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The EU Wants Its Own DNS Resolver That Can Block 'Unlawful' Traffic,TorrentFreak
- bhaney 3y agoSeems both harmless and pointless. There are tons of resolvers that block all sorts of crap, and we just don't use them if we don't want that crap blocked. This proposal doesn't seem to imply that anyone will be forced to use this resolver, and I doubt anyone will use it because it's very unlikely to be better than existing options.
- febeling 3y agoNot hard to anticipate how this might play out. I can see how it first becomes the "official" resolver, which in a later steps is maybe "recommended," then required if you want certain kinds of funding or subsidy, or just serve public contracts, etc. Before you know it it's mandatory.
- zarzavat 3y agoThey can make it “mandatory” but if it sucks then people will just change their DNS to something else. The people who don’t know how to do that probably don’t leave the mainstream internet anyway.
- febeling 3y ago25 years ago I also had a lot of trust in freedom on the internet, because it would just "route around censorship" and all that. I don't have the same confidence anymore.
- zarzavat 3y agoThe internet seems to be doing just fine at routing around censorship. I can still access TPB and Libgen a multitude of different ways despite the efforts of my govt to block them. DNS is harder to block because it’s not illegal, and it’s a core internet service, which means there’s a lot of interest in preserving access.
- gryn 3y agoIt's a boiling frog situation, next step in that scenario is making illegal to change the DNS.
- codedokode 3y agoISPs will block DNS traffic to harmful DNS servers or reroute it to approved servers.
- zarzavat 3y agoVery difficult to even identify DNS traffic if it’s passing over DoH. EU moves far too slowly to stand a chance at blocking it. If your evil master plan involves winning against millions of horny teenagers: it’s bad plan.
- m000 3y agoYou may not use it at home, but it can easily become the default in managed environments. I just wish that the focus is really on protecting citizens (e.g. block domains known to serve malware) rather than just filtering "illegal content". The latter would just be a waste of EU money with very little added value for the EU citizens. I'd bet that blocking "illegal content" will be mostly blocking DMCA takedowns. I.e. EU will be spending from their own pockets to have the "privilege" to serve takedowns for US-owned IP from an EU-controlled DNS infrastructure.
- agilob 3y agoJust like Turkey did? https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=turkey%20dns%208.8.8.8%20graffiti&tbs=imgo:1 https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=turkey%20dns%208.8....
- mbf1 3y agoThis has been done many times before. The question is: Who wants it? Is it the government that wants it or the users? If the users want it, then it will take off. Otherwise, nobody will use it. "Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it." -Mark Twain
- throwaway11460 3y agoThat's why the next step will be mandating its use and blocking of DNS servers that don't replicate this one.
- eastbound 3y agoYes. Mandate Google to follow EU’s restrictions when they respond to 8.8.8.8 on a EU address, or pay a huge penalty. After all, it’s EU’s freedom which is at stake.
- orwin 3y agoIt won't work, the courts will not enforce it. Worse even, it is typically a case where EU can loose some legal power to the European court of human right. Logically, the ECHR should have primacy over the EUCJ, but technically and legally, it does not yet. Any case as broad as this, if the EUCJ is forced by the parliement to enforce it against human rights, would trigger a shit storm, and the EUCJ would either have to bow to the ECHR, or a new constitution would have to be drafted and voted on, and _that_ would be an even worse shitstorm.
- candiodari 3y agoHow do we get from DNS to Human rights? Why would they get involved?
- orwin 3y agoBecause to force people to use a specific Dns, you will have to invade their privacy, and privacy is a human right.
- perihelions 3y agoSeems to dovetail with the EU's separate proposal to mandate that browsers trust EU-controlled TLS root certificates [0]. (Note the DNS resolver in OP is not apparently mandatory). [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38109494 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38109494 ("Last Chance to fix eIDAS: Secret EU law threatens Internet security", 299 comments)
- AlchemistCamp 3y agoThe Great Firewall of Europe is getting built slowly and poorly, but it is getting built. The will clearly exists.
- mantas 3y agoMandatory TLS in browsers, E2E encrypted chats bypass... I see a pattern there.
- gryn 3y agoYes it's a worrying trend you see in the laws proposed/created over the past few years. ISPs in france already comes with censored DNS servers probably due to regulation for a few years now. I guess this is a suggestion to make EU wide not just for some countries. The real problem is when they will ban and make it illegal to change from a list of censored ones.
- feverzsj 3y agoThey can just import the Great Firewall of China.
- Joker_vD 3y agoNo, they can't "just" do it in one fell swoop, that'd be too much and meet way too strong backlash. Even in autocratic regimes the "tightening of the bolts" has to be done gradually and step by step, nevermind the (still mostly) democratic ones.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- eterps 3y agoThe most used third-party options include Google, Cloudflare, OpenDNS and Norton, which are all US-based. This large foreign footprint has the EU worried. This is understandable but the integration of government, DNS, and particularly blocking is a controversial intersection of concepts.
- blitzar 3y agoI would rather that my government controlled my DNS than the US government / CIA controlled my DNS.
- zerof1l 3y agoDoesn't matter. Most people have been manually changing their DNS server to Google or Cloudflare DNS. More tech-savvy ones run their own DNS: unbound, pi-hole, etc.
- RandomLensman 3y ago"Most people"? I very much doubt that.
- TacticalCoder 3y agoYou may wonder how's that going to work now that DoH is used by default by browsers? For it won't be enough to use the great firewall of communist Europe to filter port 53: they'll have to force browsers to send encrypted DNS traffic to EU-approved resolvers... Well, the call for proposal linked in TFA mention DoH and explains that they'll need to "engage with the community" (browsers, ISPs, ...). Community engagement comrades!
- severino 3y agoFunny thing people says the EU is a communist state when it has been ruled by right-wing conservatives since its inception
- DiogenesKynikos 3y agoI know the word "neoliberal" is overused, but The EU really is a neoliberal economic bloc, in the correct sense of the term. The most fundamental goal of the EU is to enable free flow of goods, services and labor within the bloc. The EU tries to prevent member states from enacting subsidies or regulations that benefit their own companies at the expense of other EU companies. The one area in which EU market policy isn't neoliberal is agriculture. EU subsidies there are meant to keep farmers happy and to prevent any food crisis from ever occurring. I think food security is an exception that even the most strident free-marketeer understands. So when people call the EU communist, I just have to chuckle.
- TheRoque 3y agoWhat's the point ? In France, IAP already block some unlawful websites with their DNS, and you just have to switch to another one.
- prmoustache 3y agoI think the idea is to: 1) force ISP to use them as source DNS 2) force ISP to block ip of non EU DNS 3) add laws that forbid individuals and association to maintain an uncensored DNS 4) Force browser vendors to point to DNS over HTTPS server whose source is EU DNS Not sure how they could limit people from using DNS over HTTPS with forked/reconfigured browsers but I guess that would at least limit the majority of non tech savy users.
- nwellnhof 3y agoNote that the EU forces providers to censor DNS already. % nslookup www.rt.com - dns01.mnet-online.de Server: dns01.mnet-online.de Address: 2001:a60::53:1#53 *** Can't find www.rt.com: No answer
- bootsmann 3y agoI don't think disrupting a foreign states propaganda operation falls under censorship.
- 4bpp 3y agoWhat do you think does fall under censorship?
- hosteur 3y agoWhat? This is exactly what censorship is. Censorship is censorship even if it aligns with your opinion.
- bootsmann 3y agoBlocking RT has little to do with the opinions spread by it (though highly correlated for a variety of reasons), other people in Europe are allowed to say and spread the same ideas without any repercussions. It is about fighting the intelligence operations by a country that is quite literally invading a bordering allied state. RT isn't being blocked because it spread ideas that are contained in some EU law to be illegal and dangerous opinions, they are being blocked because they are owned by the Russian state.
- m000 3y agoMeanwhile, we've been hugging with some other illegal occupiers for decades. They're even allowed to openly run lobbying groups.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- spookie 3y agoThis is stepping over the line, I'm not even arguing over piracy. The real issue is having the infrastructure in place to control media. It's concerning this is even attempted to begin with.
- kamma 3y agoYear 2024, Humanity's in its golden age. Real problems? Extinct. War, crimes, poverty, hunger, even diseases: all banished into history textbooks. The only tear in this utopian tapestry? A handful of folks getting their knickers in a twist over the replication of certain patterns of zeroes and ones.
- rvnx 3y agoIn which country are you living ?
- coldtea 3y agoYeah, had to LOL at "War, crimes, poverty, hunger, even diseases: all banished into history textbooks". That's with several major wars going on, including talks of nuclear escalation, worsening crime stats (in the US, but also elsewhere in the west), poverty on the rise (and thus hunger), and after the COVID pandemic toll (regarding diseases)...
- pprotas 3y agoIt’s sarcasm
- vjjsejj 3y agoIt really can’t be this hard to understand such basic sarcasm? Or I’m actually the one doing that here (and your comment is sarcastic as well)?
- Arnt 3y agoIn this case, the sarcasm is intended to confuse, and with some readers it achieves a little more confusion than intended. kamma could have written something like "the EU should solve <really difficult problems> before concerning itself with <simpler problenm>" but that would have made clear that the really difficult problems are really difficult. The sarcasm is rhetorical device to distract the readers so they won't pay attention to the different levels of difficulty. Handwaving, basically, and the handwaving was a little too strong and distracted some readers too much.
- mittermayr 3y agoI teach a class on basic web technologies to Marketing students, and I always enjoy talking about DNS there. It is a fun concept to explain, that a text file, quite literally, is the backbone (phonebook) to the entire internet as we use it today. Anyone who gets to mess with the phonebook, has power. At the same time, nobody stops you from using your own copy of it. If the government decides to mess with the phonebook (like it does in many countries around the world), you simply use someone else's phonebook, or your own copy (or even just the edits/overwrites - i.e. the hosts file).
- ultim8k 3y agoThe only way this could work would be to force OS vendors to have "trusted" DNS servers and ban the use of any custom setting. Then again that would be a nightmare for large corporates that have customised internal DNSs, so I don't see it coming anytime soon.
- mrtksn 3y agoTurkey has a similar thing since about 10 years and the way it works is that if you don't agree with the government censorship you simply use some other DNS. Some service providers go the extra mile and block the ip but it seems pretty random. Even when blocked, you can use VPN. However, being able to access if you try hard enough is not O.K. Especially commercial operations are not viable if the Government doesn't like you because you instantly lose the non-techies. Dangerous stuff, even if you completely agree with everything the current government does don't forget that governments change.
- bazzargh 3y ago(2022). That contract was awarded to Whalebone https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/european-commission-entrusted-whalebone-development-dns4eu-/ https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/european-commission-entrusted... and the project has a website https://www.joindns4.eu/ https://www.joindns4.eu/ This background article covers a lot of the whys and hows: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23738871.2023.2295937?scroll=top&needAccess=true https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23738871.2023.2... including mentioning similar projects in the UK and Canada. It says public access to it (as an option, alongside other public DNS services) will be available from 2025.
- stavros 3y agoI have thought "man, I wish my DNS server didn't let me visit this torrent website I want to visit" exactly zero times. I wonder if this is some misguided "torrent sites are malicious, so users should be able to block them" thing, rather than a "the government needs to ban torrent sites because they're illegal". It's bizarre to make a DNS resolver like this, and then make it opt-in.
- bazzargh 3y agoThe stated purpose of the thing isn't to block torrents. It's to avoid the EU being critically dependent on US infrastructure (and a lot more words), particularly government departments - also the stated reason for the UK version, both of which launched for access from government offices first? They make it clear on the website that it is optional so that it cannot be used for censorship.
- stavros 3y agoThat clarifies things, and makes more sense, thank you.
- AnthonyMouse 3y ago> They make it clear on the website that it is optional so that it cannot be used for censorship. But then why is it blocking those sites? All that would do is reduce adoption and thwart their stated purpose.
- stavros 3y agoIt's so weird to me that the EU seems to simultaneously hold the position that a user's privacy is a fundamental right that must be respected, and enacts a lot of good legislation to that effect, but also that we must snoop on everyone so that we can think of the children.
- nemoniac 3y ago“The Internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.” — John Gilmore (1993)
- GuB-42 3y agoIt actually looks like a good thing. Having a state-approved DNS resolver is better than letting ISP and other private entities mess around with DNS. The current situation in many EU countries is that it is up to the ISPs to block unlawful/compromised domains, having an official EU resolver removes that burden from ISP, they now just have to point to that resolver. It will probably make it much easier for wi-fi hotspots, company networks, etc... to be in compliance, and it is better than relying on a third party that may have its own idea of what's acceptable, inject ads, etc... Of course, it would be better without censorship, and some organizations are fighting for it, and it is a good thing. but the technical solution is not bad IMHO. And censorship will be circumvented anyways, DNS blocking is weak. In summary: - It doesn't make the current situation worse regarding censorship (DNS poisoning is already done at ISP level) - It can keep ISPs in check - Depending on how well it is run, it can be good for security (it implies good reactivity on the part of the EU, that's why I don't count on it)
- chockablocker 3y agoDuring the early career of Ursula von der Leyen (current EU president) in Germany she was championing a law just like that. It was something like "stop signs" for the internet and was based on DNS based blocks. The law was passed and was quickly overturned once her party won the election. During the campaign she and her party were denouncing everybody opposing the law as being friendly to csam. This feels like a bad re-run of the same script to me.