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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

#201
post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm no longer living in Iran for a few years, so this is based on my close friends' observations, not mine. People are doing their best and the riots are intensifying. But the riot police is using warfare to scatter them and when it does not work, they fire directly into the crowd, killing and wounding many. People have no way to fight back. Sanctions are a serious problem for a SWE who lives in Iran. It's almost imp…

>While I was working in another country, banks were afraid of opening an account for me and eventually gave me an account with no internet banking and no credit card. This is something that gets to me about sanctions. It seems they prevent everyday citizens just wanting to work and live from doing so, while the government elites still get to enjoy themselves because they can easily find ways to circumvent it. What's…

> What's then the point?

It eventually makes things hard enough for the normal people that they revolt and (hopefully) replace the government.

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

#202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You drastically underestimate power that those oppressive governments have in real world that some fancy decentralized solution would solve. They just take down the internet.

> They just take down the internet. Or kill a lot of people if they rebel. Which is what Iran did just before the pandemic, and which the media only briefly covered. They machine-gunned people in the streets by the thousands and the West barely batted an eye. It was as bad as Tiananmen Square in 1989, but you'd never know it going by the media coverage then or since.

The only way to win is the point when police and army joins your side. That's only how those are won.

Of course, Iran has parallel structures with IRGC specifically made for those situation.

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

#203
post #69

Slight OT: When I was in Monaco recently the Monaco Telecom network prevented me making or receiving WhatsApp calls. I could message, but no calling. Presumably therefore it is something that the network provider can interfere with effectively.

Could it be that WhatsApp has a mechanism for ISP and telcos to block calls to prevent unnecessary competition? Like Apple has one to prevent using Apple's VPN?

It's not hard nor does it require WhatsApp's cooperation. It's fairly easy to figure out something is an (even encrypted) video call (for example by the consistency of throughput of "wanting to upload") and certainly pretty easy to use a simple algorithm to deduce what that traffic looks like.

Hiding video traffic with other traffic is hard since it's easy to assume "long persistent video-like upload with consistent throughput over something like srtp" is video and get a few false positives and no false negatives.

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

#204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>While I was working in another country, banks were afraid of opening an account for me and eventually gave me an account with no internet banking and no credit card. This is something that gets to me about sanctions. It seems they prevent everyday citizens just wanting to work and live from doing so, while the government elites still get to enjoy themselves because they can easily find ways to circumvent it. What's…

> What's then the point? It eventually makes things hard enough for the normal people that they revolt and (hopefully) replace the government.

That may be the intention, but that's not the reality of sanctioned countries. Iran, North Korea, Cuba et al are still rolling with their old rich leaders in pleasure, but an agonizing populace. It's really sad-- some countries are just unlucky :(

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

#205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are taking my comment out of context. I'm not saying that Israel is 100% for sure behind this. I'm offering an equally likely explanation in response to the individual above who concluded that this was definitely because women randomly decided that they'd had enough. Was it actually Israel? Was it just angry women? Nobody truly knows, least of all me or GP.

There's been a gradual relaxing of adherance to the hijab in Iran for decades, and this year a woman was murdered because of her 'lax' hijab. You are entertaining the idea that this _could_ be an israeli plot, which you don't have evidence for, alongside the idea it's just "angry women". So yes, even _with_ the context, it sounds a lot like you're spouting conspiracy theories behind a veil of "but I'm just asking _'w…

This has been going on for many years in the Middle East:

https://gulfnews.com/world/americas/the-new-middle-east-and-...

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

#206
post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Iran is geographically two countries away from Israel, the country that clandestinely fomented similar riots/insurrections in 10+ other countries that border Israel during the Arab Spring. Furthermore, Israel has been greatly outspoken in its hatred of Iran and Iran's nuclear program, going so far as to deploy the most sophisticated cyberattack in history[1]. It would hardly be a conspiracy theory to pin this on Isra…

uhm —- even if israel is fanning the flames of this, so what?

Isn’t that called state sponsored terrorism?

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

#207
post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Euromaidan 2014 overthrew a democratically elected president.

If that had been a democratically elected regime, Ukraine wouldn't be making the stand it is today vs Russia. Ukraine would have immediately folded under popular domestic pressure to give in to / join up with Russia.

The elections have been internationally recognized as democratic. Please refer to the quote from the head of the OSCE observers mission I just posted in the parent thread.

That's the only thing that counts, not your assumption on how Ukraine would behave, especially 12 years after said elections.

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

#208
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are the odds someone makes iranstagram.com lol Edit: i've just read the article. disheartening series of events. my country philippines has flaws but damn i can still say i'm lucky in a lot of ways.

.com is probably not the right TLD for the iranstagram product.

don't leave us hanging, tell us the right one! HAHA

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

#209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can distribute DNS data over any transport, p2p or not. Ans with DNSSEC, you can trust the contents you get from any transport. Are you concerned with countries forcefully removing entries? Because there are a lot of other country TLDs where you can add your entries if you want.

Virtually everyone relies on ISP DNS servers, which can trivially bypass DNSSEC (DNSSEC collapses down to a single bit in the header on the last hop from server to stub resolver). If all you're trying to do is resist DNS censorship, you can get almost everything you need from using an out-of-country name and DoH, which is universally available, very much unlike DNSSEC.

DNS without DNSSEC is pretty much vulnerable to the kind of censorship that won't even let you know you are being censored... Any name system without something equivalent to DNSSEC is.

With DNSSEC it is still vulnerable, but only to the kinds that you will know you are being censored, so you can try to get it from another country or another channel.

If your ISP denies DNSSEC for you, you already know you are being attacked, and can get it through some other channel. DoH is a cool channel, just make sure it has DNSSEC.

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