Privacy Watchdog EFF Lambastes Lawmakers Over Terrible Plan To Ban VPNs

A new wave of state-level proposals targeting virtual private networks has stirred up an unusual amount of alarm from digital-rights groups, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation isn't pulling punches. In a detailed critique published this week, the organization called efforts in Michigan and Wisconsin "misguided," "technically incoherent," and a direct threat to the privacy and security of users.

The flashpoint is Michigan's Anticorruption of Public Morals Act (HB 4938), introduced by six state representatives. The bill claims that it's intended to crack down on adult content and devices used to circumvent that censorship. In practice, it would outlaw both the use and sale of VPNs, require ISPs to detect and block VPN traffic, and impose steep penalties—on the order of hundreds of thousands of dollars—for any company that "knowingly facilitates access" to prohibited material. In Wisconsin, a similar proposal ties VPN blocking to mandatory age-verification rules for adult sites.

Privacy advocates argue that lawmakers are grossly misunderstanding what VPNs are and who uses them. Far from being niche tools for evading content filters, VPNs are foundational security infrastructure for remote work, journalists, travelers, and anyone relying on public Wi-Fi. As the EFF points out, banning commercial VPN providers wouldn't even accomplish its intended purpose; anyone with basic technical competence can spin up their own private VPN on a cloud server or swap to encrypted proxies and obfuscation layers. Blocking "known circumvention tools" is, at best, a game of whack-a-mole.

The EFF further highlights commentary from cybersecurity experts who say that the bills would force ISPs to engage in intrusive traffic analysis to detect VPN usage, an approach that risks harming network reliability and privacy while still failing to catch countless encrypted alternatives. Small businesses relying on VPNs for secure remote access could find themselves unintentionally violating the law. Michigan's proposal goes even further, dragging a wide range of content—harmless ASMR, completely fictional adult manga, and AI-generated imagery—under its censorship umbrella in language that is both overbroad and technologically illiterate.

The EFF's argument is blunt: these bills are less about protecting minors and more about granting the state sweeping control over digital communications. Once you establish the precedent that personal encryption tools can be banned because they might allow access to restricted material, the door opens to a much wider rollback of online privacy and media censorship. The group warns that these proposals resemble policies seen in countries like Russia and Myanmar, where VPN bans are tied directly to broader censorship crackdowns.

Legislatures float questionable tech bills all the time, but regardless of your politics, outright outlawing VPNs crosses a line from misguided policymaking into genuine overreach. Encryption isn't a loophole; it's a core pillar of modern security; trying to ban it because it frustrates moral policing is not just unrealistic, it's downright reckless. Lawmakers can debate content regulation all they like, but targeting the tools that protect millions of legitimate users is a profound misunderstanding of both technology and quintessentially American values. This won't stop the content they're worried about, but it absolutely will make everyday digital life less safe.