Freedom to Tinker: Use a Firewall, Go to Jail.
The states of Massachusetts and Texas are preparing to consider bills that apparently are intended to extend the national Digital Millennium Copyright Act. (TX bill; MA bill) The bills are obviously related to each other somehow, since they are textually similar.
Here is one example of the far-reaching harmful effects of these bills. Both bills would flatly ban the possession, sale, or use of technologies that “conceal from a communication service provider … the existence or place of origin or destination of any communication”. Your ISP is a communcation service provider, so anything that concealed the origin or destination of any communication from your ISP would be illegal — with no exceptions. [Privacy Digest]