Telegram Suffers DDOS, Criticism For Enabling Human Rights Lawyers In China
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They did say that they may open up the server side. Maybe this is the only way to keep the network from running and preventing governments from blocking it. [1]
BitTorrent works well and has not split into hundreds of clone protocols.
The way skype used to work may also be a possibility where there are super nodes outside of the main cloud.
Those were the good ole days... I hate the new skype.
Also, it's 2015, can Skype stop leaking subscriber IP information? Someone can resolve your IP from your username without even messaging or adding you as a friend. Seems like a design flaw to me
Are you telling me that those same lawyers don't have iPhones and don't use iMessage even more than they do Telegram? Because I don't believe that.
So either the Chinese government has just recognized there's nothing they can do about banning Apple's iMessage - or Apple already provides them with a way to look at iMessages.
I'm inclining to believe it's more the latter.
SUDDENLY, you know nothing about China and other developing & 3rd world countries.
Do you have a source for that? It would seem to be huge news.
Also, just like Whatsapp's "end-to-end" crypto, just because they use it now doesn't mean they can't disable it at any time without you being aware of it. That's the danger of proprietary closed-source software.
For the iMessage, it is just for iPhone, Telegram is all-platform. And in China, iPhone is still an expensive smartphone. Android phone is used more widely.
Edit: typo
I don't personally care, either way, but "No, really! It's true!" does not generally a good point make.
For references, here's an example of a website that was simultaneously blocked on a bunch of providers because it matched domain name patterns of a Russia propaganda site: https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/duplicates/38pmg8/hey_re...
Here's a FOIA document from the Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications in general about their (mostly overt capabilities to engage the Middle East). They mention DoD covert hacking/DoS capabilities: https://www.muckrock.com/foi/united-states-of-america-10/cen...
There's plenty of this stuff to go around. My favorite (using MRIs to help develop propaganda for Twitter in the Middle East): http://minerva.dtic.mil/doc/samplewp-Lieberman.pdf
Not sure what this demonstrates. If you look at the comments it seems pretty clear that this was just an ordinary case of mistaken blacklisting, possibly because the administrator had never heard of an SPF record. And, worst case, it was blacklisted because it was mistaken for a Russian spam site. There is no credible allegation of governmental involvement at all, and no reason to think that there was. Moreover, it looks like the problem was long since corrected, through the usual means for becoming un-blacklisted.
The US use the term 'spam' and 'trolling' as code to mean foreign propaganda. I can get you more information about that as well.
Telegram is like ZunZuneo and other initiatives by Western governments to force their adversary to choose to either censor something and take a PR hit or have their countrymen radicalised.
I ought to have made that link clear. I apologize.
I don't doubt that it has the capability, and that the U.S. would use it if there were a compelling reason to do so (your assertion about ISIS forums, for example, strikes me as an attempt to suppress organization and recruitment by an active enemy of the United States in wartime [insert largely irrelevant debate about whether this is really a war, here]), but I seriously doubt there is any credible evidence that the U.S. government uses these tools in a way comparable to the Chinese government.
We have a lot of problems here in the U.S., but I think you'd be hard pressed to make a credible case that pervasive Internet censorship, equivalent, or even remotely similar to what is done by the Chinese government, is one of them.
Much of the information warfare has to do with controlling the movement - stopping it from spreading where we don't want it to and letting or encouraging it to spread in Syria.
The State Department's "War of Ideas" and Congress's "Jihad 2.0" are higher level concepts that round down to the use of these capabilities to direct movements. Of course nothing can get done without some sort of conventional capability as well.
I'm sorry that you aren't aware of it. The allegations, I hope, and there's plenty of both evidence and anecdotes and law that supports it, will pique your interest.
I don't think its right to compare to China. I do think it's important to note that both need to fight against one another's propaganda.
Again, if you drop the case that it's like the Chinese, and just ask whether it is done (especially overseas - it is done in huge amounts overseas) then yeah there is pervasive Internet censorship and propaganda.
I encourage you to look up "strategic communication": http://www.acq.osd.mil/dsb/reports/ADA476331.pdf
Here's part of Jihad 2.0: http://minerva.dtic.mil/doc/samplewp-Lieberman.pdf
The US works with media executives to develop foreign aimed propaganda: https://wikileaks.org/sony/emails/emailid/133736
(And if you hadn't caught it that's what the SONY hacks were all about).
I've also read quite a bit of scholarship on the Chinese program and it doesn't look so very different from the US side (from a technical perspective): http://gking.harvard.edu/files/censored.pdf
There are certain things that get thwarted. Facebook's 'anti-spam' feature blocked the organization of this past year's MayDay protests. Whoops.
What I strongly object to, however, is the equivalence you are suggesting between U.S. "strategic communications" and China's pervasive Internet censorship, both as a matter of raw degree, and also taking into account the different circumstances in which the two countries exercise these capabilities. When asking whether there is some sort of moral equivalence to be drawn between the Chinese and U.S. programs, the question to ask is when do the countries exercise their capabilities, not whether they have these technical capabilities, or whether they are sometimes used.
And I still don't see that you've provided any credible evidence that the two are comparable in these terms. (Though maybe we agree here too -- you say "I don't think its right to compare to China" but if this is true, I really don't know why your comments are relevant commentary on this article.) I certainly don't disagree that the U.S. and Chinese programs are likely similar "from a technical perspective," but I don't think the technical perspective is the perspective that should interest people here.
So to address why this is relevant has to do with China DDoSing content that is not a domestic product/service of China. Telegraph is not from China. China blocking Telegraph is like the US blocking stopfasttrack.ru and videos from warfighters in the Middle East. China blocking Telegraph is like the UK plans to take what they currently do and what they plan to do by law and block certain foreign tools for secure communication. The US, too, blocks (and sabotages) secure communication software - it has been defunding secure communication software with partnerships in the valley, has Comey talking to Congress about the need for software front doors, and the Snowden leaks showed us how comprehensively backdoored everything is including relationships between vendors and services with customers.
The US does this with foreign developed services and it thwarts secure communication capabilities both provided by foreign governments and its own private sector intended for domestic use.
That's the equivalence and the relevance.
But this is precisely the claim for which you have provided no substantial support (though you have provided ample support for the uncontroversial assertion that the U.S. engages in strategic communications operations), other than 1) a single website that was temporarily blacklisted by private spam filtering organizations and ISPs, likely for some combination of factors including the absence of an SPF record, and which was promptly un-blacklisted upon request and 2) forums being used to support an enemy during wartime. What am I missing?
> China blocking Telegraph is like the US blocking . . .videos from warfighters in the Middle East.
No. It is not. It similar only in from a technical perspective. From the perspective of the government's motivations for blocking them, and the moral acceptability of those motivations, the two are entirely different. The U.S. blocked forums being used to publicize and support enemy activities in a war zone (by a terrorist group, by any definition, to boot), while China blocked communications tools being used by human rights lawyers to expose inequities in China's legal system. Whatever you may think about the legitimacy of the U.S.'s "war" against ISIS, it's not too hard to draw a line between these two situations.
The problem is not that, e.g., China censors communications. I think most would agree that this is sometimes necessary (though perhaps only very rarely). The issue, which you're glossing over, is when and why.
If you ask anyone from outside America whether its citizens exist in a media bubble they will tell you that it's true. It's like talking to a Russian and telling them that they have state sponsored propaganda. They are going to be skeptical - and it will seem like for good reasons.
> No. It is not. It similar only in from a technical perspective. From the perspective of the government's motivations for blocking them, and the moral acceptability of those motivations, the two are entirely different.
The motivations are pretty similar in this case, and the acceptability is the same.
I cited examples far beyond the ISIS/ISIL case. We're talking about those now. The 'tools by human rights lawyers' are state sponsored tools from Civil Society Organizations funded by the West. Like ZunZuneo and when the US criticized Cuba for blocking Cuban cell phone access.
What's amazing is that Americans can look at Russia and North Korea and "see how the people are being misled by propaganda" but refuse to believe that propaganda is used in the U.S.A
Maybe they've decided it's time for a more offensive approach?
The fact is China is the largest bureaucratic country, the DDoS may or may not coming from any administrative authority layer, or just business strategy to spur your competition to anti-China side, so government will act accordingly and take care the competition for you.
Or, if they prefer to host themselves, they can spend the money to buy the bandwidth and Arbor (or other?) equipment.
The fact is that -- like github -- they are being DDoSed and have to do something about it if they want to stay in business. I'd be interested in hearing what github did to mitigate their attacks. I can't find any info on it (but I'm guessing that perhaps they want to keep it secret).
Maybe they should respond to the reviews directly in the app stores or put something in the app which explains what is going on. Not sure if they have the ability to broadcast message affected users but it could be as simple as implementing a better connection error message. Most of their users aren't going to read their blog or the tech press.