Law enforcement intercepted VPN traffic, seized domains, and arrested its operator.
Europol announced yesterday the results of the operation against the service, First VPN. The First VPN website now displays a message saying the domain was seized by a joint international law enforcement action.
“A VPN service used by cybercriminals to conceal ransomware attacks, data theft, and other serious offenses has been dismantled in an international operation led by France and the Netherlands, with support from Europol and Eurojust,” the agency said. “For years, the service, known as ‘First VPN,’ was promoted on Russian-speaking cybercrime forums as a trusted tool for remaining beyond the reach of law enforcement. It offered users anonymous payments, hidden infrastructure, and services designed specifically for criminal use.”
Governments don’t hate privacy intrinsically. They just don’t think it’s important. Violating privacy using mass surveillance has no visible downside to the uninformed public. Policy makers just notice that destroying privacy makes it easier to catch cybercriminals and decide it’s a worthwhile trade off. You probably disagree with that. But there are far too many people who just go along with it.
Nah, I gotta disagree.
Governments always want more power. Knowledge is power. So they always want to know what you’re doing all the time. Any sort of privacy gets in the way of that, so they hate privacy.
Hypothetical situation: if the government were just theoretically 100% ethical and secure with the data they gathered, would be that make it OK? Just for the sake of public safety?
I’m hesitant to say yes, but im not sure if that’s because I just want to watch free online episodes on sketchy semilegal sites or because I just don’t want them to know stuff about my personal life?
If they were 100% ethical and secure with the data, one could truly say “Nothing to hide nothing to fear”.
But because we live in a world where they aren’t 100% ethical and secure with the data, we just can’t let ourselves have that mindset (not even in the hypothetical that they are 100% ethical and secure with the data).
Hate is maybe the wrong word, but they’re certainly naturally opposed to it. Like a fish is naturally opposed to living on land. It doesn’t hate the land, but if it gets to decide you don’t get any.