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It's true HTTPS traffic can be blocked (at least partially) by revoking certificates, but is this worse than the censorship opportunities offered by unauthentic
by lfam 8y ago
It's true HTTPS traffic can be blocked (at least partially) by revoking certificates, but is this worse than the censorship opportunities offered by unauthenticated HTTP?
Whether the traffic is authenticated or not, ISPs block sites when instructed by government orders. And that is much harder to work around than a revoked TLS cert (although a revoked cert does mean "totally blocked" for almost all users).
These are not purely technical challenges, but rather political issues that must be addressed as such. We will always lose to our governments if we focus only on technical solutions to censorship.
I'd like to add that the USA government, for the most part, does not accept an absolute right to private communication. The possibility of ubiquitous end-to-end encrypted communications with tools like TLS and WhatsApp is not something we should take for granted. The USA matters here because we are the powerful nation with the strongest legal and cultural commitment to freedom of speech.