Whereas not using a VPN will subject one to... domestic surveillance.
this post was submitted on 03 Apr 2026
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lol, what a bunch of liars. Americans don't have any privacy protections to waive
I was under them impression that just using the internet in America might subject you to domestic surveillance.
Honestly they'd probably throw you on a list for not using the internet lol.
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Technically true, you should choose your VPN provider carefully and not opt for the cheapest one right on.
In practice however, it's safer than whatever surveillance US is trying to implement by forcing down US made routers.
Oh nooo, we won't be protected by the law they can't be arsed to follow anyway? Whatever will I do when they surveil my encrypted VPN traffic?
Store now, decrypt later. Make sure your VPN is using quantum-safe encryption algorithms with perfect forward secrecy. They are storing ALL traffic that goes outside the country (probably domestic traffic too, realistically).
Don't you think that would take too much storage space?
They can probably use heuristics to keep the 0.1% most interesting traffic (eg traffic that flows towards servers that isn’t too large, that’d catch everything you send to your bank without breaking the budget to store)
Wonder how many individual encrypted copies of bee movie they will be storing!
VPNs could turn purely domestic communications into “foreign” communications the NSA can legally intercept
Lol. Then they go and immediately say:
and the FBI, somewhat less-legally can dip into at will
In other words, they don't gaf about your sovereignty, and will monitor communications in any way they want, legally or otherwise.
They've been illegally digging into domestic communications for decades. Stallman and Snowden (to name a couple) exposed that a long time ago. Hell, the USA government exposes themselves all the time, the USA people just choose to ignore it.
Americans may be inadvertently waiving the privacy protections they’re entitled to under the law…
LOL what privacy protections? The NSA has proven time and time again that they don't give a single shit about the law, certainly now more than ever.
What do I trust more: Legal protections nobody cares to enforce and could be a multi year battle in court, or well verified strong cryptography.
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Hey, just so you know. Trying to hide from us "totally not spying on you" might force us to totally spy on you.
Are they retards or did they forget the NSA already does this illegally?
Yes to the first part
They spy on domestic communications too, with the 5 eyes arrangement, they have their allies scoop up the information and share it back with them, even as it's just the US doing the entire thing with a couple of foreign names on the masthead. Fucking lawyers.
For some unhinged reason, Trump wanted to kick Canada out of the five eyes last year, so as a response we just stopped sharing information with the US, and the US just kind of Kicked themselves out.
Time to spread the free word of Tor to everyone.
So, I am a remote worker in Healthcare. Obviously, I need to use a VPN to connect to work to ensure that communication is secure. But because I have a job that requires secure access, I am a suspected domestic terrorist?
No, because there are different types of vpn connectivity.
A point to point vpn is what employees use to connect to the office. The intention is to encrypt the connection so a 3rd party can’t access ithe data going through it. The FBI/NSA won’t care about this type of vpn because your work knows who you are and logs all traffic generated by you which could be subpoenaed by the government.
Connecting to a vpn server in another country to then access the internet hides your original ip address, gets around geo-location blocks and the traffic is typically not logged by the vpn provider. This is the type of vpn governments don’t like.
I think it's somewhat naive to assume anything isn't being spied on by the NSA. They don't have a history of being picky.
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Suspect or not, you get the same surveillance treatment as suspected domestic terrorists do.
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In contrast to not using a VPN, which subjects them to illegal surveillance already?
what in the anti-VPN fearmongering is this bullshit?
I use VPN because it actually speeds up my connection on cellular. My theory is the DNS servers that Verizon uses in my area are inefficient, to the point where I’ll get 1 Mbit down on Verizon, but 100 Mbit down connected to Proton VPN.
It has nothing to do with security, unless I’m in a coffee shop on WiFi.
Edit: here are my speeds on cellular, first without VPN, second while connected to a server in Los Angeles.
Bro fast isn't measuring your internet speed, it's measuring how fast you're connected to Netflix. Phone carriers like Verizon generally throttle video streaming if you're on a cheaper plan but everything else is uneffected. A VPN just bypasses the video streaming throttle because then Verizon can't see what you're connected to. Use a real speed test app.
Used Ookla. Got 40 Mbit down off VPN, 2.25 on VPN.
Will continue using this in future tests. I don’t watch Netflix on my phone. I usually am browsing Lemmy, YouTube, or listening to Apple Music. Fast.com has been my indicator of why my speed is so slow off of VPN when using these services on cellular. While it might not be an ideal speed test, its results track with my connections performance with these services.
That is to say, at times I’ll find myself not on VPN, find that my videos are chugging, turn VPN on, and problem solved. I usually only turn it off if I’m on home WiFi.
I'm a fan of testmy.net. Ookla never seemed to give me actual results while I was on spectrum. Several times I'd just get a printout of what my speeds were supposed to be, but then no download would come close, and 480p videos could barely buffer.
I've been using Wifiman lately. I find it pretty reliable and informative. I somewhat manage a wifi mesh network at my work so I use test apps frequently and have found it to be pretty good. I believe it is Ubiquity branded, who make a lot of wifi stuffs.
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They have been surveiling us for years. They just to maximize what they can collect.
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I don't get it.
Why should a Russian spy have to tell Americans anything?
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This is utter BS.
A foreign national on US soil doesn't get the same protections as a US citizen would overseas.
What they're saying is "fuck 'em all, let God sort 'em out!" for warrantless data searches and collection. And then waiting for the lawsuit 20 years from now about clear violation of the law to bother thinking about this.
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