Submitted via IRC for SoyCow4408
The encrypted chat app is partnering with a circumvention service.
As encrypted chat apps grow more popular, they’re also becoming more popular targets for state-level blocks. Whether it’s brief interruptions in Brazil and Egypt or long-term censorship in China and Iran, countries are testing out their ability to block traffic at a national level, and apps are having to get creative to stay online.
Wickr’s latest solution is a partnership with the circumvention service Psiphon, which will be available to enterprise users starting today and rolling out to free users in the weeks to come. Similar to a VPN, Psiphon will disguise Wickr traffic through proxies and other routing protocols designed to make the traffic hard to spot and even harder to block.
Emerging from the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab, Psiphon already provides anti-blocking services for a number of digital rights tools, most notably in Iran. “The systems doing network disruptions are very sophisticated,” says Psiphon’s Michael Hull. “So you have to have a smarter kind of VPN to perform under the various kinds of filters and attacks.”
That’s a particularly valuable service now that it’s harder to hide your traffic among larger networks. In recent months, both Amazon and Google have disallowed a practice called domain-fronting, which allowed apps like Wickr to forward their traffic through the larger network as a way of evading censorship. Botnets also sometimes used the technique to avoid detection, which ultimately inspired the broader networks to shut down the practice.
Source: https://www.theverge.com/2018/8/23/17770384/wickr-psiphon-partnership-internet-censorship
(Score: 4, Insightful) by aristarchus on Saturday August 25 2018, @12:29PM (5 children)
But how will they suppress the aristarchus submissions? Perhaps this is not the tech for SoylentNews?
(Score: 4, Funny) by janrinok on Saturday August 25 2018, @02:18PM (4 children)
Has your journal stopped working? You can publish anything that you want there. We have provided it for you so that you don't feel suppressed.
If you read all the other stories you will already know that I have actually said something supportive about your latest submission which is waiting in the sub queue - along with 47 other submissions. Will your submission stand out against all of them? Can't you sense the excitement of the cut and thrust of submitting stories? Perhaps an editor will single yours out as being the next one to be processed.
If someone paints a picture, he cannot walk into the nearest art gallery and insist that they exhibit it. If a person writes a story they cannot demand that a publisher prints it. Why do you think that you have a 'right' for your submissions to be published here? If they are good enough, they will be edited (Oh noes...) and released on the front page. But if it is not selected it isn't because you are being oppressed by any political group, nor are your stories being suppressed because, as I have explained above, you have the means to publish them yourself. We cannot free Aristarchus because we haven't got him (although some will say that is surely a bonus!). Have a good weekend Ari, and enjoy the excitement of the moment...
(Score: 4, Funny) by Runaway1956 on Saturday August 25 2018, @06:18PM (1 child)
That is a possibility. I was wandering around in the server room one night, soon after Ari had run at the mouth. I saw his journal laying open on top of the server with the scratches on the side, and ARISTARCHUS printed in big block letters. So - I - uhhhh - accidentally spilled a bottle of ink in his dead tree journal, and spilled another into the server journal. All accidentally, of course. I wouldn't sabotage anyone intentionally, you see . . .
What I can't understand is, why does he get his own journal server? Just because he's such an OLD bastard?
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 3, Funny) by janrinok on Saturday August 25 2018, @06:29PM
Steady now - even with history on his side I'm not sure that he's older than I am.
But for coming forward and being honest about your 'accident' with the ink, I will forgive you this once....
(Score: 3, Touché) by jelizondo on Saturday August 25 2018, @07:39PM (1 child)
All oppressors lie about people they had detained. “Never heard of him” “We don’t have him, so we can’t free him”
Liars, liars, liars.
FREE ARISTARCHUS!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 25 2018, @09:04PM
Free AIDS! Apply within.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 25 2018, @01:38PM (1 child)
Just a question of how far does the government(s) want to go.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 25 2018, @06:51PM
All the way, baby! Yeah!
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 25 2018, @02:57PM (2 children)
I want to be oppressed!
Fuck you Soylentnews. I always comment on your worthless site through a glype because you fucking suck at censoring my shitposting.
Step up your fucking game please. Your excessive bad posting block is not stopping me at all.
(Score: 4, Funny) by janrinok on Saturday August 25 2018, @04:00PM (1 child)
All our editors are busy at the moment, and you have been placed in the oppressed queue behind the others. We'll get to you as soon as we can. Your request to be oppressed is important to us and we will handle your request just as soon as an editor is available. If you need to speak to a person urgently, may I suggest that you subscribe to the green site and pretend that you have lots of money.
In the meantime, if you have an account, you may now use the '##free{nick}' signature each time you post.
I'll confess that I had to look that one up....
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 26 2018, @04:27AM
Who is {nick} and why is he locked up? Is he locked in with Ari?
#Free{nick}_NOW!!!