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As unrest grows, Iran restricts access to Instagram, WhatsApp

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Re: As unrest grows, Iran restricts access to Instagram, WhatsApp

#91

Just a reminder that Signal supports both censorship circumvention and independently hosted proxies (e.g. Search Twitter, etc. for proxy links using the #IRanASignalProxy hashtag.) https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360056052052-Pr...

Does Signal support signup without a phone number yet? Otherwise Iranian telcos could easily eat Signal's SMSs to block signups.

Re: As unrest grows, Iran restricts access to Instagram, WhatsApp

#92
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should American companies pull out of Germany instead of banning Nazi propaganda? The UK instead of removing court-ordered offensive speech? I mean, maybe, but since the US has the least-restricted speech of basically any nation, you are de-facto asking for a nationally partitioned internet. That's a big change.

The problem is: if you want to ban Nazi propaganda you have to develop tools to do it. Once you have tools in place you can use it to ban anything you do not like, not just Nazi propaganda.

You also have to develop tools to block spam, child porn, and (in practice on almost all social networks) legal porn that there is nevertheless considerable censorious pressure on.

Re: As unrest grows, Iran restricts access to Instagram, WhatsApp

#93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A government that beats young women to death could probably intimidate people that grumble that they can't buy the least apple fashion accessory

Right now there's practically a revolution because they don't want to wear a piece of fabric on heads. I don't think they could.

You do realize that these topics arw differwnt? Also a nice stab at supressed women standing up for their rights in very repressive country, doing so takes a lot of courage. Don't diminish that.

Re: As unrest grows, Iran restricts access to Instagram, WhatsApp

#94

I'd be surprised if by now Iranians hadn't figured out alternate means of communication.

I think it's not so much about them talking to each other, it's about shutting them off from the outside.

> The last time the Islamic Repubic cut off the Internet in Iran, they brutally massacred 1500 people, just 3 years ago. I beg you please save my people (crying while typing)

-- https://twitter.com/AsingleNight/status/1572930406709530624

> We are covered in blood, don't forget us, they want to suffocate us. Please be our voice.

-- https://twitter.com/dokhtr81/status/1572907289774006272

It's heartbreaking, and I for one do not intend to let it go. Enough is enough.

https://twitter.com/AlinejadMasih/status/1572273975639642114

Re: As unrest grows, Iran restricts access to Instagram, WhatsApp

#95
post #36

Google pulling out of China instead of catering to censorship was a principled move, but fairly obviously did not lead to more freedom of speech in China. It helped kickstart a domestic, government-obedient tech industry. I don't know what the right move here is. Nobody who thinks there's an obvious right answer is worth listening to.

Those are two very bold claims: that Google pulled out of China for purely ideological reasons, and that the Chinese tech industry would have otherwise failed if they had stayed. We are dealing with hypotheticals here, so it's not like we can back up our propositions with actual evidence. But both ideas just seem deeply unlikely based on what we know of both Google and Chinese tech.

not sure why this is downvoted. Chinese companies can definitely make their own search engine. And in fact search engines are not so big in china anyway; everything is an app, and questions are answered on Zhihu. Google's time in China was up anyway and they knew it. It was good PR for them to leave with a bang. Does anyone really thing the CCP would allow Google to collect data on every Chinese person as they do in the US? And without data collection ads become much less profitable (see: facebook). This would also set a precedent of barring Google from data collection which would spread elsewhere. Now its just seen as a domestic Chinese thing only.

Re: As unrest grows, Iran restricts access to Instagram, WhatsApp

#96

I'm a little surprised Whatsapp even works (worked) in Iran, given the US sanctions against the country.

Iran seems to think Whatsapp & Instagram are destabilizing such that turning them off can help quell domestic unrest. A couple of takeaways. First, holy shit. Communications software is powerful enough to put fear in the hearts of political rulers! Second, insofar as sanctions are designed as punitive measures against a government who's actions our government doesn't support, it makes no sense to restrict their acces…

Communication networks are the first thing to disable or compromise in any conflict. Whether it's banning African slaves from having Talking Drums or cracking the Enigma during WWII, it's always a feature.

Re: As unrest grows, Iran restricts access to Instagram, WhatsApp

#97

I'd be surprised if by now Iranians hadn't figured out alternate means of communication.

I think it's not so much about them talking to each other, it's about shutting them off from the outside. > The last time the Islamic Repubic cut off the Internet in Iran, they brutally massacred 1500 people, just 3 years ago. I beg you please save my people (crying while typing) -- https://twitter.com/AsingleNight/status/1572930406709530624 > We are covered in blood, don't forget us, they want to suffocate us. Pleas…

Install Briar from FDroid, it can comunnicate even over Bluetooth.

Re: As unrest grows, Iran restricts access to Instagram, WhatsApp

#98
This protest is very different from previous protests. Look it up. Women in Iran are just tired of being oppressed and their movement is an embodiment of feminism. I'm an Iranian and unfortunately this protest hasn't received world wide attention in the news. This is a first time women taking the lead in protesting against this tyrannical regime.

Re: As unrest grows, Iran restricts access to Instagram, WhatsApp

#99

Does anyone know how this works in Iran? All the way from the decision making to the question of: who do you call? What commands do they execute? I would naively start with physical ingress points and add routing rules that stop traffic to service IP blocks (obtained by examining DNS records). Depending on how DNS is deployed (like, is there a national law to only use government run name servers?) you could freeze DN…

I imagine SNI too - which is in cleartext. There is encrypted SNI but I don't know how far that is along in terms of deployment. But really for a company like FB you could just blackhole their entire IP range(s) and/or AS (AS32934?) which would take everything offline very quickly.

Cloudflare supports ESNI. AFAIK none of the mainstream browsers support ESNI by default. I believe the latest build of Firefox [1] may have an option in about:config to enable it. One could check if a website supports ESNI with [2] ESNICheck. Support for ESNI is still subject to change. [3]

[1] - https://blog.cloudflare.com/encrypt-that-sni-firefox-edition...

[2] - https://esnicheck.com/

[3] - https://serverfault.com/questions/976377/how-can-i-set-up-en...

Re: As unrest grows, Iran restricts access to Instagram, WhatsApp

#100
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Normally the government (in this case Iran) contacts the service provider (in this case FB/Whatsapp)and lets them know that unless they self-block their service, the government will do blocking at the network level and might issue fines. Normally, that makes the service provider implement blocks on their end, because then at least they can present the user with a sensible error message, and other services that the go…

It is illegal in USA for Meta to pay fines to Iran government. The government is blocking at network level anyway. The app provider should detect the network outage and provide a good UI, not proactively block users who aren't using the affected network at all.

> The app provider should detect the network outage and provide a good UI,

Can the blocking be adequately distinguished from packet loss? If not it seems like it would be embarrassing for the app to declare Government blockage when it's not really the case.

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