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Hong Kong ISP Association’s Statement on Selective Blocking of Internet Services
- tony 7y agoIf it turns out PRC messes with HK's traffic, PRC is going to lose a load of trust over this. Businesses relying on VPN'ing home to function, those believe its a human right to choose their leadership. Why shouldn't the fragrant harbor enjoy same autonomy the rest of these received? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_that_have_gained_independence_from_the_United_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_that_have_ga... What's there to fear? Do Hong Kongers not share the same kindred blood, language (as far as Cantonese, at least in Guangdong), culture. Why not let Hong Konger's vote for independence? Scotland had a chance in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Scottish_independence_referendum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Scottish_independence_ref.... What keeps it together? I don't know. Trust? Respect? Is there trust and respect between HK <-> China? I've been between GZ/HK many times. They're different places. If PRC wants to be an example to others of their own philosophy and system, they should do it by building trust over time, not by using a hammer.
- tthhuuiff 7y ago> Why not let Hong Konger’s vote for independence? Probably the same reason Spain doesn’t let Catalonia vote for independence.
- sooheon 7y agoOr why America literally fought a war over secession.
- _iyig 7y agoDoes Hong Kong practice chattel slavery? That was the reason for the American Civil War.
- tony 7y agoI'm not an expert on Catolonia and Spain, but I don't see it that way. I've likened Hong Kong to Singapore. It's leaning toward being fully independent and the momentum seems unstoppable. The question I'm wondering is why stop at HK? I want my access to KuGou back. That's what did it for me. Spain and Catalonia both use the Euro. Catalonia has its own judicial system, but I believe they both are set to the EU in terms of bigger picture things. HK and PRC have separate currencies. HK uses traditional chinese characters and speaks Cantonese. Not everyone in neighboring Guangdong speaks Cantonese, and they use simplified chinese characters. Hong Kong has its own famous movies. It has its own cellphone companies and ISPs. Its own stock market. They drive on different sides of the road (left in HK, right in China). HK has trams. HK has its own customs. The legal system is in english and its a common law system and dramatically different than China's.
- ridaj 7y agoWhat momentum towards independence? Everything since the handover has been going against independence. Maybe the difference with Singapore is this cold reality: https://foreignpolicy.com/2014/08/21/hong-kongs-inconvenient-truth/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2014/08/21/hong-kongs-inconvenient...
- morningseagulls 7y agoThe article notes: >the city looks to the mainland for most of its resources. So does Singapore, which looks to Peninsular Malaysia for most of its resources (water and food). That's the main problem with that opinion piece. Here's the real difference: - Singapore was expelled from the federation of Malaysia by politicians keen to keep their racialist affirmative action policy. AFAIK Malaysia has no official irredentist policy when it comes to Singapore. - Hong Kong is in no danger of being expelled from the PRC because the PRC has an officially proclaimed irredentist policy regarding Hong Kong.
- ridaj 7y agoSure, the dependency on resources exists in the case of Singapore as well, but the ratio of military capability between Singapore and Malaysia is much more balanced than that between HK and the PRC (since it's 0).
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- nitwit005 7y agoYou often get the impression that leaders are more upset about the fact that people are defying them than any underlying issue with people wanting different governance. You'll sometimes see leaders proudly support independence movements abroad while insisting people pushing the same sort of ideas at home are criminals or terrorists.
- jjcm 7y agoInteresting that this is coming right after the DoJ suggested they might be blocking the construction of the link between HK and the USA: https://www.wsj.com/articles/trans-pacific-tensions-threaten-u-s-data-link-to-china-11566991801 https://www.wsj.com/articles/trans-pacific-tensions-threaten...
- saagarjha 7y agoUnrelated: did Hacker News mess up their eTLD+1 code? I see the link as going to "org.hk" :/
- dear 7y agoHN only displays the top level domain, which is org.hk
- chipperyman573 7y agoI'm not sure I'm right, but isn't ork.hk the TLD? Similar to co.uk or com.cn
- thefifthsetpin 7y agoFor use cases like this, I generally pull from: https://publicsuffix.org/list/effective_tld_names.dat https://publicsuffix.org/list/effective_tld_names.dat They'd consider these to be the .hk TLD's: .hk com.hk edu.hk gov.hk idv.hk net.hk org.hk 公司.hk 教育.hk 敎育.hk 政府.hk 個人.hk 个人.hk 箇人.hk 網络.hk 网络.hk 组織.hk 網絡.hk 网絡.hk 组织.hk 組織.hk They also consider dreamhost.com to be a TLD, so it's probably not the right list for some other use cases.
- saagarjha 7y agoWhich looks like a bug, I take it, considering that this one shows up as going to "bbc.co.uk": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20817583 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20817583? (Also, I think the TLD is still just ".hk"; ".org.hk" is an eTLD AFAIK.)
- jasonjei 7y agoI’m guessing they probably only put in a handful of common country-level TLDs...
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
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- walrus01 7y agoThe important part about implementing something like the great firewall, or how Iran runs the Internet (All ISPs need to be downstream of the government-run ASN), is that you need cooperation from the people with network engineering talent. If all of them refuse to help implement your new internet censorship regime, it's a problem for any authoritarian government, just as much as if your police force stops following orders. You can start firing people and hiring replacements who will toe the line, but at a certain point you're going to end up with second and third rate talent, and correspondingly shoddy ISPs. Talented network engineers such as those who have the equivalent of 'enable' on the twenty largest ISPs in HK can choose to go elsewhere and work in free countries. There's sufficient demand for their skills that refusing en masse to cooperate is not an incredible risk for them. I work in the field and try to teach junior NOC people that there is such a thing as ethics in network engineering. Just as there is in any other professional field where people rely upon critical systems. This means, among other things, don't try to MITM your customers' traffic (Kazakhstan, recent incident comes to mind), don't get into intrusive DPI, don't fuck with neutrality of content, and absolutely never cooperate with anything that slightly resembles the great firewall. The combination of modern technology/human tracking systems plus full autocratic state control of ISPs could result in something that would be the wet dream of east germany's Stasi.
- whatshisface 7y agoChina doesn't need Hong Kong network talent, they have plenty of Chinese network talent. The same people who built the system to oppress their contrymen can build it to oppress semi-foreigners.
- walrus01 7y agoThat is probably true, if they accelerate a full political takeover and removal of HK autonomy. If HK autonomy is gone, all bets are off. At least the HK network engineers don't have to be complicit in it. Come to Canada and build something as awesome as PCCW [1]. [1]: https://www.peeringdb.com/net/1451 https://www.peeringdb.com/net/1451
- just_steve_h 7y ago
- olliepop 7y agoIronic that this would appear below a banner with the slogan "Making Web Content Available For All"* *Screen cap: https://i.imgur.com/tnTvaAJ.png https://i.imgur.com/tnTvaAJ.png
- saagarjha 7y agoThat certainly looks like what they're doing here?
- lemoncucumber 7y agoIt sounds like you didn't actually read the text of the statement, which concludes with: "Therefore, the HKISPA strongly opposes selective blocking of Internet Services without consensus of the community."
- hank_z 7y agoTbh, hk’s destiny was written when it’s handed back to cpc. Cpc is less tolerant of ‘anti-noise’ now. Just hope no more blood from the ordinary.
- whatshisface 7y agoIf the standard of living of the ordinary in HK drops to the ordinary standard of living in the mainland, ordinary HKers will have a reason to fight.
- iamnotacrook 7y agoChina is undergoing an economic miracle which is transforming the lives of millions. Hong Kong is going to get consumed by the mainland no matter which Linux distro or whatever is used. There's no domestic desire to keep HK special. It's just not going to happen.
- lettergram 7y agoI’d need to find the Frontline episode I saw on this (which gave numbers). But only around 300 million people are benefiting by moving to the middle class, the 700 million migrant workers and farmers are essentially slaves. That’s how China produces cheaper goods. So sure, “miracle for millions” is kind of true, but also omitting the majority.
- Leary 7y agohttps://www.gapminder.org/tools/#$chart-type=mountain https://www.gapminder.org/tools/#$chart-type=mountain Good chart for people interested in exploring the change in income distribution of people in different countries, including China.
- koduckgraph 7y agoDon't know where these figures of 300m and 700m come from, but people below poverty line reduced significantly. No tax is asked from farmers and kids of farmers are free to get higher pay either by either working as migrants in city or become new middle class through education. Overall wellbeing uplift is no doubt but discrepancy in the society increases much more, which is a big problem. Back to HK problem, info access control is a real threat to the freedom of ordinary people, which will ruin the foundation of HK’s prosperity.
- xster 7y agoAre there primary sources? It seems like a response to rumors but are there primary sources to the speculations they're alluding to?
- darawk 7y agoWhat do you mean? This is a primary source. This is the HK ISP association.
- walrus01 7y agoI think he's asking if there's been any sort of demand from the HK government to the various ISPs to start implementing such a thing, which I'm unaware of. Looks like the HK ISP association is getting out in front of the entire idea and issuing a clear statement. Anyone that's been watching HK for the past 20 years would find it obvious that the PRC government intends to slowly integrate it into mainland China, and absorb it into the same legal framework, slowly but surely. Eventual end state goal would be laws indistinguishable from across the "border" in Shenzhen.
- xster 7y agoI think it's also probably pretty obvious since 1898 :) I don't think there was really any indication counter to what you're describing since.
- RavlaAlvar 7y agoThere has been, in recent days, major government insiders openly say they is a possibility for the government to declare emergency situation in which its power include block any communication channel.
- xster 7y agoSure, the threat of using "Emergency Regulations Ordinance" seems credible. Though that makes one ask of all the hypothetical outcomes which according to https://www.elegislation.gov.hk/hk/cap241 https://www.elegislation.gov.hk/hk/cap241 includes "arrest, detention, exclusion and deportation;", "authorizing the entry and search of premises;" etc, why is selective internet blocking the one that gets a pre-emptive denouncement rather than say randomly getting snatched at home by the police?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- Basic_Treat 7y agoIs there an easy to follow guide for how to setup a censorship resistant internet toolkit for those of us in HK to prepare? Especially for mobile phones/devices.
- pas 7y agoYeah, at this point probably any plan start with getting a plane ticket and getting out of there if you really want to be prepared. :/ In my experience nothing really works, because the Chinese firewall is more like a whitelist than what it used to be. OpenVPN over WebSocket proxy works, sometimes. Some commercial VPNs work up to a point, but expect very low bandwidth and frequent annoying disconnects.
- seanmcdirmid 7y agoYou can get a direct line in the mainland from China telecom unfiltered by the firewall if you are a big enough company (foreign or otherwise). It is about the only reliable way of jumping the wall. A lot of hotels in GZ have internet through HK for some odd reason I can’t fathom, it was nice browsing Facebook in my hotel room without a VPN.
- pas 7y agoSure, you can, but that's not censorship resistant either, after all they know who you are. Plus even just to get a SIM card you need passport/id. So to be able to speak freely some kind of secure anonymization layer is needed.
- baroffoos 7y agoThe hardest part about such a toolkit is how do you know it is undetectable. Its quite easy to see when you have managed to bypass filters but what if the government has still detected the bypass and has put you on a list for illegal activity. Or what if they work out how to detect it in the future and go back through the logs to find all the people who used it. I think this is a problem that needs a political solution, not a technical one. The protesting in HK is probably the best way to go about this.
- iandanforth 7y agoI'm always baffled when these pieces include a line that says "we follow the law." That's carte blanche to any regime. The first rule of law is that you break them when necessary. If you're not willing to defy something you think is evil or wrong why bother with a puff statement? CYA I guess.
- dymk 7y agoReal easy to say "Defy the Chinese government while in their jurisdiction" from the comfort of your own home.
- tasogare 7y agoSo you think corporations should be able to cherry pick the regulations they follow? Seems a great idea for consumer rights, environmental protection, etc.
- wbl 7y agoObeying the law worked so well for IG Farben.
- Aperocky 7y agoTBF, it sucked for them mostly because Nazis lost the war. I'm sure whoever profited from constructing internment camp of Japanese during the same era went through it just fine.
- briantakita 7y agoIG Farben was broken up into Bayer, Monsanto, BASF, etc. Also many in the NSDAP were brought over to America via Operation Paperclip. Many went to the Soviet Union, Argentina, & remained in West & East Germany.
- javert 7y agoThe Japanese internment in the U.S. is not remotely comparable to the Nazis.
- Gaelan 7y ago@dang HN should probably show this article's domain as hkispa.org.hk, not just org.hk (which appears to be a "TLD" in the same vein as co.uk)
- dang 7y agoOk, done. Thanks!
- partiallypro 7y agoI think that the US should openly say it will accept Hong Kong asylum seekers with open arms. There is so much talent there that likely doesn't want to be there when the CPC truly uses its long arm.
- vermontdevil 7y agoMany are moving to Taiwan. The process is not difficult but expensive. https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/hong-kong-immigration-to-taiwan-surges-as-protests-grind-on https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/hong-kong-immigr...
- tthhuuiff 7y agoIronically, it’s good the Hong Kong curriculum started to teach Mandarin, as it will be needed in Taiwan.
- hanniabu 7y agoWhat do they speak in Hong Kong?
- reissbaker 7y agoCantonese
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- ClashTheBunny 7y agoCantonese
- PikachuEXE 7y agoEven though many would say Cantonese (Even HK people do) It's actually HK variant of Cantonese with many HK unique phases The Cantonese in Guangzhou is quite different But I guess no one call it HongKongese yet
- tthhuuiff 7y agoSo they are basically addressing rumors? It doesn’t seem like the HK government actually did anything. There has been so much incomplete news spreading that it’s hard to tell what is real. Just two weeks ago, there were videos of APCs “going into Hong Kong,” and people were saying a takeover was imminent. Instead it turned out to be some regular drill in Shenzhen. Just a few days ago, there were posts of HK police shooting at a kneeling bystander. Turns out if you watch the full video, the “bystander” was throwing bricks at the cops and a huge mob was attacking the cops with spears. Edit: To the people downvoting me, can you explain why? Am I mistaken about the events that happened? If so, please let me know. I’m just trying to weed out all the rumors get posted. Edit 2: If it’s because of my green status, I usually use throwaways when posting on sensitive topics. So I can understand if my interpretation of events upsets some people. Just to be clear, I do support the people of Hong Kong and hope they succeed. I just think it’s important to have a true accounting of the facts.
- louis8799 7y agoAlthough Hong Kong government has not officially announced such measure, the potential usage of it was actually bought up by one of the highest ranking official in Hong Kong. You can argue that it was not an official statement made by the government but any statement made by an official of this rank would pose enough concern to the society to the effect of the actual measure he was suggesting to task.
- chvid 7y agoThe coverage of the Hong Kong protests is very partisan. So much that is hard from an outsider to gauge exactly what is going. (Compare it to eg. India / Kashmir or the protests in France.) However what is obvious is that the HK government has a number of measures to do before it resorts to complete censorship or invites the army to take over. For example here in Denmark wearing masks in a public demonstration has been against the law for the past 10 years. Meaning that the police can arrest you immediately if you wear a mask and also (probably) dissolve the demonstration.
- Retroity 7y agoA very interesting statement. The Hong Kong ISP Association makes a number of very good points. Much of Hong Kong's economy relies on the open internet (like most of the world) and censoring it would do it much harm.
- ilaksh 7y agoI think the reality is that the largest group on the planet is in China and lives under this authoritarian paradigm or whatever it is exactly. There is good reason to expect China's global influence to continue to increase. HK is basically a front line. If you look at countries like Australia you can see that this style of government is already starting to spread in some ways. The US population is only 23% the size of China's yet the US has much more territorial and resource control globally. My concern is that Chinese people will eventually not want to tolerate this disparity in resource control anymore. At the moment the Chinese military is not capable of doing anything about it as far as I know. However, if that changes, it is unlikely that the US will cede control voluntarily. In that case there would be a war. However, since war involves mass killing, and people do not do that without some moral justification, people will need to find this ethical cause. What scares me about the protests is that "freedom" is the type of cause that people will commit mass murder for. I think that the people who might push for a war do not really care about freedom or anything other than money and they do not respect human life. I think it may be necessary to find non-violent ways to integrate Eastern and Western cultures and logistical controls in order to avoid a war. So I believe that should be a national security priority.
- rayiner 7y agoWar is not murder, in the same way self defense or involuntary homicide is not murder. Words have meaning. (Especially legal terms of art.)
- ilaksh 7y agoI changed it to say mass killing.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- magicsmoke 7y agoIf it's any consolation, a US-China war will likely be naval in nature. Unlike WW2's land theaters in Russia or China, a naval conflict will have significantly fewer civilian casualties. This will be a fight where China tries to turn its surrounding seas into a no-go zone for the US navy and dominate oil supply lines through the Indian ocean that will secure its oil flow and allow it to pressure its East Asian neighbors. The US navy will try to maintain control of East Asia's oil shipping and degrade China's military capabilities enough to force China to the negotiating table where they can then impose formal limits on China's post-surrender military and set up a permanent military presence in Taiwan close enough to pre-emptively attack any future military buildup. Neither military is primarily concerned with seizing large tracts of civilian populated land and the bloody mess that would entail.
- ridaj 7y agoWhen you start a draft comment on this story and your China-made device chooses this time to reboot without warning O_O;
- anticensor 7y agoIs there enough information interchange between CPU and baseband PU to do that?
- ridaj 7y agoNot just China manufactured. Chinese ROM. Anything goes.
- exabrial 7y agoI think the protesters need to figure out how to start making economic impacts that affect the Chinese. Striking at their jobs is a great start. Sand on runways, blocking ports, earth moving equipment to block highways, anything needed.
- vmlinuz 7y agoFirst general strike was on August 5th. It wasn't universally supported, but much public transport was paralysed - my company is very neutral politically, but they put out a general "work at home if you think it's necessary" announcement. There's another one scheduled for next week... Nobody has been anywhere near a runway, and it would be very hard to argue that they shouldn't be shot if they tried, but Hong Kong Airport was shutdown twice by the government because of protests there. Ports, meh, it's just cargo, nobody cares. Port workers went on strike a few years ago and companies just rerouted. Many highways have been blocked for short periods in 2019, and in 2014 major roads on Hong Kong Island were occupied for months. The economic impact so far has been modest, but noticeable. The overall state of the regional and global economy is a much bigger factor in Hong Kong's economic situation. We don't want anyone to die, police or protester. There have been cases where that has been a real possibility, recently, and that's mostly the red line that nobody wants to cross.
- techslave 7y agoi like how it reads like a telegram. i wonder if that’s a quirk of translation. _COMMENT_ENDS_
- mmaunder 7y agoRelevant from earlier today: US regulators have stepped in to potentially block an undersea cable between the US and HK. It's a joint project between Google, FB and Dr Peng which is the 4th largest telco in China. https://www.businessinsider.com/us-officials-may-undersea-cable-china-google-facebook-backed-wsj-2019-8?op=1 https://www.businessinsider.com/us-officials-may-undersea-ca...
- buildanduse 7y agoI live in Hong Kong and work for two international IT organizations and couldn't do it without full access to the Internet. The start of restrictions on what we can access, and possibly on what we do, would trigger an immediate "exit the territory" plan for myself and many others. If mainland China wishes to do irreparable damage to Hong Kong as retribution for bucking the system, this would do it. While my personal experience in Hong Kong has just been mediocre (have lived in APAC for 13 years - China, Taiwan, Hong Kong), the open access to news, social media, etc... is part of the local culture. Hong Kongers seem to have a similar cynical / critical view of all media - they want to validate the spin by their experience and other data points - a characteristic that is often seen as "western." This contributes to westerners feeling comfortable with Hong Kongers. It would be sad to see HK lose this. Of course, the wider Internet's concentration of critical network infrastructure in organizations like Cloudflare, Google, and others mean that even the "free" Internet is not fully free or truly egalitarian. The world needs infrastructure-level solutions to the overall troubling trend of great firewalls, malicious cert. authorities, bad actors, etc... that can be trusted by all and maybe even be a ray of light for Hong Kong's future.
- woutr_be 7y agoSame here, I've been looking to leave Hong Kong for a few years already, but was always comfortable enough to stay. The protests didn't have me worried a lot, but the response from the government has been disappointing to say the least. They're not looking to improve the situation, and treat people like they're babies. There's also a lot of personal reasons for me to leave, and a lot of minor annoyances in daily life that add up over time. With that said, if any restrictions come into place, I'll definitely fast track my plan to leave, probably before the end of the year.
- justinclift 7y agoCutting off or heavily restricting internet access seems to be a favoured tactic by governments prior to initiating internal violence. Sounds like a bad sign.
- haydn3 7y agoPeople just don't know about China. This is how it is there. There is no openness and freedom and everyone is monitored. People say it's not too bad. Personally, I don't know how I'd feel about it. It would change things and you'd only be able to go on state-approved websites, but life would go on...
- Tigah_pawszzz 7y agoInternet blockade is absurd, and that's why I use VPN (multiple actually) to bypass GFW.
- steventhedev 7y agoWe have servers in HK. Not to reach mainland China, but to service all SE Asia. We chose HK because it has the best balance of latency between all destinations. If PRC decides to move HK behind the great firewall, we'd move our servers, and so would most other companies. Last I checked, Great Firewall DPI takes around 100ms. I don't have exact timing, it's possible it's different for ingress/egress, or that it's only on tcp connect, but 100ms means it's reasonable for us to consider pretty much any other city in SE Asia, and a few outside. For reference, Taipei is around 20ms away from HK, and Manila is around 40ms. Singapore is problematic because they have a tiny number of external cables, and they had an incident a few years back where all but one cable was out of service for months. Point is if HK moves behind the GFW, I'll have some servers for sale. EDIT: I'll let my stupidity stand, but for correctness: Singapore has around 15 submarine cables as of 2018, but only 3 landing sites.
- idlewords 7y agoNote that this is not the PRC expanding the Great Firewall, but the Hong Kong government mulling its own restrictions under emergency powers. My understanding is that the infrastructure is not in place to just move the city behind the Great Firewall even if that were a goal.
- rrix2 7y agoThe letter's point is that if they make movement today on attempting to block access through their current means, it can only end in a GFW-like situation because it can't meet PRC standards otherwise. Even if it takes years, it ruins the economic prospects of the city as a technological leader.
- est 7y ago> Last I checked, Great Firewall DPI takes around 100ms How do you check that? The DPI works mostly in async way, mirror traffic to standalone servers to extract key data points, if found a match, send RST to drop the TCP stream and maybe further blacklist the IP indefinitely. Is there a new mechanism that requires synchronised data stream check? Making a DPI on backbone internet with <100ms latency would be extremely impressive achievement.