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Investigating TLS Blocking in India

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Re: Investigating TLS Blocking in India

#101

Post by abtom »

justDankin wrote: post #63

I'm one of the authors of the post, we're trying to extend this work by crowdsourcing censorship measurements from different vantage points in India. We've compiled these tests into an android app, please consider running it if you live in India and would like to contribute to the research :) https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.censorwatc... It's completely anonymous, doesn't require any permissions, an…

Great work man! Installed the app and ran the tests. If there is any way we can see the results do share.

From what I can see, there is no way to bypass the SNI filters without using a proxy/VPN of some sort. Do let me know you have any tips for it.

Re: Investigating TLS Blocking in India

#102

Post by walrus01 »

Hokusai wrote: post #42
djsumdog wrote: post #11

I remember visiting India as a kid with my family, and one of my cousins telling me about an America TV series that was banned. I didn't think much of it at the time, but as I've grown older, I've really come to appreciate the freedom of speech we have in America. I just wrote a post about it: https://battlepenguin.com/politics/why-i-no-longer-hate-amer... India is literally the largest democratic country by populati…

The USA has more freedom of speech that many countries, but its heavily biased on certain ways. To show violence on TV is Ok, but to show a naked body makes people go all full censorship. That a nip slip in 2004 generated news around all the country and intensified fines on "indecency" is just plain ridiculous. That level of censorship is very difficult to justify when other countries are much more comfortable showin…

The TV part is a legacy of 1950s era laws for free-to-air broadcast radio and television.

You say the USA has a cultural aversion to nudity. But it also legally produces a vast quantity of legal pornography, and the web hosting companies for the world's largest online paid and advertising-supported pornography operations are all in the USA.

And provided that things like ID age checking, consent and record-keeping are all followed, nobody is kicking in their doors and arresting the operators.

There is no "full censorship" of nudity in the USA.

Re: Investigating TLS Blocking in India

#103

Post by hawkoy »

jeroenhd wrote: post #53
as1mov wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another peculiar one being blocked (at least on Airtel) is Newgrounds. Not really sure what was going on when they decided to ban it.

Newgrounds is full of porn. It's probably blocked for the same reason pornhub is.

> In July 2015 the Supreme Court of India refused to allow the blocking of pornographic websites and said that watching pornography indoors in the privacy of one's own home was not a crime.[13] In August 2015 the Government of India issued an order to Indian ISPs to block at least 857 websites that it considered to be pornographic.[14] In 2015 the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) had asked internet service providers to take down 857 websites in a bid to control cyber crime, but after receiving criticism from the authorities it partially rescinded the ban. The ban from the government came after a lawyer filed a petition in the Supreme Court arguing that online pornography encourages sex crimes and rapes.[15]

> In February 2016 the Supreme Court asked the Indian Government to suggest ways of banning all forms of child pornography.[16]

> In October 2018 the government directed Internet service providers to block 827 websites that host pornographic content following an order by the Uttarakhand High Court. The court cited the rape of a 10th standard girl from Dehradun by four of her seniors. The four accused told police that they raped the girl after watching pornography on the Internet.[17]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pornography_in_India#Legalit...

Re: Investigating TLS Blocking in India

#104

Post by dmix »

shi314 wrote: post #70
djsumdog wrote: post #11

I remember visiting India as a kid with my family, and one of my cousins telling me about an America TV series that was banned. I didn't think much of it at the time, but as I've grown older, I've really come to appreciate the freedom of speech we have in America. I just wrote a post about it: https://battlepenguin.com/politics/why-i-no-longer-hate-amer... India is literally the largest democratic country by populati…

Free speech is not about releasing every movie or TV show produced by entitled people. It's about free speech of common people. A person getting fired for a thing he/she commented a decade ago is not free speech. USA has lot to do with free speech which really matters. USA was top country regarding free speech in maybe 1980s but now, it needs to change it's policies to be one.

Free speech is a culture phenomenon in the US that goes well beyond the US constitution.

This argument that only the direct legal limitations is enforced is very naive and a much more modern take because social media companies have largely ignored the cultural and ethical implications. Yet plenty of people, organizations, policies, and general common sense have embraced free speech voluntarily (ie, companies refusing to try to control their employees speech and views pushed outside of the workplace).

Re: Investigating TLS Blocking in India

#105

Post by brigandish »

sdoering wrote: post #52
wutwutwutwut wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any source for that, looks pretty good to me? Been to 30 or so different countries but not entirely sure why traveling abroad is relevant.

You probably won't get a reply. At least a rational one. I experienced similar sentiment here on HN when discussion the topic of freedom a while back. Reporters without borders is probably one of the best sources to evaluate the quality of Freedom of Press worldwide. But for some people arguing that not all is great with their freedom in the US challenges a part of their identity. And that makes rational discussion a…

You appear to be comparing the 2 kinds of liberty Isiah Berlin outlined[1], that of negative and positive liberty. English (and hence) American conceptions of liberty historically tend strongly to negative liberty, European countries like Germany emphasise positive liberty more - though as you point out there's a mix everywhere and to differing degrees.

One of my favourite interviews is with Berlin[2] where he talks about why positive liberty is so dangerous.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfhQhdA-zss Tom Richey with an intro [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIP9IjJcZr4 Isiah Berlin interview on the ABC on freedom

Re: Investigating TLS Blocking in India

#106

Post by jacobush »

nindalf wrote: post #73
shi314 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free speech is not about releasing every movie or TV show produced by entitled people. It's about free speech of common people. A person getting fired for a thing he/she commented a decade ago is not free speech. USA has lot to do with free speech which really matters. USA was top country regarding free speech in maybe 1980s but now, it needs to change it's policies to be one.

You’ve made a common mistake - constitutionally guaranteed freedom of speech means freedom from the government restricting you from or persecuting you for speech. That does not mean citizens need to tolerate whatever you say. For example, a commenter on HN might break the rules and get banned by dang. Dang isn’t violating their constitutional rights, because dang/HN isn’t the government. [1] Similarly, trump the priv…

I find it interesting how many seem so content with that constitutionally guaranteed freedom of speech means freedom from the government restricting you.

At what point does that stop being useful, as corporations gain power over the government?

Some used to worry that private malls replacing public venues for people congregating caused an erosion of rights. Now the Internet is mostly private malls. Anyone can self host a blog, still, but most spend their virtual lives in the "online private malls".

Re: Investigating TLS Blocking in India

#107

Post by hawkoy »

boruto wrote: post #79
indiablock wrote: post #30

I run a tech company that got randomly blocked in India. There's no way it wasn't some kind of mistake. It's been months and there's no way to find out why and there's no documented method to resolve the problem. While looking into this, it turns out it happens all the time and many websites have been blocked for years. If you're big enough then maybe you can get unblocked. Or you might just be SOL. Some examples: ht…

All three are accessible to me from ACT broadband in tier-3 city. Also work from a VPN on AWS bombay.

The blocks varies a lot. Broadband from the same companies will not block many sites that are blocked on their mobile networks. It depends on location as well as few other less controlled factors.

Source: I have broadband connection and sim from the same telecom and have noticed same issues in distant family houses.

Re: Investigating TLS Blocking in India

#108

Post by justDankin »

abtom wrote: post #101
justDankin wrote: post #63

I'm one of the authors of the post, we're trying to extend this work by crowdsourcing censorship measurements from different vantage points in India. We've compiled these tests into an android app, please consider running it if you live in India and would like to contribute to the research :) https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.censorwatc... It's completely anonymous, doesn't require any permissions, an…

Great work man! Installed the app and ran the tests. If there is any way we can see the results do share. From what I can see, there is no way to bypass the SNI filters without using a proxy/VPN of some sort. Do let me know you have any tips for it.

Thanks for running it! We are in the data collection stage at this moment, will definitely be publishing our findings and releasing the data publicly.

P.S. Our previous paper talks about censorship in India, albeit the data is from just one vantage point https://arxiv.org/abs/1912.08590

As for circumvention, TLS 1.3 + ESNI + DoH should do the trick. Firefox has the capability to enable these options

Re: Investigating TLS Blocking in India

#109

Post by Santosh83 »

ignoramous wrote: post #96
justDankin wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TLS1.3 + ESNI is a robust solution, Firefox has the option of enabling it. Cloudflare has a great page which allows to check this https://www.cloudflare.com/en-gb/ssl/encrypted-sni/

A couple of problems: 1. ESNI isn't a standard yet. So, support in mainstream web-clients is lacking. 2. Unfortunately, TLS v1.3 is blocked in countries with stringent censorship already.

Wait what?? TLS 1.3 is blocked by some countries? As more and more of the Web, especially CDNs move to TLS 1.3, won't these countries be effectively crippling the Net for their citizens?

Also ESNI needs server support I believe and very few servers support it. Right now it is effective only for sites fronted by Cloudflare if I'm not mistaken, and while that isn't a small number still its by no means the wider Net.

Re: Investigating TLS Blocking in India

#110

Post by mrkstu »

brigandish wrote: post #105
sdoering wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You probably won't get a reply. At least a rational one. I experienced similar sentiment here on HN when discussion the topic of freedom a while back. Reporters without borders is probably one of the best sources to evaluate the quality of Freedom of Press worldwide. But for some people arguing that not all is great with their freedom in the US challenges a part of their identity. And that makes rational discussion a…

You appear to be comparing the 2 kinds of liberty Isiah Berlin outlined[1], that of negative and positive liberty. English (and hence) American conceptions of liberty historically tend strongly to negative liberty, European countries like Germany emphasise positive liberty more - though as you point out there's a mix everywhere and to differing degrees. One of my favourite interviews is with Berlin[2] where he talks…

The problem with 'positive' liberty is simple. You can't have it without taking negative liberty away first- i.e. Universal Healthcare as a 'right'- you have to compel multiple levels of society via coercion in order to fulfill that right, thus weakening their negative rights to be free from such coercion.

For some reason, many people seem cling to a nebulous idea of 'government,' that is more a wish fulfillment mechanism than concrete enforcer entity, can provide positive rights without impinging on the more basic negative rights.

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