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Cloudflare tells U.S. govt that foreign site blocking efforts are trade barriers

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Re: Cloudflare tells U.S. govt that foreign site blocking efforts are trade barriers

#151

Post by loeg »

tastyfreeze wrote: post #117
loeg wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US already deputizes third parties to enforce its laws. Banks are responsible for KYC / AML. Grocery stores must check ID when selling alcohol. This is nothing special.

I wouldn't call legal force to be deputizing anybody. If those entities don't do as the law says they will be in trouble themselves. Deputies have authority. Banks and stores are just following the rules and report to authority when required.

You're picking a pretty fine semantic distinction, and IMO if you're going to be a pedant, you should try to be correct. Deputization isn't my invented description for this model; it's more broadly used. E.g., https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/money-laundering-and-...

Re: Cloudflare tells U.S. govt that foreign site blocking efforts are trade barriers

#152

Post by AnthonyMouse »

pfortuny wrote: post #144
Ajedi32 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think if something is hosted in a different country, the laws of that country apply to that service. It's not under your jurisdiction, so you have no say in whether it's allowed to exist, nor should you. You can, of course, pass a law making it illegal for your citizens to communicate with that service, but I think it's really important to understand that that's what's happening. You are passing a law which applies…

Mmmmhhhhh… There is the problem of the middleman (the telcos): you are using them for communication. I guess if the USPS/Fedex knew for a fact (such as your website request) that you were communicating CP, the. they should do something about it? This is an honest question.

> I guess if the USPS/Fedex knew for a fact (such as your website request) that you were communicating CP, the. they should do something about it?

That is often the case, but it's also not the relevant part, because consider what happens if you do that. I mean it's the same thing that happens with parcel carriers -- everybody's package ends up in an opaque brown box and the carrier has no means to determine if it's contraband. They just weigh it and deliver it, which is what they're supposed to do, because they're not the police.

And so it is with ISPs. What happens if you make them block stuff people actually want? TLS, third party DNS, VPNs, etc.

At that point you have to answer a different question: Should they be obligated to open and censor your mail?

No. The answer is no.

Re: Cloudflare tells U.S. govt that foreign site blocking efforts are trade barriers

#153

Post by [deleted] »

pfortuny wrote: post #144
Ajedi32 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think if something is hosted in a different country, the laws of that country apply to that service. It's not under your jurisdiction, so you have no say in whether it's allowed to exist, nor should you. You can, of course, pass a law making it illegal for your citizens to communicate with that service, but I think it's really important to understand that that's what's happening. You are passing a law which applies…

Mmmmhhhhh… There is the problem of the middleman (the telcos): you are using them for communication. I guess if the USPS/Fedex knew for a fact (such as your website request) that you were communicating CP, the. they should do something about it? This is an honest question.

[deleted]

Re: Cloudflare tells U.S. govt that foreign site blocking efforts are trade barriers

#154

Post by pfortuny »

themafia wrote: post #150
pfortuny wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, yes. But then again, those beginners gave us unauthenticated TCP…

"Gave" is the key word. You got TCP for free. There were other competing network protocols. You might ask, why didn't those get used instead?

You are right, but I was referring to the fact that their ideas are not necessarily the best ones. Edit: because they were too optimistic, they left the security problems behind. Same with this kind of problem.

Re: Cloudflare tells U.S. govt that foreign site blocking efforts are trade barriers

#155

Post by AnthonyMouse »

loeg wrote: post #112
immibis wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody's saying the government shouldn't be able to go after the owner of the site and force them to shut it down. It definitely shouldn't be done by third parties though.

The US already deputizes third parties to enforce its laws. Banks are responsible for KYC / AML. Grocery stores must check ID when selling alcohol. This is nothing special.

It's accurate that the US already does it, but that doesn't tell you if we should be doing it.

It does, however, provide evidence that doing that is dumb.

KYC/AML have an effectiveness that rounds to zero while causing trouble for innocent people as the government pressures the banks to do something about problems the banks aren't in a position to actually solve, so instead the banks suspend the accounts of more innocent people because the government is pressuring them to suspend more accounts.

Re: Cloudflare tells U.S. govt that foreign site blocking efforts are trade barriers

#156

Post by iamnothere »

pfortuny wrote: post #154
themafia wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Gave" is the key word. You got TCP for free. There were other competing network protocols. You might ask, why didn't those get used instead?

You are right, but I was referring to the fact that their ideas are not necessarily the best ones. Edit: because they were too optimistic, they left the security problems behind. Same with this kind of problem.

Authenticated TCP wouldn’t have been feasible on early networks due to hardware limitations. But here in the present, you could certainly build it. As long as it works on top of IP, nothing is stopping you.

Re: Cloudflare tells U.S. govt that foreign site blocking efforts are trade barriers

#157

Post by AnthonyMouse »

exasperaited wrote: post #146
jalk wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are missing the point. Blocking a CDN providers IP range, means blocking all the websites using the CDN - not just the nazi-poster.com.

This is quite close to the whole Nazi bar analogy isn't it? You run a bar. You let anyone in, and some of your customers are a bit edgy. But one day, Nazis start using your bar for their regular gathering and you don't kick them out. Congratulations: now you have a Nazi bar.

An obvious problem with this analogy is that the percentage of Cloudflare's traffic which could be Nazis even if they were hosting all the Nazis in the world would still start with a 0 followed by a decimal point.

Re: Cloudflare tells U.S. govt that foreign site blocking efforts are trade barriers

#158

Post by immibis »

mike-cardwell wrote: post #104
immibis wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody's saying the government shouldn't be able to go after the owner of the site and force them to shut it down. It definitely shouldn't be done by third parties though.

How does the US government, force a Russian website, hosted in Russia, for Russian people, following Russian laws, to shut down?

Same thing they do to every country, Pinky. Have a small team invade the country and disappear the people they don't like[1].

Or tap the fiber lines at the border and inject RST packets from off-path, which is something the Great Firewall of China does, and is ironically much more transparent than what they actually are doing.

Or cut the cables between the USA and Russia, or between the USA and any country that doesn't cut their own cables to Russia. The USA did this to Iran with the banking system and it worked: the USA cuts money transfers with any country that doesn't cut money transfers with Iran. I don't think it would necessarily go their way if they did it right now with the internet.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Omar_case

Re: Cloudflare tells U.S. govt that foreign site blocking efforts are trade barriers

#159

Post by AnthonyMouse »

vkou wrote: post #142
Ajedi32 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think if something is hosted in a different country, the laws of that country apply to that service. It's not under your jurisdiction, so you have no say in whether it's allowed to exist, nor should you. You can, of course, pass a law making it illegal for your citizens to communicate with that service, but I think it's really important to understand that that's what's happening. You are passing a law which applies…

You're missing one further step - you can also sanction a foreign business from doing business in your country. So, you can allow it to serve your citizens packets, but if you block it from collecting revenue, it will have little incentive to (unless it's a state-sponsored bad actor, then you can only lean on the two mechanisms you described). All three prongs (ban hosting, ban access, ban revenue) can be used to kee…

> but if you block it from collecting revenue

How is this not a trade barrier against foreign payment providers?

Re: Cloudflare tells U.S. govt that foreign site blocking efforts are trade barriers

#160

Post by em-bee »

ivl wrote: post #9
giorgioz wrote: post #2

I hosted a website on Cloudflare and I sent a link to it to a friend on a Sunday. The friend told me the website was down. Turns out Spain blocks IP addresses belonging to Cloudflare during big football matches because some pirate streaming websites are hosted on Cloudflare. https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/1nm80wz/trying_to_u... I decided to go back to AWS. Frankly Cloudflare is choosing the wrong battle on…

I don't even think that case was from Cloudflare hosting, just providing DDOS protection. And it wasn't a Spanish government policy, but rather a single judge's order.

judges are giving orders based on the law/policy of the country. so if a judge gives a bad order, then the cause is a bad policy/law, and the fix is not to replace the judge, but to change the law.
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