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Flicking the kill switch: governments embrace internet shutdowns

theguardian.com

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Re: Flicking the kill switch: governments embrace internet shutdowns

#151

Post by FunnyBadger »

webmobdev wrote: post #128
wtmt wrote: post #108

> India leads total shutdowns globally. In 2021, the world’s largest democracy shut off its internet 106 times – more than the rest of the world combined. Hardest-hit was the conflict-ridden region of Jammu and Kashmir, which was subject to 85 shutdowns under the guise of containing separatist violence. The blackouts shut down Zoom classes for students, stopped doctors from communicating with their remote patients an…

As an indian, I don't see anything wrong with my country having a kill switch for the internet because (1) India is a democracy (2) It is a foreign platform and (3) A kill switch for communication platforms is necessary to prevent rumour mongering or disrupt coordination during tense political situations like rioting (which is common in India). Note that this is not a new thing - every government also has a kill swit…

Well this explains why so many Indian-ex-pat-led social media executives have no concerns about censorship or the US 1st amendment, even within the USA.

Re: Flicking the kill switch: governments embrace internet shutdowns

#152

Post by OrangeMonkey »

bombcar wrote: post #76
OrangeMonkey wrote: post #13

The every day user, even on here, supports shutting down internet access for some - why wouldn't the government give them what they want. You cannot simultaneously hold that - for the good of us all - we have to remove people from internet services (see 'paradox of tolerance') and then pretend that the government shutting people out from the internet is bad. Too harsh? No. Check out the article on HN yesterday to see…

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32661638 is probably a better comparison than Twitter doing whatever Twitter does.

What a disappointing link.

Not because it was unhelpful - it explained the issue rather well - but because it shows our colleagues eagerly lining up to beg a corporation to silence people they disagree with.

Re: Flicking the kill switch: governments embrace internet shutdowns

#153

Post by robryk »

hotpotamus wrote: post #72
robryk wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you require client certificates then you don't need to worry about non-insider attacks on anything other than your TLS library and your client cert bootstrap procedure.

I didn't even think of that as a possibility, but it's a good suggestion and something that's within the realm of feasible (though far from trivial) for us. Thank you.

TBF putting a reverse proxy that does authn and rejects requests that do not authn correctly in front of everything (except for the login pages) is nearly as good: the exposed area is then login page, reverse proxy, and the authn login in the reverse proxy. That might be vastly simpler to implement.

Re: Flicking the kill switch: governments embrace internet shutdowns

#154

Post by webmobdev »

FunnyBadger wrote: post #151
webmobdev wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an indian, I don't see anything wrong with my country having a kill switch for the internet because (1) India is a democracy (2) It is a foreign platform and (3) A kill switch for communication platforms is necessary to prevent rumour mongering or disrupt coordination during tense political situations like rioting (which is common in India). Note that this is not a new thing - every government also has a kill swit…

Well this explains why so many Indian-ex-pat-led social media executives have no concerns about censorship or the US 1st amendment, even within the USA.

Isn't it more ridiculous to think that corporates will help you uphold your rights more than political parties? It doesn't matter if Google or Microsoft has an indian at its helm, what matters is that they too are beholden to their shareholders who only care about their profit, not you.

Re: Flicking the kill switch: governments embrace internet shutdowns

#155

Post by known »

wtmt wrote: post #108

> India leads total shutdowns globally. In 2021, the world’s largest democracy shut off its internet 106 times – more than the rest of the world combined. Hardest-hit was the conflict-ridden region of Jammu and Kashmir, which was subject to 85 shutdowns under the guise of containing separatist violence. The blackouts shut down Zoom classes for students, stopped doctors from communicating with their remote patients an…

No post body was provided.

Re: Flicking the kill switch: governments embrace internet shutdowns

#156

Post by throw10920 »

candiodari wrote: post #149
throw10920 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You wouldn't be able to get a high-speed mesh network, sure, but LoRa[1] (or something LoRa-like - it's proprietary) provides in the range of kilobits per second across tens of miles. RONJA[1] trades throughput for range, with 10 megabit throughput over 0.8 miles). Sure, you won't be able to even really download images through LoRa, but it'll do for textual communications in case of an emergency e.g. natural disaster…

Or you just use free-space optics. If you use lasers you can even (in theory) use DWDM and get xxx separate connections of 25, even 40 Gbps each. Line of sight is required but at some point someone will get it working with satellites. I believe line-of-sight >100km 400 Gbps links have been done. Oh and once you get past ~900km the fact that via the satellite you have a straight line with ~100% the speed of light (as…

To clarify: are you intentionally differentiating between what RONJA is and "free-space optics"? My impression was that that's what RONJA was - a particular open-source implementation of a FSO setup designed for ease of assembly and robustness.

Re: Flicking the kill switch: governments embrace internet shutdowns

#157

Post by jliptzin »

fein wrote: post #115
jliptzin wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're saying Trump's DOJ and FBI threatened FB with _______ unless they blocked the spread of the Hunter Biden laptop story? FB didn't even ban the story though? Even if FB is suppressing information at the request of the FBI, there are hundreds of other news sources out there that people can use. I don't use Facebook, especially not for news consumption. Here's a more concrete example: Trump's DOJ threatened FB wit…

> You're saying Trump's DOJ and FBI threatened FB with _______ unless they blocked the spread of the Hunter Biden laptop story? Where on earth did you get that from? FB is in cahoots with the FBI (and ADL), period. FB has a censorship regime that massively favors one set of politics, which is guided by the FBI, ADL, and probably many other political orgs we don't even hear about.

Isn't that what you were insinuating?

In any case, I agree with you that FB is in cahoots with the FBI. FB has a ton of juicy information that the FBI would love to get their hands on. But getting back to the topic at hand, this looks like a case of "you scratch our back I'll scratch yours," not government censorship of the Hunter Biden laptop story which the FBI would have no incentive to do, especially under Trump. FB wants to remove disinformation from their platform (or at least appear like they're making an effort), and the FBI wants a friendly relationship with FB so they can lean on them for whatever data they need.

I really don't get the arguments that there is government censorship going on when the Hunter Biden laptop story was one of the most widely publicized stories of 2020 available on pretty much every news outlet nationwide.

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