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FTFY: a shitty government is putting people in jail. Even if we ignore the horrible government and bullshit reasons why they're considering installing an encry

FTFY: a shitty government is putting people in jail. Even if we ignore the horrible government and bullshit reasons why they're considering installing an encrypted chat app a "crime", they should at least use proper evidence for the convictions, like a dump of the phone's memory with the chat app installed on it, and not a simple DNS lookup/HTTP request to the chat app's domain.

tzahola 9y ago
No, it was a single line of code. We should ban codes like this.
- codewithcheese 9y ago
  Do you want to throw people in jail if they use code that is banned too?
- mseebach 9y ago
  Oh, I guarantee you that the Turkish government agrees wholeheartedly and would very much like to speak with the perpetrators.
- simonh 9y ago
  The people who wrote the code, whatever else they may or not be guilty of and whether or not the code should be illegal or not, didn’t put anyone in jail.
danso 9y ago
Exactly this. People are apparently being jailed for having accessed or simply pinged a forbidden IP/server -- which seemingly could be caused by receiving an email with a hidden img tag, or visiting a website with a hidden iframe.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- boosting6889 9y ago
  It happens in the US too. Any site could have 1x1 iframes loaded with nude pictures of people under 18. If your IP happens to be caught up in their investigation, your computers will get seized, they’ll see you accessed the forbidden pages, and you’re basically done for, especially if you can’t afford a good attorney. Nobody is giving an accused pedophile the benefit of the doubt.
  - danso 9y ago
    I'd agree that the U.S. law enforcement probably takes a "better safe than sorry" approach to suspicions involving child porn and terrorism, but I think there's a big difference between what's happened in the U.S. vs what appears to happen in Turkey. Turkey's situation, as described by the OP, is so interesting because it describes the scenario you envision -- in which a government really did go for a sweeping "take no prisoners" approach, in the dumbest way possible using Internet access data. But FBI sweeps of child porn suspects seem to be very targeted -- e.g. tracing IPs of people who participate in known illegal sites or honeypots: https://www.wired.com/2014/08/operation-torpedo/ https://www.wired.com/2014/08/operation-torpedo/ Having visited bad sites/URLs/IPs/searches may be used as circumstantial evidence. But Turkey seems to have used the pinging of an IP as the primary way of both finding suspects and the primary evidence for jailing people. I can't think of many similar situations like that in U.S. law. In fact, with child porn, you see courts making the distinction between seeing child porn (i.e. inadverdently) and intentionally seeking it out: https://www.yahoo.com/news/blogs/sideshow/viewing-child-pornography-not-crime-according-york-court-165025919.html https://www.yahoo.com/news/blogs/sideshow/viewing-child-porn... https://www.olemiss.edu/depts/ncjrl/pdf/cp%20But%20Your%20Honor.pdf https://www.olemiss.edu/depts/ncjrl/pdf/cp%20But%20Your%20Ho...
mseebach 9y ago
The article's tacit acknowledgment of the legitimacy of arresting people for having had the app installed at all is pretty off-colour as well.
- Quarrelsome 9y ago
  one problem at a time.
  - philipov 9y ago
    Yes, precisely. And the first problem can be eliminating tacit acknowledgement of the legitimacy of oppressive governments.
    - Quarrelsome 9y ago
      No need to bring all of your moral judgement into everything. Would you treat a wounded criminal or would their criminality effect your ability to treat them? One problem at a time.
      - nasredin 9y ago
        I don't follow your analogy. IMHO, a better one: Your friend (used loosely in this case) is doing criminal acts. Would you tell him to stop doing criminal acts while you treat him? --- Sometimes journalist take this "ALLWAYS two sides to every story" and "each side is equal" crap too far. See the success of Wolf's book on Trump.
        Quarrelsome 9y ago
        there are two problems here: 1. Turkey's government is brutally suppressing opposition 2. The means Turkey is using to identify its opposition is flawed. You don't have to talk 1. to talk 2. Case in point is that you can legally talk 2. in Turkey but if you talk 1. you get fucked. If you try to fight 2. you help a bunch of people if you try to fight both 1. and 2. at the same time the chance of you solving 2. is diminished because Turkey's government will be suspicious that it is propaganda against them because you included 1. Thus: one problem at a time. Also remember that your attitude leads to shit like Iraq. Its perfectly "legitimate" for a government to be autocratic. Russia is a government, Iran is a government, China is a government. They wield the power, is that not legitimate? You seem to be suggesting that only "legitimate" governments are democracies and that sort of attitude leads us back to Iraq where we go on a liberation war and heroically give people a democracy that they didn't fight for themselves. Reality is messy and complicated and "nice" ideas like making everyone have the good government are well intentioned but naive. I will celebrate the day Turkey gets its democracy back but it has to do that itself and its not the problem of anyone who isn't Turkish as their "help" may well hinder.
yorby 9y ago
I thought that the American government had the worst ratio of free citizens/incarcerated citizens ...
- Aaron1011 9y ago
  A government can imprison people for horrible reasons, but still not have the worst radio.
  - Retric 9y ago
    I think it's a sign of horrible reasons. Dig into specifics and the US does unjustly keep people in prison on a regular basis. We have huge issues from generations of politics over substance. It's only obvious that things are getting worse when you look at statistics because nobody has unbiased understanding of the entire system.
  - Y_Y 9y ago
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volksempf%C3%A4nger https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volksempf%C3%A4nger
  - theBobBob 9y ago
    Another part that effects the current prison population is the length of sentences. One country might imprison less people but for much longer so the total population at one time might be very high.
  - yorby 9y ago
    if you imprison 1 person for no reason at all, that would be pretty horrible... but if you imprison thousands for barely nothing, that is ok?
- w0m 9y ago
  No one mentioned ratio, this is about 'injustice/abuse of tech' not volume. For comparison, even with the BS behavior in OP, Turkey is about 285/100,000 incarceration rate. The US of A is at 666/110,000, over double.
t-away9912 9y ago
It's getting worse by the day. They arrested people for wearing a t-shirt. They just arrested people for tweeting against the war (recent Turkish incursion to Syria).
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
mrtksn 9y ago
That's misrepresentation of the situation, the crime is not installing an app(nobody is sentenced for the crime of using an app) but being a member of an organisation that is deemed illegal and the app is considered evidence for membership as it was members exclusive app. Think of it as if being an Uber driver was illegal, then having the drivers app can constitute as a good reason for suspicion of you being Uber driver and you might be held until you receive a sentence or cleared from wrongdoing. The problem here was that the Turkish authorities were "a bit too liberal" on what constitute of using the App in question, that is, they mistakenly assumed that making HTTP request to the App's server is a good indicator of being a user. Unfortunately this is the way that the Turkish government operates since many years, they first lock you in and you fight back for years until you prove your innocence. What's even worse is that you can't really get good compensation for it, you just suck it up and move on.
amckinlay 9y ago
And this is a government we're going to rescue if they're ever under attack.
Pxtl 9y ago
The absence of any condemning of the policy itself in the article is super conspicuous. I assume the commenter below guessing it's for the protection of their correspondent is correct. Still, it's too bad they couldn't put a lampshade on it - "we at the CBC are not in a position to comment on the merits and flaws of this policy". But even that could draw ire, I guess.

tzahola 9y ago

No, it was a single line of code. We should ban codes like this.

codewithcheese 9y ago
Do you want to throw people in jail if they use code that is banned too?
mseebach 9y ago
Oh, I guarantee you that the Turkish government agrees wholeheartedly and would very much like to speak with the perpetrators.
simonh 9y ago
The people who wrote the code, whatever else they may or not be guilty of and whether or not the code should be illegal or not, didn’t put anyone in jail.

danso 9y ago

Exactly this. People are apparently being jailed for having accessed or simply pinged a forbidden IP/server -- which seemingly could be caused by receiving an email with a hidden img tag, or visiting a website with a hidden iframe.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
boosting6889 9y ago
It happens in the US too. Any site could have 1x1 iframes loaded with nude pictures of people under 18. If your IP happens to be caught up in their investigation, your computers will get seized, they’ll see you accessed the forbidden pages, and you’re basically done for, especially if you can’t afford a good attorney. Nobody is giving an accused pedophile the benefit of the doubt.
- danso 9y ago
  I'd agree that the U.S. law enforcement probably takes a "better safe than sorry" approach to suspicions involving child porn and terrorism, but I think there's a big difference between what's happened in the U.S. vs what appears to happen in Turkey. Turkey's situation, as described by the OP, is so interesting because it describes the scenario you envision -- in which a government really did go for a sweeping "take no prisoners" approach, in the dumbest way possible using Internet access data. But FBI sweeps of child porn suspects seem to be very targeted -- e.g. tracing IPs of people who participate in known illegal sites or honeypots: https://www.wired.com/2014/08/operation-torpedo/ https://www.wired.com/2014/08/operation-torpedo/ Having visited bad sites/URLs/IPs/searches may be used as circumstantial evidence. But Turkey seems to have used the pinging of an IP as the primary way of both finding suspects and the primary evidence for jailing people. I can't think of many similar situations like that in U.S. law. In fact, with child porn, you see courts making the distinction between seeing child porn (i.e. inadverdently) and intentionally seeking it out: https://www.yahoo.com/news/blogs/sideshow/viewing-child-pornography-not-crime-according-york-court-165025919.html https://www.yahoo.com/news/blogs/sideshow/viewing-child-porn... https://www.olemiss.edu/depts/ncjrl/pdf/cp%20But%20Your%20Honor.pdf https://www.olemiss.edu/depts/ncjrl/pdf/cp%20But%20Your%20Ho...

mseebach 9y ago

The article's tacit acknowledgment of the legitimacy of arresting people for having had the app installed at all is pretty off-colour as well.

Quarrelsome 9y ago
one problem at a time.
- philipov 9y ago
  Yes, precisely. And the first problem can be eliminating tacit acknowledgement of the legitimacy of oppressive governments.
  - Quarrelsome 9y ago
    No need to bring all of your moral judgement into everything. Would you treat a wounded criminal or would their criminality effect your ability to treat them? One problem at a time.
    - nasredin 9y ago
      I don't follow your analogy. IMHO, a better one: Your friend (used loosely in this case) is doing criminal acts. Would you tell him to stop doing criminal acts while you treat him? --- Sometimes journalist take this "ALLWAYS two sides to every story" and "each side is equal" crap too far. See the success of Wolf's book on Trump.
      - Quarrelsome 9y ago
        there are two problems here: 1. Turkey's government is brutally suppressing opposition 2. The means Turkey is using to identify its opposition is flawed. You don't have to talk 1. to talk 2. Case in point is that you can legally talk 2. in Turkey but if you talk 1. you get fucked. If you try to fight 2. you help a bunch of people if you try to fight both 1. and 2. at the same time the chance of you solving 2. is diminished because Turkey's government will be suspicious that it is propaganda against them because you included 1. Thus: one problem at a time. Also remember that your attitude leads to shit like Iraq. Its perfectly "legitimate" for a government to be autocratic. Russia is a government, Iran is a government, China is a government. They wield the power, is that not legitimate? You seem to be suggesting that only "legitimate" governments are democracies and that sort of attitude leads us back to Iraq where we go on a liberation war and heroically give people a democracy that they didn't fight for themselves. Reality is messy and complicated and "nice" ideas like making everyone have the good government are well intentioned but naive. I will celebrate the day Turkey gets its democracy back but it has to do that itself and its not the problem of anyone who isn't Turkish as their "help" may well hinder.

yorby 9y ago

I thought that the American government had the worst ratio of free citizens/incarcerated citizens ...

Aaron1011 9y ago
A government can imprison people for horrible reasons, but still not have the worst radio.
- Retric 9y ago
  I think it's a sign of horrible reasons. Dig into specifics and the US does unjustly keep people in prison on a regular basis. We have huge issues from generations of politics over substance. It's only obvious that things are getting worse when you look at statistics because nobody has unbiased understanding of the entire system.
- Y_Y 9y ago
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volksempf%C3%A4nger https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volksempf%C3%A4nger
- theBobBob 9y ago
  Another part that effects the current prison population is the length of sentences. One country might imprison less people but for much longer so the total population at one time might be very high.
- yorby 9y ago
  if you imprison 1 person for no reason at all, that would be pretty horrible... but if you imprison thousands for barely nothing, that is ok?
w0m 9y ago
No one mentioned ratio, this is about 'injustice/abuse of tech' not volume. For comparison, even with the BS behavior in OP, Turkey is about 285/100,000 incarceration rate. The US of A is at 666/110,000, over double.

t-away9912 9y ago

It's getting worse by the day. They arrested people for wearing a t-shirt. They just arrested people for tweeting against the war (recent Turkish incursion to Syria).

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

mrtksn 9y ago

That's misrepresentation of the situation, the crime is not installing an app(nobody is sentenced for the crime of using an app) but being a member of an organisation that is deemed illegal and the app is considered evidence for membership as it was members exclusive app. Think of it as if being an Uber driver was illegal, then having the drivers app can constitute as a good reason for suspicion of you being Uber driver and you might be held until you receive a sentence or cleared from wrongdoing. The problem here was that the Turkish authorities were "a bit too liberal" on what constitute of using the App in question, that is, they mistakenly assumed that making HTTP request to the App's server is a good indicator of being a user. Unfortunately this is the way that the Turkish government operates since many years, they first lock you in and you fight back for years until you prove your innocence. What's even worse is that you can't really get good compensation for it, you just suck it up and move on.

amckinlay 9y ago

And this is a government we're going to rescue if they're ever under attack.

Pxtl 9y ago

The absence of any condemning of the policy itself in the article is super conspicuous. I assume the commenter below guessing it's for the protection of their correspondent is correct. Still, it's too bad they couldn't put a lampshade on it - "we at the CBC are not in a position to comment on the merits and flaws of this policy". But even that could draw ire, I guess.