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Tor blocked in Turkey as government cracks down on VPN use

turkeyblocks.org

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Re: Tor blocked in Turkey as government cracks down on VPN use

#2

Post by edblarney »

In my experience, these countries do not have the sophistication to do such things on their own, they usually hire (often Western) outside firms to do this.

I think it would be helpful if the press would 'name names' in terms of the companies that are enabling this.

Re: Tor blocked in Turkey as government cracks down on VPN use

#3

Post by eloy »

Events like this is the reason I operate a few Tor Bridges. It gives uncensored internet to vulnerable people in countries that are (semi-)dictatorships.

The Streisand VPN includes a Tor Bridge by default, so if you ever have problems with an advanced firewall that blocks most VPN protocols, Streisand with Tor is your friend.

Tor Bridges are also a nice playground for modern cryptography, they are working on PQ Crypto: https://gitweb.torproject.org/user/isis/torspec.git/plain/pr...

Re: Tor blocked in Turkey as government cracks down on VPN use

#4

Post by wfn »

edblarney wrote: post #2

In my experience, these countries do not have the sophistication to do such things on their own, they usually hire (often Western) outside firms to do this. I think it would be helpful if the press would 'name names' in terms of the companies that are enabling this.

> they usually hire (often Western) outside firms to do this.

Yep, such as Cisco which helps China, to quote Cisco's pitch slides, "combat ‘Falun Gong’ evil religion and other hostiles" (https://www.wired.com/2008/05/leaked-cisco-do ; https://www.wired.com/images_blogs/threatlevel/files/cisco_p... (PDF)).

Re: Tor blocked in Turkey as government cracks down on VPN use

#5

Post by tyingq »

edblarney wrote: post #2

In my experience, these countries do not have the sophistication to do such things on their own, they usually hire (often Western) outside firms to do this. I think it would be helpful if the press would 'name names' in terms of the companies that are enabling this.

This article suggests that Turkey is doing this kind of work themselves: http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014240527023046263045795059...

Although, it does mention some help from Google with YouTube...

"In late 2012, Google launched a local version of YouTube, a move that allowed the company to block access to some videos within Turkey while making them available elsewhere. "

Edit: Ahh, did find one US company with deep packet inspection tech assisting Turkey...Procera. http://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2016/10/25/procer...

Re: Tor blocked in Turkey as government cracks down on VPN use

#7

Post by coldcode »

Could happen in any country, including the US, unless you have options to connect to the internet which is not heavily controlled. Sadly in the US we have only a few remaining ISPs with monopolies who in the near future will likely gain even more power to restrict the internet for profit; after that what is to stop the government from adding a few more "additions", like making illegal connections to TOR or unapproved VPNs. Sadly the most vulnerable part of the internet is the point where you connect. No matter what you do after that, if you can't connect you are generally stuck.
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