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Tor blocked in Turkey as government cracks down on VPN use
- edblarney 10y agoIn my experience, these countries do not have the sophistication to do such things on their own, they usually hire (often Western) outside firms to do this. I think it would be helpful if the press would 'name names' in terms of the companies that are enabling this.
- wfn 10y ago> they usually hire (often Western) outside firms to do this. Yep, such as Cisco which helps China, to quote Cisco's pitch slides, "combat ‘Falun Gong’ evil religion and other hostiles" (https://www.wired.com/2008/05/leaked-cisco-do https://www.wired.com/2008/05/leaked-cisco-do ; https://www.wired.com/images_blogs/threatlevel/files/cisco_presentation.pdf https://www.wired.com/images_blogs/threatlevel/files/cisco_p... (PDF)).
- edblarney 10y agoChina definitely has the capabilities they need. They might get help from Cisco, but they don't need to. I worked in an F50 that sold services, and we were constantly having to 'help' countries like Tunisia, Kazakstan etc. do some things we didn't want them to do, we tried to steer clear of being involved but we could not in some circumstances. But it wasn't that bad, it was mostly porn filtering and such.
- bogomipz 10y agoWhat's an F50?
- SCHiM 10y agoWhich company was this?
- edblarney 10y ago"Which company was this?" There's no way I would name the company, it would be a breach of confidentiality. If there was something tantamount to whistle-blowing, possibly, but there was nothing illegal going on. "What is F50?" 'Fortune 50'
- tyingq 10y agoThis article suggests that Turkey is doing this kind of work themselves: http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304626304579505912518706936 http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014240527023046263045795059... Although, it does mention some help from Google with YouTube... "In late 2012, Google launched a local version of YouTube, a move that allowed the company to block access to some videos within Turkey while making them available elsewhere. " Edit: Ahh, did find one US company with deep packet inspection tech assisting Turkey...Procera. http://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2016/10/25/procera-francisco-partners-turkey-surveillance-erdogan/#76e8bc9075ce http://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2016/10/25/procer...
- gaius 10y agoThat's a very Western attitude. Turkey is an advanced country with amongst others, a sophisticated aerospace industry. There is no reason they can't have local expertise in networking, which lets face it is simple in comparison.
- edblarney 10y ago"That's a very Western attitude" Yeah. Sure. Turkey can make airplanes. Great. They still need help with a lot of things. Can you name any Turkish companies that build packet sniffing hardware? That design special ASICS for this? Content filtering solutions? Specialized networking gear? Maybe, but probably not. The vast majority of countries that have 'controlled internet' scenarios cannot do it themselves, or rather, it would be very difficult to do. In fact - which countries could do it alone ... Russia, China, surely. India. Turkey ... probably not. Saudi, Morocco, Jordan, Egypt, Indo, basically every country in M/E and Africa, pretty much all of South America (maybe Brazil?), probably not Pakistan, not North Korea. Forget 'Western' - there are just a few countries that could do it alone, depending on the degree of sophistication of control. Basically West/North Europe, USA/Can, Japan, S. Korea, Russia, China, India ... Singapore even is probably too small. It's not a long list.
- spaceplane 10y agoI have actually developed deep packet inspecting firewalls in Turkey. There are both domestic and exported solutions. ISPs are required by law to use one.
- spaceplane 10y agoTurkey has the technology. I have worked on one. Turkish science council gives large grants for national security related technologies. So even it is not profitable, technologies like DPI are developed by several private firms.
- edblarney 10y agoThat's very interesting. Turkey is a really intriguing place - they are on the threshold of so many thing, culturally, politically, economically. On some days they seem like a regular, modern nation ... the next day there is a 'coup attempt' and the Prez. is announcing mass jailings :)
- eloy 10y agoEvents like this is the reason I operate a few Tor Bridges. It gives uncensored internet to vulnerable people in countries that are (semi-)dictatorships. The Streisand VPN includes a Tor Bridge by default, so if you ever have problems with an advanced firewall that blocks most VPN protocols, Streisand with Tor is your friend. Tor Bridges are also a nice playground for modern cryptography, they are working on PQ Crypto: https://gitweb.torproject.org/user/isis/torspec.git/plain/proposals/XXX-newhope-hybrid-handshake.txt?h=draft/newhope https://gitweb.torproject.org/user/isis/torspec.git/plain/pr...
- rokosbasilisk 10y agoI think uncensored internet is under attack in general even in the america and europe. No one with power seems to like the idea of stuff they cant control.
- benevol 10y ago> I think uncensored internet is under attack in general even in the america and europe ...where the actors are more subtle and use mass surveillance to manipulate people and undermine "dissidents".
- the8472 10y agoThe UK is also putting quite a filtering infrastructure in place. To fight terrorism, extremists, porn, filesharing etc.
- velox_io 10y agoI read about this too, it sounds like a firewall to me. Source: http://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/police-must-be-given-power-to-shut-websites-in-child-abuse-and-revenge-porn-fight-a3422131.html http://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/police-must-be-given-po...
- loverofcode 10y ago?so, does the bridge work the same as an exit?
- retox 10y agoAnd the EU says we should welcome them in to Europe...
- dijit 10y agoActually it was Britain who were arguing for their membership for years. Most of the EU was wildly sceptical due to an incompatiblility of cultures. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/david-cameron/11283924/David-Cameron-I-still-want-Turkey-to-join-EU-despite-migrant-fears.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/david-cameron/11283...
- icebraining 10y agoSir Humphrey Appleby: Minister, Britain has had the same foreign policy objective for at least the last 500 years: to create a disunited Europe. In that cause we have fought with the Dutch against the Spanish, with the Germans against the French, with the French and Italians against the Germans, and with the French against the Germans and Italians. Divide and rule, you see. Why should we change now, when it's worked so well? James Hacker: That's all ancient history, surely. Sir Humphrey Appleby: Yes, and current policy. We had to break the whole thing up, so we had to get inside. We tried to break it up from the outside, but that wouldn't work. Now that we're inside we can make a complete pig's breakfast of the whole thing.
- atmosx 10y agoYMPM is by far and large the best political satire show ever made.
- matt4077 10y ago"Incompatibility of cultures" is a slogan for "too dark-skinned" or "too muslim". From around '95 to 2005 Turkey was making excellent progrsss on all fronts. They were as laicistic as the french, economically at least as competitive as Portugal was when they joined, had a generation of cosmopolitan entrepreneurs etc etc. They provably weren't ready for full membership, but a defined schedule with measurable checkpoints could have anchored the country in the EU. But Kohl & Mitterand didn't just have to say no, they had to do it the most disrespectful of ways: "you're culturally incompatible and you always will be". You'd think they could've at least looked at a map, maybe again some time in the fall of 2001 and thought "oh, what's that country? It'd be really useful if they'd work with us"
- coldcode 10y agoCould happen in any country, including the US, unless you have options to connect to the internet which is not heavily controlled. Sadly in the US we have only a few remaining ISPs with monopolies who in the near future will likely gain even more power to restrict the internet for profit; after that what is to stop the government from adding a few more "additions", like making illegal connections to TOR or unapproved VPNs. Sadly the most vulnerable part of the internet is the point where you connect. No matter what you do after that, if you can't connect you are generally stuck.
- marcoperaza 10y agoI don't think the number of ISPs is really relevant. The rule of law is pretty strong in the United States. If the government made Tor illegal, and that law withstood constitutional scrutiny, it wouldn't really matter if there was one or one thousand ISPs.
- rahrahrah 10y agoYeah. I think that crypto-ideologues (although I'm not saying that the parent is one) often underestimate the impact that the law has in practice on these matters.
- d0mine 10y agoYou underestimate the selective use of law by the elites. How many bankers are behind bars? Do you see anybody punished for starting a war under false pretenses? for mass surveillance? for lying to Congress about it?
- CurtMonash 10y agoI think the claim was along the lines that if you want to restrict people's freedoms in this country, it's best to get a law passed allowing you to do so. That's oversimplified, of course, as is common in such online discussions, but it makes considerable practical sense. Your claim seems focused on other categories of wrongdoing. Now, the two areas could overlap in the future. To date, there's been a lot of illegal surveillance that has gone unpunished, but few people have actually suffered, at least in the US, because the government has been quite restrained about its actual domestic use of the resulting information. In the future, of course, the government might not show such restraint. By "future" I mean, for example, the period starting next January 20.
- Roritharr 10y agoIs this a political post or a technical one?
- bluesign 10y agoI think it is fair to say it is technical enough to be here
- Roritharr 10y agoIt surely is, but since this site lately has taken a stance against politics here, I wanted to understand where the line is drawn.
- dfgasfjhjhsdojj 10y agoThe one week experiment ended early. Politics has been allowed again for longer than the experiment ended - I think we are supposed to remain civil though.
- enraged_camel 10y agoThat stance was withdrawn a few days after it was instantiated.
- kilroy123 10y agoI wonder if they can do the same thing they're doing in Iran? Beaming down packets of internet content from satellite TV. http://wired.com/2016/04/ingenious-way-iranians-using-satellite-tv-beam-banned-data/amp http://wired.com/2016/04/ingenious-way-iranians-using-satell...
- makomk 10y agoProbably not. That's funded by a foreign government (almost certainly the US government) as a kind of propaganda tool against Iran. I don't think anyone's interested in doing the same thing to Turkey currently.
- kilroy123 10y agoI doubt it. Did you read the article? They badly _need_ funding and are having a tough time keeping it afloat. I see no evidence to suggest foreign interests at play.
- makomk 10y agoYes, I read the Wired article. It mentions the government funding. I'm guessing the US because it's very much the kind of project they fund.
- danjoc 10y agoI wonder how much this has to do with tor rebranding from privacy service to human rights service. https://medium.com/@virgilgr/tors-branding-pivot-is-going-to-get-someone-killed-6ee45313b559 https://medium.com/@virgilgr/tors-branding-pivot-is-going-to...
- kutkloon7 10y agoThe arrest and torture of an exorbitant number of 'enemies of the state', including judges, police officers, and teachers, indicates more important problems in Turkey. For some reason, a lot of Turks still seem to support Erdogan. The West doesn't really care what he does, as long as Turkey takes care of most of the refugees. A disgusting European policy.
- tyingq 10y ago>For some reason, a lot of Turks still seem to support Erdogan You hear 3 reasons, typically... - Viewed as a champion for lower class citizens, who weren't well represented in past administrations - Supportive of religious conservatives, also not represented well in the past - The economy has improved under his tenure. Inflation slowed, infrastructure improved, etc. Not disputing your view of him, but he is popular for palpable reasons.
- agumonkey 10y agoI still remember the people kicking tanks away the night of the failed coup. That dude has fans.
- grenoire 10y agoInternal economy seems like it has improved by the numbers, but the greatest problem is the longevity of these improvements. If Turkey is not able to keep its economy together, whereas it will likely not be able to due to the aforementioned improvements being a result of the construction industry supplying for no demand, it is going to crash very badly. Additionally, with its foreign policies and own political and socioeconomic problems, foreign investment has gone down significantly, leading to a great exchange rate declines (1.2 USD/TRY prior to the 2008 crisis, to 3.5 USD/TRY close today).
- agumonkey 10y agoSorry for the digression, in democracy, if 49% of the voters are non violent enemies is it a problem ?
- icebraining 10y ago
- willvarfar 10y agoAnyone else remember the time the TurkTrust cert was used to mitm Google? https://www.google.se/amp/s/nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2013/01/08/the-turktrust-ssl-certificate-fiasco-what-happened-and-what-happens-next/amp/ https://www.google.se/amp/s/nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2013/01... Does Turkey still have a key the gov can use to mitm connections terminating there? And if so, can someone make instructions in Turkish on how to blacklist the Turkish TLS certs in mainstream browsers so that the gov can't mitm their own citizens? For that matter, I don't want a Turkish root of trust in my own browser either, but the list of roots in our browsers is so long it's kinda meaningless to start zapping them - I mean, who trusts Verisign anyway?
- rahrahrah 10y agoI've heard about problems with trusting certain certificates. Any suggestion where I can read about these specific matters that you mentioned? Thanks.
- Bombthecat 10y agoMozilla has a Google discussion forum for stuff like that. Just Google stardom and Mozilla discussion:)
- rhlala 10y agoI wonder how many ℅ people using tor/vpn will still using it if it was strongly punished by government(s) with jail for exemple..
- sandstrom 10y agoIf you want to donate to Tor bridges/nodes, these are two alternatives: - http://tor.noisebridge.net/ http://tor.noisebridge.net/ - https://www.torservers.net/ https://www.torservers.net/
- towb 10y agoNothing unexpected for the 2016 Turkey. With everything that goes on in there now, it won't be too long until something really horrible happens. Boycott everything turkish is the only thing we can do as normal persons I guess. That is at least what I've done for a long while now.
- toyg 10y ago> Boycott everything turkish is the only thing we can do That doesn't seem to work very well. It certainly didn't with with Israel, simply pushing the country more and more into a paranoid mindset of continuous siege which is effectively exploited only by hardliners like Netanyahu. Similarly, economic sanctions didn't work against the original Fascism either. Arguably they didn't work against Iran either, they barely gave "the west" a bargaining chip when the nuclear issue could not be ignored anymore. And they are not working against Russia about Ukraine.
- spaceplane 10y agoPlease don't. Poorer they are, more fanatic they get.
- towb 10y agoThe poorer they get, more reason to get rid of the leaders. And that is something only the people can do. Anyway, I can't justify it with what I know and what we hear almost daily now.
- bogomipz 10y agoThis is the same President that turned to the internet - via Twitter and Facetime when there was a coup attempt against him, asking for them to help. http://www.wsj.com/articles/erdogan-embraces-social-media-to-repel-coup-attempt-in-u-turn-1468760698 http://www.wsj.com/articles/erdogan-embraces-social-media-to...
- Yaggo 10y ago(Cannot read the paywalled article.) I wonder how FaceTime was utilized, given that it's one-to-one link, not social media.
- tyingq 10y agoIt was super low tech...a CNN Turk anchor held her phone up to a TV camera. http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2016/07/17/01/3658391B00000578-0-image-m-14_1468716660357.jpg http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2016/07/17/01/3658391B0000057...
- Tepix 10y agoDecentralization is key to bypass these type of firewalls. All commercial VPN vendors will be on blacklists sooner or later. Hang around lowendtalk / lowendbox and rent a tiny dir cheap VPS. Just SSH there and use the SOCKS5 proxy built into SSH. I hope they will not block SSH any time soon. If they do you can set up a HTTPS website on your VPS with a secret proxy.
- gruez 10y ago>I hope they will not block SSH any time soon GFW already does that. it's not that hard either, if you're using ssh for forwarding purposes, chances are you're using way more bandwidth than if you're using it for teletype only.
- Tepix 10y agoSSH can also be used for SCP...
- funnyfacts365 10y agoAnd SFTP
- AlexCoventry 10y ago> GFW already [blocks ssh] Where can I read more about that?
- hkjgkjy 10y agoShows the importance of using simple tools. Similarly, I've recently discovered how to send encrypted email from your command line, really really easy (note that Gmail throws these away if they come from an invalid domain name). `echo "This is a secret message" | gpg -e -a -r "recipients@gpg.key" | mail -s "Your eyecatching subject line" recipients-email@example.com`
- Tepix 10y agoFor encryption using S/MIME with mailx (from heirloom-mailx), see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12742809 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12742809
- gaius 10y agoTor was funded by the US State Department specifically so that anti-government elements in foreign countries could plot against their equivalent of "the establishment". Given the recent furore about "hackers" stealing the election, how is it surprising that foreign governments don't want US interference in their internal politics?
- aroma12344 10y agoWonder why parent was downvoted..
- mikebay 10y agoTurkey gov are working closely with USA, Facebook and Google to try block and censure all fakenews sites and procecute people for reading "fake news". Weldone Turkey, "freedom of speech" was too much anyway ? Facebook and Google ? - no thanks!
- bestbinaryrr 10y agoIf youre a newbie to binary options, i advice you contact bestbinaryrr on gmail and outlook for the best and safer managing strategies Text +19193076946 for more info
- louithethrid 10y agoIf only internet could be smuggled on the cellphones of citizens, one huge encrypted package at a time, hidden away, and the infrastructure of this spread like a virus- TOR could be everywhere.
- walrus01 10y agoRemember a short time ago when there was a failed coup in turkey, and the NEXT DAY, the regime fired 4000 judicial officials and civil servants? It's almost as if they had the list of people ready to go before the false flag coup... Nah,an autocratic regime would never do that!