On one of the websites there is an ax in the coat of arms. http://www.referendum.cat/ I recognize that ax symbol from somewhere. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism
It is the symbol of the "Guardia Civil", a spanish paramilitary force.
How the Catalan government uses IPFS to sidestep Spain's legal block
41–50 of 565 posts
Re: How the Catalan government uses IPFS to sidestep Spain's legal block
#42"Basically, the code recurses a sha256 computation 1714 times to get a lookup key, and then once more to get a password for decryption." This is an Easter Egg. Barcelona fell on September 11, 1714 during the War of Spanish Succession and with that Catalonia's freedom as well. September 11 is the National Day of Catalonia. Also, at 17:14 of each and every game of FC Barcelona in Camp Nou Stadium, Barcelona fans claim…
The 1714 is in an abbr tag with a title that explains that ;)
Re: How the Catalan government uses IPFS to sidestep Spain's legal block
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
Alternative approach: Instead of using the IPFS2HTTP gateways (that can easily be censored, as gateway.ipfs.io has already been censored in Catalunya), run a IPFS daemon locally that cannot be censored (but is not anonymous either). I live in Catalunya and wrote this tool for doing just that, in a easy way. It 1) starts a go-ipfs daemon locally, 2) opens up the referendum website in your default browser, via localhos…
> that cannot be censored I am not familiar with IPFS internals, but is there no pattern to the IPFS traffic that the ISPs can shape/block? Too bad about the entire IPFS domain being blocked, because besides the host, HTTPS traffic has safety in numbers. If only there was a way to proxy through google.com or some other popular domain too important to block.
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Re: How the Catalan government uses IPFS to sidestep Spain's legal block
#44Author here. I've tried to keep the article as apolitical as possible, while giving some context to provide the setting. Anyway, I'm very interested in knowing if the used crypto is sound or not, and stirring a discussion around possible alternative approaches. Ask me anything if you want to know further!
The crypto is far from ideal. The situation is very similar to password storage, where you want to not make it trivial to brute-force moderate-entropy passwords even if your database gets breached. We have functions designed specifically for that: scrypt, argon2 etc. https://www.npmjs.com/package/scryptsy is a pure JS implementation of scrypt for example. Even with scrypt the situation is not great, but using sha for…
I'm not sure what you mean by "the crypto is not ideal"? I was under the impression that there are not yet collisions for
SHA-256 https://github.com/ipfs/faq/issues/22
Only for SHA-1 (which has 160 bit hashes) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SHA-1#Attacks
Re: How the Catalan government uses IPFS to sidestep Spain's legal block
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
The spanish constituion explicitly states that Spain is an indivisible country. Hence, the Constituional Court (that is elected by the parliament) has ruled out that any referendum about independence is illegal. At this point, the government says that both them and the judiciary powers are just defending the democratic rules, and Catalonia's government is the one at fault for all this hassle. The problem is that it i…
Governments usually do not like to give up the money making portions of their countries and neither does the population of the rest of the country. You never see a poor part of a country seceding (well, other than Quebec maybe).
The South in the U.S. Civil War?
Re: How the Catalan government uses IPFS to sidestep Spain's legal block
#46It seems shocking that Spain a member of the EU is resorting to these tactics. Can you discuss some of their justifications for doing so?
I'm not a lawyer and I don't have an opinion on the Spanish government's or judicial system's concrete actions to stop a illegal law to take effect, but: the only websites, posters, etc. being seized are those paid for and organized by the Catalan government. Any association, political party, or individual is completely free to campaign for whatever they want, including independence.
We have a Spain-wide constitution. The Catalan government decided it has a democratic mandate by the people of its region to not abide by it. The NORMAL reaction by the state is to apply it, and stop the Catalan government from breaking it. It's only oppresive insofar laws and the judicial system are opressive.
Disclaimer: I'm a non-nationalist Spaniard living (but not born) in Catalonia. I don't particularly care about Catalan seceding or not (except for pragmatic concerns such as freedom of movement, etc.). I do care about whatever country I live in being able and willing to enforce its laws, insofar they are enacted by legitimate democratic institutions (and thus can be changed or repelled by democratic means) and there's freedom to disagree with them.
I also support a secession referendum for Catalonia. There's a very strong and majoritary demand for it that the state should address. But it needs to happen in due lawful process.
Re: How the Catalan government uses IPFS to sidestep Spain's legal block
#47On one of the websites there is an ax in the coat of arms. http://www.referendum.cat/ I recognize that ax symbol from somewhere. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism
It's just a fasces. They show up everywhere.
Re: How the Catalan government uses IPFS to sidestep Spain's legal block
#48On one of the websites there is an ax in the coat of arms. http://www.referendum.cat/ I recognize that ax symbol from somewhere. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism
The symbol is called fasces, and, despite its name, it is not necessarily a purely fascist symbol.
Re: How the Catalan government uses IPFS to sidestep Spain's legal block
#49It seems shocking that Spain a member of the EU is resorting to these tactics. Can you discuss some of their justifications for doing so?
Catalan parliament has deployed a referendum law with +1 MPs, breaking regional Catalan law, silencing opposition and its own constituent powers. The referendum law states that any positive result from the referendum will result in a declaration of independence, with or without agreement with the central government.
Trying not to be get too biased, I'd conclude that Spanish central government is trying to protect the rule of law, state-wide or regional-wide, while also protecting those who didn't vote for separatists parties, which in 2015 elections were 52%.
Re: How the Catalan government uses IPFS to sidestep Spain's legal block
#50Author here. I've tried to keep the article as apolitical as possible, while giving some context to provide the setting. Anyway, I'm very interested in knowing if the used crypto is sound or not, and stirring a discussion around possible alternative approaches. Ask me anything if you want to know further!
being a catalan expat with some expertise in computers, is there any useful way that i can help this weekend? (I am not afraid of losing anonymity nor being condemned or prosecuted by the spaniards, I actually would find it rather amusing.)