State Department Setting Up Bypass for European Bans on Web Browsing – Freedom

I had heard rumors of this but hadn’t found anything yet, and then?

BOOMITY

The Freedom.gov landing page appears, with Paul Revere galloping across the screen.

I feel like Madeline Kahn – ‘It’s twue! It’s twue!’

And the brilliant mind behind it is none other than Under Secretary of State Sarah Rogers, that unfiltered freedom pistol who doesn’t hesitate to march into the censorship happy fascist lion’s den – be it London or Brussels – and read them the riot act.

The U.S. State Department is developing an online portal that will enable people in Europe and elsewhere to see content banned by their governments including alleged hate speech and terrorist propaganda, a move Washington views as a way to counter censorship, three sources familiar with the plan said.

The site will be hosted at “freedom.gov,” the sources said. One source said officials had discussed including a virtual private network function to make a user’s traffic appear to originate in the U.S. and added that user activity on the site will not be tracked.

They had hoped to have it up and ready for introduction at the recent Munich Security Conference, but the launch was delyed with no explanation.

In any event, that postponement will give the European Union more time to find ways to moan and groan.

…The project could further strain ties between the Trump administration and traditional U.S. allies in Europe, already heightened by disputes over trade, Russia’s war in Ukraine and President Donald Trump’s push to assert control over Greenland.

The portal could also put Washington in the unfamiliar position of appearing to encourage citizens to flout local laws.

In a statement to Reuters, a State Department spokesperson said the U.S. government does not have a censorship-circumvention program specific to Europe but added: “Digital freedom is a priority for the State Department, however, and that includes the proliferation of privacy and censorship-circumvention technologies like VPNs.”

The spokesperson denied any announcement had been delayed and said it was inaccurate that State Department lawyers had raised concerns.

The Trump administration has made free speech, particularly what it sees as the stifling of conservative voices online, a focus of its foreign policy including in Europe and in Brazil.

Europe’s approach to free speech differs from the U.S., where the Constitution protects virtually all expression. The European Union’s limits grew from efforts to fight any resurgence of extremist propaganda that fueled Nazism including its vilification of Jews, foreigners and minorities.

U.S. officials have denounced EU policies that they say are suppressing right-wing politicians, including in Romania, Germany and France, and have claimed rules like the EU’s Digital Services Act and Britain’s Online Safety Act limit free speech.

It’s quite dramatic, as is the concept.

Man, the designer who worked on freedom .gov absolutely crushed it. Super aesthetic! pic.twitter.com/Mh5WQfKPG9

— Janu (@becakhias) February 19, 2026

There’s going to be some gnashing of teeth.

Reuters is being disingenuous here with their question about the portal’s advantages over VPNs not being obvious. 

For one, not everyone has access to VPNs.

…EU regulators regularly require U.S.-based sites to remove content and can impose bans as a measure of last resort. X, which is owned by Trump ally Elon Musk, was hit with a 120 million-euro fine in December for noncompliance.

Germany, for example, in 2024 issued 482 removal orders for material it deemed supported or incited terrorism and forced providers to take down 16,771 pieces of content.

Similarly, Meta’s oversight board in 2024 ordered the removal of a Polish political party’s posts that used a racial slur and depicted immigrants as rapists, a content category EU law treats as illegal hate speech.

Calling the U.S. plan “a direct shot” at European rules and laws, former State Department official Kenneth Propp, who worked on European digital regulations and is now at the Atlantic Council’s Europe Center, said freedom.gov “would be perceived in Europe as a U.S. effort to frustrate national law provisions.”

Also involved in the U.S. portal effort is Edward Coristine, a former member of Musk’s job-slashing Department of Government Efficiency, two sources said. Coristine works with the National Design Studio, created by Trump to beautify government websites. Reuters was unable to reach Coristine for comment.

It was not clear what advantages the U.S. government portal would offer users that are not available from commercial VPNs.

Most importantly, if they do use one now, that doesn’t mean they won’t be restricted in the future.

Starmer’s OfCom in the United Kingdom is already working toward destroying that privacy via their insidious Online Safety Act, all in the name of the best excuse ever wielded:

FOR THE CHILDREN

VPNs Are Supposed to Protect Your Privacy. Will the UK Govt Destroy That?

The UK is signaling that it’s serious about blocking children from using VPNs, which is raising concerns the country will require age verification to use the privacy tools.

The UK’s Online Safety Act already mandates age verification for major social media platforms. But the government brought up the possible VPN restrictions as part of its effort to prevent children under the age of 16 from accessing online chatbots.

This consultation (the UK’s term for seeking feedback and public comment on an issue) on
“children’s wellbeing online…will also confront the full range of risks children face online,” the government said in its announcement. “This includes examining restrictions on children’s use of AI chatbots, as well as options to age restrict or limit children’s VPN use where it undermines safety protections and changing the age of digital consent.”

On Monday, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer also briefly mentioned a clampdown on VPNs, calling them out as a way for children to circumvent age-verification systems.

In August, Rachel de Souza, Children’s Commissioner for England, flagged VPN use as a “loophole” that needed to be closed in order to enforce the Online Safety Act. “We need age-verification on VPNs,” said at the time.

Oh, yeah- they are so done for.

Then again, Americans have always made sure the Freedom signal got out.

The geopolitics of this are genuinely interesting: the US historically used Radio Free Europe to beam banned content into Soviet countries. https://t.co/sGgi1G0TFs doing the same thing for Western democracies is a striking inversion. Whether you think the content being banned is…

— Frank Fu (@YaoquanF) February 19, 2026

…Whether you think the content being banned is harmful or legitimate, this represents a fundamental fracture in the post-WWII Western consensus on speech governance.

What a sad commentary on the state of Europe, that the transmission has to be revived and redirected.

The days of Radio free Europe during the old failed communist Soviet Union of Russia.. Sad that reality is we now have to create this for the European people to be able to get uncensored news and information from their government that has gone communist! https://t.co/I4RbxKHK3M

— Shawn Lundon (@RealTimeryders) February 19, 2026

But it won’t be stopped, you know, especially with this administration in the White House.

Can’t stop the signal.

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