Sorry, who will win?
However no matter what the government or security services want, they won't be able to stop people who want to use VPN or End to end encryption. Nothing would ever change in that regard.
If you make money by laying asphalt on British streets and get paid in British pounds, there's no way for you to pay an internet business in Malta if the British government doesn't want you to. Sure, there's crypto, but crypto needs businesses which let it interface with the British banking system, which the UK government can instruct banks to shut down.
Eventually the bans will be widespread enough that VPNs become near meaningless. You won't be able to bypass streaming region locks, or access regional discounts. You won't be able to ensure E2EE privacy in some other region because all the major ones will be cracked down.
The only way forward will be running VPNs out of poorer countries, countries with less telecommunication restrictions, etc. Although this will come at the cost of latency. 100-200ms to connect to a Tajikistan VPN. From my experience, even Google Searches and YouTube playback become sluggish at 100ms+, the modern web has 1000 .js files executing every time a page loads and the 100ms delay just screws everything up. It's like browsing the web on a PS3 in 2026.
Once people start switching to Guatemalan VPNs, the Government will ban "manipulating networking routing" at the backhaul and ISP levels. You will not be able to adjust routing, it will become illegal. Before anyone says "you can't do that, it won't work", I was told the same thing when I said they'd ban VPNs, yet here we are.
One step at a time to erode privacy, security and freedom. Once you jump up a level, you cannot comprehend a world below that level. The mega restrictions of tomorrow are normalized in the new world.
The real problem is that the legislation would bring the power to prosecute people who use them or use it against them.
The security services aren't having any of that shit because it puts their position at risk both from the front-facing side and recommendations and guidance issued and from their own operations.
The reality is, VPNs help people learn, have freedoms and explore alternative world views. This is a direct "harm" to the Governments, because they have trouble dictating the narrative.
Force ISPs to log all connections and make ISP customers accountable for their traffic, like they are in Germany for example. If you detect an IP to be used for a VPN, ask every ISP to disclose al customers who interacted with it and issue them a ticket. Three tickets and you're denied internet service for two years.
I think this would scare most people off.
If they cared about privacy and security they wouldn’t be [redacted].