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New Zealand Mobile Carriers Block 8chan, 4chan, and LiveLeak
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New Zealand Mobile Carriers Block 8chan, 4chan, and LiveLeak
Following the Friday mass shooting in Christchurch, New Zealand, multiple internet service providers (ISP) in the country have blocked access to websites that distribute gruesome content from the incident.
[...] At least three internet companies operating in New Zealand have made this decision voluntarily and enforce it on a temporary basis against sites that still publish the sensitive materials. Spark NZ, Vodafone NZ, and Vocus NZ agreed to work together to identify and block access at DNS level to such online locations. 8chan and 4chan are currently unavailable to New Zealanders trying to load them through a connection from the three telcos. At the moment, visitors trying to get to these forums through Spark NZ, Vodafone NZ and Vocus NZ see the message "The URL has been blocked for security reasons."
Some users reported that LiveLeak video-sharing platform was also blocked in the region, along with other websites, including file-sharing service Mega. The block is not permanent, though. As soon as the horrific content from the Christchurch incident originating from the terrorists is removed, access to the website is reestablished.
The Dark Night of Censorship falls on New Zealand
Everybody keeps waiting for the dystopia to arrive, well wait no more for it has made an appearance in New Zealand. Zero Hedge reports that New Zealand is dropping the hammer on all discussion about the recent shooting. The list is growing and will almost certainly be larger by the time this story goes live.
Current banned sites seem to be: Dissenter.com (the new service from Gab yet gab.com is still reported as available.... for now), "all" of the "chans" are banned, and Zerohedge itself is now banned.
Subscribers who ask their ISP are reporting being told sites will stay banned until they become "censorship compliant." Sites not banned: Facebook.com, which live streamed the attack, and Twitter.com, which hosted the original link to the shooter's "manifesto." Guess they are "censorship compliant."
Suppression of Christchurch shooting video
After Christchurch, Reddit bans communities infamous for sharing graphic videos of death
In the aftermath of the tragic mosque massacre that claimed 49 lives in Christchurch, New Zealand, tech companies scrambled to purge their platforms of promotional materials that the shooter left behind. As most of the internet is now unfortunately aware, the event was broadcast live on Facebook, making it one of the most horrific incidents of violence to spread through online communities in realtime.
As Twitter users cautioned others from sharing the extraordinarily graphic video, some Reddit users actively sought the video and knew exactly where to look. The infamous subreddit r/watchpeopledie was quarantined (making it unsearchable) in September 2018 but until today remained active for anyone to visit directly. The subreddit has a long history of sharing extremely graphic videos following tragic events and acts of violence, like the 2018 murder of two female tourists in Morocco.
[...] The subreddit remained active until some time late Friday morning Pacific Time, when Reddit banned the controversial community.
How 'hashing' could stop violent videos from spreading
Some experts say tech companies should more broadly adopt a technology they're already using to combat child pornography and copyright violations to more quickly stop the spread of these types of videos.
[...] Facebook (FB) says it took down the livestream "quickly," but hours later, re-uploads of it were still circulating on the site. Twitter suspended the original account in question and is working to remove other versions on the platform. YouTube said it is utilizing "technology and human resources" to remove content that violates their policies.
Technologists say digital hashing, which has existed for more than a decade, could be better used to prevent the re-upload of videos. Hashing wouldn't have been able to catch the original live video of the attacks, but it could stop re-uploaded copies from spreading.
Social media platforms were used like lethal weapons in New Zealand. That must change now.
Editorial judgment, often flawed, is not only possible. It's necessary.
The scale and speed of the digital world obviously complicates that immensely. But saying, in essence, "we can't help it" and "that's not our job" are not acceptable answers.
Friday's massacre should force the major platforms — which are really media companies, though they don't want to admit it — to get serious.
After New Zealand Attacks, Muslim-Americans Call For Action Against Rising Bigotry
"The New Zealand shooter was able to livestream a 17-minute video of his murderous rampage that continues to spread like wildfire online. This is flatly unacceptable. Tech companies must take all steps possible to prevent something like this from happening again," Khera said.
Previously: 49 Dead in Christchurch, New Zealand Terror Attack
Original Submission #1 Original Submission #2 Original Submission #3 Original Submission #4
(Score: 5, Interesting) by takyon on Monday March 18 2019, @12:12AM (6 children)
If you apply the China difficulty level to the entire Internet, then free speech will lose big fast. You might have to resort to things like steganography and sneakernets.
One thing to consider is that the Great Firewall of China is more about censoring Chinese people who are talking to each other than preventing Chinese people from reaching BBC, YouTube, Facebook, etc. Only a small percentage of the population understands English. Granted, there might be a high concentration of anti-CCP individuals in that group. But the real action is on sites like Sina Weibo [wikipedia.org], which have hundreds of millions of users. People use code phrases to talk to each other, but like Winnie the Pooh [theguardian.com], they will eventually get censored.
You could have meshnets to facilitate local communication, with some nodes capable of linking to the outside world. But those networks have their own problems. A malicious node could result in a visit from the police.
Maybe we need neutrino routers. Your "address" would be your precise global coordinates, down to the nearest centimeter. If the other router isn't positioned in the exact location and does not respond to a ping attempt, then the router can send neutrinos in a circle/grid around the pinpointed location to cover a few square meters, until it finds the other router and a link is established. Interception could be possible depending on the angle, but unlikely, and you could use an onion routing scheme to prevent communicating in the same direction too often.
Ok, with the neutrino fantasy out of the way, I think we can conclude that the fight for free speech is going to be unrewarding going forward. Bit by bit, it is being chipped away at, suppressed, and censorship excused. Technology could hurt free speech (surveillance, machine learning) more than it helps.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Monday March 18 2019, @09:59AM (2 children)
Someone published a paper about using neutrinos to communicate with submarines (presumably the sort that sit on the bottom of the ocean somewhere and wait for nuclear war).
https://arxiv.org/abs/0909.4554 [arxiv.org]
You need a large instrumented body of water to act as a detector and a powerful neutrino source. It is hard to collimate neutrinos so the source needs to be very directional, probably using decay of high energy muons - or you leak data.
(Score: 4, Informative) by takyon on Monday March 18 2019, @11:46AM (1 child)
Neutrino communication was achieved in 2012:
https://physicsworld.com/a/neutrino-based-communication-is-a-first/ [physicsworld.com]
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/message-encoded-in-neutrino-beam-transmitted-through-solid-rock/ [scientificamerican.com]
Not very practical at this point, but I would be surprised if it couldn't be scaled down in physical size eventually.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Monday March 18 2019, @12:48PM
I didn't know this, thanks for the post.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 18 2019, @05:31PM (1 child)
good point. so this would mean that if western governments were smart they would fund translation of certain websites to mandarin.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday March 18 2019, @07:29PM
That probably also doesn't matter.
https://www.voachinese.com/ [voachinese.com]
https://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/Opinion/2012/0427/Why-Voice-of-America-is-losing-to-voice-of-communist-China-at-home-and-abroad [csmonitor.com]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alhurra [wikipedia.org]
Foreign services get blocked or crowded out by domestic ones. Even if Google were to bend the knee and create a censored search engine, would they ever surpass Baidu?
You might target a small amount of Chinese VPN/Tor users, who could be getting caught and shut down individually over time. And even if the government were to fall and freedom of speech and politics came to China, whomever is in control of local media outlets may still have the upper hand.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 24 2019, @10:14PM
Even China can be circumvented if you run narrowband point to point network connections all over, and have hubs inside the firewall set up that can provide access out.
Where the problem comes in is having the money to do this, and enough different techniques to ensure they can't trace everyone from one or two people being made examples out of.
In order for this to be successful, you would need a combination of varying wifi frequencies, fiberoptic cabling (whether underground or through buildings/overhead wiring), invisible lasers with guilds, etc. China in particular has the manufacturing capability for all of these. A few third shifts in the right factories could provide this equipment. The problem is we are rapidly approaching the point where citizens of *ALL* nations need this, just to have a chance at unfettered discourse and education beyond the local propaganda, be it national, special interest, or corporate.