not to actually use them.
If the Government did try to ban VPNs, I would hope there would be a huge huge backlash to fight against this.
David Farrar runs Curia Market Research, a specialist opinion polling and research agency, and the popular Kiwiblog where this article was sourced. He previously worked in the Parliament for eight years, serving two National Party Prime Ministers and three Opposition Leaders
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