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As unrest grows, Iran restricts access to Instagram, WhatsApp

reuters.com

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

#221

Post by pyinstallwoes »

rodolphoarruda wrote: post #122

Oppressive governments must be thankful to all BigTechs able to consolidate userbase and services around a handful of apps. It makes it really easy to switch things on/off when needed. The original purpose of the Internet as being a resilient p2p network for the people has been completely defeated in some nations.

Not really that distributed given that everything is controlled by 'hubs/isps' which are within arms reach for any government within their borders.

The internet was built for fail-over to maintain communicatoin during a nuclear event.

The internet is less concerned about being a p2p network, which it clearly is not. A totally ad-hoc p2p network would be interesting, and more resiliant in some ways and lossy in others. It probably makes sense to entertain such a model. They aren't mutually exclusive.

Totally agree with you though. It's a big problem with the _increased amount of centralization_ in traffic flow / routing. That and BGP is wack.

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

#222

Post by aasasd »

weard_beard wrote: post #197
aasasd wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To my knowledge, Iranian government doesn't have power to dictate FB's actions outside Iran. So FB could block by the IPs, but blocking everywhere by the nationality makes no sense (at least by the standards of a normal person).

I can only send email 500 miles and my nationality seems to impact my cell service

Github once managed to ban accounts of Iranians, even students in the US. Afaik shortly after that GH went to the US government and convinced them that sanctioning every Iranian even outside Iran was technically and politically dubious, which resulted in the sanctions being relaxed in some way.

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

#224

Post by luckylion »

jimbob45 wrote: post #192
davisoneee wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Miriam Webster Definition of conspiracy theory : a theory that explains an event or set of circumstances as the result of a secret plot by usually powerful conspirators You have no evidence that this is likely to be Israel. Just speculation. This is conspiracy theory by definition.

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.

"Randomly", after a woman died after being taken into custody by the moral police. But sure, it's "equally likely" that Israel somehow sprinkled the rebellion-seeds over Iran and now the women are rising up. Totally just as likely.

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

#225

Post by Melatonic »

Abekkus wrote: post #128
rodolphoarruda wrote: post #122

Oppressive governments must be thankful to all BigTechs able to consolidate userbase and services around a handful of apps. It makes it really easy to switch things on/off when needed. The original purpose of the Internet as being a resilient p2p network for the people has been completely defeated in some nations.

Building a resilient p2p service on the internet doesn't just require not using big name SaaS, it means building that service to not need the WebCAs or even DNS, two core services that are anything but p2p. I honestly don't know of any applications that require neither.

Wouldnt any service that could be used by just manually entering IP addresses be workable? No DNS involved.

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

#226

Post by Melatonic »

tptacek wrote: post #168
marcosdumay wrote: post #153

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.

Until the ISP or government just blocks all the popular DNS servers by IP.....

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

#227

Post by sph »

norwalkbear wrote: post #216

Yikes it feels like arab spring again. I wonder if this will be Afghanistan, where things westernize for a decade then goes even more the other way than it was initially.

> it feels like arab spring again

Hopefully not, because the Arab Spring didn't do much in the long term, just the US & allies profited from it by getting rid of Ghaddafi, while the whole of northern Africa isn't faring much better today than before that flash in the pan.

I just hope this civilian revolution actually tears down the Iranian religious dictatorship for good. And hopefully in my lifetime I can experience seeing the Saudi scumbags getting the boot as well. Wouldn't that be great.

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

#228

Post by bpodgursky »

norwalkbear wrote: post #219
anvic wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The right move is letting countries govern themselves in whatever way they see fit and leaving them alone. Or would you like to have Iran or Pakistan or whatever intervening in the domestic issues of the West?

People really do think their nations culture should be imposed everywhere. In reality it doesn't work. See Americas bitter defeat in Afghanistan. Which is now more Islamic and antiwestern than it's ever been

> more Islamic and antiwestern

It's a massive regression from 2002 - 2021, but this is not true. The Taliban has moderated somewhat from 2000 (somewhat), and frankly would be very happy to make tactical deals with the west to help counter ISIS.

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

#229

Post by tptacek »

marcosdumay wrote: post #213
akerl_ wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the vast majority of DNSSEC-enabled end user systems, the user's device is not doing its own DNSSEC validations. It's using a DNSSEC-enabled resolver and trusting the bit set on the DNS query response where the recursive resolver says "yup, I confirm that DNSSEC is good here". Given that these resolvers are generally provided by the user's ISP, if the ISP wants to lie about DNSSEC, they can just fudge the results…

Honestly, this is something I shouldn't have to say. But getting a DNS response with a flag saying "yep, trust me, it's valid" is not DNSSEC. What is it with DNSSEC that people have to pollute discussions saying that stupid stuff that isn't DNSSEC isn't secure?

It's an interesting flavor of "No True Scotsman" when you've managed to argue that every resolver on every OS in the world is "stupid stuff that isn't DNSSEC". If DNSSEC only works if you're using a custom fully-recursing resolver, not present on any mainstream operating system or built into a single piece of software you install on your machine, what exactly is the point of signing a zone? So far as you're concerned, nothing is doing DNSSEC validation in the first place.

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

#230

Post by tptacek »

Melatonic wrote: post #226
tptacek wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Until the ISP or government just blocks all the popular DNS servers by IP.....

That's pretty tough to do, since any IP can run a DoH cache.
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