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Amazon threatens to suspend Signal's AWS account over censorship circumvention

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Re: Amazon threatens to suspend Signal's AWS account over censorship circumvention

#231

Post by dogecoinbase »

glogla wrote: post #166
goatsi wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The post that alerted AWS was submitted by HN user hapnin, who I don't believe has anything to do with Signal.

But he got thousands of people censored. I hope he's happy.

This is not useful. The great thing about domain fronting when e.g. Google semi-officially supported it is that it is a non-secret technique which leverages the unique status of a large-scale technical operation that the citizenry demands access to. It allows the citizenry of an oppressive state to engage in collective action via the machinery of global capitalism.

Google and Amazon should not only be supporting this practice, but celebrating it. Subverting an oppressive state is a moral good. Specifically cutting off anonymous, safe communication paths for those being oppressed is, to put it mildly, fucking evil.

Re: Amazon threatens to suspend Signal's AWS account over censorship circumvention

#232

Post by non_sequitur »

mattigames wrote: post #211
tony101 wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "They're spoofing identity" That's the entire point. By making it impossible for censors to distinguish Signal traffic from other web traffic going to AWS, domain fronting forces the government censors to either 1) stop censoring, or 2) censor many important websites that people rely upon. The associated economic cost has the tendency to discourage censors, and as shown by Signal, is actually quite an effective det…

Exactly, free countries (or those who consider themselves as such) should make it fully illegal for private companies to aid in any kind of censorship in behalf of oppressive countries. But what we see in reality is the opposite, all companies trying to make it as cheap and as simple as possible to censor anything every government dislikes; meaning the liberal fantasy of allowing every private company to do as it ple…

"in a world where every important event you can't find in Google for all practical matters never happened"

Except Google isn't in China, and least I heard important events still happen there...the world isn't as FANG centric as western media would want us to believe.

Re: Amazon threatens to suspend Signal's AWS account over censorship circumvention

#233

Post by _2d30 »

tony101 wrote: post #230
_2d30 wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's quite clear what the point is from Signal's attempt at implementation of the theory as well as your freshly minted wiki page. That doesn't change the dubious nature of it. Putting other valuable services at risk for a single service's gain is clearly dubious.

> "your Signal" Just to be clear, I am not affiliated with Signal in any way. I am just a user. > "your freshly minted wiki page" I am a regular contributor to Wikipedia, and I created the article on "collateral freedom" in January 2017[1] when I came across the topic because it satisfied Wikipedia's notability guidelines.[2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Collateral_freedo... [2] https://en.wikipedia…

That was a typo (now fixed). Didn't mean to imply you were involved with Signal

Re: Amazon threatens to suspend Signal's AWS account over censorship circumvention

#234

Post by godelski »

freedomben wrote: post #72
smileysteve wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or it forces oppressive regimes to realize that they are being an oppressive regime. Want to censor the internet, fine, send your citizens back to the dark ages; see how long it is until they protest or move.

I'm guessing you haven't spent much time looking into how oppressive regimes work. They aren't going "to realize that they are being an oppressive regime" and have an epiphany where they realize, "Hey maybe I'm an evil dictator?" If you are up for reading, I highly recommend Michael Malice's book, Dear Reader: The Unauthorized Autobiography of Kim Jong Il . After reading that you will completely understand why "see h…

There is a difference when people have never had access to things and when you take away access.

A difference would be like America and North Korea and taking away the internet. The vast majority of Americans use the internet and it is an integral part to their lives. You take it away and they would riot in a heartbeat. On the other hand if you have a regime where the majority of people never had access to the internet (or any whatever), taking it away does not cause a riot. The small groups of people that had access won't have the critical mass needed to cause such a riot.

The point is not to make a dictator to realize "Hey, maybe I'm the baddie" but "If I take this away then someone will stage a coup." Dictatorships tend not to be very stable regimes. It is hard to balance the line of power and being overthrown.

TLDR: People care much more when you remove something that is already integral to their life. Not so much if it isn't.

Re: Amazon threatens to suspend Signal's AWS account over censorship circumvention

#235

Post by shruubi »

It's frustrating because I can see both sides having valid concerns, however, while Signal's position may be the right one ethically, AWS/Google are in the right practically.

Should these countries kick up a stink about a private business acting from their perspective to undermine the laws of their country, it could very well blow up into an international incident. From the point of view of AWS/Google, allowing this to happen or turning a blind eye makes them just a culpable if this were to turn into an incident.

That's not to say I don't support what Signal is trying to achieve, in fact, I very much do, however, given that in essence they forced Google/AWS into this situation without much thought makes me less sympathetic to their plight.

Re: Amazon threatens to suspend Signal's AWS account over censorship circumvention

#236

Post by QuinnyPig »

s73v3r_ wrote: post #115
smileysteve wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or it forces oppressive regimes to realize that they are being an oppressive regime. Want to censor the internet, fine, send your citizens back to the dark ages; see how long it is until they protest or move.

Sure, but the point being is that Amazon is not consenting to being a bargaining chip in this manner. If you're in control of a site, and you want to say, "If you block them, my site will be blocked too, in solidarity," that's just fine. But it would be pretty awful for you to involve me in that, as well, if I don't wish to be part of it.

Right, and them taking that stand isn't what most of their customers want from them. "We don't want to make political points in other countries, we're just here to sell ads" is the generic corporate position.

Re: Amazon threatens to suspend Signal's AWS account over censorship circumvention

#238

Post by sterlind »

tony101 wrote: post #199
goatsi wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Russia made it clear that they would block AWS and Google Cloud if domain fronting was allowed to continue. https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/04/in-ef... As moxie says in the blog post >The idea behind domain fronting was that to block a single site, you’d have to block the rest of the internet as well. In the end, the rest of the internet didn’t like that plan.

AWS and Google Cloud should have refused to cooperate. Let Russia block them and bear the economic costs of censorship.

Plays into Russia's hands, actually. Russia has been pushing for a nationalist approach to messaging, rather than having its citizens use Telegram (ironically, developed by the Russian who created VKontakte.)

Nations that lean authoritarian are teching up their sovereign walled gardens, banning external/ungovernable services as soon as it's feasible.

The long play is to knuckle under and defer to local governments, as Amazon, Google and Facebook have shown.

Re: Amazon threatens to suspend Signal's AWS account over censorship circumvention

#239

Post by abiox »

non_sequitur wrote: post #232
mattigames wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly, free countries (or those who consider themselves as such) should make it fully illegal for private companies to aid in any kind of censorship in behalf of oppressive countries. But what we see in reality is the opposite, all companies trying to make it as cheap and as simple as possible to censor anything every government dislikes; meaning the liberal fantasy of allowing every private company to do as it ple…

"in a world where every important event you can't find in Google for all practical matters never happened" Except Google isn't in China, and least I heard important events still happen there...the world isn't as FANG centric as western media would want us to believe.

> I heard important events still happen there

where did you hear about this? :)

Re: Amazon threatens to suspend Signal's AWS account over censorship circumvention

#240

Post by M00nF1sh »

I think Amazon is doing the right thing here. There is no reason to blame Amazon, since it's protecting other customers's right to serve content legally.

When we need "collateral freedom", we should change TLS, instead of asking Amazon to allow this by hurting more customer's right to serve content to countries like russian.

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