[HN Gopher] Tor is fighting and beating Russian censorship
___________________________________________________________________
Tor is fighting and beating Russian censorship
Author : LinuxBender
Score : 163 points
Date : 2022-07-30 16:32 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wired.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wired.com)
| sacrosancty wrote:
| It's always other governments who are authoritarian and for whom
| censorship circumvention is a good thing. Of course they surely
| are relatively more authoritarian but everywhere has censorship
| that the locals want because it's their country with their
| culture and their rules.
|
| New Zealand imprisons people for sharing the video of the
| Chirstchurch mosque shootings. I'll bet Tor is doing a good job
| helping circumvent that censorship too.
| bennysomething wrote:
| I'm not sure what your point is here.
| knowaveragejoe wrote:
| There isn't a point, it's contrarianism for the sake of being
| contrarian.
| pie_flavor wrote:
| https://archive.ph/HYjJl
| everyone wrote:
| I have a russian friend living near Moscow, and he can fully use
| discord, chat to whoever he wants, view any region free video on
| youtube (be it extremely anti-Putin or anti-russian) etc. etc.
| without _any_ effort on his part, just using normal programs, no
| tor or vpn. It seems that there are just so many avenues for
| information on the net, anyone in Russia who cares to know about
| something can find out immediately with minimum effort and zero
| technical knowhow.
|
| It's just the majority of Russians dont _want_ to know anything.
| Just like US citizens during the invasion of Iraq, most of them
| barely knew what was happening and simply didnt care to know.
| They were just comfortable in their assurance that USA was #1.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| As I understand it, a ton of Russians, especially older ones,
| just rely on TV and print media for news, and those are much
| more tightly controlled by the Kremlin.
|
| > Just like US citizens during the invasion of Iraq, most of
| them barely knew what was happening and simply didnt care to
| know. They were just comfortable in their assurance that USA
| was #1.
|
| While the WMD aspect of the invasion of Iraq was bullshit, the
| rest of it didn't seem to contain nearly as much propaganda --
| as in, just blatantly lying -- as what Russia's doing here. I
| don't think the US lied about US soldier casualties, for
| instance, acting like they were taking a small fraction of the
| actual injuries and deaths. Not to mention the war crimes seem
| enormously more common and severe with Russia's invasion, and
| those are all getting covered up by the Russian media within
| their country (e.g. "Azov/Ukraine did Bucha").
|
| Basically any war will involve some amount of propaganda and
| atrocities, but some people are acting like the way Russia and
| the US prosecute war are the same, when that appears to be
| clearly wrong.
| cabirum wrote:
| knowaveragejoe wrote:
| Seeing this sentiment expressed in seriousness on HN is
| saddening.
| 5e92cb50239222b wrote:
| I have a bunch of friends and relatives there. 99% of your
| average citizen's internet time is spent on ok.ru and vk.ru,
| which work very hard at putting you in a tight information
| bubble, just as any other social media platform. I think it's
| pretty much the same in every country, only the domains differ,
| not their substance.
|
| > view any region free video on youtube
|
| Only if you specifically look for it, and for the same reason.
|
| btw, I have to help my non-technical friends with
| VPNs/proxies/reading news through sites like archive.ph/some
| other tricks. They definitely cannot read or watch anything
| they want without some technical expertise or someone willing
| to help.
| vogre wrote:
| Telegram channels are big deal in Russia. They are the best
| source of information about war, from first hands, Russian and
| Ukrainian.
|
| Don't forget that Ukraine and Russia are very tihtly related,
| with tons of friends and relatives on each side of a border.
| You don't need some Western media to get news about rumble on
| your backyard.
| pessimizer wrote:
| It's a strange dictatorship where the government's decision to
| ban anonymous communication is held off by repeated court
| judgments.
| Sean-Der wrote:
| This has been really fascinating to watch. A patch just landed in
| Pion DTLS[0] yesterday to make the fingerprinting harder. I don't
| remember all the commits, but the Tor devs are absolutely amazing
| to work with and submit patches that are pretty much perfect :)
|
| If you haven't had a chance to investigate WebRTC I _really_
| think it is worth it. WebRTC gives up P2P Data /Media everywhere
| and it is really hard to block (because so many companies depend
| on it). To me it really feels like the best path forward to
| circumventing control. It also is a great career move. You can
| help people build conferencing tools during the day, and
| Censorship Circumvention at night.
|
| [0]
| https://github.com/pion/dtls/commit/de299f573c3e44fece16f09c...
| midislack wrote:
| Does Tor Browser still use the same relay for months at a time or
| have they fixed that?
| system33- wrote:
| Yes it is. This is by design, and better than using a random
| first relay for every circuit, new random one every day, etc.
|
| https://blog.torproject.org/improving-tors-anonymity-changin...
|
| https://www-users.cse.umn.edu/~hoppernj/single_guard.pdf
| marcodiego wrote:
| The network where I work breaks all the time. The cascade of
| firewalls often leaves us in a state that even DNS does not work.
| Tor and tor-browser usually work when this happens. I'm mostly
| using tor nowadays as a free proxy when network breaks.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| So if you run a site, why not help? If you run a service on
| Cloudflare stop blocking Tor users please.
| radiator wrote:
| How about European censorship? Is is possible to read russian
| news portals in Tor?
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| Most of the ISPs that block russian sites (RT, etc.) do it on
| DNS level, so just changing the DNS allows you to open those
| sites.
|
| And yes, this is a dark part of EU history... someone like
| putin blocking websites... sure, he's more or less a dictator,
| and we expect dictators to do stuff like that. But EU, a
| "pillar of democracy" blocking sites, because they don't like
| what they say, and because they show a different side to
| western propaganda... that's a bad precedent to set. But yeah,
| unironically writing articles like "evacuation of azovstal" [0]
| with a headline photo like that, takes some guts and needs some
| censorship to pass
|
| [0]
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/gallery/2022/may/17/evacua...
| ("evacuation" for western media is another word for
| "surrendering and being taken as war prisoners to siberia")
| trasz wrote:
| turdit wrote:
| the information i got from rt was that putin says he's
| invading bc the us is putting missiles in ukraine, which
| take a certain amount of minutes to hit moscow, which putin
| claimed was unacceptable to russian national security. from
| the west the only info you get is that he's crazy and there
| was no reason at all for the invasion. so without even
| getting into details of is it actually true or not, it was
| nice to at least hear putin's rationale, because the west's
| explanation that he's doing this for no reason except that
| he's crazy is really insulting to the intelligence of
| everyone who is not a complete moron. but unfortunately
| that is 99% of people.
| ptr wrote:
| "the us is putting missiles in ukraine" -- first time I'm
| hearing that explanation. Didn't he invade because
| Ukraine is "full of nazis"? Or was it due to the "nukes
| Ukraine was planning to get"? Or to "return Ukraine to
| Russia"?
|
| https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/putin-
| adm...
| bpodgursky wrote:
| I don't think we can put aside the details of whether it
| is true or not (it's not), because Putin has full info
| about the fact that it's nonsense, so it's extremely
| relevant to his mindset (ie, it's a fabrication aimed at
| a completely unrelated objective).
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| If ukraine joined nato, do you honestly believe, that
| americans wouldn't install missles there, that could
| reach moscow?
| bpodgursky wrote:
| The US has not put any nuclear weapons (or long-range
| missiles) in Latvia or Estonia, which are already part of
| NATO and closer to Moscow... so no.
|
| There's already a perfectly close place to put them,
| which the US hasn't bothered doing, because it's
| unnecessary.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| So, for example, if russia became more friendly and
| cooparetive with eg. Cuba, that wouldn't be problematic
| to USA, because proximity doesn't matter that much?
| bpodgursky wrote:
| You're shifting goalposts because you don't have any
| rebuttal to my point.
|
| In the many years that Cuba was friendly and cooperative
| with the USSR, the US never made any more than a joke
| attempt at a military intervention. The US was obviously
| not thrilled, but never did anything comparable to the
| current invasion of Ukraine. Not sure your point.
| [deleted]
| josephcsible wrote:
| Can't modern ICBMs launched from within the US already
| reach Moscow?
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| yes, but it's easier to intercept them if they're
| launched from further away
| ptr wrote:
| Russia can't intercept ICBMs. Distance doesn't matter.
| stefan_ wrote:
| See, that's the problem when "news" like RT hits on
| people that have no critical thinking ability. No one
| needs to put missiles physically closer for half a
| century now; they just launch from nuclear subs. Even
| Israel can do this.
|
| (And this isn't even the stated reason! You can just
| watch Putins faux-historical speech!)
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| Yep... and if true or not (and let's be fair, if Ukraine
| joined NATO, there would actually be missles located
| there), the west used even worse propaganda, even twice
| in a row ([0] and [1]).
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayirah_testimony
|
| [1] "iraq has weapons of mass destruction"
| pessimizer wrote:
| > RT isn't banned because we don't like what it says - it's
| banned because it's a part of information war.
|
| You're going to have to explain the difference between
| these two things.
| trhway wrote:
| It is an information arm of the Russian government.
| Restricting direct actions of other government on your
| territory is a well established international practice.
|
| Europe doesn't ban [dis]information from Russia (until of
| course it violates specific laws of a given country
| against say inciting violence, propaganda of genocide,
| etc.)
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| Banning media is a thing repressive dicatators do.
| trhway wrote:
| RT is a propaganda department of Russian government. Most
| countries do regulate behavior of the agents of foreign
| governments on their territory.
|
| It is up to a specific government whether they allow
| another government to come in and for example spread
| propaganda or mine coal or build railways. Usually there
| is some reciprocity expected. Russia blocked not only
| West government propaganda agencies, it is also blocked
| independent media. So, the West governments are more than
| expected to block Russian government propaganda
| operations, especially given that non government
| information flow from Russia isn't blocked (that would be
| the censorship similar to that Russia has been doing, and
| West hasn't done it yet).
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| > RT is a propaganda department of Russian government
|
| So is BBC. And they lied about iraq having weapons of
| mass destruction. We didn't ban them.
|
| Yes, russia is led by an ex-kgb dictator... do we really
| want to be the same as him, and do the same things? Are
| we really no better at censorship and propaganda than
| him?
| trhway wrote:
| >So is BBC. And they lied about iraq having weapons of
| mass destruction. We didn't ban them.
|
| do you really think that that BBC lying was a deliberate
| action of Great Britain government against your country?
| I think nobody thought that, so it wasn't banned.
|
| In general you're mixing 2 different things - an
| operation of a foreign government on your territory and
| information content. Blocking the first is sovereign
| right while blocking the second is censorship and is a
| mark of dictatorship.
|
| The RT operation in EU is blocked, while the content
| isn't - you wouldn't get punished for forwarding or
| retelling (on your own volition without any payment from
| Russian government for doing so) a content of RT
| propaganda contradicting official information of EU. In
| Russia BBC is blocked as an operation as well as its
| content - i.e. you'd get criminally punished for
| forwarding or retelling (again, even at your own will) a
| BBC content contradicting official [dis]information of
| the Russian government, i.e Russia does have censorship.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| The BBC lying might as well be. Good luck keeping a job
| at the BBC if you are the kind of person that wouldn't
| have taken the US on their word in that situation.
|
| Instead of keeping an editorial line on a list of
| subjects, organizations like the BBC simply maintain a
| culture, from the top down, where if you were to threaten
| propaganda by the government or it's allies that is too
| valuable, you will lose your job.
| mmastrac wrote:
| If you are trying to compare RT and BBC and make excuses
| for RT, you're deep down the disinformation hole.
| pphysch wrote:
| Why do you say that? BBC has a rich history of engaging
| in disinformation campaigns, from the Cold War to Syria
| and Ukraine.
| vogre wrote:
| >it's banned because it's a part of information war
|
| Yup, just call anything you don't like "russian
| disinformation", and you are free to ban it, easy.
| ptr wrote:
| So, what are we supposed to do with actual Russian
| disinformation? Or are you saying it doesn't exist?
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| miracle2k wrote:
| You let it be published and broadcast, like a normal free
| country would.
| ptr wrote:
| I'm sorry but people in general aren't critical thinkers
| -- broadcasting false and misleading communication should
| be avoided since it's extremely dangerous. See the
| storming of the Capitol Building. It's especially
| dangerous when that communication is meant to undermine
| your country and what your country stands for.
| throwaway0x7E6 wrote:
| so then why do we have this conversation at all? Russia
| has done nothing wrong, it's just protecting its own dumb
| proles from false and misleading information meant to
| undermine their country and what it stands for.
|
| I delight in the irony
| ptr wrote:
| Maybe that's what it all comes down to if you can't
| reference "truth". People can pick the side that appears
| to be the lesser evil.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| ptr wrote:
| Relevance? Why do you feel a need to pull out such
| arguments when we have a complete war criminal over in
| the kremlin?
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| Whataboutism is a longstanding Russian doctrine: https://
| en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| It's relevant, because we didn't ban western media (well,
| our own) back then, for spreading false propaganda
| (ending in many many deaths), and we're banning RT now,
| because it's "them" and not "us".
|
| If we hate false news/propaganda/... then ban cnn (and
| many other media), but we clearly want (and allow) "that
| kind" of propaganda, just not the russian one.
| josephcsible wrote:
| There's a big difference between intentionally lying and
| saying things that you honestly believed but turned out
| to be false.
| w7 wrote:
| What is your definition of "free country"?
|
| It seems to have been reduced to "country that allows
| enemies a free platform".
| simion314 wrote:
| In my free country media has to obey rules. There are
| rules for porn, ads, defamation, bad language. Not sure
| where youa re from that media can has no rules and they
| can publish anything without any consequences.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| But that media is not in your free country, it's hosted
| outside. You're banning people connecting to servers in
| other countries, hosted under their laws.
| simion314 wrote:
| That is irrelevant, Google, PornHub respect the local
| laws if they want to do business here. I don't think my
| country constitution protects the free speech of Russian
| media, they can spawn a local media and then follow the
| local laws if they want constitutional protection, but
| just to emphasize in my country TV channels were closed
| because they ignored the laws too many times and fail to
| pay their fines.
|
| Also no need to pretend you don't know what Russian
| version of the "facts" are, you can find what their claim
| in media and social networks. But in Russia world each
| fact might be in a superposition of 3 realities, the
| initial Russian fake reports, then when caught the second
| altered fake report , and the third convoluted fake
| version where the army of trolls found all their previous
| holes and patch them with more idiotic falsehoods. 2
| w7 wrote:
| Your entire statement is nonsensical.
|
| If I make a law in my country that allows me to throw
| rocks at people in another bordering country without
| repercussions, then that other country should just let me
| do it because those are my country's laws?
| trasz wrote:
| It's not "anything": it's not like Fox News is banned, or
| antivaxers. We are talking about an actual shooting war
| between a genocidal regime and the western civilization,
| and the ongoing process of Russia turning from "Nigeria
| with nukes"[1] into North Korea. It's a once-per-century
| event.
|
| 1. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/russia-nigeria-with-
| nukes_b_1..., and of course Nigeria got much better
| future prospects
| jollybean wrote:
| This is a misunderstanding, I believe.
|
| What people need to understand is that 'words have
| consequences'. The 'truth' isn't that important in
| communications because people can't discern it.
|
| People don't know, and often do not care what the truth is.
|
| Putin, Xi etc. can easily convince millions of Europeans of
| their view of the world, which will mostly be based on lies.
| It's a key pillar of their respective foreign policies.
|
| That disinformation has material effects in civil culture.
|
| So put another way: we don't want to 'completely ban' content
| from Russia, but rather, not make it part of the populist
| lexicon.
|
| It's a bit like removing a TV station from broadcasting as
| one of the 'major channels'.
|
| If Europeans conscientiously choose want to get RT, they can.
| But the West shouldn't allow Russia or China to broadcast
| directly into people's homes willy nilly. My god man.
|
| Information is by _far_ the most powerful weapon.
|
| If either Putin or Xi lost their power to censor, their
| respective governments would collapse, frankly I suggest both
| of them would be literally dead. Very quickly, within a few
| months.
|
| The internet is giving us the biggest lesson in 'Critical
| Theory' imaginable (i.e. competing narratives) and of course,
| we have our own narratives (and internally huge competition
| over them), but still, some truths are a bit better than
| others.
| vogre wrote:
| > West shouldn't allow Russia or China to broadcast
| directly into people's homes willy nilly. My god man.
|
| What will happen if West would allow it? Will it collapse?
| If not, why censor it? If it will, what's the difference
| between West and Putin? Both will collapse without
| censorship.
| jollybean wrote:
| "What is the difference between the Allied 'liberation'
| of France and Hitler's 'liberation' of France? They both
| deserve an equal voice!"
|
| If you're wading int moral relativism, then what is the
| point, really?
|
| The West mostly acts in good faith (not always), and, bad
| information mostly is marginalized though definitely
| available.
|
| For example, we suppress some kinds of bad information
| about health, and definitely suppress things like 'how to
| make nuclear weapons' etc. though generally, it's
| available if you really try. We don't completely shut
| down pirate bay.
|
| RT.com is a propaganda outlet, designed to spread
| falsehoods and to undermine civic integrity.
|
| If RT.com was 'in every home', a large swath of Europeans
| would come to believe things that are not true, and
| likely undermine important efforts, specifically around
| security.
|
| Stalin controlled 17% of the Bundestag during the Wiemar
| Republic through direct control over the Germany
| Communist party. He used information, thugs, violence,
| populism to try to overthrow the Social Democrats (center
| left) many times, in an attempt to spread his tyranny. He
| even worked with the far right (aka nascent Hitler)
| during that time, as they were considered fools. The far
| right used the legitimacy of Soviet intervention as a
| means for violent populism. They lied themselves about
| various things in order to gain power. Mass destruction
| ensued.
|
| The Russians ironically initiated the spread of the
| 'Protocols of the Elders of Zion' a pretty good example
| of 'misinformation' which has seriously dire
| consequences.
|
| 30% of Americans believe that 'Joe Biden Stole the
| Election' which combined with events on Jan 6 which was a
| clear and direct attempt to dismiss valid votes in lieu
| of political 'votes' to overthrow the government, has
| very real consequences. None of that could have happened
| of only, say, 1% of Americans believed the election
| stolen. And that's in a media system where most
| mainstream outlets did not directly promulgate the lie
| (Fox News didn't sufficiently question the lies about
| election integrity, but they didn't usually directly
| support the lie either).
|
| The issue matters, greatly.
|
| I have access to RT in North American and I don't think
| it's a big deal, but collectively it is, much more so in
| Europe where there are Russian sympathizers.
|
| For example, RT was pulled form regular broadcast, which
| is rational.
|
| Someone noted above that 'Vodafone' blocked them from
| RT.com, which I think is fine so long as there is some
| way to conscientiously get around that arbitrary
| blocking.
|
| Finally, you'll note that Russians do have access to tons
| of information from outside the censors, but they don't
| access it, or even care to, which denotes how kind of
| 'lazy' most of us plebes are - we tend to watch what is
| in front of us, and believe what we want to believe.
|
| Go ahead and watch Russia 1, i.e. Russia's main TV
| broadcast for a bit, translated into English. It's
| utterly shocking, now contemplate that 50% of the country
| believes most of what is beings said because of how they
| are being fed information.
|
| This idea that 'the truth' rises to the point is worse
| than naive, it's extremely dangerous because it's
| absolutely false. The most engaging ideas that appeal to
| our impulses are those that 'rise to the top' to become
| 'truth'.
|
| It's a serious issue. Though again, Europeans should be
| able to access RT by jumping a few small hoops.
| cabirum wrote:
| marvin wrote:
| You can bet your ass that I'm afraid that an expanding,
| violent imperialist dictatorship will continue its
| historically proven tradition of undermining the
| political stability of my country and thereby make us
| much poorer and less free.
|
| It just so happens that I'm not stupid, and am
| sufficiently worried about this real and imminent risk
| that I will support quite strong measures to defend
| against it. One of which is making blatant lies and
| propaganda from the enemy somewhat harder to access for
| the population of my country, who collectively have the
| power to surrender to this attack.
| pphysch wrote:
| > If you're wading int moral relativism, then what is the
| point, really?
|
| Moralizing geopolitics is the domain of children and
| warpigs
| Volker_W wrote:
| > If Europeans conscientiously choose want to get RT, they
| can.
|
| If I want to visit rt.com , Vodafone blocks it.
| tryauuum wrote:
| I get what you feel but still... Censoring the internet is
| dangerous, Europe will certainly not give up this power
| even after the war ends
| FpUser wrote:
| Sounds like an ostrich talk to me.
|
| >"Putin, Xi etc. can easily convince millions of Europeans
| of their view of the world, which will mostly be based on
| lies."
|
| If your own government / media can not convince them
| otherwise it is quite pathetic then. Normal person should
| be able to see through Putin's bullshit, particularly the
| one that is "based on lies". If however you are educating
| mostly vegetables that can't think on their own and do some
| fact checking you definitely deserve it.
| thriftwy wrote:
| > If either Putin or Xi lost their power to censor, their
| respective governments would collapse
|
| Why?
|
| I can see how a coordinated infowar attack could at some
| point topple either one (not just "freedom of speech" stuff
| but a barrage of weaponized propaganga), but I'm not sure
| why you take this happening as granted.
|
| What are the truths that Russians (or even Chinese) have no
| way of knowing right now and that would topple China/Russia
| if they did knew those?
| jollybean wrote:
| Xi and Putin would be toppled instantly without
| censorship because the reality of their oppression, out
| in the commons, without constant, total suppression of
| other ideas would expose them for what they are.
|
| Why do you think it's illegal to even refer to the War in
| Ukraine as a 'War'?
|
| They've threatened 15 years in jail with anyone who even
| _hints_ at something that is 'not true' - in their
| purview - meaning - if you publicly say something against
| the ridiculous propaganda - you dissapear. Watch
| interviews of regular Russians on the street as the
| 'avoid answers' or 'struggle to find ways to say
| something, without actually saying it' because they
| obviously live in a system of fear, where just a few
| wrong words ends their lives.
|
| Without the power to make sure that Russians do not talk
| about the war, about Putin's corruption, and how to 'get
| rid of him', Putin (and Xi) would be gone very quickly.
|
| The #1 thing in our modern constitutions is 'freedom of
| assembly' - basically so that people can convene and have
| ideas. 'Rulers' don't like that because it's how they are
| overthrown.
|
| On the other side - RT is a propaganda outlet that can
| hugely affect popular opinion and discourse, especially
| in a realm where people generally do have free access to
| information.
|
| Most of Putin's lies are laughable, but most people
| aren't in a direct position to dispute them either, and
| so its' pretty easy for him to convince, say 10% of the
| population of the legitimacy of whatever genocide he
| wants to do.
|
| Which is why we absolutely do not want RT on broadcast to
| every American every night.
|
| Of course, freedom of information is important as well,
| so we do want to enable people to have access, and as
| such, only a very small subset of the population will
| bother with it. Those that are 'inclined towards
| information' which is probably a good thing.
| thriftwy wrote:
| People absolutely do talk about the war in Russia.
| Strelkov's last self-interview video got half million
| views. Yuri Podolyaka, who makes daily videos about
| current state of the front, talks about the war. Popular
| Russian military Tg channels get half million views on
| each their post. Youtube is not blocked and (AFAIK) no
| longer does any censorship on behalf of Russian
| Federation (they did block Podolyaka's channels
| persistently, though, so much for freedom of speech)
|
| If your confidence rests on assumption that Russians are
| too scared to discuss the war, that's myopic.
| pphysch wrote:
| Why do you so strongly believe that you know what is
| going on in China and Russia better than the respective
| people? What is your source of knowledge?
| pphysch wrote:
| > Putin, Xi etc. can easily convince millions of Europeans
| of their view of the world, which will mostly be based on
| lies. It's a key pillar of their respective foreign
| policies.
|
| Is there any powerful country you can name that does not do
| this...?
| w7 wrote:
| Does it matter? (Hint: no)
|
| Their specific lies are leveraged to harm us (the west)
| therefore something should be done about them.
|
| Gone should be the days of giving autocracies special
| privileges in the media while they maintain a tight grip
| on their own.
| FpUser wrote:
| One day you might like social scoring your citizens as
| well.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Of course it does, because the alternative is giving
| privilege to other countries for the benefit of power
| politics. It won't end well either. Relying on censorship
| for such things really isn't a great idea.
| Volker_W wrote:
| German Vodafone customer here: It seems to be blocked
| properly not just on DNS level. Changing DNS does not fix it.
|
| $ ping rt.com
|
| PING rt.com (91.215.41.4) 56(84) bytes of data.
|
| ^J
|
| --- rt.com ping statistics ---
|
| 293 packets transmitted, 0 received, 100% packet loss, time
| 295812ms
|
| I'm not a Putin/Russia supporter, nor do I read rt.com, but I
| want the ability to hear what the enemy says.
| fosefx wrote:
| I think that's because the rt server does not respond to
| ICMP. I use 1.1.1.1 and can access rt.com just fine (also
| German Vodafone customer here)
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| try curl. DNS is blocked for me, but ip traffic works, just
| not ICMP (probably blocked on RT side)
|
| $ curl http://91.215.41.4 <!DOCTYPE
| html><html><head><title>DDOS-GUARD</title><meta
| charset="utf-8"><meta name="viewport"
| content="width=device-width,initial-scale=1">....
| tzs wrote:
| Have you tried it from a browser? I also get 100% packet
| loss on pinging via my ISP in the US (Comcast), but it
| comes up fine in a browser.
|
| It's not uncommon for servers to not support ping.
| 5e92cb50239222b wrote:
| > but I want the ability to hear what the enemy says.
|
| Read propaganda written for internal consumption then. I
| find it much more illuminating. Maybe through Google
| Translate, I think it's quite decent at ru - en translation
| these days.
|
| Some of the main outlets off the top of my head:
|
| https://interfax.ru
|
| https://tass.ru
|
| https://regnum.ru
|
| https://pravda.ru
|
| https://kommersant.ru
|
| https://gazeta.ru
|
| https://iz.ru
|
| https://ria.ru
|
| https://lenta.ru
|
| https://rbc.ru
|
| Or through an aggregator:
|
| https://yandex.ru/news/
| [deleted]
| dimitrios1 wrote:
| My immediate thought here too. Is it possible to defeat US and
| European citizenship with Tor, as well? Looking for solutions
| once the "Disinformation Governance Board" gets rolling again.
| knowaveragejoe wrote:
| What if you're actually just looking at disinformation?
| cowtools wrote:
| >Is it possible to defeat US and European citizenship with
| Tor, as well?
|
| Rhetorical question? Serve your web page as an onion service
| (preferably without javascript).
|
| >Looking for solutions once the "Disinformation Governance
| Board" gets rolling again.
|
| I doubt it. It would be highly unpopular and supreme court
| will strike it down.
| trasz wrote:
| >I doubt it. It would be highly unpopular and supreme court
| will strike it down.
|
| Last time it happened it took a decade to end it, and of
| course nobody got punished:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism
| dempart wrote:
| I'm familiar with French censorship, and I read the Democratie
| Participative journal by simply using north-American DNS
| providers like QuadNine or the Cloudflare one (1.1.1.1).
| knowaveragejoe wrote:
| Why would you want to?
| beardog wrote:
| Tor project doesn't block any sites in the code/protocol, but
| given that many/most of the exit nodes are in western europe
| you are at the mercy of any given circuit's exit node (usually
| the node's ISP) filtering.
|
| I remember back when more exit nodes were _in_ Russia, i 'd
| sometimes not be able to visit different sites because the
| russian exit nodes I was connecting to were blocking them.
| cowtools wrote:
| unless you are using onion services.
| lovelearning wrote:
| Any examples of such blocked Russian sites? I'm outside Europe
| and would like to test it.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| rt.com
| hjek wrote:
| i can confirm this
| aPoCoMiLogin wrote:
| EU here and it works fine for me, so I suppose the ban is
| on the ISP DNS side.
| vetinari wrote:
| rt.com works for me too.
|
| sputniknews.com does't.
| thriftwy wrote:
| I've heard that Telegram now blocks a lot of Russian military
| news channels, at EU govt request, so you can't read war news
| from the "other side".
|
| Telegram being the main source of raw information about
| course of military actions.
|
| Try t.me/warjournaltg and see if there's anything blocked/not
| available (there are a lot of reposts, I wonder if their
| source channels would be unviewable or if reposts will be
| silently dropped)
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| Russian here. Roskomnadzor's capabilities for blocking TOR are
| quite sufficient to cripple TOR's capabilities to the point of
| making it unusable as a VPN service, unless you set up your own
| private TOR ramp, which in this case is essentially the same as
| personal VPN, but much more slow.
|
| The algorithm is quite simple:
|
| 1. Attempt to connect to TOR
|
| 2. If it connects, blacklist the IP, goto 1.
|
| 3. TOR is unavailable
|
| (If an anonymous TOR user can obtain bridge address, shared by
| any means, email, Signal, messenger pigeons or whatever, RKN
| operative can obtain it as well)
| stingraycharles wrote:
| > (If an anonymous TOR user can obtain bridge address, shared
| by any means, email, Signal, messenger pigeons or whatever, RKN
| operative can obtain it as well)
|
| As a Tor relay operator, this always seemed like the most silly
| aspect of bridges: if someone really wanted to block Tor,
| wouldn't they just block any bridges they encountered?!
|
| Some of the bridges are even published on public pages,
| wouldn't that defeat the whole point of bridges in the first
| place?
| cowtools wrote:
| Many private bridges are distributed privately through cell
| systems.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| I was talking only about public bridges, because this is the
| use-case that RKN is trying to prevent: people have a free
| way to access blocked information. People who have means
| find/access a private bridge can have a private VPN too, and
| it'll work much better for this purpose.
|
| Btw, it is _quite difficult_ now to have private bridge or
| VPN because of _idiotic_ ban on Mastercard / visa payments
| Russians can't pay for hosting without _a lot_ of trouble.
| While inside radishes Russia Mastercard /Visa work fine.
| Putin is happy: dissidents are cut off, his supporters didn't
| even notice.
| controversial97 wrote:
| I have a low-capacity obfs4 tor proxy, it has been running for
| a few months and isn't blocked in Russia yet.
|
| It has about fifteen users each day, all connecting from
| Russian ISPs.
|
| I set it to only be announced by the telegram bot and only for
| a few weekends.
| hutrdvnj wrote:
| Can Tor work over IPv6?
| golergka wrote:
| Another Russian here. 99% of usage of Tor and Bitcoin is Russia
| is to purchase drugs -- darknet has almost completely replaced
| street dealers in the whole country, and there's an addiction
| epidemic going on. At the same time, most of drug trade in
| Russia has been managed by various branches of police and
| secret police (actual police, rosgvardia, fsb, fskn in the
| past), and large marketplaces are likely directly owned by
| them. So there's a huge monetary incentive to keep Tor network
| available, which I think is much more important to people in
| power than a dozen or so journalists and activists who might
| publish some anti-government banalities on some darknet forum
| that nobody (unfortunately, in my personal view) reads or gives
| a shit about anyway.
|
| Russians at large know perfectly well that their media is
| censored and the government is corrupt. They just don't care.
| tomcam wrote:
| > who might publish some anti-government banalities on some
| darknet forum that nobody (unfortunately, in my personal
| view) reads or gives a shit about anyway.
|
| So true, so Slavic. I love the dark Russian humor and bracing
| cynicism.
|
| We're getting there ever so slowly in the USA...
| int_19h wrote:
| A Russian and an American sinner die and end up in Hell. As
| they stand before Satan, he says: "I give you the choice of
| your punishment: you can spend eternity either in the
| American Hell, or in the Russian Hell."
|
| "What's the difference?", they ask.
|
| "In the American one you're force-fed a bucket full of shit
| every day. In the Russian one, you're force-fed two
| buckets. Other than that, you're free to do as you please."
|
| "Well, that's a no-brainer; I pick the American Hell", says
| the American.
|
| The Russian ponders for a while longer and says, "I'd
| rather stay in a familiar place; I'll go to the Russian
| Hell".
|
| A month has passed, and the sinners meet to compare notes.
| The Russian asks: "So, what's it like in your place?"
|
| "It's exactly as advertised; I have to eat a bucket of shit
| every day, regular as clockwork, but other than that I'm
| enjoying life. What about yours? I can barely get through
| one bucket, two must be horrible!"
|
| "Pah, it's not so bad. Most days, there's a shortage of
| shit, and they don't have enough to feed even one bucket to
| most of us. And sometimes the buckets get stolen
| altogether. Just like home; I love it!"
| [deleted]
| cowtools wrote:
| A solution that Tor has been using with china is to host
| bridges on something like AWS. In order for china to block the
| bridges, they must also block all of AWS IP space.
|
| https://media.ccc.de/v/26c3-3554-de-tor_and_censorship_lesso...
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| Roskomnadzor can block whole AWS and there will be neither
| rioting not even a significant outrage. They can even turn to
| whitelisting. The only reason they don't do it is that it is
| still considered unnecessary.
| smsm42 wrote:
| The reason it is considered unnecessary is that the
| existing blocks work enough to cover the most of the
| population, who aren't technically savvy enough and would
| not bother to take the special effort. This is enough to
| lower the reach of sources that contain information not
| approved by the government to where it doesn't pose any
| danger to the regime. The same concept as "kitchen talks"
| in the USSR, only on the Internet - you can have VPN in
| your own "kitchen", as long as it stays there it will be
| ignored.
|
| So, if Tor browsing becomes easy enough for a common
| citizen to use, they will disrupt it just enough so that
| common citizen won't be able to use it, and would stop
| there.
| cowtools wrote:
| Will they ban every VPS provider?
| n4bz0r wrote:
| They've already got their hands on ProtonVPN, Nord VPN,
| Opera VPN and a number (about 8-10, I think?) of others.
|
| Their system analyzes all the traffic and tries to
| identify VPN packets, so I don't really see why wouldn't
| they block _all the providers_ should they need to.
|
| There are still ways to mask the traffic, but a regular
| user can only be bothered so much.
|
| Yes, many businesses rely on VPN, but I can imagine that
| RKN might just come up with some great white-list idea.
| yardstick wrote:
| > Yes, many businesses rely on VPN, but I can imagine
| that RKN might just come up with some great white-list
| idea.
|
| Plus with the sanctions it's unlikely there is much need
| for western businesses to run VPNs into Russia.
| smsm42 wrote:
| Every single one? No. Every major one? Likely.
| schleck8 wrote:
| There is also Snowflake bridges which are run by individuals
| using a browser extension
|
| https://community.torproject.org/relay/setup/snowflake/
| WaitWaitWha wrote:
| AWS is required to provide all data flowing in and out of
| datacenters to the Government.
| cowtools wrote:
| Doesn't matter, it is just a bridge node. Tor is resilient
| to that mode of attack.
| moffkalast wrote:
| American yes, Chinese no.
| viraptor wrote:
| Depends on the region. us-east-1 - us. cn-north-1 - both.
| metadat wrote:
| And even then, only with a warrant.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| China also does not seem to be willing to burn all the
| bridges to the rest of the world just yet, so it has to
| accept some kind of interconnection to services like AWS that
| aren't under its control.
| dilyevsky wrote:
| That's exactly what telegram did when they had their famous
| battle against rkn
| cowtools wrote:
| Tor is not really comparable to telegram. check out that
| link I posted, that talk goes over a lot of details that I
| am currently at a loss of words for.
| defanor wrote:
| And large subnets were blocked back then, blocking many
| unrelated websites/services at once. IIRC even some of
| RKN's own services were temporarily disrupted by that, but
| generally they don't shy away from inflicting collateral
| damage. There's no shortage of cases of blocking large
| websites for humorous or silly pictures and texts (not even
| political), too.
| dilyevsky wrote:
| Yes and eventually rkn had to back down and walk that
| back (maybe less of a concern for them today tho)
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| RKN only backed down only because it was a PR stunt where
| it played the role of an inept villain.
| dilyevsky wrote:
| Seems like very elaborate pr stunt and what exactly did
| they stand to gain from this? I'd hesitate to explain
| something with a great conspiracy what is much simply
| explained with incompetence
| markdestouches wrote:
| So you're implying that Telegram is essentially Kremlin's
| project. Any other reasons you believe this is the case?
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Probably because Telegram wasn't removed from the App
| Store.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| When they had their famous PR campaign closely coordinated
| with RKN.
|
| Telegram wasn't even removed from appstores, unlike
| Navalny'a app a bit later or LinkedIn a bit earlier.
| jerheinze wrote:
| You can help by running a Snowflake proxy (which merely functions
| as a gateway to the Tor Network, so you don't need to worry as no
| traffic exits from your IP) if you're in a country that doesn't
| censor Tor. You can either run the standalone Snowflake proxy:
|
| https://community.torproject.org/relay/setup/snowflake/stand...
|
| Or by installing the browser addon:
| https://snowflake.torproject.org
| Qworg wrote:
| Or just using the embed at the bottom of the last link! You
| don't need to install anything at all - just keep a tab open.
| vogre wrote:
| Actually the Russian internet censorship is mostly bypassed by
| simple VPN app/extension. We have problems paying for them
| because VISA/Mastercard payments don't work, but there are plenty
| of free ones.
|
| Tor is mostly used for darknet/drugs/weapon selling. Nobody is
| using it to read some new Navalny's post.
| anonporridge wrote:
| Mullvad, http://mullvad.net/, accepts bitcoin and monero, which
| are currently uncensorable payment mechanisms, especially
| monero because it's base chain is truly anonymous.
|
| Of course, if you're in a state that's already started
| censoring information as Russia has, they also start censoring
| on-ramps to crypto, as Russia has begun,
| https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2022/07/15/vladimir-putin-ba...
|
| Owning monero and bitcoin in self custody is a "rather have it
| and not need it than need it and not have it" kind of thing. If
| you wait until you need it, it's too late.
| AzzieElbab wrote:
| Makes sense. Tor is too umm specialised and obscure. Although
| in brave you can simply open a private tab with Tor
| cowtools wrote:
| Specialized? Obscure? It exposes a SOCKS5 proxy at
| localhost:9050. If you can figure out how to use a VPN, you
| can figure out how to use Tor. In a way it is easier than a
| VPN if you are just using something like Tor Browser or
| Orbot.
| AzzieElbab wrote:
| Well you have dl it to begin with. Also, how would even
| explain having it on your laptop?
| ThePowerOfFuet wrote:
| Prove it.
| cowtools wrote:
| Tor is free too, and it is distributed enough that a single
| node won't rat you out to your local gov.
|
| Even if you are setting up your own VPN, I recommend installing
| your own tor infrastructure instead. It is simply stronger than
| a VPN.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| No, it is not stronger or better for purposes of accessing
| blocked websites. Internet accessed through TOR is much-
| unusable due to low speeds and endless captchas.
| colordrops wrote:
| How about Chinese censorship? That's the real challenge.
| drewcoo wrote:
| A bigger challenge is our own because we are largely oblivious
| to it.
| ChadNauseam wrote:
| can you elaborate on that? as far as I know, my government
| (the USA's) does little to limit my access to information
| beyond copyright issues. There is of course censorship on
| social networks, which is no doubt real, but it's a much
| trickier problem to solve.
| pessimizer wrote:
| There is censorship on _every_ network, not just social
| ones, and it 's naive to think that's not connected to
| government policy. What I'm not aware of are any DNS level
| blocks (even at individual ISPs), but I'm afraid someone
| will correct me.
| AzzieElbab wrote:
| On the bright side 3 years ago I would have laughed out loud
| if someone told me to check out an obscure Jewish magazine, a
| falun-gong associated newspaper, and a Christian jokes site.
| Strange times
| pessimizer wrote:
| There are three OTA Falun Gong TV channels in Chicago, but
| Chinese state (or designated affiliated) media was banned
| from Google News.
| kruuuder wrote:
| Beating any state censorship is a success and we should
| appreciate that.
| dopa42365 wrote:
| My Weibo feed is full of Chinese people reposting Instagram
| content (blocked in China) that's posted by Russians (where
| Instagram is banned as well).
|
| People in both countries just use a random free or dirt cheap
| VPN.
|
| The feasibility of a "big firewall" is kinda low if you're not
| willing to go full North Korea.
| jacooper wrote:
| I think they are already do, using meek-azure bridges.
| defanor wrote:
| > It has found ways to avoid Russian blocking efforts, and this
| month, it was removed from Russia's list of blocked websites
| following a legal challenge. (Although this doesn't mean blocking
| efforts will instantly end.)
|
| The website is blocked again. [1]
|
| > However, people are able to connect to its services using
| volunteer-run bridges--entry points to the network that can't
| easily be blocked, as their details aren't public--and Tor's
| anti-censorship tool Snowflake.
|
| It seems that plenty of bridges (the ones you obtain via the
| website) are blocked, refuse connections, or otherwise don't
| function properly. I've checked yet again now, with a bunch of
| hand-picked bridges to which connections at least succeeded at
| some point in the past, and connections over Tor just time out.
|
| It is still helpful though, but unfortunately "beating" looks
| like an overly optimistic way to describe this.
|
| [1]
| https://www.rbc.ru/technology_and_media/28/07/2022/62e28fc39...
| fossuser wrote:
| Public bridges often get blocked (the CCP does this too). Tor
| then spreads them privately through social media with people
| they trust in the country. Those are harder to find, but that's
| also why they're harder to block.
| H8crilA wrote:
| FWIW the Russian internet censorship is pretty weak because their
| propaganda machine relies on more traditional techniques for
| keeping things in check (domestic terror, lies about external
| danger, distortion of significant founding myths such as the
| victory over Nazism, exploiting native nationalism, and even just
| the basic need to feel sane via denial of reality). They missed
| the opportunity window to build a great firewall, but it seems it
| isn't needed after all.
| cabirum wrote:
| Tor was developed by US military and is funded by dept of state.
| It should not be trusted. Better set up your own tunnel/vpn on a
| host you control.
| system33- wrote:
| Now the other end of that tunnel still uniquely identifies you.
| It helps in some adversary models, but not many or all.
|
| I work for the Navy. The Naval Research Lab where Tor and onion
| routing was started. I wrote a FAQ to respond to these concerns
| on Reddit here[0]. AMA if you want.
|
| [0]:
| https://old.reddit.com/r/onions/comments/kdjrxa/tor_was_star...
| cabirum wrote:
| Thanks for an interesting read!
|
| Now, time for a thought experiment. Imagine Tor was instead
| developed by Russian researchers working for Russian ministry
| of defense at the time. Would you use it to visit rt.com
| blocked in your country?
| system33- wrote:
| Sure.
|
| The funding was secured to protect $military comms.
| Allegedly the $military actively uses it, so it better be
| actually secure, especially when malicious foreign enemy
| actors have had two decades to study it. Academics have
| studied it to death, and some of their discovered attacks
| have actually resulted in transitioned improvements. I
| myself have the benefit of (1) being _extremely_ familiar
| with how it works on the lowest level and what its
| weaknesses are, and (2) not considering myself a target
| worth my $govt 's close monitoring.
| cabirum wrote:
| Your point makes sense. My distrust comes from the fact
| that $militaries keep separate versions for toys they
| export/publish vs toys they use. See: M1 Abrams export
| variants, cryptography export laws (limited key lengths;
| restrictions mostly lifted), etc.
| doublerabbit wrote:
| Unless you own colocation, with your own netblock, the VPN
| still cannot be trusted.
| ravenstine wrote:
| Not only that, but so much attention is on Tor and there are
| irreconcilable problems with its architecture.
|
| People should consider using I2P instead, which didn't come out
| of government research and has superior anonymity.
|
| https://geti2p.net
|
| The downside is it doesn't have a browser bundle like Tor, but
| it's possible to configure Tor Browser to use it. Turning off
| scripting all together is really a better approach no matter
| which tool you use, be it I2P or Tor.
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