Firefox Browser Blocks Anti-Censorship Add-Ons At Russia's Request (theintercept.com) 129
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Intercept: The Mozilla Foundation,the entity behind the web browser Firefox, is blocking various censorship circumvention add-ons for its browser, including ones specifically to help those in Russia bypass state censorship. The add-ons were blocked at the request of Russia's federal censorship agency, Roskomnadzor -- the Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology, and Mass Media -- according to a statement by Mozilla to The Intercept. "Following recent regulatory changes in Russia, we received persistent requests from Roskomnadzor demanding that five add-ons be removed from the Mozilla add-on store," a Mozilla spokesperson told The Intercept in response to a request for comment. "After careful consideration, we've temporarily restricted their availability within Russia. Recognizing the implications of these actions, we are closely evaluating our next steps while keeping in mind our local community."
Developers of digital tools designed to get around censorship began noticing recently that their Firefox add-ons were no longer available in Russia. On June 8, the developer of Censor Tracker, an add-on for bypassing internet censorship restrictions in Russia and other former Soviet countries, made a post on the Mozilla Foundation's discussion forums saying that their extension was unavailable to users in Russia. The developer of another add-on, Runet Censorship Bypass, which is specifically designed to bypass Roskomnadzor censorship, posted in the thread that their extension was also blocked. The developer said they did not receive any notification from Mozilla regarding the block. Two VPN add-ons, Planet VPN and FastProxy -- the latter explicitly designed for Russian users to bypass Russian censorship -- are also blocked. VPNs, or virtual private networks, are designed to obscure internet users' locations by routing users' traffic through servers in other countries. "It's a kind of unpleasant surprise because we thought the values of this corporation were very clear in terms of access to information, and its policy was somewhat different," said Stanislav Shakirov, the chief technical officer of Roskomsvoboda, a Russian open internet group. "And due to these values, it should not be so simple to comply with state censors and fulfill the requirements of laws that have little to do with common sense."
Developers of digital tools designed to get around censorship began noticing recently that their Firefox add-ons were no longer available in Russia. On June 8, the developer of Censor Tracker, an add-on for bypassing internet censorship restrictions in Russia and other former Soviet countries, made a post on the Mozilla Foundation's discussion forums saying that their extension was unavailable to users in Russia. The developer of another add-on, Runet Censorship Bypass, which is specifically designed to bypass Roskomnadzor censorship, posted in the thread that their extension was also blocked. The developer said they did not receive any notification from Mozilla regarding the block. Two VPN add-ons, Planet VPN and FastProxy -- the latter explicitly designed for Russian users to bypass Russian censorship -- are also blocked. VPNs, or virtual private networks, are designed to obscure internet users' locations by routing users' traffic through servers in other countries. "It's a kind of unpleasant surprise because we thought the values of this corporation were very clear in terms of access to information, and its policy was somewhat different," said Stanislav Shakirov, the chief technical officer of Roskomsvoboda, a Russian open internet group. "And due to these values, it should not be so simple to comply with state censors and fulfill the requirements of laws that have little to do with common sense."
OK, so time for browser recommendations (Score:5, Insightful)
I have used Firefox as my primary browser for years because it seemed less likely to track me and easier to add addons and wasn't stuffed to the gills with telemetry-grabbing code feeding MS or Google.
So where should I be migrating now, preferably something that looks more or less the same on Windows and Linux?
Because honestly, how can you trust any company that even responds to a request from the current Russian government, especially one that helps Putin maintain his grip on power and stifle dissent?
Re:OK, so time for browser recommendations (Score:5, Interesting)
Honestly i think their options were:
1. remove the add ons
2. remove the browser from the country entirely
If you do business internationally you need to follow the laws of every country you do business in, even if you don't like those laws.
Also, it means that everyone that already has the add-ons installed can continue to use it (I'm not positive about this one, but I assume it is true).
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>If you do business internationally you need to follow the laws of every country you do business in,
The interesting thing about the Internet is you don't actually have to do business in a country to have your product used there... and even to profit from that. Bits generally ignore borders and governments and only care about valid routes, which can be created outside government control if you're motivated to do so.
Russia could block Firefox, but Russia controlling Firefox is more or less the same functi
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you can still install the plugin via other ways, while harder
what firefox can do is having a whitelistes list of add-ons that are except from mozilla signature, and so easier to install offline... while that also open the door for a trojan add-on to be spread in russia and used to track those that may think different
all this is easier when you are under the radar, but after becoming visible, it is hard to manage, there is no right solution (and not, not complying with russia demand would end in a total bloc
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Fuck that they make a special ios not-firefox firefox browser. They can make a special russian firefox or pull out of the country entirely. Their core userbase is all people who can figure out how to circumvent restrictions anyhow.
Re:OK, so time for browser recommendations (Score:5, Insightful)
If this story had literally been "Firefox blocks anti-censorship add-ons at Hitler's request", there would still be people who would defend complying with Nazis, even with today's knowledge. Nobody needs to do business in Russia, so nobody needs to follow Putin's orders. GTFO instead of making it clear to every person in the world that your browser cannot be trusted. Today you're complying with Nazis, I mean Putin's Russia, tomorrow you'll rat me out because even unjust laws must be followed? "Just following orders" hasn't been a valid defense for a long time.
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"Just following orders" hasn't been a valid defense for a long time.
Unless youre in the US army
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What Army were you in? for which country? when?
Oh, none? Well, then you certainly know a lot of garbage then.
Lt Calley was the downfall of that policy that you think is still in place. Yeah, Back 50-some years ago, that policy was abolished in the US Army. Read a book some time.
As a former Light Infantry Soldier I can tell you that we have to sit through and stay awake for a bunch of lectures about the differences between legitimate orders and illegitimate order
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Not a defense in the US army either. US soldiers have been prosecuted and convicted for "just following orders", though the ones giving orders will usually deny it and leave the bottom run to swing alone in the courts. Just because there may be units that routinely break laws does not mean this is official policy of the military or government.
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Temporarily removing something while they figure out how to get around the rule doesn't sound like "just following Hitler's orders" to me. Get real.
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Nobody needs to do business in Russia, so nobody needs to follow Putin's orders. GTFO instead of making it clear to every person in the world that your browser cannot be trusted.
Two things:
a) What makes you think the browser can't be trusted? They were open with the request and open with how they executed it. The request was geofenced to Russia only, meaning they were literally protecting you from a request from a foreign entity. Incidentally this is how all countries operate.
b) What's the alternative. You think the people in Russia would be better off with *less* choice? You think the people in Nazi Germany would be? Yes I'll stand up to defend it. Censorship is weakened through d
Re: OK, so time for browser recommendations (Score:2)
I think it wouldn't have even gotten there with Hitler. He'd likely ban anything that wasn't made by his German race, just like he did with basically everything else, so there probably would be no Firefox to begin with. If there was, it would be like they did with music in those days where they slap another name on the record to hide its origins.
So most likely if Firefox did exist in Germany, it would be called Volksbrowser, written by angle of sphere, but anybody with half a brain would know better because
Re:OK, so time for browser recommendations (Score:5, Insightful)
Agreed.
If Firefox remains available in Russia (even if Mozilla makes no money directly from Russian entities from it). Russians who wish to evade the censors then side-load the tools they need onto their browsers, having obtained the extensions via the sneakernet or other means. The volume of Firefox users means that Firefox ownership, and traffic don't look unusual to the Kremlin snoopers, and given that Mozilla's been playing along, actually, Firefox looks "clean".
If Firefox withdraws entirely from Russia, that leaves Russians with Chrome or Edge (yeah, good luck doing anything less than godly on that), or whatever crap the Kremlin threw together. That seems like it's lot worse than Firefox and some side-loaded extensions.
So for whatever it's worth, supporting Mozilla/Firefox right now looks like "the right thing" to do (assuming you disagree with the Russian state).
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How does one withdraw entirely? Sneakernet is still there. It just means it's harder to get Firefox, not that Firefox is unavailable at the local Browsers-R-Us store.
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Your arguments only hold as long as you don't value Freedom. Fuck the Mozilla foundation. (said from a Mozilla foundation product because there isn't anything better)
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Is Firefox doing business with Russia? I thought Russia was under sanctions.
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Your belief those sanctions have any support outside a tiny minority of countries is the issue here.
About equivalent to the list of countries that support Israel nowadays. It's getting lonely in the West.
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China, the single largest economy, isn't in there. Neither is India, Brazil, South Africa, the Islamic world, etc etc. So what were you saying about 'most of the wealth'?
The illusion of most of the wealth is what you meant to say. Most of the earth's resources _and manufacturing_ are on the other side.
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No, they are doing something worse. Trading in their own currencies now. See how much you laugh about that when you realize that the use of the dollar as a default currency is why the outrageous national debts of the West are permitted to persist.
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If you do business internationally you need to follow the laws of every country you do business in, even if you don't like those laws.
Mozilla foundation is an American (San Francisco, CA, USA) corporation.
Under current sanctions, they should not be doing ANY business in Russia.
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And if the Mozilla foundation has any physical presence in Russia, #2 wouldn't do it -- we'd have to give a third option: "Leave Russia entirely".
That said, I don't know if they have any presence there or not, and if they do, #3 doesn't sound like the worst idea.
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Option 3) Continue allowing Russia to download and use the browser, leave it to the dictator to find ways to block it. It's a web browser, you don't actually package it up into a box so that people inside of Russia can find it at a local store. There is no "remove the browser from country X". If the browser eventually is blocked/forbidden/etc, then at least their conscience is clean.
Second choice is option 2. Last choice is option 1, but by that point the decision making process has gone horribly off th
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If you do business internationally you need to follow the laws of every country you do business in, even if you don't like those laws.
Not doing business in Russia is the correct choice.
1. remove the add ons
2. remove the browser from the country entirely
If you don't do business in some area that doesn't mean your products can't exist there especially ones of the free variety publicly downloadable from the Internet.
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And how would you do that? You realize Firefox is compiled specially for many Linux distributions and other reasons, right?
Just because "Mozilla Firefox" is banned, doesn't mean the source code isn't available in dozens of Linux distributions. I mean, install Debian, and you get a Firefox recompilation as Ice Weasel.
In the end, Mozilla really has some explaining to do. Because Firefox recompilations are readily available as are many Firefox derivative projects
Re: OK, so time for browser recommendations (Score:2)
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Honestly i think their options were:
1. remove the add ons
2. remove the browser from the country entirely
If you do business internationally you need to follow the laws of every country you do business in, even if you don't like those laws.
Also, it means that everyone that already has the add-ons installed can continue to use it (I'm not positive about this one, but I assume it is true).
Honestly, with Russia... I'd be going with number 2 as Russia can't effectively block people from downloading it from non RU servers... not even China can effectively do that. Also they cant force people to uninstall Firefox in Russia.
.ru address to do it.
However your point is largely valid.
Russians will still be able to get the add on, they'll just have to go to a non
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Re:OK, so time for browser recommendations (Score:5, Interesting)
Unlikely. When Mozilla decided to kill off translation extensions they not only removed them from the store they also actively removed them from your device, blocked you from reinstalling them privately, and even if you found a way around that it was a cat and mouse game where they'd continue maliciously tampering with your computer.
Mozilla's belief is if they don't want you to have something installed they should be able to delete it off your hard drive.
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you CAN install offline, this is how devs test the extension... but requires manual instal and enabling the extension on every restart in the about:config
extensions that are automatically removed from clients are for sure extensions found to be doing wrong things (mallware)... just because it is usefull do not mean that they didn't hide some bad code in there... now this is less common, as they do automated code checks and captch more before being made available... but in the past, you had 3 extensions with
Re:OK, so time for browser recommendations (Score:4, Informative)
You can still sign and self-distribute addons [extensionworkshop.com]. Why do people make shit up?
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So what? You can't self-sign, you have to sign through Mozilla using an API key they give you. If Mozilla wants to, they can prevent a developer from signing any further releases of their extension, which they probably already did to comply with Russian law.
If that happens they'd then need your users to use developer releases of firefox to use unsigned extensions.
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which they probably already did
They did not. Get a fucking clue.
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Eat shit you fucking nerd.
It is truly amazing to me that anyone here thinks the word "nerd" is an insult here rather than a compliment.
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i was thinking in the unsigned extensions instalation for developers, that i did long ago, i didn't knew that we could now distribute signed extensions offline too, great info, thanks!
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and it is the correct workaround for this problem too! :D
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Glad I could help.
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Yes you can. [extensionworkshop.com] Ignore the moron modded "Insightful" spreading obvious misinformation.
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2nd this request.
Unless someone suggests better, I hear LibreWolf? is pretty good?
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Pale Moon (Score:3)
Been using it for years, and only needed Firefox for the rare website that temporarily didn't work with Pale Moon.
It also uses less resources compared to the fat fox.
Disclaimer: it depends on the websites you visit, as I don't wander everywhere around internet.
Recommended add-ons: uBlock and eMatrix / nMatrix.
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Mozilla, while presumably having a conflict of interest, says Pale Moon is not a recommended alternative because it runs off a fairly old fork of their browser, is missing some significant security features, and the Pale Moon team does not perform reasonable levels of security testing.
I'm kind of inclined to take them at their word on that.
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Forget trying to do your banking with Pale Moon, or anything else that only knows how to deal with Chrome, Firefox, and Safari. I wish I'd never started my mother on it years ago, now it's impossible to move her off because then she'd have to look up all her passwords again and swears she doesn't have half of them.
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No trouble with my bank, but maybe European banks have stricter rules with regard to web compliance.
Sites which only care about the latest hype will always bring trouble and bloat to the browser.
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Of course they'd say that, which is why there's a section titled Rumor Control on tthe Pale Moon website:
https://forum.palemoon.org/vie... [palemoon.org]
And of course there are the release notes:
https://www.palemoon.org/relea... [palemoon.org]
To me, Pale Moon is the browser Firefox should be (for the most part), just as Firefox (4.0?) was the browser Internet Explorer should have been all those years ago.
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Perhaps Mullvad Browser, which is a fork of firefox.
It is privacy-focused and they seem to be putting enough resources into it to keep up with security patches for issues with firefox.
Brave (Score:2)
Chromium based, updated regularly, blocks a ton of stuff. It does have telemetry which is easily disabled.
https://privacytests.org/ [privacytests.org]
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I'm more ticked just because of the thought of it. The entire reason that I switched to linux and open source software is because open source tends to believe in the fact that software should never have artificial limits for anything and the owner says what is OK and what isn't and properly has more control than the creator of the software. Software and software companies should NEVER artificially limit or cripple anything and they should never ever override the wishes of the owner of the device that it is
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Software and software companies should NEVER artificially limit or cripple anything and they should never ever override the wishes of the owner of the device that it is running on.
None of this happened. Russia said, "This is illegal in Russia." Mozilla said, "Okay, we will de-list it from our servers for Russian IP addresses."
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Because honestly, how can you trust any company that even responds to a request from the current Russian government, especially one that helps Putin maintain his grip on power and stifle dissent?
How can you not? Companies comply with legal requests of the country they are in. Nothing more, nothing less. The alternative to Firefox in Russia with addons is no Firefox period. You want to use something else, Yandex Browser comrade. That kind of shit is the whole point of these crackdowns. You're playing right into their hands.
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I wouldn't be too surprised (Score:5, Insightful)
if a developer's life was on the line here. Mozilla is possibly being blackmailed.
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I wouldn't be too quick to judge Mozilla without knowing the reasoning. If a nation state can threaten to ban Firefox, they can ban any mainstream 'western' browser.
Then you're left with, say, a cobbled together webkit fork endorsed by Dear Leader and possibly backdoored by that country's 3 letter agencies. Which might make life for marginalized dissidents worse than if Firefox complied.
Re: I wouldn't be too surprised (Score:2)
Since they haven't told us, we are left to assume the worst. They have burned up most of their good will by ignoring the people that made them popular in the first place, i.e. us.
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if a developer's life was on the line here. Mozilla is possibly being blackmailed.
It's just not that hard to simply NOT hire developers in Russia or who are Russian. If for some reason Mozilla can't do that, then their model is permanently broken and can't be fixed and maybe we need to move on from Firefox. Besides, threatening to kill a guy who works for Mozilla unless Mozilla does what they say isn't really Russia's way of doing things. They'd be a lot more likely to force the developer to put a secret back door into the browser that allows for all kinds of nasty hacking.
It
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So what if a developer's life is on the line. As soon as you sacrifice your principles, you are lost. Sometimes blood will be spilled... even mine.
Follow local laws or eat polonium pill (Score:5, Insightful)
It's bad news but the alternative is worse.
This is not the hill anyone should (literally) die on.
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It's bad news but the alternative is worse.
This is not the hill anyone should (literally) die on.
WTF? You think that Russia threatened the Mozilla Foundation?! What kind of copium are you drinking here? Russia doesn't care enough about some random software company to send someone over to America to kill the personnel of that company.
This is the Mozilla Foundation betraying their principles for a dictator of a foreign country.
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I would not put it past them to threaten a developer or other Mozilla person on Russian territory, no.
People fly out of windows in Russia fairly often. Much higher rates of window fall deaths than the rest of the world for "difficult" people.
WHY? (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't understand why Mozilla chose to do this, what is the reason?
- does Mozilla have development office in Russia, which could be harassed by the terrorist state? I don't think so.
- does Mozilla sells something in/to Russia? I don't think so, but if they do, then they should stop doing business with a terrorist state.
- Mozilla executives plan to travel to Russia and risk to be arrested there? Better not, is a high risk to travel to a terrorist state.
Seriously, what is the worst thing that can happen if Mozilla ignores the Roskomnadzor request? Their website could be blocked by ISPs in Russia and Russian people can't directly download the software anymore.
What is be best thing that can happen? Firefox suddenly becomes very popular and lot of Russians and people living in other undemocratic countries use it.
Decisions, decisions... Which one is the best? To me, the answer is easy.
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Re:WHY? (Score:4, Insightful)
While I agree with you, strongly, you do have to consider the possibility that Putin would have you killed for it. It's not like he has any respect for borders, or people.
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. It's not like he has any respect for borders, or people.
what is it with you and respect for borders
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Borders, are an example of a set of agreed upon principles, aka laws which govern interactions between civilized people. If you demonstrate contempt for or willfully ignore said principles, then others know not to trust you, and avoid contact. Without these agreed upon principles, the whole word breaks down to Lord of the Flies, and might makes right. If you don't believe in borders, do you believe in criminal trespass?
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While I agree with you, strongly, you do have to consider the possibility that Putin would have you killed for it. It's not like he has any respect for borders, or people.
If Putin were routinely killing such low value targets, he wouldn't be the leader of Russia. The insanity of such an idea is beyond belief.
Re:WHY? (Score:4, Insightful)
blocking firefox would open the door for backdoor firefox downloads, but without signature and updates... that is a path for russia using those insecure firefox to install and track anyone that is trying to see more
blocking the extensions is easier, more extensions will show up in different names (cat and mouse game), it is possible to install offline (while much difficult and annoying) and other tools may show up outside firefox to replace them (ie: other vpn services)
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1) They removed a few extensions from the store while they figured out the best way to proceed. This is a temporary measure. It's not ideal, but perfect is the enemy of good. Keeping Firefox easily available to Russian users is the best move here.
2) Mozilla will sign extensions even if you intend to self-distribute them. The authors of the anti-censorship add-ons can still distribute them through other channels.
3) Forks of Firefox can also include add-ons. It shouldn't take very long for one or more an
Re: WHY? (Score:2, Flamebait)
The Mozilla foundation lost its way a long time ago and has been kowtowing to government censorship for a while. They fired their CEO for political donations they didnâ(TM)t like, subsequently Firefox sold shady cloud sync, password and VPN services all to make a little bit of money so what makes you think they care one bit about their users, if the Firefox default page stops working, thatâ(TM)s a glob of ad revenue they are losing.
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Charitable foundations aren't in the business of civil disobedience. They don't just break the law when they disagree with it.
The Red Cross performs abortions, but only in places where it is legal. To do otherwise would be organizational suicide.
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What does anyone gain from Firefox not being available in Russia? It doesn't hurt Putin, just drives people to browsers who have their user data not E2E encrypted by default and stored in Russia (for Apple an option).
Time to fork... (Score:3)
Time to fork Mozilla, and do a version for all users that forks Russia and Firefox...call it the "Un-bearable browser, no stallin' just rushin'" ??
JoshK.
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Time to fork Mozilla, and do a version for all users that forks Russia and Firefox...call it the "Un-bearable browser, no stallin' just rushin'" ??
JoshK.
That kind of thing is what they want to happen. Create an alternative browser for Russia, from a group you've not heard of, who play it fast and loose with how they sign binaries. Please download my RussiaFox v0.1 based on the latest Firefox fork but with your favourite plugins. Since we're in development phase still we're giving our release codenames. v0.1 will be called "no KGB backdoor promise pinkie swear *smile emoji*"
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Quite so, the "Putin Russia First" web browser. Yeah, it would say "KGB free" since 1991 (but not FSB...)
JoshK.
i wonder if mozilla-firefox (Score:2)
They're doing an AMA on Reddit (Score:2)
If you have an account there, it might be the place to ask about this and presumably get ignored.
The lesser of evils? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's easy to condemn Mozilla for this, and my first impulse was to do just that. But then I started thinking about
... "we received persistent requests from Roskomnadzor demanding that five add-ons be removed from the Mozilla add-on store,”
Realistically, Russia could make it much harder for its citizens to use Firefox at all, by blocking based on user agent and by denying ALL access to Mozilla sties. But so long as the browser itself is available to Russians and isn't blocked, then those add-ons can be distributed by back channels. I've installed Firefox extensions that didn't come from Mozilla on several occasions, and I'm sure technically inclined Russians can do the same for themselves and friends.
So it's possible that Mozilla has done a good thing here. I bitch about some of the things they do pretty frequently, but in this case I'm inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt until I have a good reason not to.
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Good stuff to know - thanks.
Concerning (Score:2)
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It's open source. Figure it out.
Oh, look at that! Nothing. What fucking joke you are!
Mozilla brought this on themselves (Score:2)
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Just like how the vast majority of open source software is now dependent on Microsoft through Github, which can and does take down software for dictators as well.
Why though? All you need is a shell account on a local hosting site that doesn't do business internationally to host a git server. A few TB of storage is practically free these days.
Chrome, Edge? (Score:2)
Are these extensions still available through official (Google, MS respectively) channels for Chrome or Edge?
Mozilla responded in the Reddit AMA (Score:3)
"we temporarily restricted access following a request from Roskomnadzor. Notification to the developers of the impacted extensions was not completed in a timely manner and we are reviewing our processes to ensure this does not occur in the future."
That doesn't actually sound like a straight answer. It sounds like "yep, we blocked them when the Russian government told us to, but 'forgot' to tell the devs and we will pretend to be sorry for that part".
Just Uninstalled company wide. (Score:1)
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Sounds to me that Russia just told Firefox to piss off of your non-Russian computers. Why do you care what extensions Russia allows Russians to use? I'm sure your users are now enjoying the utoptian freedom of Edge.
Moz are so rich they don't need donations (Score:2)
The browser is not their main interest, it just gets Google money. They do nothing to earn mine.
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Mozilla just restored access to the addons that were temporarily removed.
https://tech.slashdot.org/stor... [slashdot.org]
Are you now reinstalling Firefox company-wide or are you full of shit?
What would objectors have Moz do & precisely w (Score:3)
Humoring authorities while still offering the browser means anyone who knows how to use the internet can still download the extensions or sneakernet them or whatever.
Anyone who doesn't instantly get this should trade their computer for an abacus. Direct confrontation and tantrums are often suboptimal vs. workarounds which competent Russians will be used to thanks to rampant piracy.
When enemies don't give a shit what you think and you can't physically dominate them the logical solution is lip service and deception. Power trumps everything so I'd to what serves me where confrontation is not useful.
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When enemies don't give a shit what you think and you can't physically dominate them the logical solution is lip service and deception.
Sure, but what power does Russia have over an American organization? Do you honestly think they will send hitmen over? Do you think they will invade and use force to get at Mozilla?
In other words, why the fuck does Mozilla "give a shit what Russia thinks when they can't be physically dominated"?
Now reinstated (Score:2)
https://www.theregister.com/20... [theregister.com]
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Big mistake, Mozilla.
It certainly looks like it ... until you think about it for even just a second. SMH...
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So it's like Shitter kowtowing to the fascist [forbes.com] in Turkey? Because . . . excuses [vanityfair.com].
âoeDid your brain fall out of your head, Yglesias? The choice is have Twitter throttled in its entirety or limit access to some tweets. Which one do you want?â Later in the day, Musk argued that the action was âoepar for the course for all Internet companies â" we are just going to be clear that itâ(TM)s happening, unlike the others.â
Because no other company informs anyone why they're blocking something in another country when that country makes a request.