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Comment by realfuncode | Hacker News Reader

“Two days ago the police came to me and wanted me to stop working on this. Today they asked me to delete all the code from GitHub. I have no choice but to obey.

I hope one day I'll live in a country where I have freedom to write any code I like without fearing.

I believe you guys will make great stuff with Network Extensions.

Cheers!”

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Not being facetious here - what country do you live in that you think the government can't/won't interfere with your code?

Mexico.

Maybe China? There's a bit of Chinese in the author's other repos: https://github.com/clowwindy?tab=repositories

From the fact that there's lots of other stuff related to networking/tunneling, and the username has some "Chinese characteristics" to it, I also think it's China.

Yes it's china, because chinese government fears that the citizens who lived in china know about the truth of government's corruption.

Dear Alex, although this may sound like a revelation, but governments do not fear. They are fictitious entities. Non-humans. One may think about them as a software.

Dear ommunist, I think you are right, governments like "Matrix" which control every childprocess.

No, dear. They are just putting childprocesses into existence. If there is no state, there are no citizens.

Knowing about corruption, and being able to get away with it are 2 separate things I think. If you don't abuse people human rights) and give them a good life; you can get away with a lot of corruption I presume.

Perhaps I am misunderstanding your use of English, because it is difficult to see how this is not a facetious question.

There are relatively few countries in which the government both could and would interfere with someone's publication of code, and I think only in China is there both widespread computer use and internet access, on the one hand, and state security actors (the civil police, actually) who have the sophistication and funding to intervene with specific projects such as this one.

Did you mean to ask what country he was in?

I think there are more than a few countries where this sort of thing could easily happen. Tech talks get canceled at the behest of the powers that be with some regularity, I don't think requests to take down source code would be out of the question.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/07/2...

http://www.csoonline.com/article/2947377/network-security/pr...

You think that, but your links are to two cancelled presentations at conferences, neither of which has any clear connection with the 'powers that be', unless you consider the SEI and Carnegie Mellon University to be the 'powers that be'.

Both those conferences occur in a single country, one which was not even able, under its own laws, to effectively suppress the distribution of cryptographic code when it was legally considered to be militarizable as a weapon.

Do you think you're allowed to talk about the government suppressing you?

And the point isn't that they weren't able to suppress crypto code; it's that they tried.

The US does "interfere" with the publication of some code. I'm thinking of cryptography code. Quoting from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_of_cryptography_from_th... .

> Since World War II, many governments, including the U.S. and its NATO allies, have regulated the export of cryptography for national security considerations, and, as late as 1992, cryptography was on the U.S. Munitions List as an Auxiliary Military Equipment. ...

> As of 2009, non-military cryptography exports from the U.S. are controlled by the Department of Commerce's Bureau of Industry and Security. Some restrictions still exist, even for mass market products, particularly with regard to export to "rogue states" and terrorist organizations. Militarized encryption equipment, TEMPEST-approved electronics, custom cryptographic software, and even cryptographic consulting services still require an export license

> ... Other countries, notably those participating in the Wassenaar Arrangement, have similar restrictions.

But in the US, you can sue the government: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernstein_v._United_States

I think you mean "at least", rather than "but"? You'll notice the WP quote I gave includes restrictions post-Bernstein (and links to that case). Even these restrictions count as 'interfer[ing] with someone's publication of code', no?

> There are relatively few countries in which the government both could and would interfere with someone's publication of code

It's not about interfering with someone's publication of code. It's about neutralizing threats to rulers' rule.

China's rulers shut this guy down because his tool might enable too much free speech among the masses, which, in turn, would pose a threat to the government's rule.

As for the idea that "it couldn't happen here!", see how the US government "interfered" with someone's publication of articles: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUYMPZ4nEOY

I'd add the USA to that list - plenty of evidence that National Security Letters have been used to stifle/gain access to/alter coding projects in the interests of US GOV.

It's probably even more insidious, because simply confirming the existence of an NSL can be a crime punishable by significant custodial sentences. In the USA, posting "The police asked me to delete this code" could land in you federal pound you in the ass prison for 10+ years.

I find this is a very gentle warning compared to what we hear about secret law enforcement in general and China in particular. Isn't the practice to stage a suicide after deleting his repositories?

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