50,000 Users Test New Anti-Censorship Tool TapDance (www.cbc.ca) 198
The CBC reports:
What if circumventing censorship didn't rely on some app or service provider that would eventually get blocked but was built into the very core of the internet itself? What if the routers and servers that underpin the internet -- infrastructure so important that it would be impractical to block -- could also double as one big anti-censorship tool...? After six years in development, three research groups have joined forces to conduct real-world tests.
An anonymous reader writes: Earlier this week, Professor Eric Wustrow, from the University of Colorado at Boulder, presented An ISP-Scale Deployment of TapDance at the USENIX Workshop on Free and Open Communications on the Internet. TapDance is an anti-censorship, circumvention application based on "refraction networking" (formerly known as "decoy routing") that has been the subject of academic research for several years. Now, with integration with Psiphon, 50,000 users, a deployment that spans two ISPs, and an open source release, it seems to have graduated to the real world.
"In the long run, we absolutely do want to see refraction networking deployed at as many ISPs that are as deep in the network as possible," one of the paper's authors told the CBC. "We would love to be so deeply embedded in the core of the network that to block this tool of free communication would be cost-prohibitive for censors."
An anonymous reader writes: Earlier this week, Professor Eric Wustrow, from the University of Colorado at Boulder, presented An ISP-Scale Deployment of TapDance at the USENIX Workshop on Free and Open Communications on the Internet. TapDance is an anti-censorship, circumvention application based on "refraction networking" (formerly known as "decoy routing") that has been the subject of academic research for several years. Now, with integration with Psiphon, 50,000 users, a deployment that spans two ISPs, and an open source release, it seems to have graduated to the real world.
"In the long run, we absolutely do want to see refraction networking deployed at as many ISPs that are as deep in the network as possible," one of the paper's authors told the CBC. "We would love to be so deeply embedded in the core of the network that to block this tool of free communication would be cost-prohibitive for censors."
Not A Moment Too Soon (Score:1, Insightful)
With Google, Facebook, Twitter and Cloudfare all deciding they get to be the worlds nannies this may just what the doctor ordered.
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But how does this help when:
1) Oppressive Regimes don't install this routers, and
2) hosting & DNS servers and CDNs cancel your service?
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1) Oppressive Regimes don't install this routers
Doesn't matter. This relies on friendly regimes installing the functionality. The redirect works whenever someone accesses any site that hosts the redirect capability. The censoring country can only stop the redirects by banning access to all servers that run it. If enough servers run the redirect capability, this is what TFA calls "prohibitive to block" since they'd have to cut off access to basically the internet itself.
2) hosting & DNS servers and CDNs cancel your service?
It doesn't help in this case at all. That's not its point.
Re:Not A Moment Too Soon (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, but something doesn't smell right - if friendly ISPs can recognize this protocol and aid and abet the bypassing of firewalls, then censoring entities can *also* recognize this protocol.
Where's the method for preventing interception of the initial handshake?
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TFA doesn't provide much technical info, but the papers it links to explain this in some detail.
In a nutshell, crypto and steganography: using the public key of the system, the client hides a signal in a TLS connection, which the TapDance station can recognize because it knows the private key. If you don't know the private key, the TLS connection looks like an ordinary stream of encrypted TLS records. In fact, it is a valid TLS connection, so the server doesn't think anything is weird about it either.
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Read the paper, but it wasn't terribly clear either - they seemed more interested in scalability than operations.
Anyway, so the trick is you need to make sure that end users behind the firewall can get your public key...which, if they're doing DPI, they can filter out, so that someone has to send it via snail mail, or otherwise stego it somewhere. Difficult, but not impossible.
I guess the other problem is if the censors shove you behind an encryption terminating firewall (i.e., they insist you instantiate
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Yeah, that makes sense.
I was thinking the other way they could implement would be with some port knocking sequence to the friendly ISP - that crap is hella hard to notice, even with DPI. I wish there were more useful implementations of it, but my bet is the deep state is intent on suppressing that kind of tech.
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In most parts of the world, everyone uses the government ISP already. That's a given.
This software is installed in an ISP that's beyond the control of the censors. I don't think Merit Network or the University of Colorado are going to worry much about whether they or their users are breaking the network laws of some random country halfway around the world.
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You did not even read it did you? It is just a way for internet users to bypass (government) blocks. It does not solve the problem of denying people a forum to spout their ideas in the first place.
And I doubt it will work as intended. The Chinese will just label it a "circumvention device" and punish anyone that will provide this infrastructure right from the start. In fact, they have already started by demanding all information of chinese users will be stored on servers in China. China will not hesitate to
Tor, I2P, vpngate. (Score:2, Interesting)
The technologies are already there.
The former two need more development work, since many of the obfuscation formats for networks utilizing DPI have been fingerprinted sufficiently to kill connections/flag suspected users.
The latter, vpngate, works out of the box and has rotating IP addresses and many 'volunteer' outproxies. Unlike Tor it works with both TCP and UDP, doesn't support port forwarding (limiting p2p apps running through it to client-only modes.)
I2P supports both stream and datagram style packets
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Except they aren't and this won't help.
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So what will stop you from clicking on the link that downloads malware. Spyware, and other harmful material.
Unfortunately the process to protect your network from bad actors is also the same technology to "protect" your government from alternative interpretations of history.
Re:Not A Moment Too Soon (Score:4, Insightful)
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And if you want to see this in action, you just needed to see the anti-First Amendment rioters in Boston yesterday. They prevented people from holding a rally in support of the First Amendment and required something like 500 riot police in order to contain. All because they decided that anyone who supports free speech is by definition a Nazi.
You might not like what they say, but it is absolutely vital to a healthy society that they be allowed to say it. Otherwise, things like the violence in Charlottesville
Uh, No. that's not how it works. (Score:1)
The counter protesters are EXACTLY as entitled to march as the protestors. Even in the same place. It's free speech for everyone. E.V.E.R.Y.O.N.E.
The only acceptable counter to free speech is MORE, BETTER free speech.
Being outnumbered is not being censored. It is only showing you that you have a minority opinion.
The alt reich carried guns and surrounded and intimidated groups of counter protestors, are you as willing to call that anti-first amendment action? Because that CLEARLY was with armed proteste
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Being outnumbered is not being censored. It is only showing you that you have a minority opinion.
That would be fine and all if they hadn't assaulted the protesters unprovoked.
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The First Amendment only prohibits the government from imposing limits on speech. It says nothing about private citizens.
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The First Amendment only prohibits the government from imposing limits on speech. It says nothing about private citizens.
Fuck I’m glad to live where the constitutional feedom protections do not just apply to government but to everyone, including coporations
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you DO know about that, right?
Re: Uh, No. that's not how it works. (Score:2)
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All they did was keep you from having an audience where you wanted it!!
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Horseshit. The "free speech rally" was organized by the "alt-lite," which is a splinter of the alt-right composed of people not comfortable with openly supporting white nationalist views. They're still anti-immigration nationalists in a white-majority country, which is practically almost the same as being a white nationalist.
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This is especially relevant in the current climate of having politicians and the media deciding who is a nazi and who isn't based on a whim. Or worse, groups like Antifa and universities like Evergreen State essentially being able to justify violence and censorship against anybody that they decide is a nazi, with the police and university staff only providing protection to the side making those accusations. Take for example, the Coulter and Milo speeches at Berkeley.
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nonesense. all nazis should have the swastika cut into their forehead inglorious bastards style.
Yes, and all Jews should have a star pinned to their clothing...gee...where have I heard that before...
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Idiot, that very claim is a lie
Re: Not A Moment Too Soon (Score:1)
because mutilared genitals isnt enough?
Although, legend has it, many Jews actually wear the star of david voluntarily.
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Yes, and all Jews should have a star pinned to their clothing...gee...where have I heard that before...
In Medieval Europe?
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Terrorist attack? Get real, someone was beaten up by the SWJ extremists and flipped. While of course illegal I would not call that terrorism.
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That's not even close to true. Nazis don't have freedom of speech in Germany, haven't had it for over half a century, but you still hear loud political discourse from all over the ideological spectrum. Nobody was "next".
Slippery slope arguments are for dopes. Don't fall into that trap. Free speech isn't a suicide pact. Societies, like any natural organic system, has the right to reject cancer, harmful bacteria or viruses.
Re: Not A Moment Too Soon (Score:3, Insightful)
You're wrong. They literally are arresting people now who blaspheme against Islam, under the same anti-Nazi laws. The slope is real.
I know that you feel really good about all of this, but you of all people should fight for the right to say incredibly stupid and ignorant shit, because that's what you do constantly.
Re: Not A Moment Too Soon (Score:4, Insightful)
This sort of thing shouldn't be possible in a society that takes free speech seriously. And that starts with not having vague delimitations of that freedom. In Europe, critique of Islam is increasingly seen as "hate speech". In the USA, you don't have to wave a swastika around to be branded a nazi, it is enough to defend a statue of a confederate general. Or maybe a trump bumper sticker is sufficient these days. Look at what happened on some social media sites in the wake of events in Charlottesville: suddenly all of alt-right (whatever the hell that is) is branded undesirable.
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At the behest of Muslims, UK police are tracking and arresting as terrorists immigrants who fought for Peshmerga and other anti-jihadist militias.
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You can go from there:
http://pamelageller.com/2017/08/islam-reich-alliance.html/
So don't be a lazy shit, just use a search engine.
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You don't pay very close attention do you?
http://grk.am/S1 [grk.am]
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The obvious reaction from someone who has been bested. Consider yourself lucky. I save my smackdowns for those who deserve it the mostest.
Re: Not A Moment Too Soon (Score:2, Insightful)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blasphemy_law#Germany
You lose. Now shut the fuck up, Nazi.
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Re: Arrest (Score:1)
Re:Not A Moment Too Soon (Score:4, Interesting)
That's not even close to true. Nazis don't have freedom of speech in Germany, haven't had it for over half a century, but you still hear loud political discourse from all over the ideological spectrum. Nobody was "next".
Germany and free speech, Germany and free speech, where have I heard this trope before? Oh right, last year where a comedian was being charged [aljazeera.com] for the crime of "insulting a foreign head of state". Now to be fair they did eventually drop the charges and made moves to drop that particular crime [npr.org], though the current status of that effort I do not know. Who knows, maybe the made the motion of repealing it but it "Died in committee" only for the law to be dusted off again when it is convenient.
But the question remains, why was that particular thing codified into law? What prompted the German leaders to make it illegal to criticize foreign heads of state? Was there some pressing crisis of low moral foreign dignitaries in need of a safe space in Germany? I am not sure, but the after effects remain. This is yet another example of the chilling effects that free speech restrictions can have upon "loud political discourse". While you may say there is no slippery slope, I would say that this is but one example of one. Nazi's may not have freedom of speech in Germany, but neither do political comedians.
P.S. For those Slashdotters living in Germany, I am not aware of the current status of your Lese-Majeste laws but do be aware that U.S. President Trump is also a big fan [reason.com] of expanding Libel laws, so unless you know for certain that the law mentioned above was repealed you may want to keep quite about him. Because he will certainly use them against you if he can.
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Oh right, last year where a comedian was being charged for the crime of "insulting a foreign head of state".
You own link says that he wasn't charged, merely that the state's prosecutors were allowed to decide if there should be charges based on Turkey's request for extradition. There was no prosecution in the end.
Basically she refused to block it outright for diplomatic reasons (Turkey helping with the migrant crisis), knowing that it wouldn't go anywhere and that it was due to be repealed next year anyway. And Germany is hardly alone in having stupid old laws on its books.
And to be clear, Merkel or anyone in the
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Left, right, faiths, publishers, political parties all face the same political laws and have to be very aware of what they say and comment on.
The US has freedom of speech and freedom after speech. A much better legal system to publish in as rights are fully protected from any governments
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And yet, if you go to Germany right now, you will hear much greater diversity in political speech and ideology than you will in the US. Far left, far Right, and everything in between. Loudly spoken and deba
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The only speech that is allowed in Germany is legal speech that supports democracy.
Some of the origins of modern German law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Thats very different to the USA and having free speech fully protected before and after speaking or publication.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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"German Law" hasn't done anything to curtail free speech. Just don't be a Nazi.
Ahem [telegraph.co.uk]. Though please please please, tell me how this comedian was a Nazi.
Re:Not A Moment Too Soon (Score:4, Insightful)
He wasn't a Nazi and his freedom of speech was not curtailed and he was not prosecuted. Merkel said the prosecution could move forward, but it never did. And all this happened after his poem was published and distributed widely. And the law was changed.
Go back and read the article more carefully. And remember, free speech does not mean consequence-free speech. You can still be dragged into court for libel or slander. If you cry "fire" in a theater, you can be prosecuted. Even right here in freedom-loving Texas, you can be prosecuted for "fighting words", defined as:
You think flying a Nazi flag or telling people that you're going to put them in ovens or promoting the Klan in a majority black community might fit that definition? Of course it does. Free speech does not give you the right to say whatever kind of shit you want without consequences. It didn't in 1789 and it doesn't now.
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He wasn't a Nazi and his freedom of speech was not curtailed and he was not prosecuted. Merkel said the prosecution could move forward, but it never did.
Yeah, if I saw someone escape prosecution by the skin of his teeth I am sure going to be encouraged to speak up like him. Chilling effects dude, they happen.
Go back and read the article more carefully.
I could but I have taken notice of what happened already. Germany has a lese-majeste law on the books. This guy (rightly or wrongly) criticized Recepe Erdrogen and his stalking of hobbits up Mt. Doom personal characteristics,and he tried to use that law to silence a critic. And Merkel was ok with that. Do you think that encouraged "loud political discou
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I hate Slashdot Nazis.
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Slippery slope arguments are for dopes.
It is undisputable that Germany is on a slippery slope.
At first, only Nazi propaganda was outlawed. The new "Netzwerkdurchsetzungsgesetz" [www.bmjv.de] now also makes “evidently unlawful” content illegal [cfr.org] and forces Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms to remove it or be fined. It is unclear what is meant by "evidently unlawful" but it is definitely no longer just confined to Nazi propaganda.
Textbook slippery slope.
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OK, that's what Antifa is for. They are the new first responders, and they're here to reject Nazism with extreme prejudice, because that's all Nazis understand.
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Then let them battle it out. It seems to me the score nazi vs. antifa is 1-0 at the moment.
Equal opportunity employee (Score:1)
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Anti censorship tools are tools that can be used by the nazi to speak their shit and by their victims to denounce their shit. Also by people smart enough to convince people to not be nazis in first place.
First they came for... (Score:1)
EXACTLY.
I am amazed at the number of people that think they can take free speech away from someone without destroying it for everyone.
It's like they stopped teaching civics entirely.
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It's like they stopped teaching civics entirely.
In 2001 to number was down to 34 States that still required passing civics in order to graduate high school. By 2012 the number was down to only 9 States that still required passing civics to graduate high school:
Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, South Carolina, Texas, and Virginia
So yes, essentially they did stop teaching civics entirely.
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"First they came for the Nazis...". If a couple of entities get to decide what speech is acceptable and what isn't, and can effectively keep "undesirable" speech from reaching the public, then who is to say who's next? If the nazis don't have freedom of speech, we don't have it either, even if it feels good to be rid of them and we ourselves don't yet have to feel limited in what we say. Just wait.
Define freedom of speech.
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Define freedom of speech.
The precise definition really doesn't matter. Freedom of speech is a natural consequence of the fundamental principle of proportional response. Simply avoid escalating matters by answering speech with physical violence (including "legal" violence like jail, fines, etc.) and the rest will take care of itself.
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Define freedom of speech.
The precise definition really doesn't matter. Freedom of speech is a natural consequence of the fundamental principle of proportional response. Simply avoid escalating matters by answering speech with physical violence (including "legal" violence like jail, fines, etc.) and the rest will take care of itself.
Is murder of your opposition an expression of free speech? Keep in mind, his supporters expressed that they support the murder.
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"First they came for the Nazis..."
Hilarious that this is being used unironically in defense of nazis now, considering that it's a paraphrasing of a quote about being persecuted by nazis. [ushmm.org]
But maybe if we keep defending and coddling nazis, the original context will become more relevant again.
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Hitler liked the tactic of "alternative facts" and that short lived democracy died of the disease
Until and unless Putinism is confronted at EVERY post, gathering or meme posting, freedom, even the idea of a rePUBLIC, is in danger.
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Last time I checked those drug sellers didn't mind me speaking my mind, so I guess it's easy to decide who to side with.
Re: Not A Moment Too Soon (Score:1)
Dark nets.
Fucking stupid question.
U.S. Citizens right to speak (Score:1, Insightful)
See subject: It's what I believe in. No matter who you are/what your views are you have the right to speak (especially if you back it w/ fact. Not just "relative truths" but absolute hard fact). It's up to others to listen (or not) but if "a truncheon is used in lieu of conversation" we have a problem.
APK
P.S.=> A truly VERY serious problem that subverts 1 of this nation's fundamental values & rights... apk
Re:U.S. Citizens right to speak (Score:4, Interesting)
Is this karma for all the presidents you planted on "banana republics" that now you are going even lower in the cognitive dissonance regard?
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2015: Sorry snowflakes, there are no safe spaces in real life
2017: Help I need somewhere safe to discuss my nationalist bullshit
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Can't figure out the difference? Do you need me to tell it to you, or would you rather work it out for yourself.
2015: Sorry snowflakes, there are no safe spaces in real life
Sorry snowflakes, we're not censoring media because it hurts your feelings.
2017: Help I need somewhere safe to discuss my nationalist bullshit
Help, there's insane communists trying to stifle everyone's speech, by declaring it 'hate speech.'
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This isn't the middle ground. That's what people ended up protesting in Boston Commons. [imgur.com] Insane communists indeed, with people wrapped in a media hysteria bubble.
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Unaddressed question (Score:5, Interesting)
As described in the article, it seems like this might be ripe for abuse as a hard-to-block DDOS tool. How would that be prevented?
What ISP? (Score:2)
They want an ISP-based system, but TFA does not makes clear that there are some ISP willing to implement the idea.
One problem I foresee is that there seems to be no gain for a participating ISP, and most ISP are primarily driven by profit.
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TFA (well, the second one, the USENIX paper) makes it clear that there are already two ISPs running this software.
Not a tier-1 ISP, granted, but MERIT carries a pretty large chunk of the traffic in and out of the Midwest. It's a start.
Arrogant. (Score:3)
What they are failing to recognize is that repressive governments can dictate what people can and cannot run on a server within their own borders. You can argue they can use servers outside their borders but that's just likely to cause them to completely segment their chunk of the internet.
The real-world result of this tool is going to be enabling individuals that were banned from various sites for ToS violations to continue spreading hate/spam on those sites.
It's good in concept but the reality is the $5 wrench will win. [xkcd.com]
proxy certificate (Score:2)
Refraction networking certainly makes it very difficult but not impossible to intercept comms. Would it not be possible to 'mandate' the use of a govt-sponsored root certificate on browsers? They could then do man-in-the-middle decryption at the router level. This would require a massive effort, but then the Great Firewall is pretty massive.
FreeNet (Score:5, Interesting)
How is this better than FreeNet?
https://freenetproject.org/
Terrific! (Score:2)
...so this means that people like the KKK and white supremacists can finally avoid being censored?
That's good, right?
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...so this means that people like the KKK and white supremacists can finally avoid being censored?
That's good, right?
Yes.
Because if you can censor the KKK, you can censor anyone. And those that support censorship are never satisfied.
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So far the Left has murdered 10 cops in cold blood and shot up a bunch of politicians.
Your "Nazi" boogeymen haven't even showed up at their protests. Now we have one dead courtesy of the Nazis and you are getting your panties in a twist? I'd think someone who supports a group that has been so efficient at killing an injuring people over the last year would have a bit more fortitude.
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You're a fucking idiot then. There was more damage in and to Germany from antifa and their ilk in the last year, then there has been by actual nazi's in the last decade.
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Coming from a non-US English nation, what is wrong with Americans in general? Their collective psyche is like no other nation on the planet; the closest to a general national identity that can be described appears to be "paranoid schizophrenic on crack". That's a generalisation, obviously, but it's an awful one to consider.
A few decades ago this was not so much the case in the US as it is today. What you are witnessing is the result of identity/group politics dividing people along every conceivable social dividing line...be it race, religion, gender, wealth, or ideology...then fanning-up the flames of hate and pitting these groups against each other so that TPTB can maintain and grow their power, control, and wealth, with little pushback possible from the fractured and infighting plebs who are too busy hating and fighting eac
Re: Terrific! (Score:2)
How much does Putin pay you to agitate against freedom of speech and undermine American values?
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Then arrest those that commit crimes and let the rest speak. What exactly is your problem?
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Honestly that was the point of my comment, but I fear Poe's Law got in my way.
I just got torched for insisting that Google de-listing 'hate sites' is a dangerous slippery slope, prompting my post here.
Won't be allowed in Australia... (Score:2)
http://www.news.com.au/technol... [news.com.au]
The internet (Score:2)
If the activist big brands want to remake the www, the internet will just find new services and methods of moving new content and data around.
The more social media and big search engines ban words, thoughts, authors, publications, politics, reviews, comments, users, blasphemy, history, whistleblowers, cryptography the more people seek new networks that support freedom of speech.
The users now have the bandwidth to move text around globally.
Havi
Re: The internet (Score:2)
Nazi Nazi Nazi Reeeeeee! Nazinazi! NAZI!!!!1!!
Damn, the 50 Cent Army is working overtime today.
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So asking that everyone can be heard is now a "nazi" point?
That I get old enough to hear that "nazis" are now defending our right to speak... Have we arrived at nineteen-fourty-eight at last?
War is Peace;
Freedom is Slavery;
Ignorance is Strength;
Either that or I woke up in Bizarro world while I wasn't watching.
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That I get old enough to hear that "nazis" are now defending our right to speak... Have we arrived at nineteen-fourty-eight at last?
Remember all those speeches by social justice advocates trying to shut people down, deplatform people, censor political views over the last year? Been going on for at least a decade now. They've got their allies in feminists, and other fringe groups as well. Your UID is low enough that you're you're involved in the OSS community(or were), then you'll have seen it with the push of "codes of conduct" that they'll try to push through, which will include things like: Revoking ownership of a project, censori
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A decade being maybe a bit much, but the bullshit level got really high in the past 3-4 years. I can easily speak, sitting in old Europe where people oddly are still way more sane (and currently way more occupied with immigrants to deal with other bullshit), but I do see the problem the US is hitting right now.
In a really bizarre cooperation between religious nutjobs and SJWs they seem to have joined ranks in an attempt to destroy what's left of science in the US.
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I remember the forerunners of this stuff back in the 1990's, it's simply become more pervasive the last 3-4 years. But there was always an undercurrent. Many of the worst examples of deplatforming and so on in the last 3-4 years have been from European schools, debate clubs, and so on. The last year though has been very bad for the US and Canada.
It's not really surprising. SJW's picked them as their own allies when they decided to pull the "muslim = racism" card and refuse to have any discussion on the
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a) We can agree that Nazis are bad. Only a Nazi would consider Nazis good.
b) Label everyone disagreeing with you "Nazi".
c) It's easy to silence your opposition because nobody would want to defend Nazis.
Works with everything. In the past it was Witches and Commies, the label du jour being Nazi.
Security through obscurity? (Score:2)
TFA: "The user's circumvention software tags this innocuous request with a little extra data — basically a secret flag the censor can't see that says "Hey, I actually want this request to go somewhere else.""
Secret flag? That sure sounds really a bullet proof method from the 80's. I'd like to know more details of it. It can't be fixed to anything, because investigating the packet payload is trivial and dropping all the unnecessary headers is also easy. Censors can see every byte you send, so hiding in
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The protocol works by piggybacking a TLS connection to an unblocked host and hiding data in the ciphertext ("chosen ciphertext steganography"). This hidden data is separately encrypted with the ISP's public key and invisible to everyone else, camouflaged within the regular ciphertext which also looks like random noise to anyone without the key. All the censors see is a standard TLS connection to a perfectly normal and uncontroversial web site. An active MitM interception (with TLS proxy certificates install