26 ms·

How the Catalan government uses IPFS to sidestep Spain's legal block

906 points by kilburn 9y ago

multibit 9y ago
"it is nearly-impossible for any actor to block access to this content because it is replicated around the network automatically, using peer-to-peer encrypted connections that would be very hard to identify and block at the ISP level. Maybe China could do it, but Spain definitely cannot." How would China do it?
- geofft 9y ago
  China has the ability (primarily at layer 8 but also at layer 2) to fail closed in the case of unknown but suspicious content from outside, and also has (again, primarily at layer 8) enough control over ISPs to demand filtering on peer-to-peer traffic. Spain doesn't have that infrastructure, and deploying it would cause enough false positives to negatively affect the economy of non-Catalan parts of Spain.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- pyre 9y ago
  I imagine because China has spent more time on the required infrastructure to make this happen. Spain is trying to stop something that is set to happen on Oct 1, so they have a finite amount of time to suppress the information.
  - JBReefer 9y ago
    By the same token, they're also not the home of a bunch of friendly companies that will implement the work, unlike China, and they don't have a long history of trying to stop the flow of information, unlike China, and they don't have a effectively infinite budget, unlike China. I'm betting against Spain on this one. Go Catalonia!
    - rocqua 9y ago
      There is a huge gap between having a referendum on independence and actually being independent.
- ohyes 9y ago
  I'm not an IPFS expert, but my guess is they have the great firewall, so they can MITM every connection and inspect all of the packets for this type of content and do whatever to the originator/packets.
  - diggan 9y ago
    Does the great firewall just happen between outside and inside (Chinese) connections? With IPFS, you could have a direct connection to peers and you could have a direct link (same WiFi for example) where nothing leaves your network when downloading. As long as one peer in the network has a outside connection, all peers could access that content via relay for example.
    - ohyes 9y ago
      Sure, but they can easily pressure ISPs, Spain can do that too. The problem is spain has no leverage against outside computers. China has this via great firewall.
- xfs 9y ago
  If IPFS is not entirely stateless the protocol to set up the state will always have identifiable information, like how TLS is easily blocked in the same way. Also, a protocol-agnostic approach is traffic analysis with machine learning (this is being used to identify custom-protocol VPNs).
- QML 9y ago
  Probably the same way China banned WhatsApp earlier this week.
- ttflee 9y ago
  Easy. First identify some hotspot user, send the police, prosecute one or two, and let the chilling effect finish the rest.
  - enriquto 9y ago
    in this particular situation, this would actually encourage wider adoption due to the streisand effect
kilburn 9y ago
Author here. I've tried to keep the article as apolitical as possible, while giving some context to provide the setting. Anyway, I'm very interested in knowing if the used crypto is sound or not, and stirring a discussion around possible alternative approaches. Ask me anything if you want to know further!
- diggan 9y ago
  Alternative approach: Instead of using the IPFS2HTTP gateways (that can easily be censored, as gateway.ipfs.io has already been censored in Catalunya), run a IPFS daemon locally that cannot be censored (but is not anonymous either). I live in Catalunya and wrote this tool for doing just that, in a easy way. It 1) starts a go-ipfs daemon locally, 2) opens up the referendum website in your default browser, via localhost. If you're interested in accessing the website from inside Catalunya, give it a try: https://git.io/vdGUx https://git.io/vdGUx
  - kodablah 9y ago
    > that cannot be censored I am not familiar with IPFS internals, but is there no pattern to the IPFS traffic that the ISPs can shape/block? Too bad about the entire IPFS domain being blocked, because besides the host, HTTPS traffic has safety in numbers. If only there was a way to proxy through google.com or some other popular domain too important to block.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - TeMPOraL 9y ago
      They'd have to block it close to endpoints, because IPFS is a P2P system.
      - kodablah 9y ago
        I don't think that's tough if a country has said you need to be able to filter traffic. Assuming it is a simple pattern (e.g. whatever their NAT busting bootstrap is), set of ports, etc they could easily push filter rules to their downstream network devices if the law makes them.
diggan 9y ago
"it is nearly-impossible for any actor to block access to this content because it is replicated around the network automatically, using peer-to-peer encrypted connections that would be very hard to identify and block at the ISP level. " It's right that the connections are encrypted, but it's NOT correct to say that content is automatically replicated (but it's a common misconception). Instead, content who is wanted by other peers is the only content that gets replicated. You need to explicitly "pin" content to help replicate it. This is different from Freenet where content is indeed pushed out to other peers in that fashion.
- timthelion 9y ago
  You do NOT need to explicitly pin content to help replicate it. Any content which is requested via IPFS is replicated by the daemon, up until it is GCed. The only thing that pinning does, is prevent the content from ever being GCed
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - mynewtb 9y ago
    You make it sound like if merely accessing a resource will make my ipfs node share it to others. Is that the case?
    - timthelion 9y ago
      Yes.
    - freshhawk 9y ago
      Yes, analogous to downloading a torrent. The GC is run pretty regularly by default so you generally want to pin anything you want to keep local.
      - gediminas_ 9y ago
        As far as I remember GC isn't run by default - but it could have changed
humblebee 9y ago
"it is nearly-impossible for any actor to block access to this content because it is replicated around the network automatically" This isn't entirely accurate though. It's only replicated if people request it. If everyone only requests the content through `ipfs.io` then the content will only be living on the original seeder, and the IPFS gateway nodes which run GC on a regular basis. Depending on how the content is moved, it _might_ end up on a few other nodes (a way around nats, by using a third party peer to stream content between two peers), but I believe it's only ever moved through the network, and will not be stored on the nodes. If it is, it's only there till the next GC (disabled by default I believe).
sexydefinesher 9y ago
How very crypto-anarchistic
- jsdario 9y ago
  Seems more accurate to say crypto-nationalistic
  - QML 9y ago
    crypto-separatist
mabbo 9y ago
I just left Barcelona a couple hours ago, the capital of Catalonia. Everywhere you look, Catalan flags, signs demanding 'democracia', demanding freedom. I'm told this is just normal for the region, but if this is normal then independence is eventual.
- lloyd-christmas 9y ago
  150 years after the US civil war, the confederate flag is still flying around. I wouldn't be to hasty to call it eventual.
  - zakk 9y ago
    If you are comparing the two, you have never visited Catalunya. The flag is everywhere, also they speak a different language.
    - faragon 9y ago
      That's not correct. In mother tongue terms, 55% of population in Catalonia has the Spanish as his tongue (mother/habitual tongue), and 35% Catalan. The "economic power" is in hands of Catalan-"ethnic" people, though. Source (official): https://www.idescat.cat/pub/?id=ed&lang=en https://www.idescat.cat/pub/?id=ed&lang=en "The first casualty when war comes is truth".
      - icebraining 9y ago
        55% of population has Spanish as their mother tongue, but that's not necessarily what they speak now. Is there any poll showing what they actually speak daily?
        faragon 9y ago
        55% mother/habitual tongue. In the above link (official data, from an official source) is explained in detail.
baxtr 9y ago
I really wonder why we have such a hard time to get along with each other...
codewithcheese 9y ago
It seems shocking that Spain a member of the EU is resorting to these tactics. Can you discuss some of their justifications for doing so?
- kilburn 9y ago
  The spanish constituion explicitly states that Spain is an indivisible country. Hence, the Constituional Court (that is elected by the parliament) has ruled out that any referendum about independence is illegal. At this point, the government says that both them and the judiciary powers are just defending the democratic rules, and Catalonia's government is the one at fault for all this hassle. The problem is that it is accepted that there's a wide majority of catalan people who want a referendum, and here we are...
  - pvaldes 9y ago
    And this is not the end of the history. Would be naively opening the door to a full hell of pain. Try to give one candy to calm a child having a tantrum in a room full of them and see what happens when the other children realize that crying, breaking toys and banging the head on the wall equals to be rewarded with sweets. You allow somebody to break the law and jump over the constitution just because they are inconsolable otherwise. You fell in the trap. Now you must grant the same treatment to the rest. Similar referendums were demanded (and should have to be allowed in the very next day) for Euskadi, Galicia, Canary Islands, Asturias, Leon, Andalucia and only god knows what more. Two can play this game, and ten also. The idea is not Germany allowing or not a referendum for Bavaria; or UK trying to please Scottland; the idea would be: you must now be forced to grant referendums for each single state in Deutschland or UK to make us happy "or we will stop breathing (and will create a permanent state of confrontation and street disturbs)".
    - ukoki 9y ago
      So? If they want independence who are we to deny it? If your spouse wants a divorce, if your children wish to disown you — you can't deny them just because it's an inconvenience — it is their right.
geofft 9y ago
Wow, this is super cool that they thought of / implemented this. (I think your math on bits is wrong: I'm getting that log2(1010 * 23 * 365 * 4) = 33.4, not 28.) A few notes on the crypto off the top of my head: 1. 1714 iterations of SHA-256 seems really low given that you're going to be looking this up approximately once per person. My 2010-era laptop can compute about a million hashes per second according to `openssl speed sha256`. A second or two to look this up is definitely comparable with what a human would expect the UX to be for a dynamic website run by a government; honestly I wouldn't complain about up to a minute as long as there was a clear progress bar. So you could easily change it from 1,714 hashes to 1,714,000 without impacting UX, and you should probably do that given the relatively small key space, which would give you a factor of 1000x on the brute force attack. 2. AES-256-CBC with no IV smells funny to me. I guess every message is encrypted with a different key, but the keys themselves are easily derivable (they're just a single SHA-256 hash of the lookup key, and those are all in the public filesystem). I cannot think immediately of an attack against this but maybe someone else can. 3. Your brute-force estimates are what's needed to enumerate the entire lookup key space. The practical attack here is what you've outlined, that you know someone's date of birth and zip code (which are likely in public records). and want their national ID for some identity theft. You're not trying to find some arbitrary person to steal the identity of. That means that the date of birth and zip code are fixed, and you only need to brute-force the DNI portion, which has only 10^5 * 23 possibilities. That's extremely realistic: I can compute 10^5 * 23 * 1715 hashes on my 2010 laptop in a little over an hour. I guess they do the right thing by only using a part of the DNI string, so you still have three unknown decimal digits, and zero information about what they might be.
- jsdario 9y ago
  How is it any better to hash the same text 256 times? Entropy will always be the same. You'd just need to change the hashing function. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/115406/is-it-more-secure-to-hash-a-password-multiple-times?newreg=3a63ea8553284290bab9759378411a90 https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/1154...
- kilburn 9y ago
  > (I think your math on bits is wrong: I'm getting that log2(1010 * 23 * 365 * 4) = 33.4, not 28.) 1. Totally right that I'm wrong, but I'm now getting 48 bits, not 33 ;) 2. That was a terrible mistake of my own. The lookup key is derived from the password, not the other way around. I've corrected the article to clarify that! 3. Yeah that's why I said you can do it with your laptop and not too much time ;) Only using the latest part of the DNI is not that good though. The letter is actually a control character, which can be computed from the 8 numbers. Hence, if you have 5 numbers and the letter, there are only some possible 3-digit prefixes that lead to a valid DNI! How many? I would have to investigate further hehe...
mtgx 9y ago
I hope Mozilla shows leadership in adopting IPFS support in Firefox. I don't necessarily want it to adopt IPFS right now, but it should have a plan for when it thinks the project is "mature enough" to be adopted in a mainstream browser, but also it should be early enough that Firefox is the first to do it. Maybe Mozilla should even get involved early in IPFS so that it can shape the protocols the way it would prefer them to work in its browser later on (while still ensuring the censorship-resistance vision of the project remains intact).
- clarry 9y ago
  Should they also adopt Tor, Freenet, I2P, etc.? But I would give a thumbs up for Gopher support.
  - timthelion 9y ago
    I would hope they adopt Tor at some point. That would be awesome. Why shouldn't they?
    - KGIII 9y ago
      I'd guess the two biggest issues would be bloat and expectations. Doing so is going to add bloat that is needless to the majority of people. If they add support for Tor, people are going to expect them to add support for more protocols, from torrents to freenet to gopher.
    - dna_polymerase 9y ago
      Why should they? Tor is managed by the Tor Project. It is bundled & shipped as TBB already, using Firefox. You already can use it if you want to, so why would they bother with implementing Tor in the mainstream version of Firefox? They could only offer it as option (because not everyone wants to use Tor all the time) and this option is already satisfied.
      - timthelion 9y ago
        So that it is more accessible to "normal" people and so that onion links would "just work"
timthelion 9y ago
On one of the websites there is an ax in the coat of arms. http://www.referendum.cat/ http://www.referendum.cat/ I recognize that ax symbol from somewhere. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism
- icebraining 9y ago
  Yeap. It's true that the ax is older than Fascism, but its adoption on the symbol of the Spanish Civil Guard is from 1943 - right during the Franquist regime.
- enriquto 9y ago
  It is the symbol of the "Guardia Civil", a spanish paramilitary force.
  - timthelion 9y ago
    I'm not actually suggesting that they are fascists, similar symbolism is used in the US as well https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Lincoln_(1920_statue)#/media/File:Lincoln_statue.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Lincoln_(1920_statue)#... . And the phrase "E pluribus unum" on American money also has the same roots as the symbol. But it is amusing to me, because the idea behind the symbol is very authoritarian and fascist.
    - timthelion 9y ago
      A conceptually identical icon is used by Anarchists as well ;) https://propertyistheft.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/1917_iww.jpg https://propertyistheft.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/1917_iww...
    - int_19h 9y ago
      Fasces are supposed to represent the general concept of law and governance. Since law is ultimately always about forcing (some) people to to do something that they don't want to do, the symbol does have violent connotations, but I'd call that truth in advertising - another take on Mao's "all power comes out of a barrel of a gun". So, it is authoritarian in a sense that the generic notions of government and rule of law is authoritarian.
antaviana 9y ago
"Basically, the code recurses a sha256 computation 1714 times to get a lookup key, and then once more to get a password for decryption." This is an Easter Egg. Barcelona fell on September 11, 1714 during the War of Spanish Succession and with that Catalonia's freedom as well. September 11 is the National Day of Catalonia. Also, at 17:14 of each and every game of FC Barcelona in Camp Nou Stadium, Barcelona fans claim for independence [1]. So it was not by chance that the coder chose 1714 for the encryption algorithm. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EneqR3oDpmQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EneqR3oDpmQ
- kilburn 9y ago
  The 1714 is in an abbr tag with a title that explains that ;)
  - striking 9y ago
    That's pretty hard to notice, haha.
    - kilburn 9y ago
      An Easter Egg for another Easter Egg... it seemed just right to me (and I didn't want to interrupt the article's flow with that, admittedly)
    - rnhmjoj 9y ago
      Off topic: I don't know if it's Firefox, GTK or some other component at fault but all tooltips in the browser last for an unreasonably short amount of time and it's really hard to read something more than a couple of words. I have to either view the page source or freeze the process. I wonder why a tooltip is supposed to disappear in the first place.
      - gras 9y ago
        My guess would be GTK, I'm on Debian Stretch, XFCE + i3 + firefox-esr and I have no such problem.
agl 9y ago
"Basically, the code recurses a sha256 computation 1714 times to get a lookup key, and then once more to get a password for decryption." Other way around, no? The index is the hash of the decryption key (as it should be), it's just that the index is called "key" and the key is called "lookup". If the decryption key was the hash of the index, then it would be trivial to decrypt every entry.
- kilburn 9y ago
  You are right, and I made a huge blunder while "prettifying" the code and then commenting it. It should be corrected now!
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
themihai 9y ago
What if ipfs.io goes down? The DNS has always been the bottleneck.
- aoeusnth1 9y ago
  Spray paint 8.8.8.8 on buildings.
  - Asdfbla 9y ago
    Government could probably just block any DNS requests that want to resolve the ipfs.io domain. Though Spain probably does not have the censorship infrastructure deployed for that the way a country like China has.
    - contravariant 9y ago
      Spray paint the IP of ipfs.io? For reference it's 147.135.130.181. Or if you want to go to the Catalan referendum page, it's http://147.135.130.181/ipns/QmZxWEBJBVkGDGaKdYPQUXX4KC5TCWbvuR4iYZrTML8XCR/en/index.html http://147.135.130.181/ipns/QmZxWEBJBVkGDGaKdYPQUXX4KC5TCWbv.... Unfortunately SSL doesn't work, as the certificate is only valid on ipfs.io.
    - Fnoord 9y ago
      This is why DNSCrypt [1] and DNSCurve [2] are a good thing because they encrypt the data between client and resolver. Although they can block all of the traffic to/from any known resolvers, that's draconic and a lot of work, and it is quite a list. Mac/Homebrew users: brew cask install dnscrypt Windows/Chocolatey users: choco install simplednscrypt (or alternative see [3]) Linux: should be in your package manager. Generally, searching for dnscrypt should yield some useful software. It isn't difficult to set up via command line IMO. There's probably howto's to be found via search engine as well. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNSCrypt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNSCrypt [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNSCurve https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNSCurve [3] https://github.com/Noxwizard/dnscrypt-winclient https://github.com/Noxwizard/dnscrypt-winclient
  - 9y ago
yk 9y ago
Hmm, it appears I have misplaced my mirrorshades. I mean it's really bright in the future.
- wyager 9y ago
  A healthy dose of Gibson and Stephenson helps me to stay sane. It feels like we're approaching a singularity.
c3534l 9y ago
If my government did that, I'd certainly want independence, too.
amelius 9y ago
As an outsider, it's strange that nobody here seems to question whether the referendum really makes sense. Forgetting about Catalonia for a moment, isn't it fundamentally amoral that a part of the country where prosperity has (by mere chance) concentrated suddenly wants to split off? Isn't this taking wealth-inequality to the next level? Of course the people in a prosperous part of the country want to split off. Absolute democracy seems to result in an undesirable situation, because do we really want to live in a world that converges towards little selfish islands?
- TheMagicHorsey 9y ago
  "by mere chance" Is that your opinion, or do the Catalonians and people outside Spain agree?
  - contravariant 9y ago
    Does being conveniently located to trade on the Mediterranean sea count as chance or not?
    - pvaldes 9y ago
      Valencia is also in the same line, but there is a dirty secret that nobody wants to hear and much less admit. Franco, being the same horrible dictator that killed a lot of innocent people, favoured actively Catalonia's economy over other provinces, for decades. Is true that he discouraged them to speak in Catalonian language, but also discouraged people to speak in Galician language (and Franco was born in Galicia). At the same time give them priority in the efforts to rebuild industry and infraestructures after the civil war. Catalonia is richest than other parts of Spain, in part because Franco wanted 1) having a cluster of industries next European frontiers and roads to trade and obtain foreign divises easily, 2) money from tourism 3) conjurate the revolts giving the area a special silk-hand treatment after the first iron years passed. Specially in the late stages of franquism, a massive exodus of workers from other parts of Spain migrated and stablished in Catalonia atracted by the favourable conditions to work and live and the "smell of freedom". I'm aware that this counts as black heressy for millions of young people in the area, but well... nobody will stop them to read history books about post-war if they want. Ask your grandpa. Everybody in Spain has an uncle or some cousins in Barcelona. Oppression is not something allowing you to became one of the more modern and rich places in the country; oppresion, to me, is what happened to Extremadura in the same period for example.
m-p-3 9y ago
How does one provide a full mirror/node of an IPFS website? I wouldn't mind sparing some bandwidth and storage.
- lindner 9y ago
  First install ipfs then run: ipfs pin add QmZxWEBJBVkGDGaKdYPQUXX4KC5TCWbvuR4iYZrTML8XCR and wait for a large amount of data to be pulled in....
  - m-p-3 9y ago
    Thanks, will do that!
utnick 9y ago
A possibly simpler solution would be to not have assigned places to vote that are based on your ID & DOB. Just vote at the polling place most convenient to you, and announce available polling places on posters around town, or facebook & twitter if you prefer.
- euyyn 9y ago
  The reason that isn't done in any election is because, to prevent people from voting twice, each voting station needs a list of the people that are supposed to vote there.
  - jarofgreen 9y ago
    That's a fair point but doesn't explain why ID & DOB are needed. I asked about this in another comment - in my country, you just need your postcode to find your polling place 99% of the time.
    - NetStrikeForce 9y ago
      It's needed because it depend on the census. In Spain you don't have to register to vote every time. Just show up at the place you have to, based on the census.
      - jarofgreen 9y ago
        Interesting, but that doesn't answer my question. It's not in any way about voter registration. I'm asking why can't you be told where to vote - the original thing the article is about - based on your postcode only. But I think I have my answer in another thread.
tammer 9y ago
I see IPFS as the single most promising & important software projects in the world today.
jaimebuelta 9y ago
Wow, the potential massive leak of private information this could lead to seems quite irresponsible...
jarofgreen 9y ago
"In the where to vote? page, you are prompted to enter some of your details: DNI (national id), Birth date, Zip code" Wait a second, can someone from the area explain this? Why on earth do they need your ID number just to tell you where to vote? In my country (UK) 99% of the time all you need is a postcode and you can be told your voting place. (I say 99% because there are a few postcodes that are split across different seats and thus different people in the same post code have different polling places. Also just to note some areas are bad at publicly supplying this data. But my general point still stands.)
- gotbeans 9y ago
  Catalan here. Your ID is bound to a place to vote based on "where you live" registration. You can't just vote from anywhere.
  - jarofgreen 9y ago
    > You can't just vote from anywhere. I'm not in any way saying you should be able to. You can't in my country either. I'm just surprised that you need your ZIP & ID & DO to find out where you vote, because in my country you can find out where you vote with only your ZIP.
    - enriquto 9y ago
      yes, you can simply check where to vote based on your zip code. The ID is needed for another, independent, check, to verify whether you are actually on the list of voters for that school.
      - jarofgreen 9y ago
        Yes, I think my root problem here is that people are mixing up "Where do I vote?" and "Am I registered to vote?". These are two very different questions with different solutions! Anyway, thanks for your replies.
- kilburn 9y ago
11235813213455 9y ago
please, just use .slice, not .substring or .substr
reeffflio 9y ago
I'm genuinely curious which part ipfs solves here? Given that it's still accessed via browser/domain wouldn't they just block the dns or even ip? In which case this is no more resilient than say multiple domains and dns entries and proxying on from there to a central database (which could be run in a jurisdiction over which Spain has little control and which they would have to discover first anyways)
- cosarara97 9y ago
  I'm not an expert, but I think it goes like this: ipfs, similarly to torrent, is p2p. Given an address (that's a hash for the file), your client will look for other peers that have the file, and get it from them. Unless they find all the peers holding the file or start blocking ipfs traffic, there's little they can do to prevent access.
- TheLugal 9y ago
  Data on IPFS is accessed over P2P, not over IP. ipfs.io is just running a gateway. Anyone could do that. In fact; if you were to run IPFS on your computer, you'd probably have your own gateway on your localhost. Somebody would just make their own public gateway, and the government would need to block another domain. Of cource, running IPFS for yourself would take away any need to use a gateway.
Opossum 9y ago
For those who want more background into what's going on, here is an excellent video from The Economist explaining the independence movement in Catalonia: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NaQ4_v0fz6k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NaQ4_v0fz6k
StavrosK 9y ago
Ah, that explains why I saw various catalán sites being pinned on the IPFS pinning service I run (https://www.eternum.io https://www.eternum.io), which also runs a public writable gateway (so you can access IPFS files, including the banned catalán websites, through it). Having just gotten back from Barcelona, I have to say that the way the Spanish government is handling this is far from ideal. I don't very much support the Catalonian plea for independence (I haven't heard any good reasons other than "but our freedom"), but blocking sites seems... suboptimal. As for the crypto itself, why not use bcrypt? Your users don't care if it takes three seconds, but it makes attacks entirely infeasible.
- NetStrikeForce 9y ago
  Do you mind technically explaining a bit more about pinning, how it works and why would anyone do it?
  - TheLugal 9y ago
    You can't just look at data from the internet without touching it, you need to download it. The same holds true when reading data from the IPFS network. In the process, you make it available for anyone else who ask for it, but only for a limited time; until the Garbage Collector (GC) runs. If I remember correctly, the GC run once every hour or so, so you probably won't reshare the data for longer than that. You need to pin the data if you want to keep resharing it. This effectively tells the GC to not touch it.
    - NetStrikeForce 9y ago
      That was very clear, thanks!
      - StavrosK 9y ago
        You can kind of think of it like seeding a torrent, and pinning ensures the seeding won't stop until you unpin.
sabujp 9y ago
kurdistan, quebec, and california up next
ahachete 9y ago
Let's get the political reasoning straight. Under Spanish Constitution, supreme law in Spain, the right to determine the territory of Spain belongs to all Spaniards (article 2). What some people claim as "democracy" or "the right to vote" is actually removing this right from the rest of Spaniards. Aside from other claims and whether there are political or historical reasons, the voting has been declared illegal by the "Tribunal Constitucional", highest court in Spain. End of story, it's illegal, period. And Spain (mostly judges and police forces) are trying to defend the law. Now a quick note on the alleged economical facts: no, Catalonia does not contribute 16 billion to the rest of the country, it's actually 2,4 billion (this is what Catalonia published last year). This is called "solidarity", and it is what contributes to other regions in Spain to grow and benefit the country as a whole. Madrid is also a significant net contributor. On the other hand, Spain holds 55 billion in debt from Catalonia, which is unable to finance by itself on international debt markets. So numbers don't add that quickly as it has been said here.
- edko 9y ago
  Let me add one thing: the current Spanish Constitution was subject to a referendum in 1978. In Catalonia, it was approved by 90.46% of the votes.
  - adventured 9y ago
    1978, shortly after the dictatorship ended, a time in which Spain was still dominated by cronies from that very dictatorship, and who proceeded to dictate the Constitution. So in 1978 Catalonia's vote mattered and you're claiming today it does not.
    - ahachete 9y ago
      Because it did matter in 1978, there's a law that says that 1-O voting cannot happen, it's illegal. Only all Spaniards can vote regarding the integrity and sovereignty of Spain. If you think 1978's Constitution was approved under some form of oppression, fight that, there are clear ways to change the Constitution. But do not support any illegal activities that remove rights from the rest of the people in the country. The root of the democracy is the respect to the law. Not "voting".
marcoperaza 9y ago
It doesn't matter that they can circumvent it. The fact that the Spanish government has taken such drastic actions means that the result of the vote will be completely meaningless and illegitimate. Opponents of the referendum who agree with the Spanish government will not participate.
- farresito 9y ago
  The reason referendums don't have a minimum of votes is precisely to avoid boicots like the one that the opposition is trying to do, so if they don't want to vote it's up to them, but that doesn't make the referendum any less valid.
  - jknz 9y ago
    If the referendum unlawful, then some people will not go to vote, simply because they usually avoid breaking the law. The result would be valid (from a probabilistic point of view) if "going to vote" was independent of "voting yes". But if the there is any correlation between "going to vote" and "voting yes" then the result of the referendum will be significantly different than the result of a referendum where any individual was forced to vote. Here there might be a correlation: people in favor or independence or more likely to go voting than others. A similar phenomenon may have happened in the us. If there is a correlation between "lying to polls" and "voting for candidate A" then the poll predictions can become very wrong.
jsdario 9y ago
Voting is not necessarily democratic. Hitler won in democracy. Respecting minorities and not playing the victim card is more democratic indeed! There are many republicans dead under catalan descending military charges, all over the peninsula. I don't think being born in Catalonia makes you less fascist. But you can always play the victim card ans act like history never happened.
CaiGengYang 9y ago
Why does a single post like this get 479 points (so many) ?
krab 9y ago
I don't understand why would you need to know a person's details to tell where he should vote. In Czech Republic, you can tell just from your address of residency. It's usually the closest one to your registered address. Therefore, it should be enough to publish just the list of locations and the areas they serve.
daniel_wolves 9y ago
https://youtu.be/6Ggi_QPYRrA https://youtu.be/6Ggi_QPYRrA
enriquto 9y ago
Summary of instructions to add a ipfs node for this site : wget https://dist.ipfs.io/go-ipfs/v0.4.11/go-ipfs_v0.4.11_linux-amd64.tar.gz tar zxf go-ipfs_v0.4.11_linux-amd64.tar.gz cd go-ipfs ./ipfs daemon & ./ipfs pin add QmZxWEBJBVkGDGaKdYPQUXX4KC5TCWbvuR4iYZrTML8XCR The stuff goes into ~/.ipfs
blueyes 9y ago
It's interesting how Russia and Assange are backing every movement that weakens the West (Trump, Brexit, and now this): http://www.businessinsider.com/julian-assange-catalonia-independence-movement-and-referendum-spain-2017-9 http://www.businessinsider.com/julian-assange-catalonia-inde... Russia wants to break apart the bloc with Germany at the center to dominate its neighbors. It's a replay of Russia's tensions with Europe that date at least to the Napoleonic wars, and include WWI and WWII.
teknopaul 9y ago
All seems rather like an arms race.
cJ0th 9y ago
Some interesting insights there. Thanks for this article. I just hope this doesn't lead to more draconian IT laws all over the EU... ;)
ceene 9y ago
The letter in the DNI is a checksum of the numbers. Simply DNI mod 23 indexes a lookup table with the 23 allowed letters, so those 238 card days get reduced to only 10 days!
mola 9y ago
Is there oppression of human rights by the central government? Is there discrimination against catalans ? In other words, what's broken that secession would fix?
frabbit 9y ago
Good historical perspective: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/09/catalonia-independence-referendum-spain-podemos https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/09/catalonia-independence-re...
ismaelmartinez 9y ago
Agree they should have not use a bespoke algorithm but I don't think there is much of a security issue. Knowing where you need to go to vote is not enough to vote. You still need the physical security of the ID (DNI) that includes a few security features (like your face). You can see and image here: http://www.aulaclic.es/articulos/graficos/DNIe.gif http://www.aulaclic.es/articulos/graficos/DNIe.gif From my point of view, this rises a far more interesting question. Do you guys think it could be possible to use blockchain to implement a secure voting system? I do and I got a few ideas about the main issues (authentication, authorisation, validity period and others) and will be happy to discuss with anyone interested on co-developing such a system... or if you know of one already do let me know! Seems like if every computer can be a "poling station", authoritarian regimes/governments will have a more difficult way of stopping this sort of voting from happening. And maybe, only maybe, we can enjoy a free democracy.
h4sh3r 9y ago
I have done: ipfssudo get QmQZzfs7LjkEnmG3zU92YF7ViCcuCXkNokuYoiNe6pKvDZ But I don't see any database only html code, how can I clone this website to see what is happening with my f* data?
vicenteherrera 9y ago
The original article doesn't take into account that DNI letter is calculated from the previous DNI digits with a known formula. So when you choose the numbers, you already know the letter. See for example: https://gist.github.com/afgomez/5691823 https://gist.github.com/afgomez/5691823 So Instead of: 10^10 * 23 * 365 * 4 = 33580 * 10^10 possible combinations , we have 10^10 * 365 * 4 = 1460 * 10^10. And we can represent it with 44 bits instead of 48. To explore all possible combinations, we need then 1460 * 10^10 * 1715 = 25039 * 10^12 hashes, instead of 575897 * 10^12 hashes With AntMiner S9, we can do all hashes in: 25039 * 10^12 / 28 * 10^9 = 10.3 days. If we want to specifically scam a target neighbourhood (imagine sending an email telling people "your local bank in your neighborhood asks you to reset your password), we can choose a fixed zip code, and all this could be guessed with a less powerfull machine (someone else can do the math).
bartolo2 9y ago
I would have used scrypt (memory bound and therefore hardly scalable in ASICs/FPGAs) with a higher round count, say that it takes ~1s to calculate the hash. That way bruteforce is infeasible these days. Also I would have used other sparse information such as street number that hardly can be connected to a particular person.

906 points by kilburn 9y ago

geofft 9y ago
China has the ability (primarily at layer 8 but also at layer 2) to fail closed in the case of unknown but suspicious content from outside, and also has (again, primarily at layer 8) enough control over ISPs to demand filtering on peer-to-peer traffic. Spain doesn't have that infrastructure, and deploying it would cause enough false positives to negatively affect the economy of non-Catalan parts of Spain.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
pyre 9y ago
I imagine because China has spent more time on the required infrastructure to make this happen. Spain is trying to stop something that is set to happen on Oct 1, so they have a finite amount of time to suppress the information.
- JBReefer 9y ago
  By the same token, they're also not the home of a bunch of friendly companies that will implement the work, unlike China, and they don't have a long history of trying to stop the flow of information, unlike China, and they don't have a effectively infinite budget, unlike China. I'm betting against Spain on this one. Go Catalonia!
  - rocqua 9y ago
    There is a huge gap between having a referendum on independence and actually being independent.
ohyes 9y ago
I'm not an IPFS expert, but my guess is they have the great firewall, so they can MITM every connection and inspect all of the packets for this type of content and do whatever to the originator/packets.
- diggan 9y ago
  Does the great firewall just happen between outside and inside (Chinese) connections? With IPFS, you could have a direct connection to peers and you could have a direct link (same WiFi for example) where nothing leaves your network when downloading. As long as one peer in the network has a outside connection, all peers could access that content via relay for example.
  - ohyes 9y ago
    Sure, but they can easily pressure ISPs, Spain can do that too. The problem is spain has no leverage against outside computers. China has this via great firewall.
xfs 9y ago
If IPFS is not entirely stateless the protocol to set up the state will always have identifiable information, like how TLS is easily blocked in the same way. Also, a protocol-agnostic approach is traffic analysis with machine learning (this is being used to identify custom-protocol VPNs).
QML 9y ago
Probably the same way China banned WhatsApp earlier this week.
ttflee 9y ago
Easy. First identify some hotspot user, send the police, prosecute one or two, and let the chilling effect finish the rest.
- enriquto 9y ago
  in this particular situation, this would actually encourage wider adoption due to the streisand effect

Author here. I've tried to keep the article as apolitical as possible, while giving some context to provide the setting. Anyway, I'm very interested in knowing if the used crypto is sound or not, and stirring a discussion around possible alternative approaches. Ask me anything if you want to know further!

diggan 9y ago
Alternative approach: Instead of using the IPFS2HTTP gateways (that can easily be censored, as gateway.ipfs.io has already been censored in Catalunya), run a IPFS daemon locally that cannot be censored (but is not anonymous either). I live in Catalunya and wrote this tool for doing just that, in a easy way. It 1) starts a go-ipfs daemon locally, 2) opens up the referendum website in your default browser, via localhost. If you're interested in accessing the website from inside Catalunya, give it a try: https://git.io/vdGUx https://git.io/vdGUx
- kodablah 9y ago
  > that cannot be censored I am not familiar with IPFS internals, but is there no pattern to the IPFS traffic that the ISPs can shape/block? Too bad about the entire IPFS domain being blocked, because besides the host, HTTPS traffic has safety in numbers. If only there was a way to proxy through google.com or some other popular domain too important to block.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - TeMPOraL 9y ago
    They'd have to block it close to endpoints, because IPFS is a P2P system.
    - kodablah 9y ago
      I don't think that's tough if a country has said you need to be able to filter traffic. Assuming it is a simple pattern (e.g. whatever their NAT busting bootstrap is), set of ports, etc they could easily push filter rules to their downstream network devices if the law makes them.

diggan 9y ago

"it is nearly-impossible for any actor to block access to this content because it is replicated around the network automatically, using peer-to-peer encrypted connections that would be very hard to identify and block at the ISP level. " It's right that the connections are encrypted, but it's NOT correct to say that content is automatically replicated (but it's a common misconception). Instead, content who is wanted by other peers is the only content that gets replicated. You need to explicitly "pin" content to help replicate it. This is different from Freenet where content is indeed pushed out to other peers in that fashion.

timthelion 9y ago
You do NOT need to explicitly pin content to help replicate it. Any content which is requested via IPFS is replicated by the daemon, up until it is GCed. The only thing that pinning does, is prevent the content from ever being GCed
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- mynewtb 9y ago
  You make it sound like if merely accessing a resource will make my ipfs node share it to others. Is that the case?
  - timthelion 9y ago
    Yes.
  - freshhawk 9y ago
    Yes, analogous to downloading a torrent. The GC is run pretty regularly by default so you generally want to pin anything you want to keep local.
    - gediminas_ 9y ago
      As far as I remember GC isn't run by default - but it could have changed

humblebee 9y ago

"it is nearly-impossible for any actor to block access to this content because it is replicated around the network automatically" This isn't entirely accurate though. It's only replicated if people request it. If everyone only requests the content through `ipfs.io` then the content will only be living on the original seeder, and the IPFS gateway nodes which run GC on a regular basis. Depending on how the content is moved, it _might_ end up on a few other nodes (a way around nats, by using a third party peer to stream content between two peers), but I believe it's only ever moved through the network, and will not be stored on the nodes. If it is, it's only there till the next GC (disabled by default I believe).

sexydefinesher 9y ago

How very crypto-anarchistic

jsdario 9y ago
Seems more accurate to say crypto-nationalistic
- QML 9y ago
  crypto-separatist

mabbo 9y ago

I just left Barcelona a couple hours ago, the capital of Catalonia. Everywhere you look, Catalan flags, signs demanding 'democracia', demanding freedom. I'm told this is just normal for the region, but if this is normal then independence is eventual.

lloyd-christmas 9y ago
150 years after the US civil war, the confederate flag is still flying around. I wouldn't be to hasty to call it eventual.
- zakk 9y ago
  If you are comparing the two, you have never visited Catalunya. The flag is everywhere, also they speak a different language.
  - faragon 9y ago
    That's not correct. In mother tongue terms, 55% of population in Catalonia has the Spanish as his tongue (mother/habitual tongue), and 35% Catalan. The "economic power" is in hands of Catalan-"ethnic" people, though. Source (official): https://www.idescat.cat/pub/?id=ed&lang=en https://www.idescat.cat/pub/?id=ed&lang=en "The first casualty when war comes is truth".
    - icebraining 9y ago
      55% of population has Spanish as their mother tongue, but that's not necessarily what they speak now. Is there any poll showing what they actually speak daily?
      - faragon 9y ago
        55% mother/habitual tongue. In the above link (official data, from an official source) is explained in detail.

baxtr 9y ago

I really wonder why we have such a hard time to get along with each other...

codewithcheese 9y ago

It seems shocking that Spain a member of the EU is resorting to these tactics. Can you discuss some of their justifications for doing so?

kilburn 9y ago
The spanish constituion explicitly states that Spain is an indivisible country. Hence, the Constituional Court (that is elected by the parliament) has ruled out that any referendum about independence is illegal. At this point, the government says that both them and the judiciary powers are just defending the democratic rules, and Catalonia's government is the one at fault for all this hassle. The problem is that it is accepted that there's a wide majority of catalan people who want a referendum, and here we are...
- pvaldes 9y ago
  And this is not the end of the history. Would be naively opening the door to a full hell of pain. Try to give one candy to calm a child having a tantrum in a room full of them and see what happens when the other children realize that crying, breaking toys and banging the head on the wall equals to be rewarded with sweets. You allow somebody to break the law and jump over the constitution just because they are inconsolable otherwise. You fell in the trap. Now you must grant the same treatment to the rest. Similar referendums were demanded (and should have to be allowed in the very next day) for Euskadi, Galicia, Canary Islands, Asturias, Leon, Andalucia and only god knows what more. Two can play this game, and ten also. The idea is not Germany allowing or not a referendum for Bavaria; or UK trying to please Scottland; the idea would be: you must now be forced to grant referendums for each single state in Deutschland or UK to make us happy "or we will stop breathing (and will create a permanent state of confrontation and street disturbs)".
  - ukoki 9y ago
    So? If they want independence who are we to deny it? If your spouse wants a divorce, if your children wish to disown you — you can't deny them just because it's an inconvenience — it is their right.

geofft 9y ago

Wow, this is super cool that they thought of / implemented this. (I think your math on bits is wrong: I'm getting that log2(1010 * 23 * 365 * 4) = 33.4, not 28.) A few notes on the crypto off the top of my head: 1. 1714 iterations of SHA-256 seems really low given that you're going to be looking this up approximately once per person. My 2010-era laptop can compute about a million hashes per second according to `openssl speed sha256`. A second or two to look this up is definitely comparable with what a human would expect the UX to be for a dynamic website run by a government; honestly I wouldn't complain about up to a minute as long as there was a clear progress bar. So you could easily change it from 1,714 hashes to 1,714,000 without impacting UX, and you should probably do that given the relatively small key space, which would give you a factor of 1000x on the brute force attack. 2. AES-256-CBC with no IV smells funny to me. I guess every message is encrypted with a different key, but the keys themselves are easily derivable (they're just a single SHA-256 hash of the lookup key, and those are all in the public filesystem). I cannot think immediately of an attack against this but maybe someone else can. 3. Your brute-force estimates are what's needed to enumerate the entire lookup key space. The practical attack here is what you've outlined, that you know someone's date of birth and zip code (which are likely in public records). and want their national ID for some identity theft. You're not trying to find some arbitrary person to steal the identity of. That means that the date of birth and zip code are fixed, and you only need to brute-force the DNI portion, which has only 10^5 * 23 possibilities. That's extremely realistic: I can compute 10^5 * 23 * 1715 hashes on my 2010 laptop in a little over an hour. I guess they do the right thing by only using a part of the DNI string, so you still have three unknown decimal digits, and zero information about what they might be.

jsdario 9y ago
How is it any better to hash the same text 256 times? Entropy will always be the same. You'd just need to change the hashing function. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/115406/is-it-more-secure-to-hash-a-password-multiple-times?newreg=3a63ea8553284290bab9759378411a90 https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/1154...
kilburn 9y ago
> (I think your math on bits is wrong: I'm getting that log2(1010 * 23 * 365 * 4) = 33.4, not 28.) 1. Totally right that I'm wrong, but I'm now getting 48 bits, not 33 ;) 2. That was a terrible mistake of my own. The lookup key is derived from the password, not the other way around. I've corrected the article to clarify that! 3. Yeah that's why I said you can do it with your laptop and not too much time ;) Only using the latest part of the DNI is not that good though. The letter is actually a control character, which can be computed from the 8 numbers. Hence, if you have 5 numbers and the letter, there are only some possible 3-digit prefixes that lead to a valid DNI! How many? I would have to investigate further hehe...

mtgx 9y ago

I hope Mozilla shows leadership in adopting IPFS support in Firefox. I don't necessarily want it to adopt IPFS right now, but it should have a plan for when it thinks the project is "mature enough" to be adopted in a mainstream browser, but also it should be early enough that Firefox is the first to do it. Maybe Mozilla should even get involved early in IPFS so that it can shape the protocols the way it would prefer them to work in its browser later on (while still ensuring the censorship-resistance vision of the project remains intact).

clarry 9y ago
Should they also adopt Tor, Freenet, I2P, etc.? But I would give a thumbs up for Gopher support.
- timthelion 9y ago
  I would hope they adopt Tor at some point. That would be awesome. Why shouldn't they?
  - KGIII 9y ago
    I'd guess the two biggest issues would be bloat and expectations. Doing so is going to add bloat that is needless to the majority of people. If they add support for Tor, people are going to expect them to add support for more protocols, from torrents to freenet to gopher.
  - dna_polymerase 9y ago
    Why should they? Tor is managed by the Tor Project. It is bundled & shipped as TBB already, using Firefox. You already can use it if you want to, so why would they bother with implementing Tor in the mainstream version of Firefox? They could only offer it as option (because not everyone wants to use Tor all the time) and this option is already satisfied.
    - timthelion 9y ago
      So that it is more accessible to "normal" people and so that onion links would "just work"

timthelion 9y ago

On one of the websites there is an ax in the coat of arms. http://www.referendum.cat/ http://www.referendum.cat/ I recognize that ax symbol from somewhere. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism

icebraining 9y ago
Yeap. It's true that the ax is older than Fascism, but its adoption on the symbol of the Spanish Civil Guard is from 1943 - right during the Franquist regime.
enriquto 9y ago
It is the symbol of the "Guardia Civil", a spanish paramilitary force.
- timthelion 9y ago
  I'm not actually suggesting that they are fascists, similar symbolism is used in the US as well https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Lincoln_(1920_statue)#/media/File:Lincoln_statue.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Lincoln_(1920_statue)#... . And the phrase "E pluribus unum" on American money also has the same roots as the symbol. But it is amusing to me, because the idea behind the symbol is very authoritarian and fascist.
  - timthelion 9y ago
    A conceptually identical icon is used by Anarchists as well ;) https://propertyistheft.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/1917_iww.jpg https://propertyistheft.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/1917_iww...
  - int_19h 9y ago
    Fasces are supposed to represent the general concept of law and governance. Since law is ultimately always about forcing (some) people to to do something that they don't want to do, the symbol does have violent connotations, but I'd call that truth in advertising - another take on Mao's "all power comes out of a barrel of a gun". So, it is authoritarian in a sense that the generic notions of government and rule of law is authoritarian.

antaviana 9y ago

"Basically, the code recurses a sha256 computation 1714 times to get a lookup key, and then once more to get a password for decryption." This is an Easter Egg. Barcelona fell on September 11, 1714 during the War of Spanish Succession and with that Catalonia's freedom as well. September 11 is the National Day of Catalonia. Also, at 17:14 of each and every game of FC Barcelona in Camp Nou Stadium, Barcelona fans claim for independence [1]. So it was not by chance that the coder chose 1714 for the encryption algorithm. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EneqR3oDpmQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EneqR3oDpmQ

kilburn 9y ago
The 1714 is in an abbr tag with a title that explains that ;)
- striking 9y ago
  That's pretty hard to notice, haha.
  - kilburn 9y ago
    An Easter Egg for another Easter Egg... it seemed just right to me (and I didn't want to interrupt the article's flow with that, admittedly)
  - rnhmjoj 9y ago
    Off topic: I don't know if it's Firefox, GTK or some other component at fault but all tooltips in the browser last for an unreasonably short amount of time and it's really hard to read something more than a couple of words. I have to either view the page source or freeze the process. I wonder why a tooltip is supposed to disappear in the first place.
    - gras 9y ago
      My guess would be GTK, I'm on Debian Stretch, XFCE + i3 + firefox-esr and I have no such problem.

agl 9y ago

"Basically, the code recurses a sha256 computation 1714 times to get a lookup key, and then once more to get a password for decryption." Other way around, no? The index is the hash of the decryption key (as it should be), it's just that the index is called "key" and the key is called "lookup". If the decryption key was the hash of the index, then it would be trivial to decrypt every entry.

kilburn 9y ago
You are right, and I made a huge blunder while "prettifying" the code and then commenting it. It should be corrected now!

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

themihai 9y ago

What if ipfs.io goes down? The DNS has always been the bottleneck.

aoeusnth1 9y ago
Spray paint 8.8.8.8 on buildings.
- Asdfbla 9y ago
  Government could probably just block any DNS requests that want to resolve the ipfs.io domain. Though Spain probably does not have the censorship infrastructure deployed for that the way a country like China has.
  - contravariant 9y ago
    Spray paint the IP of ipfs.io? For reference it's 147.135.130.181. Or if you want to go to the Catalan referendum page, it's http://147.135.130.181/ipns/QmZxWEBJBVkGDGaKdYPQUXX4KC5TCWbvuR4iYZrTML8XCR/en/index.html http://147.135.130.181/ipns/QmZxWEBJBVkGDGaKdYPQUXX4KC5TCWbv.... Unfortunately SSL doesn't work, as the certificate is only valid on ipfs.io.
  - Fnoord 9y ago
    This is why DNSCrypt [1] and DNSCurve [2] are a good thing because they encrypt the data between client and resolver. Although they can block all of the traffic to/from any known resolvers, that's draconic and a lot of work, and it is quite a list. Mac/Homebrew users: brew cask install dnscrypt Windows/Chocolatey users: choco install simplednscrypt (or alternative see [3]) Linux: should be in your package manager. Generally, searching for dnscrypt should yield some useful software. It isn't difficult to set up via command line IMO. There's probably howto's to be found via search engine as well. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNSCrypt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNSCrypt [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNSCurve https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNSCurve [3] https://github.com/Noxwizard/dnscrypt-winclient https://github.com/Noxwizard/dnscrypt-winclient
- 9y ago

yk 9y ago

Hmm, it appears I have misplaced my mirrorshades. I mean it's really bright in the future.

wyager 9y ago
A healthy dose of Gibson and Stephenson helps me to stay sane. It feels like we're approaching a singularity.

c3534l 9y ago

If my government did that, I'd certainly want independence, too.

amelius 9y ago

As an outsider, it's strange that nobody here seems to question whether the referendum really makes sense. Forgetting about Catalonia for a moment, isn't it fundamentally amoral that a part of the country where prosperity has (by mere chance) concentrated suddenly wants to split off? Isn't this taking wealth-inequality to the next level? Of course the people in a prosperous part of the country want to split off. Absolute democracy seems to result in an undesirable situation, because do we really want to live in a world that converges towards little selfish islands?

TheMagicHorsey 9y ago
"by mere chance" Is that your opinion, or do the Catalonians and people outside Spain agree?
- contravariant 9y ago
  Does being conveniently located to trade on the Mediterranean sea count as chance or not?
  - pvaldes 9y ago
    Valencia is also in the same line, but there is a dirty secret that nobody wants to hear and much less admit. Franco, being the same horrible dictator that killed a lot of innocent people, favoured actively Catalonia's economy over other provinces, for decades. Is true that he discouraged them to speak in Catalonian language, but also discouraged people to speak in Galician language (and Franco was born in Galicia). At the same time give them priority in the efforts to rebuild industry and infraestructures after the civil war. Catalonia is richest than other parts of Spain, in part because Franco wanted 1) having a cluster of industries next European frontiers and roads to trade and obtain foreign divises easily, 2) money from tourism 3) conjurate the revolts giving the area a special silk-hand treatment after the first iron years passed. Specially in the late stages of franquism, a massive exodus of workers from other parts of Spain migrated and stablished in Catalonia atracted by the favourable conditions to work and live and the "smell of freedom". I'm aware that this counts as black heressy for millions of young people in the area, but well... nobody will stop them to read history books about post-war if they want. Ask your grandpa. Everybody in Spain has an uncle or some cousins in Barcelona. Oppression is not something allowing you to became one of the more modern and rich places in the country; oppresion, to me, is what happened to Extremadura in the same period for example.

m-p-3 9y ago

How does one provide a full mirror/node of an IPFS website? I wouldn't mind sparing some bandwidth and storage.

lindner 9y ago
First install ipfs then run: ipfs pin add QmZxWEBJBVkGDGaKdYPQUXX4KC5TCWbvuR4iYZrTML8XCR and wait for a large amount of data to be pulled in....
- m-p-3 9y ago
  Thanks, will do that!

utnick 9y ago

A possibly simpler solution would be to not have assigned places to vote that are based on your ID & DOB. Just vote at the polling place most convenient to you, and announce available polling places on posters around town, or facebook & twitter if you prefer.

euyyn 9y ago
The reason that isn't done in any election is because, to prevent people from voting twice, each voting station needs a list of the people that are supposed to vote there.
- jarofgreen 9y ago
  That's a fair point but doesn't explain why ID & DOB are needed. I asked about this in another comment - in my country, you just need your postcode to find your polling place 99% of the time.
  - NetStrikeForce 9y ago
    It's needed because it depend on the census. In Spain you don't have to register to vote every time. Just show up at the place you have to, based on the census.
    - jarofgreen 9y ago
      Interesting, but that doesn't answer my question. It's not in any way about voter registration. I'm asking why can't you be told where to vote - the original thing the article is about - based on your postcode only. But I think I have my answer in another thread.

tammer 9y ago

I see IPFS as the single most promising & important software projects in the world today.

jaimebuelta 9y ago

Wow, the potential massive leak of private information this could lead to seems quite irresponsible...

jarofgreen 9y ago

"In the where to vote? page, you are prompted to enter some of your details: DNI (national id), Birth date, Zip code" Wait a second, can someone from the area explain this? Why on earth do they need your ID number just to tell you where to vote? In my country (UK) 99% of the time all you need is a postcode and you can be told your voting place. (I say 99% because there are a few postcodes that are split across different seats and thus different people in the same post code have different polling places. Also just to note some areas are bad at publicly supplying this data. But my general point still stands.)

gotbeans 9y ago
Catalan here. Your ID is bound to a place to vote based on "where you live" registration. You can't just vote from anywhere.
- jarofgreen 9y ago
  > You can't just vote from anywhere. I'm not in any way saying you should be able to. You can't in my country either. I'm just surprised that you need your ZIP & ID & DO to find out where you vote, because in my country you can find out where you vote with only your ZIP.
  - enriquto 9y ago
    yes, you can simply check where to vote based on your zip code. The ID is needed for another, independent, check, to verify whether you are actually on the list of voters for that school.
    - jarofgreen 9y ago
      Yes, I think my root problem here is that people are mixing up "Where do I vote?" and "Am I registered to vote?". These are two very different questions with different solutions! Anyway, thanks for your replies.
kilburn 9y ago

11235813213455 9y ago

please, just use .slice, not .substring or .substr

reeffflio 9y ago

I'm genuinely curious which part ipfs solves here? Given that it's still accessed via browser/domain wouldn't they just block the dns or even ip? In which case this is no more resilient than say multiple domains and dns entries and proxying on from there to a central database (which could be run in a jurisdiction over which Spain has little control and which they would have to discover first anyways)

cosarara97 9y ago
I'm not an expert, but I think it goes like this: ipfs, similarly to torrent, is p2p. Given an address (that's a hash for the file), your client will look for other peers that have the file, and get it from them. Unless they find all the peers holding the file or start blocking ipfs traffic, there's little they can do to prevent access.
TheLugal 9y ago
Data on IPFS is accessed over P2P, not over IP. ipfs.io is just running a gateway. Anyone could do that. In fact; if you were to run IPFS on your computer, you'd probably have your own gateway on your localhost. Somebody would just make their own public gateway, and the government would need to block another domain. Of cource, running IPFS for yourself would take away any need to use a gateway.

Opossum 9y ago

For those who want more background into what's going on, here is an excellent video from The Economist explaining the independence movement in Catalonia: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NaQ4_v0fz6k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NaQ4_v0fz6k

StavrosK 9y ago

Ah, that explains why I saw various catalán sites being pinned on the IPFS pinning service I run (https://www.eternum.io https://www.eternum.io), which also runs a public writable gateway (so you can access IPFS files, including the banned catalán websites, through it). Having just gotten back from Barcelona, I have to say that the way the Spanish government is handling this is far from ideal. I don't very much support the Catalonian plea for independence (I haven't heard any good reasons other than "but our freedom"), but blocking sites seems... suboptimal. As for the crypto itself, why not use bcrypt? Your users don't care if it takes three seconds, but it makes attacks entirely infeasible.

NetStrikeForce 9y ago
Do you mind technically explaining a bit more about pinning, how it works and why would anyone do it?
- TheLugal 9y ago
  You can't just look at data from the internet without touching it, you need to download it. The same holds true when reading data from the IPFS network. In the process, you make it available for anyone else who ask for it, but only for a limited time; until the Garbage Collector (GC) runs. If I remember correctly, the GC run once every hour or so, so you probably won't reshare the data for longer than that. You need to pin the data if you want to keep resharing it. This effectively tells the GC to not touch it.
  - NetStrikeForce 9y ago
    That was very clear, thanks!
    - StavrosK 9y ago
      You can kind of think of it like seeding a torrent, and pinning ensures the seeding won't stop until you unpin.

sabujp 9y ago

kurdistan, quebec, and california up next

ahachete 9y ago

Let's get the political reasoning straight. Under Spanish Constitution, supreme law in Spain, the right to determine the territory of Spain belongs to all Spaniards (article 2). What some people claim as "democracy" or "the right to vote" is actually removing this right from the rest of Spaniards. Aside from other claims and whether there are political or historical reasons, the voting has been declared illegal by the "Tribunal Constitucional", highest court in Spain. End of story, it's illegal, period. And Spain (mostly judges and police forces) are trying to defend the law. Now a quick note on the alleged economical facts: no, Catalonia does not contribute 16 billion to the rest of the country, it's actually 2,4 billion (this is what Catalonia published last year). This is called "solidarity", and it is what contributes to other regions in Spain to grow and benefit the country as a whole. Madrid is also a significant net contributor. On the other hand, Spain holds 55 billion in debt from Catalonia, which is unable to finance by itself on international debt markets. So numbers don't add that quickly as it has been said here.

edko 9y ago
Let me add one thing: the current Spanish Constitution was subject to a referendum in 1978. In Catalonia, it was approved by 90.46% of the votes.
- adventured 9y ago
  1978, shortly after the dictatorship ended, a time in which Spain was still dominated by cronies from that very dictatorship, and who proceeded to dictate the Constitution. So in 1978 Catalonia's vote mattered and you're claiming today it does not.
  - ahachete 9y ago
    Because it did matter in 1978, there's a law that says that 1-O voting cannot happen, it's illegal. Only all Spaniards can vote regarding the integrity and sovereignty of Spain. If you think 1978's Constitution was approved under some form of oppression, fight that, there are clear ways to change the Constitution. But do not support any illegal activities that remove rights from the rest of the people in the country. The root of the democracy is the respect to the law. Not "voting".

marcoperaza 9y ago

It doesn't matter that they can circumvent it. The fact that the Spanish government has taken such drastic actions means that the result of the vote will be completely meaningless and illegitimate. Opponents of the referendum who agree with the Spanish government will not participate.

farresito 9y ago
The reason referendums don't have a minimum of votes is precisely to avoid boicots like the one that the opposition is trying to do, so if they don't want to vote it's up to them, but that doesn't make the referendum any less valid.
- jknz 9y ago
  If the referendum unlawful, then some people will not go to vote, simply because they usually avoid breaking the law. The result would be valid (from a probabilistic point of view) if "going to vote" was independent of "voting yes". But if the there is any correlation between "going to vote" and "voting yes" then the result of the referendum will be significantly different than the result of a referendum where any individual was forced to vote. Here there might be a correlation: people in favor or independence or more likely to go voting than others. A similar phenomenon may have happened in the us. If there is a correlation between "lying to polls" and "voting for candidate A" then the poll predictions can become very wrong.

jsdario 9y ago

Voting is not necessarily democratic. Hitler won in democracy. Respecting minorities and not playing the victim card is more democratic indeed! There are many republicans dead under catalan descending military charges, all over the peninsula. I don't think being born in Catalonia makes you less fascist. But you can always play the victim card ans act like history never happened.

CaiGengYang 9y ago

Why does a single post like this get 479 points (so many) ?

krab 9y ago

I don't understand why would you need to know a person's details to tell where he should vote. In Czech Republic, you can tell just from your address of residency. It's usually the closest one to your registered address. Therefore, it should be enough to publish just the list of locations and the areas they serve.

daniel_wolves 9y ago

https://youtu.be/6Ggi_QPYRrA https://youtu.be/6Ggi_QPYRrA

enriquto 9y ago

Summary of instructions to add a ipfs node for this site : wget https://dist.ipfs.io/go-ipfs/v0.4.11/go-ipfs_v0.4.11_linux-amd64.tar.gz tar zxf go-ipfs_v0.4.11_linux-amd64.tar.gz cd go-ipfs ./ipfs daemon & ./ipfs pin add QmZxWEBJBVkGDGaKdYPQUXX4KC5TCWbvuR4iYZrTML8XCR The stuff goes into ~/.ipfs

blueyes 9y ago

It's interesting how Russia and Assange are backing every movement that weakens the West (Trump, Brexit, and now this): http://www.businessinsider.com/julian-assange-catalonia-independence-movement-and-referendum-spain-2017-9 http://www.businessinsider.com/julian-assange-catalonia-inde... Russia wants to break apart the bloc with Germany at the center to dominate its neighbors. It's a replay of Russia's tensions with Europe that date at least to the Napoleonic wars, and include WWI and WWII.

teknopaul 9y ago

All seems rather like an arms race.

cJ0th 9y ago

Some interesting insights there. Thanks for this article. I just hope this doesn't lead to more draconian IT laws all over the EU... ;)

ceene 9y ago

The letter in the DNI is a checksum of the numbers. Simply DNI mod 23 indexes a lookup table with the 23 allowed letters, so those 238 card days get reduced to only 10 days!

mola 9y ago

Is there oppression of human rights by the central government? Is there discrimination against catalans ? In other words, what's broken that secession would fix?

frabbit 9y ago

Good historical perspective: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/09/catalonia-independence-referendum-spain-podemos https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/09/catalonia-independence-re...

ismaelmartinez 9y ago

Agree they should have not use a bespoke algorithm but I don't think there is much of a security issue. Knowing where you need to go to vote is not enough to vote. You still need the physical security of the ID (DNI) that includes a few security features (like your face). You can see and image here: http://www.aulaclic.es/articulos/graficos/DNIe.gif http://www.aulaclic.es/articulos/graficos/DNIe.gif From my point of view, this rises a far more interesting question. Do you guys think it could be possible to use blockchain to implement a secure voting system? I do and I got a few ideas about the main issues (authentication, authorisation, validity period and others) and will be happy to discuss with anyone interested on co-developing such a system... or if you know of one already do let me know! Seems like if every computer can be a "poling station", authoritarian regimes/governments will have a more difficult way of stopping this sort of voting from happening. And maybe, only maybe, we can enjoy a free democracy.

h4sh3r 9y ago

I have done: ipfssudo get QmQZzfs7LjkEnmG3zU92YF7ViCcuCXkNokuYoiNe6pKvDZ But I don't see any database only html code, how can I clone this website to see what is happening with my f* data?

vicenteherrera 9y ago

The original article doesn't take into account that DNI letter is calculated from the previous DNI digits with a known formula. So when you choose the numbers, you already know the letter. See for example: https://gist.github.com/afgomez/5691823 https://gist.github.com/afgomez/5691823 So Instead of: 10^10 * 23 * 365 * 4 = 33580 * 10^10 possible combinations , we have 10^10 * 365 * 4 = 1460 * 10^10. And we can represent it with 44 bits instead of 48. To explore all possible combinations, we need then 1460 * 10^10 * 1715 = 25039 * 10^12 hashes, instead of 575897 * 10^12 hashes With AntMiner S9, we can do all hashes in: 25039 * 10^12 / 28 * 10^9 = 10.3 days. If we want to specifically scam a target neighbourhood (imagine sending an email telling people "your local bank in your neighborhood asks you to reset your password), we can choose a fixed zip code, and all this could be guessed with a less powerfull machine (someone else can do the math).

bartolo2 9y ago

I would have used scrypt (memory bound and therefore hardly scalable in ASICs/FPGAs) with a higher round count, say that it takes ~1s to calculate the hash. That way bruteforce is infeasible these days. Also I would have used other sparse information such as street number that hardly can be connected to a particular person.