Help users in Iran reconnect to Signal
signal.org
Help users in Iran reconnect to Signal
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Re: Help users in Iran reconnect to Signal
#2How would you let users know about this proxy without letting their government know about it? Instead of platforms like twitter, how about randomly giving out random proxies in some header that the app could query on cloudflare or google or akamai? Does Signal already make use of any CDN's for out-of-band signalling and fail-over? If the Signal proxy could expose an obfuscated load metric, then the CDN could pick another proxy via health checks. The proxy could advertise itself via CDN's as well.
Re: Help users in Iran reconnect to Signal
#3I'm a big fan of the idea of independently-run proxy servers.
Caddy has a secure forward proxy plugin born out of a research project at Google that does something similar, but works with any clients that let you configure HTTP proxies, and doesn't terminate TLS: instead it tunnels it over TLS. The proxy server itself can also be probe-resistant, i.e. difficult to detect that a website is acting as a proxy.
I'm hoping more people can help test the patch to support Caddy v2: https://github.com/caddyserver/forwardproxy/pull/74
(Edit: Disclaimer - Don't use this in situations where your personal safety or freedom could be at risk... not yet. Not until more people with more experience can vet its implementation for bugs, and a very clear threat profile can drawn up. If you have experience with this, we'd love your help.)
Re: Help users in Iran reconnect to Signal
#4How would you let users know about this proxy without letting their government know about it? Instead of platforms like twitter, how about randomly giving out random proxies in some header that the app could query on cloudflare or google or akamai? Does Signal already make use of any CDN's for out-of-band signalling and fail-over? If the Signal proxy could expose an obfuscated load metric, then the CDN could pick ano…
I think Signal is clearly recognising that nearly sny server or system they create will be blocked, which is why they recommended this being done on an individual layer.
From the article:
> A more discrete approach would be to only send the link via a DM or a non-public message. You can post something like this on your favorite social network:
> * #IRanASignalProxy Reply to this thread if you want the connection details, and follow me so I can DM you the link.*
Re: Help users in Iran reconnect to Signal
#5Or they could just let people host their own server instances. Would be considerably more censorship resistant from the start.
Re: Help users in Iran reconnect to Signal
#6Or they could just let people host their own server instances. Would be considerably more censorship resistant from the start.
Or just use Element/Matrix which already lets you do that.
Re: Help users in Iran reconnect to Signal
#7Or they could just let people host their own server instances. Would be considerably more censorship resistant from the start.
You're welcome to either use such a decentralised service or fork signal and add decentralisation / federation. Centralised services get more users by having a lower threshold of adoption.
Re: Help users in Iran reconnect to Signal
#8Or they could just let people host their own server instances. Would be considerably more censorship resistant from the start.
Too bad, the Signal devs love centralization. One day people will realize Signal is just not the right solution for what they actually need.
Re: Help users in Iran reconnect to Signal
#9How would you let users know about this proxy without letting their government know about it? Instead of platforms like twitter, how about randomly giving out random proxies in some header that the app could query on cloudflare or google or akamai? Does Signal already make use of any CDN's for out-of-band signalling and fail-over? If the Signal proxy could expose an obfuscated load metric, then the CDN could pick ano…
That's the trick isn't it: having an entire population know something an oppressive government doesn't.
Even if you teach everyone how to deploy their own servers, then that's the knowledge the government will start targeting. You can make blocks expensive, i.e. blocking other major, useful services that would disrupt society too much for them to want to deal with, but this of course has its own costs.
It's censorship and surveillance all the way down.
Re: Help users in Iran reconnect to Signal
#10How would you let users know about this proxy without letting their government know about it? Instead of platforms like twitter, how about randomly giving out random proxies in some header that the app could query on cloudflare or google or akamai? Does Signal already make use of any CDN's for out-of-band signalling and fail-over? If the Signal proxy could expose an obfuscated load metric, then the CDN could pick ano…
Generally speaking censorship by a government needs to be pretty poorly done at best. Taking out the bulk of the usage of Signal is easy, removing it completely is hard. Much better to apply minimum cost and effort where it counts most.