The 100 mile "reasonable distance" is used to define where vessels and vehicles may be searched for aliens.

But the warrantless search may only be applied to persons seeking admission for whom an officer has suspicion of reasonable cause for denying the person entry.

Of the 80% of people living within that distance (which is an upper bound, btw; the agents in charge are required to set a bound not to exceed that by taking into account such things as "density of population, possible inconvenience to the traveling public.") almost none can be suspected of being under reasonable cause for denial of entry.

So to do the thing you are fearing, 1) the chief patrol agent has to set the distance to encompass an inappropriately large area in violation of this law, 2) an agent has to stop and search cars randomly, and 3) somehow become suspicious that an occupant is seeking entry and ought to be denied entry, and 4) believe that searching that person's device would reveal information demonstrating that the suspicion is correct.

It's not great, but it's not "80% of Americans can have their devices searched without a warrant".

[0] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8/1357

[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/8/287.1

Another reading of "Utah is close to banning VPNs" is "Utah did something that is not banning VPNs but (as an editorial opinion) is thematically and logically adjacent to that concept." This matches reality (under some viewpoint) but is an unnatural reading.

Hence, the sentence "Utah is close to banning VPNs" is misleading, as evidenced by others' comments. That you read the headline "correctly" does not show the headline to be forthright.

Also, if something like that happens, that's a blatant 1st Amendment violation and will be enjoined as fast as the case can run up the judiciary. Today's SCOTUS is very 1st-Amendment-friendly (to the chagrin and delight of various flavors of both left and right).

Who is the "they" that you refer to? Did you know that many people are in favor of age verification? Like, many parents of children who are at a loss for how to protect them from early access to obscene material? Could it be that that is why a large segment of government actors are moving in this direction? Or must it necessarily be a secretive nefarious play by some evil tech companies in cahoots with that one administration?

Or is it actually the opponents of age verification who are the ones targeting my children by encouraging early access to obscene materials for grooming?

That last point sounds like a conspiracy theory. It should. I wrote it that way to be provocative, and I hope that you, as a result, dismiss it out of hand. But I want you to understand that TFA's argument also sounds like a conspiracy theory to me. If you want me to engage, you want to make a serious attempt at persuasion.

To that end, I do appreciate that you have not adopted the tone of the article.

You have accused me of "rhetoric", but that is no accusation at all. Rhetoric is the art of persuasive speech. I have not accused the author of "rhetoric" but of "poor rhetoric". Perhaps that is what you mean to accuse me of.

Carefully note that I have neither affirmed nor contradicted anything of the substance of his argument. So defending his position to me is a non sequitur.

> If you want the best for your children, you must stop online age verification.

> Your children are being targeted. The infrastructure being built under the cover of child safety is designed to enslave them for the rest of their lives.

Jumped the shark on that one, and really off-color. I'm less inclined to listen to guy, not because of his actual points, but because of how unreasonable he sounds when articulating them. A great lesson in how not to do rhetoric.

The law as written provides the rules of the game. Nobody should get to cheat, not the government, not a citizen, not a business, just because someone can plausibly argue that if the law were rewritten today it'd be written differently.

If the claim is true that the law would be and should be written differently today, then: Rewrite. The. Law.

If you don't have enough public support for that, then you have no business imposing your view on your fellow citizens. If you do have enough public support, but Congress is being dysfunctional (this is usually the case today), then communicate with your congresspeople and/or try vote them out, and persuade your fellow citizens to do the same. Don't cheat at the game. Play it.

But, all that said, its probably not wise to generalize an experience about Austin to an idea about the US as a whole. At best, you might generalize it to ideas about large US cities.