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Belarus has shut down the internet amid a controversial election

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Re: Belarus has shut down the internet amid a controversial election

#261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe protesters should set up some mesh to keep the information flow and coordination if the internet will be cut completely.

Currently there is no need for this as Telegram messages still work and Telegram channel network NEXTA ( https://t.me/nexta_tv , from Belarusian word Нехта (someone), pronounced [ˈnʲexta](nyekhta), see https://be.wikipedia.org/wiki/Сцяпан_Аляксандравіч_Пуціла ) became the main tool for spreading news and coordination.

from Belarusian word Нехта

I've been wondering why it's called that for the last few days, thanks! Curiously, it's not mentioned on the Russian NEXTA wikipedia page.

Re: Belarus has shut down the internet amid a controversial election

#262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> An ISP must be registered with the government and must follow laws in place for filtering content and working with the government. Whether the ISP is using any local infrastructure or "going to space" doesn't matter. An ISP should not be registering with the government, and it must follow any laws. Oppose censorship. Anonymous, censorship free communications is a lethal threat to rogue regimes. It allows opposition…

> "Anonymous, censorship free communications is a lethal threat to rogue regimes." Saudi arabia is still a dictatorship, despite being our 'allies' and having internet. They even dismember dissidents from time to time.

They even dismember dissidents from time to time.

...and look how well that went over? I'm not sure I'd chalk that one up as a win for MBS.

Re: Belarus has shut down the internet amid a controversial election

#263
post #242
post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Independent polls including from Pew Research support the 97% figure. I believe Pew polled at north of 90%. High polling numbers are not automatically suspicious.

Opinion polling is only valid in places where you can freely have opinions.

A whopping 88% of Crimean residents thought Ukraine should recognize the result of the referendum, according to independent Pew Research. [1]

[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2014/05/08/despite-concer...

Unless you can refute an extremely trusted independent pollster, I'm inclined to believe the statistics rather than anything subjective.

Re: Belarus has shut down the internet amid a controversial election

#264

I have some close acquaintances in BY, so this has been hard. We saw that (at least as of 8 PM UTC) outbound connections to HTTP servers wasn't really a problem. A fresh ec2 box with a basic web server wasn't effected. So, early yesterday I set up an OpenVPN server on ec2 (eu-west-1) to try to get some slow but functional internet access. What we saw was that about 15-30 seconds after the TLS handshake the connection…

If udp connections are working, it may be feasible to proxy something over that.

UDP is blocked completely or almost completely

Re: Belarus has shut down the internet amid a controversial election

#265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, let's not forget, the Ukrainian government was just over thrown by a western-backed coup. Of course, you won't know that from the Wikipedia cliff notes, but that's what happened.

Exactly, reminds me of when Asst. Sec. of State Victoria Nuland went and handed out sandwiches to supporters of the coup in the Maidan! And we have the nerve to be upset when other countries meddle in our affairs? How would we feel if a high-level Russian diplomat went out on the streets in the DC protests and handed out food to members of antifa or the alt-right? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ztt72mpTPXA

I inherently don't like these sorts whataboutism used in your comment, it's a poor approach to questioning the morality/strategy of any country and but-the-US-did-x-minor-thing has long been used by dictators and the like to justify horrible things. Especially when it's not even top-down but a single phone call of some mid-tier diplomat.

That said, after reading Nuland's Wikipedia her brazenness is something I'd expect more from the old CIA than the modern state dept. It's rich hearing her protest against Russian interference in the sovereignty of another country while trying to play the cocky puppet-master role in the background over the future leadership of Ukraine.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victoria_Nuland?oldformat=true...

But the main forgiving grace is that she was only assistant for Europe which isn't top tier and in other cases has demonstrated a maverick streak, not a person receptive to operating under authority or established norms. She’s also super pro-intervention in general which is less popular these days.

Most importantly this is not anywhere near the level of intervention shown by Russia. Really, it's extremely insignificant by comparison.

Russia has long been grasping at straws to build the western intervention is just as bad conspiracy. If all Russia has is some heavy-handed backroom phone call by a minor diplomat then the US doesn't have much to worry about.

Re: Belarus has shut down the internet amid a controversial election

#266
post #102

This is a full blown dictatorship imprisoning innocent people, beating up protesters, blackmailing opposition candidate to escape the country by imprisoning her husband. There are already dead protesters. Calling these elections "controversial" is like calling WW2 "a disagreement".

The husband was the original candidate, who was arrested and his wife ran in his place.

Re: Belarus has shut down the internet amid a controversial election

#267

I have some close acquaintances in BY, so this has been hard. We saw that (at least as of 8 PM UTC) outbound connections to HTTP servers wasn't really a problem. A fresh ec2 box with a basic web server wasn't effected. So, early yesterday I set up an OpenVPN server on ec2 (eu-west-1) to try to get some slow but functional internet access. What we saw was that about 15-30 seconds after the TLS handshake the connection…

What are the odds this is some western commercially packaged product that lets them do all this? Like some Sandvine stuff or whatever.

Apparently, the DPI was (at least partially) developed by RDP.ru. Here is the LinkedIn profile of the CTO: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nikolay-guzakov-1334484/

Re: Belarus has shut down the internet amid a controversial election

#268

I have some close acquaintances in BY, so this has been hard. We saw that (at least as of 8 PM UTC) outbound connections to HTTP servers wasn't really a problem. A fresh ec2 box with a basic web server wasn't effected. So, early yesterday I set up an OpenVPN server on ec2 (eu-west-1) to try to get some slow but functional internet access. What we saw was that about 15-30 seconds after the TLS handshake the connection…

Private OpenVPN definitely didn't work for the last 3 days, on any port.

Re: Belarus has shut down the internet amid a controversial election

#269
post #207

I believe Briar can help the people if they believe in democracy. However, I don't know how best to share knowledge of the Briar project to people in Belarus. https://briarproject.org/

Why dies it require adding their repo to F-Droid instead being directly in the main F-Droid repo? EDIT: Problems with reproducible builds on F-Droid side https://gitlab.com/fdroid/fdroidserver/-/issues/697

Re: Belarus has shut down the internet amid a controversial election

#270
post #207

I believe Briar can help the people if they believe in democracy. However, I don't know how best to share knowledge of the Briar project to people in Belarus. https://briarproject.org/

Only available for android, so it's kind of useless.
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