6 ms·

So many people here only look at the business cost of what Google wanted to do and don't care about the human cost. It's great that you were born in a western

So many people here only look at the business cost of what Google wanted to do and don't care about the human cost. It's great that you were born in a western country with a good understanding of freedom and your rights. The majority of the world don't have these conditions. Your "business" decision effects billions of people in the world. I was born and mostly raised in Iran. "Business" decisions from companies that sold the government DPI equipment made sense for them, their shareholders, and their investors. But at what cost? Iran is a very young country in terms of population age. Many Iranians simply didn't have the opportunity to grow simply because a few companies wanted more $$$ in their pockets. If you in any way support these decisions while having complete freedom not to, then you're complicit. You're part of the reason so many countries have a lost/dark generation. You're part of the cause of so much suffering in the world. Good on you Google Engineers who stood against making a few $ of profit to stop the suffering of many, many people.

_iyig 8y ago
What is DPI equipment? I’m not familiar with the acronym.
- gresrun 8y ago
  Deep Packet Inspection [0] [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_packet_inspection https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_packet_inspection
  - krackers 8y ago
    Doesn't TLS defeat this?
    - MrOwen 8y ago
      Not necessarily. You are correct in that you can't look at the literal messages inside the packets anymore but you can make educated assumptions based on usage patterns and packet sizes combined with data that's already in the header. Just take a look at this almost 3 year old submission detailing someone's experience with the Great Firewall: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10905076 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10905076 Since that was 3 years ago, I suspect there's much more advanced network wizardry available today.
      - TeMPOraL 8y ago
        I.e. side channels. There are side channels for everything. And if you don't care about precision that much - e.g. you're willing to filter out anything even remotely resembling the actual thing you're after - then TLS isn't going to be a hard problem.
    - wil421 8y ago
      No, the DPI box or another network box should be the one that is actually sending the cert. You are only exchanging a cert with DPI and then the DPI will send it’s cert to your destination. The client must trust the DPI cert for it to work.
    - lallysingh 8y ago
      IIRC Iran throttled TLS connections to ridiculously slow rates to discourage their use.
    - baroffoos 8y ago
      The government can just block all encrypted connections. Either switch to unencrypted or enjoy no internet.
- MrOwen 8y ago
  I believe that is "deep packet inspection". So looking at the contents of a packet rather than just the information found in the header. Pretty sure the Great Firewall makes extensive use of DPI to restrict its citizen's internet freedoms.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
badrabbit 8y ago
I get what you're saying but a country is sovreign from othets and corporations don't get to decide what's acceptable in a country. It comes down to this imo: will the product be used in ways that are morally wrong? Or will it be used in ways which are legally wrong or socially unacceptable? I agree with you that a company should not sell their products to enable a moral wrong in any country. However, free speech and oppression of democracy is not a moral wrong. "Free speech" in the west means the Government shouldn't censor speech,this is a relativly new concept almost unheard of in history. It certainly isn't a human right. If a legitimate government of a country censors speech they're merely excercising their authority unless their laws restrict them from doing so as in the west. Whatever your view may be, a corporation does not get to decide social norms and what should be legal in any country.
- gmanley 8y ago
  What's moral or not isn't static. Plenty of people believe the suppression of speech is morally wrong. Your distinction between what is morally wrong and what is Socially unacceptable is unclear. Of course companies don't have the ability to directly change laws in sovereign countries but they can definitely influence them, just like people in mass can. Whether or not this will have any effect on China I lean towards absolutely not but at the very least some people at these companies don't want to help them.
  - badrabbit 8y ago
    I should have clarified then,I meant morally wrong according to the the moral views of the person claiming wrong was done. If I argue Google is wrong for moral reasons then I need to argue as to why my standard of morality is accurate and applies to Google. For your second point,companies do influence policies but they have no right to force a policy. For example,Google can say "we're pulling out of country X because they don't have this policy" that's arm twisting and in disregard to the sovreignity of the country and its people. Google isn't irreplacable in China,Alibaba+tencent compete with them heavily anyways.
- guelo 8y ago
  > It certainly isn't a human right. Freedom of expression is in Article 19 of the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights. http://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/ http://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
schuke 8y ago
Google in China won’t make the people more oppressed. It gives us a tool for searchinng. It’s better than being oppressed AND have nothing to search with.
- abc-xyz 8y ago
  It most definitely would make the people more oppressed. Even if we ignore the fact that the searches would be directly tied to a person, as well as the fact that there are nobody better than Google when it comes to tracking users on mass-scale, then you just have to think about all the people who would stop using VPNs as a result of this. You'd also be a fool to believe that China wouldn't slowly force Google to assist them outside the search engine.
  - schuke 8y ago
    All domestic online activities are already linked to individuals. All apps and websites are required by law to do this so the marginal harm of having a censored Google is minimal, if any. People use VPN for a lot more than political searches on Google: Youtube, Instagram, Steam, Wikipedia etc. It's unlikely a censored Google will discourage using them all. on The other hand for those who'll never use VPN services, another search engine choice will greatly improve their access to information, especially in non-Chinese languages.
    - abc-xyz 8y ago
      No they're not. The big players are, but that doesn't include all. For instance, my websites are available to Chinese users and have no tracking whatsoever. The government can see they visited the website, but not necessarily what pages they visited. I suggest you read the previous Dragonfly threads, they were filled with Chinese users proclaiming that they hated paying for VPN just to use Google. I'm not saying everyone would stop using VPN, but a significant percentage would.

_iyig 8y ago

What is DPI equipment? I’m not familiar with the acronym.

gresrun 8y ago
Deep Packet Inspection [0] [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_packet_inspection https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_packet_inspection
- krackers 8y ago
  Doesn't TLS defeat this?
  - MrOwen 8y ago
    Not necessarily. You are correct in that you can't look at the literal messages inside the packets anymore but you can make educated assumptions based on usage patterns and packet sizes combined with data that's already in the header. Just take a look at this almost 3 year old submission detailing someone's experience with the Great Firewall: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10905076 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10905076 Since that was 3 years ago, I suspect there's much more advanced network wizardry available today.
    - TeMPOraL 8y ago
      I.e. side channels. There are side channels for everything. And if you don't care about precision that much - e.g. you're willing to filter out anything even remotely resembling the actual thing you're after - then TLS isn't going to be a hard problem.
  - wil421 8y ago
    No, the DPI box or another network box should be the one that is actually sending the cert. You are only exchanging a cert with DPI and then the DPI will send it’s cert to your destination. The client must trust the DPI cert for it to work.
  - lallysingh 8y ago
    IIRC Iran throttled TLS connections to ridiculously slow rates to discourage their use.
  - baroffoos 8y ago
    The government can just block all encrypted connections. Either switch to unencrypted or enjoy no internet.
MrOwen 8y ago
I believe that is "deep packet inspection". So looking at the contents of a packet rather than just the information found in the header. Pretty sure the Great Firewall makes extensive use of DPI to restrict its citizen's internet freedoms.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

badrabbit 8y ago

I get what you're saying but a country is sovreign from othets and corporations don't get to decide what's acceptable in a country. It comes down to this imo: will the product be used in ways that are morally wrong? Or will it be used in ways which are legally wrong or socially unacceptable? I agree with you that a company should not sell their products to enable a moral wrong in any country. However, free speech and oppression of democracy is not a moral wrong. "Free speech" in the west means the Government shouldn't censor speech,this is a relativly new concept almost unheard of in history. It certainly isn't a human right. If a legitimate government of a country censors speech they're merely excercising their authority unless their laws restrict them from doing so as in the west. Whatever your view may be, a corporation does not get to decide social norms and what should be legal in any country.

gmanley 8y ago
What's moral or not isn't static. Plenty of people believe the suppression of speech is morally wrong. Your distinction between what is morally wrong and what is Socially unacceptable is unclear. Of course companies don't have the ability to directly change laws in sovereign countries but they can definitely influence them, just like people in mass can. Whether or not this will have any effect on China I lean towards absolutely not but at the very least some people at these companies don't want to help them.
- badrabbit 8y ago
  I should have clarified then,I meant morally wrong according to the the moral views of the person claiming wrong was done. If I argue Google is wrong for moral reasons then I need to argue as to why my standard of morality is accurate and applies to Google. For your second point,companies do influence policies but they have no right to force a policy. For example,Google can say "we're pulling out of country X because they don't have this policy" that's arm twisting and in disregard to the sovreignity of the country and its people. Google isn't irreplacable in China,Alibaba+tencent compete with them heavily anyways.
guelo 8y ago
> It certainly isn't a human right. Freedom of expression is in Article 19 of the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights. http://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/ http://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

schuke 8y ago

Google in China won’t make the people more oppressed. It gives us a tool for searchinng. It’s better than being oppressed AND have nothing to search with.

abc-xyz 8y ago
It most definitely would make the people more oppressed. Even if we ignore the fact that the searches would be directly tied to a person, as well as the fact that there are nobody better than Google when it comes to tracking users on mass-scale, then you just have to think about all the people who would stop using VPNs as a result of this. You'd also be a fool to believe that China wouldn't slowly force Google to assist them outside the search engine.
- schuke 8y ago
  All domestic online activities are already linked to individuals. All apps and websites are required by law to do this so the marginal harm of having a censored Google is minimal, if any. People use VPN for a lot more than political searches on Google: Youtube, Instagram, Steam, Wikipedia etc. It's unlikely a censored Google will discourage using them all. on The other hand for those who'll never use VPN services, another search engine choice will greatly improve their access to information, especially in non-Chinese languages.
  - abc-xyz 8y ago
    No they're not. The big players are, but that doesn't include all. For instance, my websites are available to Chinese users and have no tracking whatsoever. The government can see they visited the website, but not necessarily what pages they visited. I suggest you read the previous Dragonfly threads, they were filled with Chinese users proclaiming that they hated paying for VPN just to use Google. I'm not saying everyone would stop using VPN, but a significant percentage would.