Cloak: Censorship Circumvention Tool
github.com
github.com
I once blacklisted a bunch of Amazon IPs that I found in some random Gist on Github, and surfed the web, and so much stuff was broken. It's staggering just how entangled AWS is with the web. The dream of the 'decentralized web' would be hard to implement. You would need to root out any dependence on AWS, Google, Cloudflare etc
But if this means we can reliably hide traffic in these centralized networks, then maybe it's a good thing they exist. Sort of like steganography with cloud services.
Either everyone has a home/office server for everything and then a company makes routers that “automatically” set up a DMZ and firewall rules and whatever, OR
Everything is just on a conglomeration of smaller hosts, which is still not ideal because that means each user pays higher prices and gets less performance, lower bandwidth, higher latency, etc because of the lack of hardware scalability with mom-and-pop server hosts.
Some level of single player (or few large players) is necessary for the modern internet.
Physically a large chunk of decentralized web could live on one huge server, and still remain acceptably decentralized. OTOH if every home had a separate p2p-networked appliance from Google or Meta, but Google's lawyers and Meta's algorithms running on each node decided what you see on your newsfeed, and what is downplayed or taken down, it would still be centralized, as it is now.
The real weakness of all such systems is setup and rendezvous: how do clients find friendly servers, and how do you prevent the censoring regime from finding and blocking them? It's not an easy problem to solve.
I always ask my tech cohort people this. They get alot of peer clout from pursuing “original”, when often times their vertical just needs “additional”.
Like an additional grocery store in the area. It doesnt need to innovate.
I'm not an expert on the current state of censorship-circumvention utilities but I found this recent comment when browsing the Cloak source repository that may partially answer your question:
https://github.com/cbeuw/Cloak/issues/169#issuecomment-12574...
>, and how do you prevent the censoring regime from finding and blocking them?
The tools like Cloak try to work on the principle "collateral freedom" which hides censored data inside of "internet services that are too big block" : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collateral_freedom
And the effectiveness of that strategy depends on the hackability of those internet services as they can sometimes change the rules which close the loopholes of "collateral freedom" : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_fronting#Disabling
First time I could not connect successfully from a public Wifi to my server was Qatar airport this summer... Maybe they work with whitelists for access control.
Would be easier to do on a custom platform, but I'm not sure how well that'd work if you stand up a video site that suddenly gets a lot of traffic in $heavilyCensoredArea -- feels like something that'll get attention. For individual users it would probably work though.
Maybe we're at a point now where traffic analysis weighs into the decision-making process, but that would actually mean freedom of information was winning and breaking through if they had to winnow down their target list that way.
In other words, there's no rhyme or reason to one service or IP being blocked and another being left open. It's done completely by fiat with the main intention not being to prevent you from access, but rather to frighten you so you censor yourself and think thrice before trying to connect again.
It may be, but I'm happy to have the choice not to visit such places.
But they are slow - fine for text based reporting, egress of intelligence, protest coordination, or the dissemination of smaller videos maybe, but not meeting the expectations of a generation raised on interactive media.
Whether we agree with these policies or not, the fact remains that these impediments to free speech can be seen as a form of censorship. At the end of the day, I think what makes censorship acceptable is very much subjective, and tied to political beliefs. I can't help noticing for instance that on this github page, there are a few flags illustrating "censoring regimes", and the Russian one is there, but not the European Union one, even though the European Council blocked RT and Sputnik throughout the whole EU after the Russian special military operations in Ukraine. This blocking, regardless of what one can think of its legitimacy, is hard not to consider as censorship. If it's not, how is it called then?
https://www.openrightsgroup.org/app/uploads/2020/03/Internet...
Most European nations have very strict Holocaust denial laws. And as much as I personally think people who deny the Holocaust happened are idiots, that's clearly "thoughtcrime" type of censorship. What someone thinks or believes about history is none of the government's (or anyone else's) business.
It is a war. There is no demand for this euphemism.
And no, free speech is absolute thing, otherwise it simply doesn't work.
A society that will trade a little liberty for a little order will lose both, and deserve neither.
But anyway... Why should I give up my freedoms just because of someone's parenting failures? Irresponsible parents are putting their children in danger, not the ABSOLUTE freedom of speech. Which isn't a subject of quid pro quo, really. And even not because my libertarian views on this matter, but because it simply doesn't work otherwise.
The exact example I mention doesn't matter. I am just saying free speech absolutism doesn't make sense unless you are anarchist. Free speech doesn't include hiring a hit man, treason, libel, slander, etc.
If you are actually in support of no regulation on speech then do you actually support removing the laws I mentioned above? You don't think somebody hiring a hitman to kill you or a loved one should be punishable?
When tampering gubment censorship, one should apply the usual opsec rules and thus stick to mature and proven solutions and refrain from experimenting. This means Tor or reputable commercial VPN provider, not yet-another-tor-killer. And the developers in general should invest more efforts into low-level attacks like GoodbyeDPI instead.