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Using VPN in UAE Could Cost You $545,000 (businessinsider.com)
An anonymous reader writes: The President of the United Arab Emirates has issued a series of new federal laws relating to IT crimes, including a regulation that forbids anyone in the UAE from making use of virtual private networks to secure their web traffic from prying eyes. The new law states that anyone who uses a VPN or proxy server can be imprisoned and fined between $136,000-$545,000 if they are found to use VPNs fraudulently. Previously, the law was restricted to prosecuting people who used VPNs as part of an internet crime, but UK-based VPN and privacy advocate Private Internet Access says that the law has now changed to enable police in the UAE to go after anyone who uses VPNs to access blocked services, which is considered to be fraudulent use of an IP address.
If you are referring to the 2nd amendment to the US constitution, gun ownership rights are expanding in the US, not contracting. Twenty years ago, the general consensus was that the 2nd amendment did not constitute an individual right to own firearms, but rather the right of individual states to maintain a national guard. Now it has expanded to the right to individual weapon ownership and we're exploring the boundaries of that protection. If other freedoms expand the way the 2nd amendment has, the US will be a libertarian utopia.
Why should I give a shit about the President being xenophobic, racist, etc.? The important thing to me is if they're going to start another war like Bush did. There's every indication that Hillary will do just this, probably in Syria. With Trump, who knows. He's been playing the nationalist and isolationist card, and saying some nice things about Putin, so it seems much less likely; more likely, he'll tell Putin to do whateverTF he wants in Syria as long as it results in ISIS being obliterated, as that's the *only* thing I've heard him say in favor of any kind of interventionism. Hillary, by contrast, has a long history of supporting interventionism.
If that means I have to put up with a "xenophobe" in the White House to avoid thousands of Americans being killed in yet another stupid war in the middle east, I'm OK with that.
And if you think Hillary isn't also narcissistic, I've got a bridge to sell you.
Does anyone know if this will apply to use of VPNs while at the Dubai or Abu Dhabi airports?
I fly through there regularly and as part of my standard policy I always use a VPN on unknown networks.
It would really suck to be laying over for a couple of hours and being picked up by the cops while surfing the net.
I also wonder how this will impact the many foreign contractors who must visit regularly and need VPN access back to head office.
Any thoughts? Or is this just another pointless unenforceable law?