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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

#391

Post by ry_ry »

kazinator wrote: post #181
sounds wrote: post #173

I took away two important messages: 1. Amazon is paying more attention to the TLS handshake than I thought. 2. Censorship-bypassing software is getting popular enough that it's hitting the news.

What? Surely: 0. Amazon is paying more attention to HackerNews than I thought. I mean: Yesterday AWS became aware of your Github and Hacker News/ycombinator posts [ ... ] General Manager, Amazon CloudFront

All the big tech companies are pretty well represented here - it is most likely an employee spotted and flagged the issue whilst having a wee browse over their morning coffee.

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

#392

Post by koide »

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #350
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.

> 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 sp…

Sure, but they do maintain an official public stance of non intervention which is what's at hand here, because companies must abide by that official public stance, not by off the record spy activity.

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

#393

Post by mirimir »

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"?

I suspect that parent meant "libertarian fantasy".

Terms like "liberal" and "conservative" are virtually meaningless.

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

#394

Post by dang »

tony101 wrote: post #230
_2d30 wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's quite clear what the point is from Signal's attempt at implementation of the theory as well as your freshly minted wiki page. That doesn't change the dubious nature of it. Putting other valuable services at risk for a single service's gain is clearly dubious.

> "your Signal" Just to be clear, I am not affiliated with Signal in any way. I am just a user. > "your freshly minted wiki page" I am a regular contributor to Wikipedia, and I created the article on "collateral freedom" in January 2017[1] when I came across the topic because it satisfied Wikipedia's notability guidelines.[2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Collateral_freedo... [2] https://en.wikipedia…

You posted that Wikipedia link 4 times in this thread. That's a bit much, and also kind of dodgy to do without mentioning that you wrote it.

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

#396

Post by [deleted] »

crazypyro wrote: post #293
tony101 wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "They're spoofing identity" That's the entire point. By making it impossible for censors to distinguish Signal traffic from other web traffic going to AWS, domain fronting forces the government censors to either 1) stop censoring, or 2) censor many important websites that people rely upon. The associated economic cost has the tendency to discourage censors, and as shown by Signal, is actually quite an effective det…

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?"

[deleted]

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

#397

Post by mvanbaak »

trumped wrote: post #323
mvanbaak wrote: post #191

I really dislike the way they put it in the title of this post. What they are doing is simply abusing the name/size of a totally unrelated company to mask signal traffic. While I am totally in favor of signal, simply using a domain name you dont own in the SNI header just because it is terminated at the same service as you want to use is something you cannot do. They could have simply have sent the question to the ow…

Can't amazon use different domain names for different customers to avoid this issue?

It's not an issue with 'domain names per customer' but with SNI. Because ip addresses are limited (well, ipv4 at least) they cannot use dedicated ip's per domain name. That's the whole issue.

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

#398

Post by mvanbaak »

nebulous1 wrote: post #220
mvanbaak wrote: post #191

I really dislike the way they put it in the title of this post. What they are doing is simply abusing the name/size of a totally unrelated company to mask signal traffic. While I am totally in favor of signal, simply using a domain name you dont own in the SNI header just because it is terminated at the same service as you want to use is something you cannot do. They could have simply have sent the question to the ow…

> simply using a domain name you dont own in the SNI header just because it is terminated at the same service as you want to use is something you cannot do Why not out of curiosity? I'm not disputing Amazon's right to disallow this (it's their service after all), but before that I don't see any objective reason why this is something they they "cannot" or even "should not" do. Also, unless Amazon put in a technical ba…

> Why not out of curiosity?

Because you are lying about what domain you want to access. This is against the TOS, and simply something you should not do. I know it helps signal to get around censorship and blocks, and it's technically working, but one should not do that.

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

#399

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

derefr wrote: post #294
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...that's kinda the point Er, no; in every "free" country, trade/export restrictions are still a thing. US corporations can't sell to North Korean citizens, or even Cuban citizens, despite not being in a state of war against either. And "munitions" (e.g. what encryption algorithms used to be) can be traded hardly anywhere. Just call censorsh…

> And "munitions" (e.g. what encryption algorithms used to be) can be traded hardly anywhere.

That regulation is only in place to protect the established players ... and to ensure the CIA decides who gets the weapons.

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

#400

Post by simonh »

jdc0589 wrote: post #337
tony101 wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "They're spoofing identity" That's the entire point. By making it impossible for censors to distinguish Signal traffic from other web traffic going to AWS, domain fronting forces the government censors to either 1) stop censoring, or 2) censor many important websites that people rely upon. The associated economic cost has the tendency to discourage censors, and as shown by Signal, is actually quite an effective det…

you hit on the most important part. If an oppressive country's options are to block a bunch of stuff that's not all frowned upon, or allow something they really don't want, they choose the former. I'm not saying Amazon is evil or anything, but if a bunch of hugely important customers started getting their traffic blocked by huge geographic segments due to another unrelated customer.... business is business.

And in case anyone here doubts this is true, try using Google, Facebook or Twitter in China. It is absolutely possible for countries to block these services, including AWS or parts of it. Amazon has a duty to it's other customers to protect them from that sort of impact caused by the frankly unethical action of another AWS user.

This is a real shame and I wish there was a viable option open to Signal, it's an important app that provides a valuable service, but they really should have seen this coming.

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