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Ask HN: How Belarus can keep connected despite internet blackout?

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Re: Ask HN: How Belarus can keep connected despite internet blackout?

#121

Post by fao_ »

nix23 wrote: post #74
viraptor wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not that black and white. Some communicators for example delete messages after a specified time and don't archive by default. It's not perfect, and it's not supposed to be. But it still raises the bar a bit - if your peer is not compromised, you can at least hope the history goes away. Same could be done with "permanent" message by rotating shared encryption keys and discarding old ones for example, so you can b…

>It's not that black and white. Some communicators for example delete messages after a specified time and don't archive by default. It's not perfect, and it's not supposed to be If something is not secure you can forget it by default, there is NO information system than can securely delete and protect it's delivered end user information, no DRM no Snapchat nothing, the consumed and delivered message can always be see…

Scrub the information and rotate encryption keys with enforced deletion.

Sure, this would not get around a dedicated attacker, or screenshotting, but that's the same as printed information, or information transfer over radio. Someone can always listen in if they have enough resources and time. Even closed networks can be infiltrated with enough persistence.

Re: Ask HN: How Belarus can keep connected despite internet blackout?

#122

Post by tinco »

blimey74 wrote: post #118
AbrahamParangi wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No offense but I think this is wrong. We’re trained by society and upbringing to think that only “appeals to management” can effect change- and that “doing it yourself” is amateurish. There is some truth to this- but the world is entirely run by people who believe they can personally effect change through their actions, everyone else be damned.

Would you not agree that government ministers who can impose economic sanctions on the Lukashenko regime have more power than regular voters since they sit at the top of the power hierarchy?

They might, or they might not at all. Who knows what government can truly influence that man. Examples plenty of countries being sanctioned that simply ignore the sanctions and do their business elsewhere, or not at all, even if that means their people suffer the consequences.

I definitely support asking our governments to pressure their government. But I wouldn't ignore the fact that people in Belarus are be the ones that might be able to affect real change in Belarus.

Re: Ask HN: How Belarus can keep connected despite internet blackout?

#123

Post by huac »

blimey74 wrote: post #118
AbrahamParangi wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No offense but I think this is wrong. We’re trained by society and upbringing to think that only “appeals to management” can effect change- and that “doing it yourself” is amateurish. There is some truth to this- but the world is entirely run by people who believe they can personally effect change through their actions, everyone else be damned.

Would you not agree that government ministers who can impose economic sanctions on the Lukashenko regime have more power than regular voters since they sit at the top of the power hierarchy?

Economic sanctions will severely hurt individual Belarusians, who are the ultimate consumers of those trade products. It is hard to imagine sanctions improving the quality of life and ability of protestors to communicate with the outside world.

Separately, I would expect American sanctions to push the country towards increased trade with Russia and China -- who are both allies of Lukashenko.

Re: Ask HN: How Belarus can keep connected despite internet blackout?

#124

Post by blaser-waffle »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #110
jmnicolas wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the free world Ah the famous free world where our social media posts are heavily censored, where lock-down was / is mandatory for a lot of us, and where protesting can cost you an eye (at least 20 people lost an eye last year in France's Gillets Jaunes protests). Yes we still have it better than the Belorussians but free our world is certainly not.

Would you be content with calling it 'somewhat democratic world'?

I'll take a mostly democratic world over an openly despotic one a la the CCP.

Re: Ask HN: How Belarus can keep connected despite internet blackout?

#125

Post by moksly »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #103

This duscussion is cute, but but situation in belarus is deteriorating and people are being beaten and tortured in jail. Open this with google translate yo get an idea: https://news.tut.by/society/696375.html I would say that if you want to help, first reach out to your representative / government and put pressure on them to put pressure on belarus. It's a small country that depends on trade with the free world. Seco…

> It's a small country that depends on trade with the free world.

Don’t they mostly depend on Putin money? Here in Europe we’ve had sanctions and been working for change for quite a while.

Doesn’t matter much when their dictator is backed by Russia.

Re: Ask HN: How Belarus can keep connected despite internet blackout?

#127

Post by [deleted] »

jmnicolas wrote: post #117
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you be content with calling it 'somewhat democratic world'?

Depends what you mean by democratic. If you mean people can vote, then yes. But if it means ruled by the people then I only see elites at the top. I'm disillusioned with the western narrative about freedom. We can and should do much better than the oligarchies we actually live in. Don't get me wrong, I don't think the rest of the world has it better than us, but we're certainly not the paradise we pretend to be.

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: How Belarus can keep connected despite internet blackout?

#128

Post by Pick-A-Hill2019 »

A bit late to hop on flea-bay and get the relevant parts but certainly an interesting trick posted a while back on HN entitled "Brazilian satellite hackers use high-performance antennas and homebrew gear to turn U.S. Navy satellites into their personal CB radios." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=932997 (Original Wired link https://www.wired.com/2009/04/fleetcom/ )

A bit earlier today there was also a HN post about a re-play attack on VoLTE encryption https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24129977

For information distribution look in to I2P as a means of caching popular News sites. Local password free wi-fi access points (but obviously only for those that can can risk a knock on the door). Power-Over-Ethernet Access Points are useful.

Good luck to all.

Re: Ask HN: How Belarus can keep connected despite internet blackout?

#129

Post by komali2 »

jmnicolas wrote: post #109
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #103

This duscussion is cute, but but situation in belarus is deteriorating and people are being beaten and tortured in jail. Open this with google translate yo get an idea: https://news.tut.by/society/696375.html I would say that if you want to help, first reach out to your representative / government and put pressure on them to put pressure on belarus. It's a small country that depends on trade with the free world. Seco…

> the free world Ah the famous free world where our social media posts are heavily censored, where lock-down was / is mandatory for a lot of us, and where protesting can cost you an eye (at least 20 people lost an eye last year in France's Gillets Jaunes protests). Yes we still have it better than the Belorussians but free our world is certainly not.

Why do you conflate corporate enforced moral positioning with people protecting themselves from a pandemic as well as police brutality? None of those 3 things seem at all related to me.

Re: Ask HN: How Belarus can keep connected despite internet blackout?

#130

Post by LinuxBender »

To get videos and articles to the media, put redundant copies on USB thumb drives and hide them in different places in the city. Tell different reporters different locations to pick up the drives. Do not tell any single news agency more than one location in the event they are compromised. Ensure you are not seen hiding them. Thumb USB drives are very cheap and disposable.

To stay connected to each other, set up your own self hosted email servers. Email is old but is well designed for this. It is also easier to set up than IRC and does not depend on real time communication. Mail servers will queue messages and retry periodically. Look for "HOW-TO: Dovecot Postfix". Set up self hosted mail servers inside your country and configure them to relay to external sites using HAM, Satellite, whatever you can get your hands on. Even better, see if you can find obscure forms of internet that have not been blocked. Dial-up for example. It isn't fast, but will relay emails and small attachments just fine. Mail servers will queue messages and retry periodically. Adjust attachment limits on your email servers and let your friends know what that limit is. Use your own domains. Ensure that you configure your mail servers to enforce TLS, or at least enforce it for domains that you know use TLS. Most important, increase the retention time of the mail spool so that the server will keep trying to send messages for a month instead of a week. Get multiple accounts on mail servers hosted in other countries that your mail server can authenticated and relay through. This eliminates the need for things like FCrDNS, DMARC, etc... on your server. A dial-up will do just fine. Read up on how to use postfix header checks to sanitized email headers so that your users IP addresses are not exposed.

One advantage of self hosted email servers is that anyone inside your country that can reach the server can communicate directly to each other through that server. Nothing has to leave the country and can not be censored. Be sure to encrypt the mail and spool folders.

For trusted circles of friends, especially those responsible for maintaining servers, ensure they create and share PGP keys. There are how-to's for this as well. Create code phrases that mean different things, so that you can tell others if you have been compromised.

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