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posted by martyb on Monday October 21 2019, @06:19PM   Printer-friendly
from the was-it-self-hosted dept.

rysiek on Mastodon has announced an anticensorship project - https://mastodon.social/@rysiek hosted at https://git.occrp.org/libre/samizdat:

Samizdat[*]

A browser-based solution to Web censorship, implemented as a JavaScript library to be deployed easily on any website. Uses Service Workers and a suite of non-standard in-browser delivery mechanisms, with string[sic] focus on decentralized tools like Gun and IPFS.

Ideally, users should not need to install any special software nor change any settings to continue being able to access a blocked Samizdat-enabled site as soon as they are able to access it once.

Rationale

While a number of censorship circumvention technologies exist, these typically require those who want to access the blocked content (readers) to install specific tools (applications, browser extensions, VPN software, etc.), or change their settings (DNS servers, HTTP proxies, etc.). This approach does not scale.

At the same time, large-scale Internet censorship solutions are deployed in places like Azerbaijan or Tajikistan, effectively blocking whole nations from accessing information deemed non grata by the relevant governments. And with ever growing centralization of the Web, censorship has never been easier.

This project explores the possibility of solving this in a way that would not require the reader to install any special software or change any settings; the only thing that's needed is a modern web browser, and being able to visit a website that deployed this tool once, caching the JavaScript library.

Architecture

A ServiceWorker is used as a way to persist the censorship circumvention library after the initial visit to the participating website.

After the ServiceWorker is downloaded and activated, it handles all fetch() events by first trying to use the regular HTTPS request to the original website. If that fails (for whatever reason, be it timeout, or a 4xx/5xx error), the plugins kick-in, attempting to fetch the content via any means [that] are available.

Click through his test page, https://cdn.test.occrp.org/projects/samizdat/ to find out more.

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Progressive_web_apps

[*] The name of the project, samizdat, is presumably based on its historical use as described on Wikipedia:

Samizdat (Russian: Самизда́т, lit. "self-publishing") was a form of dissident activity across the Eastern Bloc in which individuals reproduced censored and underground publications by hand and passed the documents from reader to reader. This grassroots practice to evade official Soviet censorship was fraught with danger, as harsh punishments were meted out to people caught possessing or copying censored materials. Vladimir Bukovsky summarized it as follows: "Samizdat: I write it myself, edit it myself, censor it myself, publish it myself, distribute it myself, and spend jail time for it myself."[1]


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  • (Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Monday October 21 2019, @08:23PM (3 children)

    by fustakrakich (6150) on Monday October 21 2019, @08:23PM (#909987) Journal

    Is it the JavaScript?

    --
    La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
    • (Score: 2) by aristarchus on Monday October 21 2019, @08:28PM

      by aristarchus (2645) on Monday October 21 2019, @08:28PM (#909989) Journal

      Shhhhh! The JavaScript's vision is motion-activated. If we don't post, it can't see us.

    • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 22 2019, @12:42AM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 22 2019, @12:42AM (#910071)

      Self-installing JavaScript plugin smells like malware.

      • (Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Tuesday October 22 2019, @01:21AM

        by fustakrakich (6150) on Tuesday October 22 2019, @01:21AM (#910091) Journal

        Yeah, and it's easy to sell snake oil to the targeted crowd

        --
        La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
  • (Score: 2) by legont on Tuesday October 22 2019, @12:49AM

    by legont (4179) on Tuesday October 22 2019, @12:49AM (#910073)

    Let me give a more modern translation: "It's when I can publish whatever I want anywhere I want and fuck any law limiting it".

    --
    "Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
  • (Score: 2) by arslan on Tuesday October 22 2019, @06:32AM

    by arslan (3462) on Tuesday October 22 2019, @06:32AM (#910201)

    It is essentially mirroring the sites that sign up into the decentralized web (ipfs). It then uses built-in browser standards, i.e. ServiceWorker - and a valid use of it, to detect if primary site is accessible, if not it "reaches" into the mirrored site via ipfs to pull the content and send to browser to render.

    Targeted Censoring usage aside, I can see this as being yet another bridge to wean users off the centralized web into the decentralized one, and non-techie users won't know the difference.

  • (Score: 1) by gozar on Tuesday October 22 2019, @10:03AM (1 child)

    by gozar (5426) on Tuesday October 22 2019, @10:03AM (#910224)
    Doesn't Beaker Browser [beakerbrowser.com] already do this?
  • (Score: 0, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 22 2019, @05:53PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 22 2019, @05:53PM (#910444)

    Is this another post by S/N's resident Russian Troll? Sure looks like it.

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