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

#381

Post by dragonwriter » Wed, May 02, 2018, 5:19 AM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #378

tony101 wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the entire point of domain fronting and collateral freedom: to make censorship as expensive as possible for oppresive regimes.

Collateral freedom is like using human shields. You unilaterally decide to involve other innocent people in your fight, and risk their well-being.

The name even hints at that: it's freedom that rests on the targets unwillingness to inflict collateral damage.

Which, questions of morality in the abstract and consent aside, seems to gamble pretty heavily on sensitivity the regimes of concern are decidedly not known for.

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

#382

Post by reitanqild » Wed, May 02, 2018, 5:19 AM UTC

coolspot wrote: post #183

ChuckMcM wrote: post #56

Clearly they need to create a free iPhone/Android game that becomes wildly popular in these countries so that they can use their own domain to front their 'secret' packets.

Censors are not stupid, they will ban domain with no problem. See Russia banning millions of AWS and Azure IPs to block Telegram, damaging a lot innocent applications by the way.

> Censors are not stupid, they will ban domain with no problem.

> See Russia banning millions of AWS and Azure IPs to block Telegram, damaging a lot innocent applications by the way.

In that particular case they seem to have been outsmarted for now : )

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

#383

Post by TeMPOraL » Wed, May 02, 2018, 5:21 AM UTC

tony101 wrote: post #165

freedomben wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm guessing you haven't spent much time looking into how oppressive regimes work. They aren't going "to realize that they are being an oppressive regime" and have an epiphany where they realize, "Hey maybe I'm an evil dictator?" If you are up for reading, I highly recommend Michael Malice's book, Dear Reader: The Unauthorized Autobiography of Kim Jong Il . After reading that you will completely understand why "see h…

We don't need oppressive regimes to "realize" they're oppressive. We simply need to shift the incentives by making it financially expensive to censor. This is known as "collateral freedom"[1], and has been used to publish censored content in China. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collateral_freedom

This is a bloodless equivalent of using human shields or hiding your forces in a hospital - you involve lots of innocent civilians in hope that the government will not be willing to absorb the sacrifice.

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

#384

Post by reitanqild » Wed, May 02, 2018, 5:22 AM UTC

stordoff wrote: post #228

notyourday wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Boatload of VMs with constantly migrating IP addresses.

Which then has the problem of how do users find them (if by DNS, you can block the DNS record).

Seems it is enough to be a little creative with side channels.

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

#385

Post by lovelearning » Wed, May 02, 2018, 5:28 AM UTC

DEFCON28 wrote: post #311

Why should we in the United States coerce (or sneak into) countries whose Governments don't want us there? Are these folks really "idealists" who think that access to tools like "Signal" will usher in a new spring! (See how well that worked in Egypt and Syria?) Let these Nations enjoy their sovereign right to protect their borders--even their digital ones--as they see fit.

A nation != its current government

Citizens under oppressive governments often don't like their governments. The feeling's usually mutual. Some people in such countries - I actually think "most" but I'll remain conservative here - appreciate such tools and its creators. Not necessarily to do anything so ambitious as "ushering in new springs", but often simply to talk to relatives or make online friends or learn new things or exchange ideas online. In case you didn't realize it, lack of freedom and powerlessness really brings down one's mood, and anything to brighten it up is welcome.

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

#386

Post by Matt3o12_ » Wed, May 02, 2018, 5:42 AM UTC

ForHackernews wrote: post #372

illumin8 wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A couple important things to note: - This most definitely is against the CloudFront terms of service. See the linked article if you disagree - the ToS is quoted there. - One direct impact to the owners of the SOUQ.COM domain is that their DNS query volume will increase drastically. They have to pay for those queries. Would you like it if your side project all of a sudden got a 6 figure DNS bill because Signal decided…

> Would you like it if your side project all of a sudden got a 6 figure DNS bill because Signal decided they want to piggy back on your domain to route around censorship? In this hypothetical example, is my side project doing $178,000,000,000 of annual revenue like Amazon.com? If so, I'd like to think I'd be honored help subvert censorship by oppressive regimes.

Except that amazon is not the one paying, it is quad.com (or some other domain they’re piggybacking on) who has to pay for the DNS traffic. If my $3 side project suddenly became a $1000 side project I’d be pissed too. I like what signal is doing but that should not be making others pay for it. Ideally amazon would help them do that but that don’t.

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

#387

Post by jaakl » Wed, May 02, 2018, 5:49 AM UTC

manigandham wrote: post #349

na85 wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

.... 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.

Military (or state in general) may have other, softer and more covert means of influencing other countries besides war, like “persuading” home corporations to act on their behalf. Thats not unheard of nowadays

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

#388

Post by stingraycharles » Wed, May 02, 2018, 5:52 AM UTC

xtat wrote: post #380

crazypyro wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My first thought is "How is it in the interest of Amazon's stockholders to prevent censorship in countries ruled by dictatorial regimes?" and secondly, "How does consenting to being a front for services that are strictly forbidden in certain countries benefit our company?"

Shareholders still come first if they do the right thing here. Letting reputable people do good with your product rises the tide for the ecosystem. Good for the Internet is good for AWS.

What if souq.com is blocked instead ? How is that good for AWS or the internet ?

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

#389

Post by Boulth » Wed, May 02, 2018, 5:59 AM UTC

majewsky wrote: post #192

Boulth wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Modern clients can connect via port 443. There is also support for XMPP via WebSockets, that looks like regular HTTPS traffic.

Sure, but they can just block the IP.

Yes, but it's always possible to block IP (targeted attack). Federated with a big amount of small servers make it hard to automate. You can block several hosts but the rest of the network would work fine. And because of how federation in XMPP works you just need a one client to server connection to reach the entire network.

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

#390

Post by raarts » Wed, May 02, 2018, 6:01 AM UTC

Maybe someone (ICANN) could start a donation register for domains which tells applications they allow using there domain name in domain fronting for censorship circumventing purposes?

Since Amazon's TOS does allow domain fronting when the domain's owner allows it.