- The US is building a site to help users outside the US access banned content
- US officials are discussing integrating a VPN function
- The Freedom.gov project has faced delays due to legal concerns
The Trump administration is reportedly developing a new government-operated website designed specifically to help internet users in Europe and elsewhere bypass local content restrictions.
According to a Reuters report, the project, hosted at Freedom.gov, aims to provide access to material that foreign governments have banned, including what some jurisdictions classify as “alleged hate speech and terrorist propaganda.”
The move marks a significant escalation in the ideological conflict between Washington and Brussels. While the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA) mandates that platforms remove illegal content and disinformation, the Trump administration views these regulations as censorship targeting American voices.
Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy Sarah Rogers is reportedly overseeing the project, which was expected to launch at last week’s Munich Security Conference but was delayed. Sources told Reuters that some State Department lawyers have raised concerns about the plan, which could be seen as the US government actively encouraging citizens of allied nations to break their local laws.
Integrated VPN capabilities expected
The most technically significant aspect of the proposal is the method of circumvention. Officials are reportedly planning to integrate Virtual Private Network (VPN) functionality directly into the portal.
A source familiar with the plan told Reuters that officials had discussed including a feature to “make a user’s traffic appear to originate in the US” and confirmed that “user activity on the site will not be tracked.”
If implemented, this would effectively turn the US State Department into a best VPN provider of sorts, allowing users to tunnel out of their local digital borders to access US-hosted content. Currently, commercial VPNs are the primary tool for such evasion, but a state-sponsored tool represents a new frontier in digital diplomacy.
While the State Department denied that the program is specific to Europe, a spokesperson told Reuters: “Digital freedom is a priority for the State Department, however, and that includes the proliferation of privacy and censorship-circumvention technologies like VPNs.”
Currently, the Freedom.gov domain displays a logo for the “National Design Studio” and the phrase “fly eagle fly.”
‘A direct shot’ at EU regulations
The initiative comes amidst a broader diplomatic fallout. Relations have been strained by disputes over trade, Russia’s war in Ukraine, and President Trump’s reported push to assert control over Greenland.
The conflict has drawn in major tech figures as well. Edward Coristine, a former member of Elon Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE), is reportedly working with the National Design Studio on the Freedom.gov project. The studio itself was created by the President to “beautify government websites.”
Musk himself has frequently clashed with European regulators, and his platform X was fined $140 million by the EU in December for non-compliance with transparency rules.
Kenneth Propp, a former State Department official now at the Atlantic Council, described the new portal to Reuters as “a direct shot” at European regulations, warning that it “would be perceived in Europe as a US effort to frustrate national law provisions.”
European regulators often require US-based sites to remove content as a measure of last resort. For example, in 2024, Germany issued 482 removal orders for material it deemed supported terrorism. The new US portal appears designed specifically to undermine those orders by providing a permanent, US-hosted loophole.
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