Mozilla to UK regulators: VPNs are essential privacy and security tools

On 17 May, Mozilla submitted a formal argument to UK regulators making a case that sounds obvious once stated but carries real political weight in the current environment: VPNs are not specialist tools for journalists, activists, or the technically anxious. They are basic digital infrastructure — as unremarkable and necessary as antivirus software or two-factor authentication. The context matters here. UK regulators have been applying increasing scrutiny to VPN services, partly driven by broader government interest in online safety legislation that, depending on how it lands, could reshape how privacy tools operate on British soil. Mozilla, which runs its own VPN service and has a long-standing institutional commitment to internet health, chose this moment to draw a clear line. The argument is that treating VPNs as suspicious or exceptional gets the threat model exactly backwards — it is the absence of encryption and privacy protection that should concern regulators, not its presence.

If confirmed, this matters well beyond the immediate regulatory skirmish. Mozilla entering the formal record in the UK creates a precedent document that other jurisdictions, advocacy groups, and companies can cite. The argument — that privacy tools are essential infrastructure rather than evasion technology — is one that regulators in multiple countries are being forced to engage with right now, and a well-constructed submission from a credible nonprofit with skin in the game changes the texture of that conversation. Second-order effects are significant: if UK regulators accept even the framing, it becomes harder to impose the kind of logging requirements or backdoor mandates that have circulated in various policy discussions. For ordinary users, the practical implication is whether the VPN they open on public Wi-Fi continues to function as designed, or gets quietly degraded by compliance requirements they will never see.

Watch for Mozilla's full submission becoming publicly available, and for any regulatory response that engages specifically with the infrastructure argument rather than deflecting it — that engagement, or the absence of it, will tell you where this is actually heading.

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