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Censorship The Internet

1.4 Million Cubans Bypass Censorship Using US Government-Funded Software Psiphon (reuters.com) 50

"Cuban officials rallied tens of thousands of supporters in the streets on Saturday — nearly a week after they were stunned by the most widespread protests in decades," the Associated Press reports.

President Miguel Díaz-Canel — accompanied by 90-year-old former President Raul Castro — "made an impassioned speech blaming unrest on the U.S. and its economic embargo, 'the blockade, aggression and terror... The enemy has returned to throw all it has at destroying the sacred unity and tranquility of the citizens.'" "I think the government is just trying to signal to people that it understands their desperation and that it's going to try to alleviate some of the misery that they're experiencing. The problem is that the government just doesn't have much in the way of resources that it can devote to doing that," said William LeoGrande, an expert on Cuba at the American University in the United States.
Meanwhile, Reuters reports: Psiphon Inc's freely available internet censorship circumvention tool has helped nearly 1.4 million Cubans this week gain access to websites, the company said on Friday, after Cuba's government curbed access to popular social media and messaging platforms... Thousands of Cubans joined nationwide protests over shortages of basic goods, limits on civil liberties and the government's handling of a surge in COVID-19 infections on Sunday, the most significant unrest in decades in the communist-run country.

Psiphon said 1.389 million users accessed the open web from Cuba through its network on Thursday, as well as 1.238 million as noon EDT (1600 GMT) on Friday.

"Internet is ON; circumvention tools ARE working," Psiphon said in a statement.

Psiphon said the roughly 1.4 million represents about 20% of Cuban internet users. Its open source circumvention tool can be downloaded from app stores like Google Play or Apple to "maximize your chances of bypassing censorship," according to the company. Canadian university researchers developed the software in 2007 to let users evade governmental internet firewalls.

The censorship-circumvention tool — which combines VPN, SSH, and HTTP Proxy tools — has also been used in Iran, China, Belarus, Myanmar, according to recent news reports. Bloomberg notes that the Toronto-based nonprofit Psiphon "has received funding from the Open Technology Fund, a U.S. government nonprofit that aims to support global internet freedom technologies...

"On Thursday, President Biden said the U.S. is examining whether it's able to restore internet access shut down by the Cuban government."
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1.4 Million Cubans Bypass Censorship Using US Government-Funded Software Psiphon

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  • by Ostracus ( 1354233 ) on Saturday July 17, 2021 @08:44PM (#61593101) Journal

    On Thursday, President Biden said the U.S. is examining whether it's able to restore internet access shut down by the Cuban government.

    Finally a use for HughesNet and Viasat

    • Havana is 80 miles off the US coast with good line of sight. That's doable for WiFi with highly directional antennas or for 3/4G phone service. It should be trivial to have US based Internet for Cuba if the US government decides it's important.
      Or they could just park ships at 12.01 miles off the coast.
    • The Cuban regime should be allowed to run unabated. The USA is afraid of the tail wagging the dog, so it is trying to kill the dog. But Cubans, because of embargoes are poor, they have universal healthcare, access to good education, some pharmacare as to what they can afford. The negative side, because of US financial and other pressures, results in blocked free speech. Cubans are definitely not stupid people, and they know that if things were relaxed, that eventually, a form of democracy (similar to non-
  • Well (Score:1, Troll)

    by weilawei ( 897823 )

    Looks like Slashdot is banning accounts for no reason. I'm not going to name names, but you people are fucked up.

    • If you're not going to make specific accusations, then why should anyone take you seriously? Anyone can wave their hands for any reason. Name and shame or GTFO.

      • Because I'm not out to win a Pyhrric victory. I'm done. I'm done emailing the mods and bitching about them banning people who've been contributing members for years, without the slightest whiff of warning.

        Y'all (Slashdot.org) killed off anonymous posting, shat all over posting code, didn't stop the Nazi spam monkeys anyway, banned the word Nazi.

        You do recall there's a news website that doesn't pull this shit? Anyone remember Fuck Beta? Yeah, gimme some soylent.

        This place finally tossed in the towel complet

  • of a station wagon full of USB drives.

    You could just rip them and hand them out.

    Is Starlink even possible in cuba?

    • by Anonymous Coward

      Is Starlink even possible in cuba?

      On purely a technical level, yes, there are two ground stations in southern Florida that any satellites over Cuba would be in range of.
      Coverage [satellitemap.space]
      Except perhaps the furthest south/east area.

      Beyond the technical side of things, absolutely not.
      Due to how starlink provisioning works, it requires specific actions to be put into motion to let a terminal coordinate communications with the fleet. It isn't like broadcast satellite where the signals are being dumped on you like-it-or-not.

      Since it would take specific s

  • by cascadingstylesheet ( 140919 ) on Saturday July 17, 2021 @09:44PM (#61593189) Journal
    Any chance we could use it? Or is there too much risk of "disinformation'?
  • The app says it clearly, it will monitor all network activity on your device.
  • by Anonymous Coward

    When oppressed people around the world express their desire for a better life, note the symbol they pick [wp.com].

    Can we trade these Cubans for Antifa and BLM? We'll even throw in Bernie & AOC.

    • by Max_W ( 812974 )
      The grants stipulate which symbols they are to use.
  • Gee..... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ogdenk ( 712300 ) on Sunday July 18, 2021 @02:09AM (#61593495)

    So we support bypassing censorship when it's convenient to destabilize things for folks in foreign lands....

    then we squeal about social media NOT censoring viewpoints we disagree with at home.... while claiming the first amendment doesn't apply to private businesses.... while supporting the complete deplatforming of annoying people entirely and other forms of cancel culture bullshit.

    Fuck this entire planet.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      Government crushing free speech = bad
      Companies exercising their free speech and freedom of association rights = good

      Simple.

      I guess you want the US government to violate the freedoms of companies and force them to allow spam, death threats etc., even if they lose all their advertisers and close as a result.
      Effectively you are calling for the nationalisation of the internet, and the government to decide what speech is protected.

      The people who whine loudest about 'Freeze Peach' are those who would crush it in

      • by jythie ( 914043 )
        Yeah, any time I hear people complaining about the level of 'censorship' the current platforms have.. I wonder... are they wanting to send death threats, kiddy porn, scam spam? The people being kicked off tend to get kicked off for saying something specific.. so which of those specific things is the speaker in favor of?
        • death threats, kiddy porn and scan spam have specific laws against them which have nothing to do with free speech.

          Creating child porn is and should be illegal, it not possible to do without hurting a child. Scams are fraud, death threats are also illegal https://www.criminaldefenselaw... [criminalde...lawyer.com]. None of them are simply someone expressing an opinion which someone may or may no agree with.

          But if you want state something that I strongly disagree with like: "child porn should be legal because ...", (I have never herd

        • by jonadab ( 583620 )
          Maybe they want to be able to talk openly about Taiwan, or Tibet, or Hong Kong, or Tiananmen Square, or the ethnic Turks who live in the area east of Afghanistan, or the ethnic Mongols who live just a little ways outside the official borders of Mongolia. I'm sure the way these topics get you quickly demonetized on every major monetizable content platform, is purely because regular people don't want to buy products advertised in association with discussion of such issues. Yes, it must be that. It can't po
      • It is really quite simple, the US gets to set laws in it own country, and make the arbitrary distinction between companies so powerful that they can effectively silence anyone in most of the world and government, if it wishes. However Cuba has no such law. You either believe that people have the right to free speech or not, but its more like people have the right to free speech as long as they agree with me.

        Go on, keep complaining about Russia interfering in US politics, while doing what to Cuba?

        What exac

    • That is a false analogy. People get deplatformed in the US not because "we don't like your ideas". People get deplatformed here for violating the first rule of social interaction, "play nice".

      Maybe the Russian trolls would benefit from a different analogy. "If you piss in the village well, they kick you out of the village".

      • Nonsense if someone went around on Facebook saying "would it be kinda of a good idea to kill all Jews, what do you think?" they would be deplatformed for that idea, not because they didn't play nice. Note I do not agree with the statement, I specifically picked something that I find distasteful.

        They are violating the real first rule of social interaction "fit in", in other words conform, there are plenty of social groups that don't "play nice", lets say the KKK, or the mafia. But if you don't fit in to th

  • They're sized between 30 and 100. They have a horse. They have a megaphone. And they have persistence.

    I think the practical response to Cuba is embrace, extend, extinguish. You can't have economic leverage over them if you crush the people with sanctions and don't have any economic activity as leverage. Frenemies at the least, long-term undermining with realpolitik.

    • by jythie ( 914043 )
      The problem is policy with Cuba has nothing to do with Cuba itself, it is all about the FL expats.. the ex-ruling class that fled when people rose up against them. Realpolitik is great for international relations if you follow it, but sadly most international relations are dictated by the need to win local elections, so nations do things that are against their best interests.
  • Funny.. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by SuperDre ( 982372 ) on Sunday July 18, 2021 @10:44AM (#61594387) Homepage
    Funny how the US is bitching at other countries for interfering with the US internal politics and yet it is interfering with others themselves, and have been for many decades. Talk about being the biggest hypocrites in the world.
  • by Vandil X ( 636030 ) on Sunday July 18, 2021 @04:36PM (#61595289)
    When censorship of local "wrongthink" happens against a government the US doesn't like, the US offers an alternative.

    When "wrongthink" happens against the US government, all social media companies censor it and DDOS/remove-services-from any alternatives.

    Ironic.

There is no opinion so absurd that some philosopher will not express it. -- Marcus Tullius Cicero, "Ad familiares"

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