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Russia restricts opposition election voting app

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Re: Russia restricts opposition election voting app

#141

Post by vbezhenar »

selivanovp wrote: post #72

I find some comments in this section quite funny. Russia was blamed with USA elections rigging because someone payed for facebook ads to promote one of the candidates. In this case we have every evidence, that a group of people, financed by foreign organizations, created multiple apps, websites and other sources to manipulate people voices. Wake up guys, such activity should and will be banned in every country.

Russia is a democratic state where people elect their leaders.

US is a totalitarian state where people are manipulated by oligarch-controlled mass-media, with non-transparent voting process.

Oh, sorry, it's the other way around. I always confuse one with another.

Re: Russia restricts opposition election voting app

#142

Post by neonbones »

vbezhenar wrote: post #120
jsn wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In this case there's not many reasons for it to be a native app instead of a Progressive Web App. This would simplify distribution. The opposite of this is true. Blocking a web application is very easy for Russian authorities, there are well-established legal and technical protocols for that, it's a routine, it happens every day. The opposition uses apps precisely because they are more difficult to censor.

What about onion website? Can Russia already block Tor?

I'm not sure about Tor, but I know from my friends in Russian, who have direct access to this information, that the Russian government inherits all the practices and technologies from China, with DPI and all the things. Now even VPN + shadowsocks won't be a permanent solution.

It's obvious cooperation of governments that can help each other, one with tech to control, and the other with cheap resources for manufacturing. (you can google how Russian almost sold part of territories to China, there are even cities where all the administration are Chinese).

Re: Russia restricts opposition election voting app

#143

Post by solmag »

selivanovp wrote: post #72

I find some comments in this section quite funny. Russia was blamed with USA elections rigging because someone payed for facebook ads to promote one of the candidates. In this case we have every evidence, that a group of people, financed by foreign organizations, created multiple apps, websites and other sources to manipulate people voices. Wake up guys, such activity should and will be banned in every country.

Guarantee people most outraged about this are same people who wanted to yeet Mango Mussolini from Facebook and Twitter for being Russian agent. None of them are having a lonely thought in their head how the said companies might have oppressed domestic opposition and if they did it's Good & Beautiful.

Re: Russia restricts opposition election voting app

#144

Post by throwaway112347 »

sgjohnson wrote: post #63

Considering Apple complied with this request, we can be absolutely 100% sure that they would never even consider complying with the request to abuse their “CSAM detection” system to find dissident content. I’m just so sure of it. They would never.

This is what was given up when people chose App Stores over the web. You want centralization and safety? You also get companies that must comply with local law.

And very often, the law doesn't give a shit for your freedom. Especially not outside the 'West'.

Re: Russia restricts opposition election voting app

#145

Post by neonbones »

Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #112
strogonoff wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Telegram had been banned by Russian authorities with a demand to disclose E2E encryption keys previously, then that ban was miraculously lifted last year. What is happening beneath the curtain is anyone’s guess. Setting aside any speculation as to whether they are in fact a state-backed covert operation, last time I checked it appeared to be a tiny company of undisclosed structure, which—while in a way glamorous/roma…

We now see that Apple and Google routinely remove apps by request of Russian government. How come Telegram was never removed? Maybe the russian government never really asked?

They asked, but before this situation, there were no serious reasons for that. But a few days ago, the Navalny organization (FBK) was declared by the court to the status of an extremist organization. They just put the opposition on one list with terrorist organizations like ISIS and the Taliban.

For now, Google and Apple ban "another dangerous organization," not political opposition. Google and Apple already censor all the content and application for local markets.

It's nothing new. Many youtube videos are restricted in some countries but accessible in others. Companies want to make money, not to play political games, and to declare war for freedom. It's not their responsibility. But in Russia, many local players dream about a ban of Google and Apple to finally take all the market.

Mail.ru, Yandex, Vkontakte, Sber, etc., all these companies got money from an oligarchy in Russian, and for them, Google and Apple are the leading competitors in the market. Many local clones of google search, mail, WhatsApp, youtube, twitch, TikTok, and other services, but they can't win the market because of US companies.

I think, in the future, Russia will ban US giants on their market. Everything goes to this.

Re: Russia restricts opposition election voting app

#146

Post by jsn »

maccard wrote: post #128
jsn wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. You can use whatever you like, the possibilities are endless. AFAIU, the most straightforward approach would be to use Android / IOS push notifications (which can't be easily blocked) to regularly push a constantly changing (to avoid censorship) URL of your backend API servers to the mobile apps.

Unless those urls are unique per user, then the response to that is for the blocker (Russia in this case) to install the app and block the URLs as they change

They don't have to be strictly unique per user. You can send out different sets of URLs to different cohorts of users, then correlate new URL blockings with client IDs to detect rogue app installations and excommunicate them. Telegram did that when Russia tried (unsuccessfully) block it.

Re: Russia restricts opposition election voting app

#147

Post by shkkmo »

swayvil wrote: post #133
ookdatnog wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not disagreeing that there are megacorporations which wield too much power. I don't believe it's a good thing that Apple can decide what software you can run on the device you bought, and I don't think the often used security argument is sufficient justification. It would be better if there were other legal ways to install software on iDevices. But if there are other ways to install software, I don't really have…

If that platform was owned by the government, or in the public domain. Or not owned by anybody, like the space around our planet. Then such shenanigans would definitely be called censorship and a violation. But because it's privately owned, it isn't. The way it hinges on who's name is on the receipt. Which is just a legal artifact. Seems unrealistic. I mean, the more realistic take is : yes, our whole population is d…

Private censorship is absolutely censorship. Anyone disagreeing is engaged in a dishonest semantic argument as there are numerous examples of it usage this way that predate this debate by decades.

The argument is that the first ammendment protects the right to engage in private censorship.

In my mind, the core debate at the center of the issue is the assertion that corporations have the same rights as any other citizen. I think that is patently absurd but the Supreme Court disagrees.

Re: Russia restricts opposition election voting app

#148

Post by neonbones »

varjag wrote: post #18
csande17 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Shield local employees from this" is the main hard part of this proposal. The Russian government does not especially care which part of the company Google claims is responsible for app review, and they will happily arrest/prosecute/murder any staff they can get their hands on if there's a chance it'll get then what they want.

It almost sounds as if operating in Russia is a bad idea.

Yeah, that's an old story, but there were engineering offices of a few big US companies in Russian before. Almost all of them left in 2010x when they understood what was going on there. Same for Belarus, companies moved their offices to Ukraine and other Eastern European countries.

They want to market and engineers there, but they don't want to risk working in authoritative countries with batshit crazy wannabe emperors. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/12/google-closes-...

Re: Russia restricts opposition election voting app

#149

Post by eitland »

shadowgovt wrote: post #129
eitland wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some alternatives: - optional: keep the current phone and refuse to upgrade it (a few months) - get a pinephone - check compatibility and get a rootable Android phone - dumbphone and pocket camera

Pinephone is nowhere near feature compatible with either Android or iPhone platforms right now.

And neither of them are feature complete with Pine phone either which is the reason for this thread :-)

Actually owning your own phone to the point of deciding yourself what runs on it and what does not and being able to repair it easily are two huge features when you start to think about it.

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