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Venezuela Blocks Twitter as Opposition Stage New Protests
- pmelendez 13y agoI am surprised about reading this at HN before than Venezuelan press. I hope there is not censorship at the level too.
- asdfologist 13y agoIf they're censoring Twitter, don't you think they'd try to censor domestic media as well?
- pmelendez 13y agoThey would have to shutdown the whole press (not that they haven't done that before), but the website is still there and still publishing opposition friendly news
- goatslacker 13y agoI found out via friends on social media which is quite surprising as well
- rafaelm 13y agoThe press is being censored in a different way. The government is not giving them the dollars they need to buy paper for printing (there is a currency exchange control and no one can buy dollars without govt approval). There is no truly "free press" since they all depend on the government to give them the money for buying paper. Several regional newspapers have had to shut down already. You either tone down the stuff critical to the government or you will shut down sooner or later because of the lack of printing material. Right now the biggest newspapers in the country have reduced their issues to around 12 pages every day. They've had to print only the essential stuff (these twitter news will probably be printed tomorrow since this took place last night at around 1am).
- jjrangel 13y agoTelevision is heavily censored. While protesters are being attacked by paramilitary groups and government forces, TV stations show soap operas and cartoons. Also, the government often makes nationwide broadcasts that forces all channels to show the same pro-government content (a "cadena", which literally means "chain".) This effectively leaves the population misinformed at the most critical moments, the country only has social networks to find out about abuses from the regime. Some newspapers are still critical of the government, but I'm surprised to see many of them switch sides possibly because they've either been bought or blackmailed. You can feel self-censorship in some of them. Just like they silenced TV, they're trying to end freedom of speech in the press.
- rafaelm 13y agoThey also forced the cable operators to take the only TV channel actually informing about the protests off the air (NTN24). Right now twitter is working normally, but the govt keeps running these small tests, taking websites offline, in preparation for a complete blackout since the only way to find out right now what is going on is through the internet.
- kimjotki2 13y agoBut haven't Americans assassinate Hugo Chavez? Blocking the twitter seems to be a necessary step to stop further influences from capitalistic sides.
- asdfologist 13y agoIs this sarcastic?
- vinalia 13y agoMaybe this would be a good opportunity for university students over there to test out a network like Freenet for communicating? FMS, Frost, or Freemail could be used for messaging back and forth in place of e-mails and social networks. A couple people could build a jSite for news stories/pictures/videos. I don't think groups of students would have that hard of a time adding each other as peers under darknet mode. The docs make it pretty easy to switch over [1]. If they can't talk freely to one-another over emails or popular social networks like Facebook and Twitter... maybe they shouldn't use them. [1] https://freenetproject.org/documentation.html https://freenetproject.org/documentation.html
- kennywinker 13y agoOne of the downsides of centralized services like Twitter. Reminds me of Tim Berners-Lee's call to re-decentralize the web http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-02/06/tim-berners-lee-reclaim-the-web http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-02/06/tim-berners-l...
- higherpurpose 13y agoThis is why we need to use decentralized alternatives to our most popular services, in this case Twister (P2P Twitter alternative): http://twister.net.co/ http://twister.net.co/
- higherpurpose 13y agoSome images from the protest: http://imgur.com/a/zj4J9 http://imgur.com/a/zj4J9 Dead people in this one: https://imgur.com/gallery/4GgOL https://imgur.com/gallery/4GgOL
- middleclick 13y agoIf you know any Venezuelans, tell them about Tor. https://www.torproject.org/ https://www.torproject.org/
- rafaelm 13y agoYes I have been spreading Tor for a couple of days now. I started in my office and friends. Last night one of the biggest Venezuelan twitter accounts retweeted me too, so many people are aware now. I need to find a similar solution for mobile phones since most people here access twitter using the phones. Any suggestions?
- middleclick 13y agoHave a look at Orbot. https://guardianproject.info/apps/orbot/ https://guardianproject.info/apps/orbot/ It is Tor on Android devices.
- rafaelm 13y agoI thought that was only for using the web on phones, but I just saw that it also works with Twitter and any app that supports proxies. Thanks! This is one of those times when I wish there was a simple, secure messaging app for everyone. I don't know if apps like whisper or threema are 100% safe so I'm wary about recommending them.
- middleclick 13y agoIf you are looking for a secure desktop IM client, look at Pidgin with OTR. https://securityinabox.org/en/pidgin_main https://securityinabox.org/en/pidgin_main For Android, I had probably trust anything by Moxie. Plus, you don't need to trust him - it's open source. Not that you have to verify it, but it's a good chance it's more secure than closed-source products.
- e12e 13y agohttps://whispersystems.org/ https://whispersystems.org/ TextSecure / RedPhone and/or https://silentcircle.com/ https://silentcircle.com/ are a good place to start -- but AFAIK might not provide all the protection you need in a case like this. Assumptions: * the government has (or can easily) link you/your associates to a SIM/Router/DSL/Phoneline * link your ip to said sim/router * the government probably already have you listed as an "enemy" (assuming you've ever said or done anything useful in terms of protest, aren't completely spineless or apathetic) Historically (in Latin/South America), at least one group will have support from the US -- so assume all VPN traffic is logged for trying to match up things like twitter posts to in-country IPs. The only reasonable action is to use TOR for onion routing, and encryption tunnelled through that. This will still show that you communicate covertly (covertly, being "not-open"). It will still show bursts of activity, and clustering of devices (Note that if you both have access to location meta-data, and have half a brain and a couple of informers/officers noting down where people are gathering, you can feed that back into lists of SIM/IMEIs to target...). The best approach would probably be to generate a rate-limited stream of traffic over TOR, and allow that stream to be replaced by communication as needed. I don't know of any tool to do this for phones -- but layering TOR and jabber+OTR might be about as good as you're going to get for now?
- Eleutheria 13y agoWhere are the champions of democracy when we need them most?
- hcarvalhoalves 13y agoIt has begun. The president has prohibited protests, and went on TV calling his supporters against protestors, claiming they are against democracy and that he's suffering a coup-d'etat. A restraining order was issued against the opposition candidate. He's going full dictator now. Expect similar social unrest, and the same tactic from the government (blaming the protesters as violent, calling then "right-wing fascists") in the rest of latin america as their economies start tanking as deep as Venezuela. Argentina is on the brink of it. Brazil is 4-6 years from it if it keeps being brainwashed and electing incompetent, corrupt left-wingers.
- rafaelm 13y agoUnfortunately this is not the first time this has happened here. We've had worse protests with many more dead and nothing happens. Maduro is just reading the script Chavez left him for whenever anything goes wrong. There's this automatic solidarity among these latin American countries where they will cover each other's back as long as they help each other out. The govt keeps giving away our oil, so everyone stays quiet. The more desperate ones like Kirchner in Argentina immediately make loud statements.
- hcarvalhoalves 13y agoUnfortunately, because of our past experiences with authoritarian regimes in latin america (I'm in Brazil), we're now stuck with incompetent leftist leaders who believe are heroes of democracy (ironic), and the people, from the poorest worker to the PhD, has been brainwashed into accepting ideologies above real results from the government.
- spikels 13y agoMaduro declared all protests illegal then a few hours later called for his supporters to protest against his enemies. This guys is literally destroying a nation. I agree with you on Argentina but Brazil is probably a different story - not as corrupt and not as crazy. Peru and Ecuador are much closer to Venezuela's and Argentina's situation. The amazing thing is how long these situations can go on. The combination of the survival skills of millions of people and their desire to avoid civil war along the lines of Syria mean this can continue for a very long time.
- vehementi 13y agoI know it's failed everywhere else in the world, but maybe internet censorship will save me!
- fuckpig 13y agoI know it's failed everywhere else in the world, but maybe Socialism/Communism will work for us!
- e12e 13y agoThe problem with this idea, is the implication that Capitalism hasn't failed people many places in the world already.
- fiatjaf 13y ago"Capitalism" is not a system. Capitalism is life itself. The system can be more socialistic or more free-marketist, that's the only choice. And the more socialistic have failed more.
- e12e 13y ago> "Capitalism" is not a system. Capitalism is life itself. Of course it is a system. Just as feudalism is a system. It's a way in which to organize distribution of abstracted wealth. You might claim that it's a consequence of industrialization (and still be wrong, but at least make sense). Would you characterize the organization of the native North Americans as a capitalist society, before the arrival of Europeans?
- fiatjaf 13y agoCapitalism is just private property and voluntary contracts. It's impossible to untie life from that. Feudalism is a system, but it was built into capitalism. Feudal lords had land as their property, they made voluntary contracts of their vassals: I'll protect you and give you some land, you'll give some of your production to me. There was also trade, merchants et cetera. This applies to everything. The Native North Americans had private property and various kinds of contracts -- which probably involved some communal property and other stuff. When there's some entity exercising coercion (non-voluntary contracts), that entity is the State and there is socialism.
- jlcx 13y agoSince commenters have already mentioned Tor, Freenet, Twister, and Tim Berners-Lee's idea of re-decentralizing the web: https://github.com/redecentralize/alternative-internet https://github.com/redecentralize/alternative-internet
- tremols 13y agoIts beautiful how anonymous groups from everywhere specially from south america are supporting us with the "tango down" operation, see #opvenezuela.