A Quiet War on Privacy Is Heating Up
For years, virtual private networks (VPNs) have been the go-to tool for millions of Americans who want to shield their browsing from nosy ISPs, advertisers, hackers, or authoritarian regimes abroad. Now, in at least two states, lawmakers are trying to turn that basic privacy tool into a felony.
Wisconsin and Michigan have introduced bills that would effectively outlaw the use of VPNs to access adult websites — and in Michigan’s case, punish anyone who sells, promotes, or even helps someone install a VPN with up to 25 years in prison.
The stated goal? “Protecting minors” from pornography and other “harmful” material.
The actual effect? A sweeping assault on digital privacy that even some conservative privacy hawks are calling un-American.
Wisconsin: The Bill That’s Already Halfway There
Wisconsin Assembly Bill 105 and its Senate companion (SB 130) passed the State Assembly in November 2025 and are now moving through the Senate with strong Republican support.
The legislation does two things:
- Forces any website that publishes material “harmful to minors” — a category so broad it can include medical diagrams, sexual-health resources, or LGBTQ+ discussions — to implement age verification.
- Explicitly requires those sites to block traffic coming from known VPN and proxy IP addresses.
In plain English: if a site wants to stay legal in Wisconsin, it has to treat VPN users as automatic violators. Privacy tools become a de facto ban for an entire class of legal adult content.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) warns that the only way websites could comply is by maintaining massive blocklists of VPN servers — a technically impossible task that would create false positives, break remote work, and drive users to give up their IDs (or worse, biometric data) directly to porn sites.
As of December 10, the bill is expected to reach the governor’s desk before the end of the year.
Michigan: The 25-Year Prison Sentence for Installing a VPN
If Wisconsin’s approach is blunt, Michigan House Bill 4938 — dubbed the “Anticorruption of Public Morals Act” — is outright dystopian.
Introduced in September 2025 by Rep. Josh Schriver (R), the bill goes far beyond age verification:
- It bans any “circumvention tool” (VPNs, Tor, proxy servers, even DNS changers) if used to access prohibited content.
- It criminalizes not just users, but developers, resellers, reviewers, and anyone who “promotes” such tools.
- It includes AI-generated images, manga, and any depiction of transgender people under its definition of prohibited material.
- Maximum penalty: 25 years in prison and a $500,000 fine.
Privacy groups mobilized fast. In September alone, Fight for the Future and the EFF collected more than 15,000 petition signatures calling the bill “authoritarian.” As of now, HB 4938 has not moved out of committee, but its mere introduction shows how far some legislators are willing to go.
The Bigger Picture: A Nationwide Trend
Wisconsin and Michigan are not outliers — they’re the sharp edge of a wave.
More than 25 states have passed or are considering online age-verification laws in the last three years. Every time one goes into effect, VPN usage spikes (Texas saw a 400% jump after its law passed; the UK added 10 million VPN users after announcing its own porn-block scheme).
Lawmakers hate loopholes. Their solution? Close the biggest one by attacking the tool itself.
Tech and civil-liberties experts say this is a cure worse than the disease:
- Forcing users to hand government ID or facial scans to porn sites creates massive data-breach risks.
- VPN blocklists are unreliable and will break legitimate services (corporate networks, streaming platforms, university access).
- Criminalizing encryption tools sets a dangerous precedent that could easily expand to political speech or journalism.
Even Google has weighed in, warning that anti-VPN laws would push consumers toward shady free VPNs packed with malware.
Where Things Stand Right Now
- Wisconsin: Likely to become law in early 2026 unless the Senate surprisingly slows it down.
- Michigan: Stalled for now, but the bill’s sponsors vow to keep pushing.
- Federal level: No serious nationwide VPN ban has been introduced, but Senator Ted Cruz and others have floated the idea of “closing the VPN loophole” in future children’s online safety bills.
The Bottom Line
Protecting kids online is a goal almost everyone shares. Turning a basic cybersecurity and privacy tool into a crime is not the way to do it.
If Wisconsin’s bill becomes law, it will be the first time in modern U.S. history that using a VPN for legal activity is effectively outlawed in an American state. Michigan’s proposal would take that precedent and supercharge it into one of the harshest anti-privacy laws on the planet.
For now, VPNs remain fully legal across the United States. But in Madison and Lansing, the countdown has already started.