I am a resident of Utah. Have been for most of my life. I was born and raised in this state. I moved out for about seven years and then moved back and have been here ever since. I always felt Utah had more of a personal freedom slant as I was growing up because that was the mentality of the communities I grew up in. However, that doesn’t seem to be the case as I get older because we keep passing laws that restrict what people can do in their own home.

The latest law that just went into effect that is taking us down this road is a new VPN law that holds websites liable for people using VPNs to bypass age verification checks. I’m sure this is a result of the stupid porn law that Utah created a few years back that requires porn sites to verify the user’s age.

What irritates me about this is most of this boils down to lawmakers thinking they know better than the people they serve and forcing rules upon us because “think of the children! We must protect the children!” And the stupid thing about all this is all the data and reports that keep coming out about age verification laws in the US and around the world causing data leaks and hacks that reveal information. We claim that we respect privacy in the US, but I don’t think that is true anymore especially in law makers eyes.

Now it seems the state I have called home for most of my life is leading the way into a new future where you aren’t allowed to do what you want online without passing a bunch of checks and verifications, so someone out there will feel better about the stuff you look at.

Anyway, I’m just ranting, but I am annoyed. I think I’ll have to look into what I can do as a citizen of this state to help get this thrown out.

Here is the article by the way that set me off from Tom’s Hardware:

Utah first state to hold websites liable for users who mask their location with VPNs — law goes into effect, designed to prevent bypassing age checks