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Censorship Your Rights Online

Turkey Bans Pastebin and Tinyurl 100

Posted by samzenpus from the only-big-urls-now dept.
New submitter anonimim writes "Pastebin and Tinyurl have been blocked in Turkey. Pastebin was blocked last week by a court after the hacking of Turkish Information and Communications Technologies Authority (BTK). Four databases including email addresses and plain-text passwords stolen from BTK were posted to Pastebin last month, in retaliation for the blocking of Blogspot, Incisozluk (a popular Turkish community dictionary) and thousands of other websites. The more shocking ban was that of Tinyurl, a URL shortening service. Turkey currently blocks thousands of websites and is classified as one of the countries under surveillance by the 2012 Internet Enemies report (PDF) published last week by the Reporters Without Borders."
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Turkey Bans Pastebin and Tinyurl More

Turkey Bans Pastebin and Tinyurl

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  • I'm sure http://www.socuteurl.com/ [socuteurl.com] will still work.

    • Re:Can they stop them all? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by sg_oneill ( 159032 ) on Thursday March 15, 2012 @11:45PM (#39374037)

      This its really playing whack-a-mole from the moles perspective. It might get your head above ground for a while, but ultimately that hammer will hit you smack on the head.

      The problem really is Turkey is not acting like the modern liberal democracy it claims to be, and I think it really needs to be called out on that fact.

      That said, I think we all should treat this sort of thing as the canary in the coal mine of democracy. If turkey can pull this garbage off and get away with it, then so can America, Europe, UK and Australia, because after all, turkey is just another liberal democracy right? The enemys of of our democracy, conservatives and pseudo-progressive alike at home are taking notes as we speak.

      • Re:Can they stop them all? (Score:5, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 16, 2012 @12:07AM (#39374141)

        Turkey has a governmental department that regulates what the imams will preach in the mosques.
        The military forced out the government four times in the last sixty years, the last time was fifteen years ago.
        There's literally hundreds of judgements by the European Court of Human Rights against Turkey.
        There's still ongoing concerns about torture in the judicial system.
        For fuck's sake, this is a country that once executed a guy for opposing a ban on a certain type of HAT.

        So no, Turkey isn't "just another liberal democracy right".

        • Still Turkey is on full speed to become the latest full member of the EU...
          Just to say that Democracy and liberal rights don't seem to count that much
          in the halls that once instituted modern democracy.

          • Re: (Score:1)

            by Anonymous Coward

            As a citizen. I would not call it "full speed". But I guess that is not the issue here.

          • Hardly "full speed". They've basically been told "you can join as soon as you get your democratic act together"- which this clearly isn't.

            • Re:Can they stop them all? (Score:4)

              by xenobyte ( 446878 ) on Friday March 16, 2012 @04:58AM (#39375215)

              Several EU countries blocks Turkey completely due to their failure to acknowledge the Armenian Genocide.

              Turkey not only denies that it happened but actively and militantly pursue anyone who even mentions it. They block Wikipedia due to their page on this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_Genocide [wikipedia.org]

              The EU countries demand that Turkey both acknowledges the event and apologize to the Armenian people and especially to the families of the victims. Turkey flatly refuses and these EU countries continuously veto any attempts at giving Turkey any kind of special or applicant status pending their compliance in this matter.

          • Re:Can they stop them all? (Score:5, Informative)

            by gl4ss ( 559668 ) on Friday March 16, 2012 @03:19AM (#39374853) Homepage Journal

            turkey won't be the next full member. other countries are joining in the meantime, but turkeys process has been stalled for as long as I can remember reading the news, it's one step forward two steps back. they're a nato member though since forever, which had made them a probable eu joiner.

            and if they became a full member of EU, their government would be fucked, their military top personnel would get insta-sued, their imaams and christian clerics would be free to preach whatever the fuck they want, booze would be available at every street corner with hookers&blow from italy, they would have to fix their prison system and release a large bunch of guys who would proceed to sue the government straight away, they would lose tariff controlling their economy and they'd have to stop bickering with kurds, boooyahhhhhh!(they would still be able to block sites distributing copyrighted material though..).

            I don't think EU member states would go as far as to provide retroactive amnesty for anyone who had been involved in the government in Turkey.. but still, preparing for turkeys eventual joining sometime in the far future creates some byro-jobs.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by L3370 ( 1421413 )
              Lived there for a couple years. Booze is already free flowing, and is not a cultural taboo at all, at least in the west. Prostitution is huge too. Trannny's everywhere at night. Russian imported women too.

              Not trying to take away from your message... just stating those two, from my experience, is alive and flourishing already.

          • You have an interesting definition of "full speed". Turkey applied for membership in 1987, when EEC had 12 members. It is negotiating membership today 25 years later, when EU have 27 members, some of which didn't even exists as nations at the time Turkey first applied for membership.

            • Ok, I might have exaggerated this one a wee little bit. But surely It might as well be correct since the politicians that run the EU are too feeble to call them out on their practices and come over all polite. Last time I heard an EU rep talk about Turkey's accession he was extolling the progress they had made towards politic stability... Really?

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by LQ ( 188043 )

          Turkey has a governmental department that regulates what the imams will preach in the mosques.
          The military forced out the government four times in the last sixty years, the last time was fifteen years ago.
          There's literally hundreds of judgements by the European Court of Human Rights against Turkey.
          There's still ongoing concerns about torture in the judicial system.
          For fuck's sake, this is a country that once executed a guy for opposing a ban on a certain type of HAT.

          So no, Turkey isn't "just another liberal democracy right".

          Yet Turkey is held up as something the countries of the Arab Spring can aspire to. Shows how far theyve all got to go.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Anonymous Coward
          The military was the only thing keeping Turkey from turning into a theocracy. Ataturk basically abolished the more barbaric aspects of Islam in favor of modern secularization (abolished sharia in favor of secular law and banning the face veil, among other things). He did what was necessary and sadly, nobody completed what he started and wiped out religion entirely, meaning it left only a matter of time before the military lost it's struggle for power. Now the military has finally lost the struggle to pop

        • Turkey is in the unenviable position of being caught between Ataturkism and Islam.

          Ataturk understood what it took to push Turkey somewhat into the modern age, but the methods were harsh and as the military grip loosens Islamists will win. Islam is bad, Ataturkism is bad (ask surviving Armenians!), and Turkey should be kept out of the EU because it's not rational to weaken the EU by installing enemy cultures in positions of power. (If your culture doesn't promote secular freedom, it's evil to that degree. )

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by seyyah ( 986027 )

        Turkey has never been a functional democracy. The military has a major hand in directing government policy and the state employs all kind of repressive measures (including torture) against groups and individuals who do not subscribe to the government-instituted identity created in the 1920s and 30s.

      • The modern Turkey was because it was a dictatorship ruled by the military who was okay with somewhat democratic leaders until they misbehaved and were stepped on. HARD!

        The army enforced that the vision of Ataturk was followed and all was well, Turkey prospored and the west had a Muslim nation that leaned heavily to western ideas and values.

        But the west didn't like this, democracy is the way and so Erdogan got into power and has been using the religious whankers to build his power base, relying on their fear

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by gox ( 1595435 )

          Not that the military is nice... they just are nicer then Erdogan.

          Well I mostly agree to your other points, but not this. You can't herd a nation indefinitely. They need to shoot themselves in the foot and learn in the process. Western nations would not be able to adopt such an authoritative position in these matters if they hadn't screwed up royally in the past. Turkish people who approve censorship should be ashamed of themselves but at the current state they basically lack the wisdom.

          Hell, racism was running rampant last time I was there, no one I met felt particularly

          • Well I mostly agree to your other points, but not this. You can't herd a nation indefinitely.

            Cute general theoretical principle. Please get me a side of fluffy pink unicors with that.

            You not only can, but if you don't, war will follow.

            • Re: (Score:1)

              by gox ( 1595435 )

              if you don't, war will follow.

              That's what I was advocating, preferably a more 'civil' one. I'd expect to be labeled as evil, rather than naive though.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Jaysyn ( 203771 )

          Roughly similar to how Republicans use fundementalist Christians.

          I hate to change the subject but I was talking to my girlfriend about this yesterday. I don't think you have it the right way around. I think the Christian Dominionists are hitching themselves to the greediest citizens that generally care the least about civil liberties, especially if they are getting rich off of their loss (I'm looking at you prison industry). That group just happens to be your average crony-type Republican at this point in time.

    • I'm familiar with how sites are blocked in Turkey.

      They don't have a Chinese style "great firewall." Instead the tell the isps to not resolve the dns of certian addresses. Such filtering can be circumvented by using dns servers that aren't run by major isps.

  • What else? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rrohbeck ( 944847 ) on Thursday March 15, 2012 @11:41PM (#39374013)

    So has Slashdot been banned yet? File lockers? Blogs? I have a feeling those datasets need some replication so the Turks can get them.

    • BTK: Our sikrits have been put up on posters and stuck up on buildings all over the city!
      Greek court: BAN ALL WALLS.

  • Gotta block pastebin! (Score:3)

    by Tyrannosaur ( 2485772 ) on Thursday March 15, 2012 @11:43PM (#39374025)

    Because there aren't hundreds of other sites that you can dump passwords on for people to see? How does Turkey see this slippery slope as sustainable? Just do us the favour of having to watch it in slow-motion and cut off the entire internet. It would get to the resolution of all this a whole lot faster.

    • Yeah, they should use MegaUpload instead

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by gox ( 1595435 )

      They just need support of Western nations, and the everyday excuse. If the US/EU takes one more a step towards censorship, they'll make one more leap. What Turkey wants to censor the most are "terrorist publications", but most of their definitions are vague (they might even have been the model for the 21. century "terror" rhetoric of the US, but they don't have enough political power to enforce their will globally), which is very hard to support externally, so they tend to make their advances using the "chi

      • You see this everytime, and it's true. The US was the nation that has been pushing the world towards freedom in the last 50 years. Most other nations, including those in the EU, don't agree that there should be freedom of the press in the sense that Americans understand the word.

        In America lots of nations are considered more free than America because in one specific detail they're slightly more

        Of course that doesn't mean there isn't a world of difference between EU and something like muslims or china. There

  • Turkey, meet me at camera 3 (Score:5, Interesting)

    by UltimaBuddy ( 2566017 ) on Thursday March 15, 2012 @11:44PM (#39374031)
    So, while I gotta respect your unique position at the nexus between cultures, you really don't know what you're doing, do you?

    It's shit like this, Turkey. Just... shit like this.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accession_of_Turkey_to_the_European_Union [wikipedia.org]

    Yeah, even 2021 is a bit optimistic.

  • They banned tinyurl (Score:3)

    by Ralph Spoilsport ( 673134 ) on Friday March 16, 2012 @12:31AM (#39374229) Journal
    because bit.ly paid 'em off. I mean if you follow "who has the most to gain" theory of detective work type of thing...

  • They should still be able to make their URLs cute [socuteurl.com].

  • ok so in a lot of countries block objecting sites...

    in the UK (which is still in the EU) they block child pornography sites via DNS and url this even blocked part of wikipedia.org for a while until people noticed...
    (there is no public list)

    so what really interest's me is how are they blocking those sites ?
    who sold this to them or did they develop it themselves and are they issuing SSL certificates for sites to inspect the payload of SSL traffic ?

    anyone actually have the TECHNICAL DETAILS ?

    regards

    John Jones

  • I guess all that talk about how keen Turkey is to join the EU is just that: talk.
  • Ban tinyurl is really? They can Ban all of shortUrl? Wordpress URLs [wordpress.com]

  • Incompetent, much? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    This is not about democracy or being liberal or EU or whatever. This is a major chain feth up created by incompetents. Some idiot database administrator/webcoder lacked experience, or technical mojo, to secure the database access and the information residing there within. When it got leaked they did what any panicked administration who has no regard for public relations whatsoever does: ban everything that makes you look bad. What would be the repercussions? Lemme tell you: none. The sysadmin who works for
  • Never let these yahoos into the EU. Ever.
  • I think this is just an ad for kitchen equipment typically used at Thanksgiving / Christmas. Wrong time of year!

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