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Hong Kong’s protesters use AirDrop to spread information to mainland visitors

qz.com

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Re: Hong Kong’s protesters use AirDrop to spread information to mainland visitors

#51

Post by 420codebro »

scilro wrote: post #47

This reminds me of people who say that we can free North Koreans by (physically) airdropping tapes and books on Pyongyang - surely the only reason they support their government is because they're heavily censored, once they see the truth they'll rise up in arms! It's a narrative that's somewhat condescending. It makes it seem like all these people are just being held hostage by their governments. The reality is that…

Having a tenancy to send an entire family (and future generations) to a forced labor camp for trivial "violations" tends to make people STFU.

I have no doubt that people in North Korea know there is an outside world that is a little less fucked up. Do they (at an individual level) have an empowerment to enact change? Lol that's a good one.

Re: Hong Kong’s protesters use AirDrop to spread information to mainland visitors

#52

Post by Forge36 »

scilro wrote: post #47

This reminds me of people who say that we can free North Koreans by (physically) airdropping tapes and books on Pyongyang - surely the only reason they support their government is because they're heavily censored, once they see the truth they'll rise up in arms! It's a narrative that's somewhat condescending. It makes it seem like all these people are just being held hostage by their governments. The reality is that…

I mean, we do physically drop in banned media. https://www.google.com/amp/s/gizmodo.com/how-one-group-is-in...

Information spreads. Some people defect.

Whether this effort helps is hard to measure. That it's succeeding shows many people are interested and change is possible/desired.

Re: Hong Kong’s protesters use AirDrop to spread information to mainland visitors

#53

Post by richardw »

Taniwha wrote: post #7

Um, Hong Kong is OUTSIDE the Chinese firewall (for now) More likely they are doing this to preserve anonymity

Similar to how USB was used to overcome the airgap by Stuxnet. Flow of visitors to HK and back to the mainland means information gets past the firewall. Those people can pass the files on via the same method.

Re: Hong Kong’s protesters use AirDrop to spread information to mainland visitors

#54

Post by NamTaf »

dwohnitmok wrote: post #48
mikeash wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it actually work from China? Their VPN blocking has gotten really good lately.

Essentially no. As yorwba points out in a sibling post the GFW is wise to the protocols being used. Algo doesn't work either. Or more accurately they don't work for long. The GFW slowly degrades the connection over the course of some minutes, making it unusable after a while. This then resets every day or so. After a series of days or weeks the IP address associated with the server is completely blocked. The situatio…

I use Streisand to spin up both Wireguard and Shadowsocks whenever I visit China and sustain a ~300KB/sec connection usually on both of them. Occasionally it'll drop out for a night, but it's generally fine by the next morning, without needing to cycle the destination IP. I'm not sure whether it's to do with my hotel's wifi or the VPN itself. I run it off a DigitalOcean or Vultr VPS, depending on which is working better at the time.

Last time I used it (Feb this year), Streisand wrapped Shadowsocks in simple-obfs, but it appears that the latest release now uses v2ray since May or so. I'll be testing it in a few weeks when I'm next back there.

Wireguard 'just worked' back then, too. Assuming Algo does Wireguard the same as Streisand, I've no reason to believe it wouldn't work regardless of the method you use to set it up.

Re: Hong Kong’s protesters use AirDrop to spread information to mainland visitors

#55

Post by yskchu »

lnanek2 wrote: post #39
xster wrote: post #34

I think they're all valid points worth debating but wrt this article's framing, the contents of the AirDrop don't seem to have anything to do with the Hong Kong protests. Infant milk powder, train ticket score etc could just as well be in random Falun Gong pamphlets you get in Chinatowns abroad. At this point, I'm not even sure the protest (communist black helicopters will come pick you up to CCP black sites where yo…

Last article I read said the mainland had a 99% conviction rate. Anyone going over there isn't getting a fair trial. They'll just be canned and counted as some official's crime fighting spree no matter if they did it or not or whatever political purpose their bodies can be put to.

High conviction rate is not something unique to China - Canada and Japan are also at 97% and 99% respectively

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conviction_rate

Re: Hong Kong’s protesters use AirDrop to spread information to mainland visitors

#56

Post by duguxu »

scilro wrote: post #47

This reminds me of people who say that we can free North Koreans by (physically) airdropping tapes and books on Pyongyang - surely the only reason they support their government is because they're heavily censored, once they see the truth they'll rise up in arms! It's a narrative that's somewhat condescending. It makes it seem like all these people are just being held hostage by their governments. The reality is that…

Most protesters never try to investigate the real thoughts of ordinary mainland people, who are just regarded as a stereotype of ignorance, impoliteness, nouveau riche, and pathetically waiting to be enlightened. Protesters know mainland people as little as, if not less than, ordinary mainland people know them. This is not a big deal in daily life, but could severely diminish the effect of the propaganda towards mainland visitors.

Re: Hong Kong’s protesters use AirDrop to spread information to mainland visitors

#57

Post by dang »

umvi wrote: post #6
freedomben wrote: post #4

Worth mentioning in case anyone in HongKong or China needs it: Streisand can help you set up a VPN to avoid censoring[1] https://github.com/StreisandEffect/streisand

Isn't naming an anti censorship tool "streisand" similar to naming an anti-facism tool "hitler"?

Please don't take HN threads on flamey tangents.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Hong Kong’s protesters use AirDrop to spread information to mainland visitors

#58

Post by kccqzy »

I still don't understand why the use of AirDrop is necessary. These Chinese tourists have already crossed into Hong Kong, a land that currently enjoys freedom of speech. Why aren't traditional methods like banners or brochures or flyers be distributed to tourists from the mainland? Is AirDrop faster and more effective?

Re: Hong Kong’s protesters use AirDrop to spread information to mainland visitors

#59

Post by shane369 »

To be honest most of us in China don't believe in the protesters value. And we think the protesters should be punished. The censorship is actually a good thing for HongKong. If Chinese public sees what's going on, most likely it will just hurt Hong Kong. Business will start to cut ties with HK, no more shopping, public anger towards HK people...etc. The young good citizens of HK simply don't know what they are tampering with.

Re: Hong Kong’s protesters use AirDrop to spread information to mainland visitors

#60

Post by derrick_jensen »

pshc wrote: post #37
orblivion wrote: post #15

What about airdropping across the river to Shenzhen? For that matter, what about setting up Gotennas for some communication?

No idea if this is practical, but I wonder people living on either side of the river could set up some kind of laser-based point-to-point pipe that would be nearly undetectable unless you knew exactly where it was?

it might be easier to have some sort of point to point packet radio setup. Wouldn't be as fast, but would probably be more reliable and the infrastructure/tooling is already in place to do this.
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