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Amazon threatens to suspend Signal's AWS account over censorship circumvention

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Re: Amazon threatens to suspend Signal's AWS account over censorship circumvention

#251

Post by collinmanderson »

zaroth wrote: post #188
simias wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're arguably impersonating Amazon on the server side by hosting their service behind Amazon's proxies and using a trick to pretend that they're talking to some Amazon service instead of their own.

The beauty of this is they are not doing anything on the server side to impersonate or spoof Amazon.

Right, it’s the _client_ side that’s tricking Amazon’s servers.

It seems to me Amazon should just close their loophole rather than threaten to kick signal out of the server side.

Re: Amazon threatens to suspend Signal's AWS account over censorship circumvention

#252

Post by nemothekid »

bluefox wrote: post #224

"If you put a spoonful of wine in a barrel of sewage, you get sewage. If you put a spoonful of sewage in a barrel of wine, you get sewage." -- Schopenhauer Unencrypted server name indication is sewage.

In the past, the alternatives was a static IP, which are easier to block. i can’t think of a solution that doesn’t just pass the buck to another third party (like a CA) which would be sucseptible to the same attacks.

Re: Amazon threatens to suspend Signal's AWS account over censorship circumvention

#253

Post by morganvachon »

munificent wrote: post #247
mattigames wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly, free countries (or those who consider themselves as such) should make it fully illegal for private companies to aid in any kind of censorship in behalf of oppressive countries. But what we see in reality is the opposite, all companies trying to make it as cheap and as simple as possible to censor anything every government dislikes; meaning the liberal fantasy of allowing every private company to do as it ple…

> the liberal fantasy of allowing every private company to do as it pleases How is that a liberal fantasy? I thought the standard liberal belief is in heavy regulation of business? Or do you mean "liberal" in the general "lots of liberty" sense and not "in the liberal political camp"?

"Liberal" does indeed have tons of definitions and connotations. I would have called it more of a Libertarian fantasy (fully free, unregulated market and anti-censorship). That appellation too, though, is fraught with sometimes negative connotations; modern Libertarians in the political arena are derided as nothing more than neoconservatives hiding behind a Fawkes mask and stroking Nazi flags.

Edit for the downvoters: I'm not saying I agree with how Libertarians are seen, just reporting what I've observed. I tend to lean Libertarian on a lot of issues (freedom of movement, freedom of and from religion, live and let live, the right to be left alone, and so on), while also being a socially progressive liberal.

Re: Amazon threatens to suspend Signal's AWS account over censorship circumvention

#254

Post by komuW »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #226
nerpderp83 wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ethical choice is for AWS and Google to collude and both allow signal to continue to using domain fronting.

Great PR opportunity for Cloudflare to pickup the torch. EDIT: Not supported by Cloudflare.

Cloudflare is against domain fronting https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/04/googl...

Re: Amazon threatens to suspend Signal's AWS account over censorship circumvention

#255

Post by s73v3r_ »

QuinnyPig wrote: post #236
s73v3r_ wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but the point being is that Amazon is not consenting to being a bargaining chip in this manner. If you're in control of a site, and you want to say, "If you block them, my site will be blocked too, in solidarity," that's just fine. But it would be pretty awful for you to involve me in that, as well, if I don't wish to be part of it.

Right, and them taking that stand isn't what most of their customers want from them. "We don't want to make political points in other countries, we're just here to sell ads" is the generic corporate position.

I think most of their customers don't know about the situation, and would prefer that their sites remain up.

Re: Amazon threatens to suspend Signal's AWS account over censorship circumvention

#256

Post by proginthebox »

munificent wrote: post #247
mattigames wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly, free countries (or those who consider themselves as such) should make it fully illegal for private companies to aid in any kind of censorship in behalf of oppressive countries. But what we see in reality is the opposite, all companies trying to make it as cheap and as simple as possible to censor anything every government dislikes; meaning the liberal fantasy of allowing every private company to do as it ple…

> the liberal fantasy of allowing every private company to do as it pleases How is that a liberal fantasy? I thought the standard liberal belief is in heavy regulation of business? Or do you mean "liberal" in the general "lots of liberty" sense and not "in the liberal political camp"?

Why do you say that the standard liberal belief is in heavy regulation of business? Liberal economics emphasize minimal regulation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_liberalism

Re: Amazon threatens to suspend Signal's AWS account over censorship circumvention

#257

Post by jacobolus »

munificent wrote: post #247
mattigames wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly, free countries (or those who consider themselves as such) should make it fully illegal for private companies to aid in any kind of censorship in behalf of oppressive countries. But what we see in reality is the opposite, all companies trying to make it as cheap and as simple as possible to censor anything every government dislikes; meaning the liberal fantasy of allowing every private company to do as it ple…

> the liberal fantasy of allowing every private company to do as it pleases How is that a liberal fantasy? I thought the standard liberal belief is in heavy regulation of business? Or do you mean "liberal" in the general "lots of liberty" sense and not "in the liberal political camp"?

Liberalism is a school of philosophy dating from the 17th century which generally espouses freedom of speech and association, the separation of church and state, pluralism and religious toleration, state protection for property rights and enforcement of contracts, open markets, popular control of the government, separation of powers, etc.

It is the dominant overarching ideology in America (the American “founding fathers” were mostly devoted liberals) and Western Europe, and there are many disagreements among different sorts of liberals.

Re: Amazon threatens to suspend Signal's AWS account over censorship circumvention

#258

Post by lostmsu »

zaroth wrote: post #186
dice wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You can't use TLS and load balancing hacks to pretend to be us in oppresive countries They're not pretending to be Amazon, they're pretending to initiate a connection to an Amazon domain. The "conversation" goes like so: Clear text request: "Hello, I would like to speak TLS with souq.com" Clear text response: "Why yes, let us do that with these parameters" Encrypted request: "Please give me the page for signal.org/a…

This important description of the actual implementation of domain fronting — namely that it’s implemented on the client side, and only as a cover for initializing the TLS channel — I think is very important and unfortunately missing from TFA. There is nothing on the server side which is masquerading as Amazon or Google. There is no impersonation or spoofing whatsoever. This is akin to making a DNS lookup for a differ…

If the fronting is done on the client side, can we set up clients to perform the same trick on other services? E.g. make Amazon and Google think they use domain fronting, and thus have them reconsider ban?

Re: Amazon threatens to suspend Signal's AWS account over censorship circumvention

#259

Post by _whbj »

munificent wrote: post #247
mattigames wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly, free countries (or those who consider themselves as such) should make it fully illegal for private companies to aid in any kind of censorship in behalf of oppressive countries. But what we see in reality is the opposite, all companies trying to make it as cheap and as simple as possible to censor anything every government dislikes; meaning the liberal fantasy of allowing every private company to do as it ple…

> the liberal fantasy of allowing every private company to do as it pleases How is that a liberal fantasy? I thought the standard liberal belief is in heavy regulation of business? Or do you mean "liberal" in the general "lots of liberty" sense and not "in the liberal political camp"?

Liberal does not mean "left-wing". It is a political philosophy mainly informed by the work of John Locke. It places primacy on rights of individuals to basically to do as they like to the extent that it does not infringe on the rights of others to do the same.

This is a difficult bit. There are many different ideas about conflicting rights. Without going into these ongoing debates it is enough to say that liberalism is a big tent philosophy. It encompasses "left wingers" in one end where the state has many responsibilities to uphold individual liberties. At the other end are libertarians who say there is no need for government intervention for individuals to pursue their own ends. People can argue about rights and still be correct in calling themselves liberals.

Re: Amazon threatens to suspend Signal's AWS account over censorship circumvention

#260

Post by collinmanderson »

fwn wrote: post #241
ucarion wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They may not be impersonating Amazon, but they are using Amazon's services to circumvent the intent of policies (laws) that Amazon wants to comply with. Amazon has decided to stop be an unwitting participant in this particular mechanism of circumventing oppression. For the record, I'm of the opinion that the US should insist that American companies not help dictators abroad in their censorship efforts. But it's hardl…

It is perfectly understandable why Amazon did that and siding with oppressive regimes is of course not unreasonable at all. Just unethical, hence the discussion.

Amazon isn’t nesessarily against censorship. They just don’t want to provide this sort of spoofing service. Regardless of whether the spoofers are good or bad.
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