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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

#431

Post by nasredin »

stale2002 wrote: post #268
analognoise wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it moral for Amazon to shirk their fiduciary duty to shareholders for the sake of a political battle it isn't theirs to wage? I counter it would be more immoral to put, say, the retirement funds of firefighters and teachers arty risk to achieve what is the responsibility of, say, the State Department?

I don't know, was it moral for IBM to work with the Nazis to build their concentration camp databases? (yes, this happened) I mean, that made the shareholders money, right?

They sold them mechanical calculators (?) IIRC.

"Databases" is maybe not the right word?

Not a historian.

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

#432

Post by zero_intp »

nojvek wrote: post #324
dbasedweeb wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On one hand I agree with you, but on the other... why is this Amazon’s place? I don’t agree with how China censors, but what gives a private US entity the right to try and override that in this way? Their place is to choose to, or not to do business with China, not what amounts to a political operation. I think it’s fair to say that it’s the job of governments and intelligence agencies, and some things shouldn’t be p…

A lot of companies have to bend to China, Brazil and others. They want to make money, they have to follow by their rules. Google was ballsy to exit from China, but I doubt others are the same. Wall Street judges a company by how much money it makes. GDP is how countries and govts are judged. The metric is delivering the result.

I think it is disingenuous to say that countries are judged by persons and other nations by GDP alone.

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

#433

Post by nasredin »

2close4comfort wrote: post #113
unethical_ban wrote: post #18

They're spoofing identity of non-consenting parties. The cause is noble, but it isn't what the headline would imply. Amazon isn't saying "You can't host encrypted services on our platform", they are saying "You can't use TLS and load balancing hacks to pretend to be us in oppresive countries". And >The idea behind domain fronting was that to block a single site, you’d have to block the rest of the internet as well. I…

So AWS finally lost enough money to the Russian blockade that they caved. Sad.

Russian economy is very very small.

Whatever Amazon's reason is it's not that they lost some Russian banks for a week.

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

#434

Post by nasredin »

freedomben wrote: post #152
beefield wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> After reading that you will completely understand why "see how long it is until they protest or move" is a silly thing to say. I wonder if you could give TL;DR on this, assuming there is something else than the basic prisoner's dilemma going on?

I'd be happy to give a very brief TL;DR with the disclaimer that I recommend either the book for a full picture or the Michael Malice interview on Joe Rogan's podcast (WARNING: NSFW language) [1] There are a few factors involved (and please bear in mind I'm leaving out a lot of detail here, and this is nowhere near a comprehensive list). 1. There is extensive "brainwashing" regarding the great leader. He is praised f…

Number 1 was in a Nat Geo documentary with an Asian American presenter (Lucy something?). Something like "Inside North Korea.

IIRC you couldn't tell if they were genuinely thanking the Dear Leader or putting on a show for the secret police.

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

#435

Post by na85 »

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.

You're being very nonchalant about going to war to make things easier for Amazon.

I find that chilling.

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

#436

Post by apatters »

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?"

Perhaps it's not. AMZN is a for-profit entity. Their shareholders come first. Profit comes first.

The more interesting question is, how does this influence our engagement with Amazon, as members of the tech community and the business community? From hackers to founders to dev leads to CEOs we're all individuals with some degree of influence. Most of us hopefully value the idea of a free society to a great degree, because without one our industry wouldn't exist.

I have no problem with saying that the business I own will think twice about making further investments in AWS because of this. I'm less likely to recommend AWS to our customers because of it.

Businesses which host hate speech get punished by advertisers who don't want to be associated with that kind of drivel. I'd like to see businesses which enable dictators be punished in a similar way.

By the market and this community. I'd like to see more hackers and founders say hey, this company enables dictators so we are re-evaluating/freezing/reducing our investment in their products. (Pick whatever level presents an acceptable cost to you.)

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

#437

Post by latch »

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.

You say "proper" but what you're describing (at least the military option) is a war of aggression. This is not only illegal (both internationally, and, for example, in US Law), but described as "the supreme international crime."

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

#438

Post by nasredin »

Bendingo wrote: post #357
adventured wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For the record, U.S. politicians have voted on sanctions on Russia Indeed, the US nearly destroyed Russia's largest aluminum company - Rusal - recently in a sanctions move against an oligarch close to Putin (Oleg Deripaska, who owns the majority of Rusal). The best way to deal with oppressive regimes, is generally to go through powerful political bodies/groups, whether the UN, G7, or US Congress. The impact a compa…

> oligarch close to Putin (Oleg Deripaska ...) For the record, Deripaska is no friend of Putin, who forced him to start paying tax and stay out of politics. Look at how Putin humiliated him several years ago during an industrial dispute, when Putin took the side of workers against Deripaska. [0] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XfbWnDXCx8

Yep. He hates Putin so much he invited one of his ministers (?) to sail on his yacht with some escorts.

/s

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

#439

Post by nasredin »

adventured wrote: post #229
tony101 wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They would care if there are financial consequences. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collateral_freedom

That premise has a very mixed bag of results historically. It works on some regimes, and fails entirely on others. Cuba defied an aggressive embargo by the US for ~50 years, which is partially responsible for Cubans typically having present incomes of about $20 per month. [1] By contrast, Haiti, which is one of the poorest nations on earth, has a higher median income than Cuba. The Castro brothers were simply unmoved…

The collapse of the USSR HAS to be a bit more complicated than that.

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

#440

Post by TeMPOraL »

nasredin wrote: post #429
TeMPOraL wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about countless of other, not censored, services delivered from the same network? Do they not "improve lives" and "deliver benefit"? Collateral freedom is akin to placing your guerilla command center in a hospital, in a gamble that the other side will leave you alone instead of risking extra harm to innocent civilians. In this case, the hospital decided to disallow guerillas to use it as cover.

This is either the worst possible example or the best. Russia BTW bombs civilian targets like hospitals and they killed their own bank sites when they tried to block Telegram recently.

Which teaches you about effectiveness of "collateral freedom" against states that Just Don't Care.
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