- The United States creates a site to help users outside the United States access prohibited content.
- US officials discuss integrating a VPN function
- Freedom.gov project faced delays due to legal issues
The Trump administration is reportedly developing a new government-run website designed specifically to help internet users in Europe and elsewhere circumvent restrictions on local content.
According to a Reuters report, the project, hosted at Liberty.govaims to provide access to material banned by foreign governments, including what some jurisdictions characterize as “alleged hate speech and terrorist propaganda.”
This decision marks a significant escalation in the ideological conflict between Washington and Brussels. While the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA) requires platforms to remove illegal content and misinformation, the Trump administration views these regulations as censorship targeting American voices.
Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy Sarah Rogers would oversee the project, which was supposed to be launched at last week’s Munich security conference but was delayed. Sources told Reuters that some State Department lawyers had raised concerns about the plan, which could be seen as the U.S. government actively encouraging citizens of allied countries to break their local laws.
Expected built-in VPN capabilities
The most important technical aspect of the proposal is the circumvention method. Officials would consider integrating virtual private network (VPN) functionality directly into the portal.
A source close to the project told Reuters that officials had discussed including a feature to “make a user’s traffic appear to come from the United States” and confirmed that “user activity on the site will not be tracked.”
If implemented, it would effectively transform the US State Department into a top VPN provider, allowing users to step outside their local digital borders to access content hosted in the US. 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 the program was specific to Europe, a spokesperson told Reuters: “Digital freedom is, however, a priority for the State Department, and that includes the proliferation of privacy and censorship-evasion technologies like VPNs.”
Currently, the Freedom.gov domain displays a logo for the “National Design Studio” and the phrase “fly eagle fly.”
“A direct blow” to European regulations
This initiative comes in a context of broader diplomatic fallout. Relations have been strained by trade disputes, Russia’s war in Ukraine and President Trump’s reported efforts to assert control over Greenland.
The conflict has also attracted major tech figures. Edward Coristine, former member of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), would work 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 often clashed with European regulators, and his X platform was fined $140 million by the EU in December for failing to comply with transparency rules.
Kenneth Propp, a former State Department official now at the Atlantic Council, described the new portal to Reuters as “a direct attack” on European regulations, warning that it “would be seen in Europe as a U.S. effort to thwart domestic legislative provisions.”
European regulators often require U.S.-based sites to remove their content as a last resort. For example, in 2024, Germany issued 482 expulsion orders for material it deemed to support terrorism. The new US portal appears specifically designed to undermine these orders by providing a permanent US-hosted loophole.
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