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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

#401

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

koide wrote: post #392
TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Ah, yep, sorry, I was going off in another direction there. Thanks for pointing that out.

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

#402

Post by edaemon »

Matt3o12_ wrote: post #386
ForHackernews wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

That may be true but Signal is purposely using high-profile domains, not someone's small side project.

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

#403

Post by surrealize »

illumin8 wrote: post #341
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…

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…

It's not a significant direct cost. Millions of extra DNS queries amounts to single-digit dollars (route 53 pricing).

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

#404

Post by icebraining »

zoltaan wrote: post #282
icebraining wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the trick works the other way around; they pretend they want to talk to someone, but then talk to someone else. They never pretend to be someone else.

Right. Even so, don't you see problem in that too? Pretending doing one but in fact doing other? Just imagine using that for a non noble cause....

I actually can't :) I mean, I can see why one would oppose it because of how it affects Amazon, but I can't see how it could be used for a non-noble cause.

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

#405

Post by icebraining »

johnwheeler wrote: post #313
icebraining wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One can have an opinion and disagree with Amazon without feeling entitled to anything from them. I'm not objective; it's my subjective opinion that you're wrong. That doesn't mean I feel entitled to have you change your mind.

"One can have an opinion and disagree with Amazon without feeling entitled to anything from them." That's a straw man. In this case, they don't only disagree, they also feel entitled; that's what I'm saying.

I understand; but you're saying you can tell they feel entitled by the fact that they're not objective or unbiased. And what I'm saying is that not being objective doesn't show they feel entitled.

Maybe they feel entitled, but I don't think there's anything in the blog post showing that. All I see is (fairly mild) disagreement with Amazon's actions.

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

#406

Post by icebraining »

pm90 wrote: post #194
icebraining wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've misunderstood how the trick works. Nobody is impersonating anybody. To make an analogy, they're like a guy who tells the building security guard that they're going to apartment 5 (the Souq servers), but when they're in they actually go to apartment 8 (Signal's servers). Except the censors can only see the conversation with the guard, but they can't see where he actually goes, so they can't distinguish him from…

This is a nice analogy. The problem here is that the visitor has logged in that he is visiting apartment 5 in the guestbook. So if he ends up breaking something, security would hold apartment 5 liable (and not apartment 8). So it makes sense that apartment 5 does not want to be responsible.

No, that's not the correct analogy, because Amazon is the building, and they know where he went to. There's no guestbook.

The actual problem is that, since the censors can't distinguish them, they might stop everyone coming in to apartment 5, and potentially to the whole building.

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

#407

Post by tony101 »

dang wrote: post #394
tony101 wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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.

> "4 times in this thread. That's a bit much"

Point taken, I'll be more careful in the future.

> "kind of dodgy to do without mentioning that you wrote it"

The article is completely neutral, cites reliable sources, has been reviewed by another editor[1], and abides by all Wikipedia policies. I do not personally gain anything from posting it here.

I didn't think the fact that I initially created the article was relevant to this conversation, because for all intents and purposes, it does not make a difference.[2] The article meets Wikipedia's standards, and anyone is free to edit it subject to the applicable content policies.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ALog&typ...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Ownership_of_content

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

#408

Post by noobermin »

manigandham wrote: post #348
solotronics wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You are literally posting on an article where Signal's attempt to aid people speaking out against authoritarian regimes are being quelled by entities due to protecting their bottom line.

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

#409

Post by noobermin »

leephillips wrote: post #352
prepend wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

After reading the linked Wikipedia page, if it's accurate then you seem to be correct. The act prohibits influencing foreign officials by giving them things of value, and doesn't mention whether that would be illegal in the foreign country. So it would seem that a U.S. corporation would be in violation of this law for doing in a foreign land what they routinely do within the U.S. (essentially all large U.S. businesse…

A very good point about the hypocrisy of the American system. Campaign contributions do look very much like bribery.

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

#410

Post by krehl »

aeternus wrote: post #351
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're not pretending to be Amazon, but they are making their client pretend to talk to an Amazon host, and use the SSL keys of an Amazon-owned host rather than their own. It's more like this: Clear text request: "Hello, I would like to speak TLS with host souq.com and encrypt my connection with a key signed by souq.com" Clear text response: "Why yes, let us do that with these parameters" Encrypted request: "Actuall…

Souq.com is owned by Amazon.
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