DDoS attack protection for at-risk public interest websites | Hacker News Reader

DDoS attack protection for at-risk public interest websites

cloudflare.com

13 pointseroo8 comments

I wonder how they will determine who they want to provide coverage to? Especially as there is no oversight or transparency as they are saying they will not publish the names of who they cover (which makes sense from a technical perspective)

From their participation criteria it looks like anti-abortion groups, certain 'white supremacist' movements and even the Westboro Baptist Church would all qualify for Project Galileo. Will CloudFlare offer protection to them?

The project also seems to have an international focus, so I wonder whether entities that are anti-democracy in the Middle East that the West has been fighting against politically (even militarily) would also qualify? (I removed the names of some of those entities because I don't want to get into a discussion as to who is pro/anti democracy in the ME, etc)

Personally, I think it's awesome that CloudFlare are offering this but it will be curious to see if there's any editorialization.

I'd love to see CloudFlare elaborate on the criteria from the FAQ "It acts in the public interest, broadly defined." as that creates massive ambiguity.

This concern is why we specifically worked with third party organizations to make the call on what "content" qualifies as politically or artistically important. As for the Westboro Baptist Church, that's actually a specific case we discussed internally. My answer in an article covering the launch:

http://recode.net/2014/06/12/internet-security-firm-offers-f...

This is a great write up, thanks for sharing Matthew.

I find the WBC just as abhorrent as you do but I'm glad you're taking a neutral stance. Great work.

For those wondering, Matthew (eastdakota, founder of CF) said:

"If the Westboro Baptist Church, known for its demonstrations against the gay community, were on the list “we would protect them, even though I find their opinions disgusting,"

Their "More FAQs" link is broken :(.

Google has a similar project: https://projectshield.withgoogle.com/en/

Where do you see the broken link? The one in the lower right of the page points here:

https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/en-us/sections/200505480

Ah, not anymore it appears. It was 404ing a few minutes ago.

Repost of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7884376

Putting their sensitive traffic in the hands of Cloudflare without giving users any choice.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com