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Fella from Kazakhstan is here, the thing is that state government claims that they had finished certificate testing and provided instructions how to remove it f

Fella from Kazakhstan is here, the thing is that state government claims that they had finished certificate testing and provided instructions how to remove it from the devices two weeks ago (http://knb.gov.kz/ru/news/v-otnoshenii-sertifikata-bezopasnosti http://knb.gov.kz/ru/news/v-otnoshenii-sertifikata-bezopasno...). I never installed that certificate and had to use VPN during this time. Still some of the people have connection issues with certain sites like facebook, gmail, etc. Some of the companies had sued government and mobile carriers for that connection issues. In my opinion Mozilla and Google made a right decision, there is a lot of talks of how good is Kazakhstan now for doing business, the taxes are low, it's easy to get a visas for foreigner employees, and by doing this they are losing trust to themselves. I don't think they will manage to make a fork of some of the browsers, simply because level of the our software production is kinda low, especially in goverment sector, and people will definitely not use the browser if they will attempt to make one, they will manage to use VPN and will find other ways to just use the "normal" software.

ignoramous 7y ago
> I don't think they will manage to make a fork of some of the browsers, simply because level of the our software production is kinda low, especially in goverment sector, and people will definitely not use the browser if they will attempt to make one Well, they could always license browsers from other vendors, which they will, if things need to go that extent. > they will manage to use VPN and will find other ways to just use the "normal" software Are users in Kazakhstan willing to pay extra $5 or more per month for VPNs that respect user-privacy? If not, using free VPNs is going to only make matters worse. In India, where porn is blocked, users typically resort to using Telegram or free VPNs to satiate their desire for it; most wouldn't pay $2 per month for VPNs, even when they could afford it (since $0 VPNs are a click away and unblocks porn for them).
- Ajedi32 7y ago
  I can't imagine how a free VPN could be worse than an actual government-sponsored man-in-the-middle attack, particularly since VPNs don't force you to install their own CA certificate (and therefore can't intercept HTTPS connections).
  - ignoramous 7y ago
    Agree, but: Most free VPNs are run by state-owned actors, may also in fact be honey-pots, which are now dripping with meta-data for literally everything you do on the Internet. Whilst that is not strictly worse than MiTMd HTTPS, it is still a step in the wrong direction.
    - stevenhubertron 7y ago
      Not saying you are wrong, but I would love a source for this statement.
      - ignoramous 7y ago
        I guess you mean source for state-owned VPNs? My other comment has this ref: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18525041 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18525041 And Lantern, a P2P VPN popular with the Chinese is backed by CIA (so is Tor): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20373425 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20373425
        adventured 7y ago
        > Most free VPNs are run by state-owned actors That's a dramatic statement however and you didn't support it at all with your links. Can you back up the claim that most free VPNs are state-owned? That is what the reply was likely asking for.
        barneygale 7y ago
        https://www.top10vpn.com/free-vpn-app-investigation/ https://www.top10vpn.com/free-vpn-app-investigation/
        ironlenny 7y ago
        I'm not quite sure what you're insinuating about Tor. Tor is an opensource project govern by a non-profit. If you're worried about things like backdoors, that's why it was opensourced in the first place. I'm not sure how you're connecting the CIA with Tor. I wouldn't be surprised if the CIA uses Tor. I know the State Department does.
- usernameis42 7y ago
  Sure, they always could get a license of some of the browsers, and still it will be hard to force people switch to that browser, simply cause people are used to work in a Chrome, or Firefox, or even Edge, this software is convenient, and mostly it works perfect. It will be very hard for government, and they will lose trust even more, it's kinda painful to use services that our government provides, it's usually slow, full of bugs and it's takes long time for them to fix it. By mentioning VPN I meant it will be the way to get a normal software if the will block the downloads and updates for the certian browsers. Of course user privacy it's other topic and I don't think that most of the people will pay for the VPN.
  - kevincox 7y ago
    Curting off people's internet access us a pretty good way to get people to do just about anything.
onetimemanytime 7y ago
>>Some of the companies had sued government and mobile carriers for that connection issues. Government shaking in their boots...a lawsuit will teach a dictatorship

ignoramous 7y ago

> I don't think they will manage to make a fork of some of the browsers, simply because level of the our software production is kinda low, especially in goverment sector, and people will definitely not use the browser if they will attempt to make one Well, they could always license browsers from other vendors, which they will, if things need to go that extent. > they will manage to use VPN and will find other ways to just use the "normal" software Are users in Kazakhstan willing to pay extra $5 or more per month for VPNs that respect user-privacy? If not, using free VPNs is going to only make matters worse. In India, where porn is blocked, users typically resort to using Telegram or free VPNs to satiate their desire for it; most wouldn't pay $2 per month for VPNs, even when they could afford it (since $0 VPNs are a click away and unblocks porn for them).

Ajedi32 7y ago
I can't imagine how a free VPN could be worse than an actual government-sponsored man-in-the-middle attack, particularly since VPNs don't force you to install their own CA certificate (and therefore can't intercept HTTPS connections).
- ignoramous 7y ago
  Agree, but: Most free VPNs are run by state-owned actors, may also in fact be honey-pots, which are now dripping with meta-data for literally everything you do on the Internet. Whilst that is not strictly worse than MiTMd HTTPS, it is still a step in the wrong direction.
  - stevenhubertron 7y ago
    Not saying you are wrong, but I would love a source for this statement.
    - ignoramous 7y ago
      I guess you mean source for state-owned VPNs? My other comment has this ref: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18525041 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18525041 And Lantern, a P2P VPN popular with the Chinese is backed by CIA (so is Tor): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20373425 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20373425
      - adventured 7y ago
        > Most free VPNs are run by state-owned actors That's a dramatic statement however and you didn't support it at all with your links. Can you back up the claim that most free VPNs are state-owned? That is what the reply was likely asking for.
        barneygale 7y ago
        https://www.top10vpn.com/free-vpn-app-investigation/ https://www.top10vpn.com/free-vpn-app-investigation/
      - ironlenny 7y ago
        I'm not quite sure what you're insinuating about Tor. Tor is an opensource project govern by a non-profit. If you're worried about things like backdoors, that's why it was opensourced in the first place. I'm not sure how you're connecting the CIA with Tor. I wouldn't be surprised if the CIA uses Tor. I know the State Department does.
usernameis42 7y ago
Sure, they always could get a license of some of the browsers, and still it will be hard to force people switch to that browser, simply cause people are used to work in a Chrome, or Firefox, or even Edge, this software is convenient, and mostly it works perfect. It will be very hard for government, and they will lose trust even more, it's kinda painful to use services that our government provides, it's usually slow, full of bugs and it's takes long time for them to fix it. By mentioning VPN I meant it will be the way to get a normal software if the will block the downloads and updates for the certian browsers. Of course user privacy it's other topic and I don't think that most of the people will pay for the VPN.
- kevincox 7y ago
  Curting off people's internet access us a pretty good way to get people to do just about anything.

onetimemanytime 7y ago

>>Some of the companies had sued government and mobile carriers for that connection issues. Government shaking in their boots...a lawsuit will teach a dictatorship