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Tools Behind Belarus Internet Censorship Potentially Revealed

posted by janrinok on Sunday August 30 2020, @01:49AM   

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for nutherguy:

Tools behind Belarus internet censorship potentially revealed:

According to a Bloomberg report, the technology used to block much of the internet access during the recent presidential elections in Belarus has come from a US-based company.

The report states that Sandvine Inc., had supplied the necessary equipment to the Lukashenko government a few months earlier through an intermediary.

On August 9, Belarus held the presidential elections where Alexander Lukashenko was elected for the sixth consecutive time. However, the Election Day was marked by irregularities that cast doubt on the transparency of the elections.

In addition to the barricades built by security forces that prevented the passage of civilians to Minsk, Belarus' capital, the internet services in the country had a major disruption that affected access to websites such as social networks, news pages, and messaging applications.

The disruption lasted for up to three days, and there are still websites that are inaccessible in a normal way, so citizens need to use tools such as VPNs or specialized browsers.

[...] This would not be the first time the technology has been accused of being used to repress a nation. Citizen Lab, a Toronto security firm, had indicated that in 2018 equipment from this manufacturer was used in internet blocks that occurred in Egypt and Turkey. Sandvine Inc. said this investigation was false.

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Original Submission

• Re:Opposition to What? (Score: 2, Informative) by khallow on Sunday August 30 2020, @11:35AM

  by khallow (3766) on Sunday August 30 2020, @11:35AM (#1044152) Journal

  It's not so much where the Nazi flags were made, more the fact that someone had already ordered up sufficient quantities of said flags for them to magically appear in numbers and then having available a sufficient percentage of the population knowing full well the history of said flags but who don't care about the obvious connotations or consequences of them waving the things in public at this point in time.

  They aren't Nazi flags BTW - they've been in use since 1918. But sounds like you don't care about the obvious connotations.

  It benefits both sides here in the game of shit stirring for these flags to be there, but, I'd say that the pro-Russian factions probably have a bit more to gain by their presence apropos propaganda. They can point them out to the neutral section of the international community and say 'see, this trouble, it's bloody Nazis that we're fighting against here again', and they'll also cause unease and division within their opposition Belarus faction who, although they might be anti-Russian, they're also anti-Nazi.

  Only one side is shit-stirring in this thread.

  Parent

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