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Venezuela Blocks Twitter as Opposition Stage New Protests

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Re: Venezuela Blocks Twitter as Opposition Stage New Protests

#21

Post by rafaelm »

middleclick wrote: post #19
rafaelm wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes I have been spreading Tor for a couple of days now. I started in my office and friends. Last night one of the biggest Venezuelan twitter accounts retweeted me too, so many people are aware now. I need to find a similar solution for mobile phones since most people here access twitter using the phones. Any suggestions?

Have a look at Orbot. https://guardianproject.info/apps/orbot/ It is Tor on Android devices.

I thought that was only for using the web on phones, but I just saw that it also works with Twitter and any app that supports proxies. Thanks!

This is one of those times when I wish there was a simple, secure messaging app for everyone. I don't know if apps like whisper or threema are 100% safe so I'm wary about recommending them.

Re: Venezuela Blocks Twitter as Opposition Stage New Protests

#22

Post by jjrangel »

pmelendez wrote: post #2

I am surprised about reading this at HN before than Venezuelan press. I hope there is not censorship at the level too.

Television is heavily censored. While protesters are being attacked by paramilitary groups and government forces, TV stations show soap operas and cartoons. Also, the government often makes nationwide broadcasts that forces all channels to show the same pro-government content (a "cadena", which literally means "chain".) This effectively leaves the population misinformed at the most critical moments, the country only has social networks to find out about abuses from the regime.

Some newspapers are still critical of the government, but I'm surprised to see many of them switch sides possibly because they've either been bought or blackmailed. You can feel self-censorship in some of them. Just like they silenced TV, they're trying to end freedom of speech in the press.

Re: Venezuela Blocks Twitter as Opposition Stage New Protests

#23

Post by middleclick »

rafaelm wrote: post #21
middleclick wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have a look at Orbot. https://guardianproject.info/apps/orbot/ It is Tor on Android devices.

I thought that was only for using the web on phones, but I just saw that it also works with Twitter and any app that supports proxies. Thanks! This is one of those times when I wish there was a simple, secure messaging app for everyone. I don't know if apps like whisper or threema are 100% safe so I'm wary about recommending them.

If you are looking for a secure desktop IM client, look at Pidgin with OTR.

https://securityinabox.org/en/pidgin_main

For Android, I had probably trust anything by Moxie. Plus, you don't need to trust him - it's open source. Not that you have to verify it, but it's a good chance it's more secure than closed-source products.

Re: Venezuela Blocks Twitter as Opposition Stage New Protests

#27

Post by hcarvalhoalves »

rafaelm wrote: post #20
hcarvalhoalves wrote: post #17

It has begun. The president has prohibited protests, and went on TV calling his supporters against protestors, claiming they are against democracy and that he's suffering a coup-d'etat. A restraining order was issued against the opposition candidate. He's going full dictator now. Expect similar social unrest, and the same tactic from the government (blaming the protesters as violent, calling then "right-wing fascists…

Unfortunately this is not the first time this has happened here. We've had worse protests with many more dead and nothing happens. Maduro is just reading the script Chavez left him for whenever anything goes wrong. There's this automatic solidarity among these latin American countries where they will cover each other's back as long as they help each other out. The govt keeps giving away our oil, so everyone stays qui…

Unfortunately, because of our past experiences with authoritarian regimes in latin america (I'm in Brazil), we're now stuck with incompetent leftist leaders who believe are heroes of democracy (ironic), and the people, from the poorest worker to the PhD, has been brainwashed into accepting ideologies above real results from the government.

Re: Venezuela Blocks Twitter as Opposition Stage New Protests

#28

Post by spikels »

hcarvalhoalves wrote: post #17

It has begun. The president has prohibited protests, and went on TV calling his supporters against protestors, claiming they are against democracy and that he's suffering a coup-d'etat. A restraining order was issued against the opposition candidate. He's going full dictator now. Expect similar social unrest, and the same tactic from the government (blaming the protesters as violent, calling then "right-wing fascists…

Maduro declared all protests illegal then a few hours later called for his supporters to protest against his enemies. This guys is literally destroying a nation.

I agree with you on Argentina but Brazil is probably a different story - not as corrupt and not as crazy. Peru and Ecuador are much closer to Venezuela's and Argentina's situation.

The amazing thing is how long these situations can go on. The combination of the survival skills of millions of people and their desire to avoid civil war along the lines of Syria mean this can continue for a very long time.

Re: Venezuela Blocks Twitter as Opposition Stage New Protests

#29

Post by ipince »

rafaelm wrote: post #18
middleclick wrote: post #15

If you know any Venezuelans, tell them about Tor. https://www.torproject.org/

Yes I have been spreading Tor for a couple of days now. I started in my office and friends. Last night one of the biggest Venezuelan twitter accounts retweeted me too, so many people are aware now. I need to find a similar solution for mobile phones since most people here access twitter using the phones. Any suggestions?

Rafael, on iPhones you can enable VPN and get over the restrictions. My friends have been using superfreevpn.com with great success. It only involves adding some setting on the iPhone and setting the vpn password (it changes every 24h and is published on their website). This is for WiFi access of course. The mobile data is not censored (yet).

I suppose something similar can be done for android but I havent looked into it.

Re: Venezuela Blocks Twitter as Opposition Stage New Protests

#30

Post by e12e »

rafaelm wrote: post #21
middleclick wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have a look at Orbot. https://guardianproject.info/apps/orbot/ It is Tor on Android devices.

I thought that was only for using the web on phones, but I just saw that it also works with Twitter and any app that supports proxies. Thanks! This is one of those times when I wish there was a simple, secure messaging app for everyone. I don't know if apps like whisper or threema are 100% safe so I'm wary about recommending them.

https://whispersystems.org/ TextSecure / RedPhone and/or https://silentcircle.com/ are a good place to start -- but AFAIK might not provide all the protection you need in a case like this.

Assumptions:

* the government has (or can easily) link you/your associates to a SIM/Router/DSL/Phoneline

* link your ip to said sim/router

* the government probably already have you listed as an "enemy" (assuming you've ever said or done anything useful in terms of protest, aren't completely spineless or apathetic)

Historically (in Latin/South America), at least one group will have support from the US -- so assume all VPN traffic is logged for trying to match up things like twitter posts to in-country IPs.

The only reasonable action is to use TOR for onion routing, and encryption tunnelled through that. This will still show that you communicate covertly (covertly, being "not-open"). It will still show bursts of activity, and clustering of devices (Note that if you both have access to location meta-data, and have half a brain and a couple of informers/officers noting down where people are gathering, you can feed that back into lists of SIM/IMEIs to target...).

The best approach would probably be to generate a rate-limited stream of traffic over TOR, and allow that stream to be replaced by communication as needed. I don't know of any tool to do this for phones -- but layering TOR and jabber+OTR might be about as good as you're going to get for now?

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