Amazon threatens to suspend Signal's AWS account over censorship circumvention • Hacker News Board

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

#341

Post by illumin8 » Wed, May 02, 2018, 2:32 AM UTC

ucarion wrote: post #214

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…

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…

Yes, but I don't think you're considering the significant direct cost to the owner of SOUQ.COM for DNS queries. If all of a sudden I get millions of extra DNS queries for my domain because Signal is using it to front their traffic to CloudFront, I might get a huge DNS bill.

Should any government coerce me into paying a large DNS bill just to sponsor freedom of speech? Even if it is a noble cause, we shouldn't coerce innocent 3rd parties into doing this.

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

#342

Post by leephillips » Wed, May 02, 2018, 2:33 AM UTC

tony101 wrote: post #306

qeternity wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As you note, private companies are typically free to do as they please in free countries...that's kinda the point. You have no right to use AWS, so this is not censorship in the legal sense. And free governments also tend to have strong laws respecting the sovereignty of other nations, whether or not their laws are similar. Your frustration is noble, but it's also internally inconsistent.

> "private companies are typically free to do as they please in free countries ... free governments also tend to have strong laws respecting the sovereignty of other nations" Not always. For example, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act prohibits U.S. companies from bribing foreign officials, even if the practice is accepted or prevalent in a foreign nation.[1] Just because another country has a particular policy does n…

I don't think this is the counterexample that you intend. The prohibition is where this bribery is illegal in the foreign countries, even if it happens to be commonplace. Bribery is never "policy", else it would be called something else (as in the U.S., where we call it "campaign contributions").

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

#343

Post by illumin8 » Wed, May 02, 2018, 2:34 AM UTC

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.

Despite the use case for censorship circumvention, many malware command and control bots use domain fronting to bypass corporate web filters that otherwise might block their traffic. CloudFlare, being a security-focused CDN, most definitely does not want to help enable malware authors to bypass security.

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

#344

Post by cjbprime » Wed, May 02, 2018, 2:35 AM UTC

kombucha2 wrote: post #101

Couldn't they ask people to donate their AWS instances or a portion of their webserver (or domain) resources to running a small outward facing webserver as a dummy, making the domain look like its a real website (eCommerce etc) and then passing Signal data through a Shadowsocks (or something similar) proxy? Couldn't they develop an AMI that they hold the keys to that people could deploy with ease?

This has been explored by Tor, through a design sometimes called "flash proxy" and "snowflake".

They used websockets and webrtc datachannels so that all you have to do to volunteer yourself as a relay is visit a webpage with JS enabled. The idea is to have many short-lived proxies on residential connections, paired with an announce mechanism.

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

#345

Post by illumin8 » Wed, May 02, 2018, 2:37 AM UTC

QuinnyPig wrote: post #7

Sorry, I'm not on board with using an Amazon owned domain for this. That's got the potential to get Amazon itself blacklisted in some places, so they're absolutely not going to be okay with it.

It also forces the poor domain owner who is being fronted, in this case SOUQ.COM, to absorb a huge Route 53 bill for all of the DNS queries that are originating from Signal users. Not fair at all.

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

#346

Post by [deleted] » Wed, May 02, 2018, 2:39 AM UTC

qeternity wrote: post #286

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…

As you note, private companies are typically free to do as they please in free countries...that's kinda the point. You have no right to use AWS, so this is not censorship in the legal sense. And free governments also tend to have strong laws respecting the sovereignty of other nations, whether or not their laws are similar. Your frustration is noble, but it's also internally inconsistent.

[deleted]

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

#347

Post by prepend » Wed, May 02, 2018, 2:42 AM UTC

leephillips wrote: post #342

tony101 wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "private companies are typically free to do as they please in free countries ... free governments also tend to have strong laws respecting the sovereignty of other nations" Not always. For example, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act prohibits U.S. companies from bribing foreign officials, even if the practice is accepted or prevalent in a foreign nation.[1] Just because another country has a particular policy does n…

I don't think this is the counterexample that you intend. The prohibition is where this bribery is illegal in the foreign countries, even if it happens to be commonplace. Bribery is never "policy", else it would be called something else (as in the U.S., where we call it "campaign contributions").

It applies even when bribery is legal and does not distinguish whether bribery is legal or illegal.

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

#348

Post by manigandham » Wed, May 02, 2018, 2:49 AM UTC

solotronics wrote: post #308

manigandham wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've posted this (wiki page that you wrote) several times in this thread... but the issue is that all the unblocked companies are already unblocked. What do they stand to gain from this other than a near-term disruption (at best)? The only way collateral freedom works is when there is mutual need for everyone to be included, otherwise why take the risk to carry the designated targets? Also I wouldn't underestimate…

The mutual need should be considering the freedom of communication that everyone should have as a human right. Like a lot of things when you think of it purely in terms of dollars you end up with an opressive authoritarian system like in China.

That doesn't make sense. Lots of places think in terms of dollars, in fact the West/capitalism is all about it, and yet we don't have the same issues.

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

#349

Post by manigandham » Wed, May 02, 2018, 2:53 AM UTC

na85 wrote: post #331

manigandham wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe point that anger towards the government and military then, instead of a private corporation with thousands of business customers and millions of consumers.

.... Because the US Military is responsible for changing a sovereign state's law if Americans don't like it? What the fuck?

Yes. It's called war. What's confusing here? If a citizen of a nation thinks that another nation is not behaving as they would like (whichever country or whatever behavior that is), the proper channels to enact change are through government action, either diplomatic or militarized.

Asking a private corporation to be international police is not good for anyone, as well intentioned as it may seem.

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

#350

Post by TheSpiceIsLife » Wed, May 02, 2018, 2:59 AM UTC

qeternity wrote: post #286

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…

As you note, private companies are typically free to do as they please in free countries...that's kinda the point. You have no right to use AWS, so this is not censorship in the legal sense. And free governments also tend to have strong laws respecting the sovereignty of other nations, whether or not their laws are similar. Your frustration is noble, but it's also internally inconsistent.

> And free governments also tend to have strong laws respecting the sovereignty of other nations

This nearly made me cough my lunch over my keyboard.

Countries tend to have the habit of respecting other countries sovereignty right up until they don’t, at which point they will invade and occupy the other. Or carry out a proxy war, etc.

Even that is too generous. Which country of any influence doesn’t at least a few spies getting about doing their spying. Which major players aren’t subverting the course of things in at least a handful of regions at any time.