BBC Migrates Everything To HTTPS, Immediately Finds Itself Blocked By The Chinese Government

from the weird-freedom-of-not-giving-a-damn-how-much-it-sucks-for-your-constituents dept

Move to HTTPS; lose the Chinese. That's the revised internet maxim. China's Great Firewall has gradually reduced the number of foreign sites accessible by Chinese citizens... "gradually" only in the sense that it's been a continuous rollout steadily decreasing web access. The government blocked an entire content delivery network at one point, so even this gradual rollout has seen its share of spikes.

As is being collaboratively reported at WikiTribune, the BBC says the move to HTTPS for all of it properties has resulted in Chinese citizens being unable to access their contents.

"In accordance with internet industry good practice, the BBC is currently changing the format of internet sites from HTTP to HTTPS. This means content is less vulnerable to tampering and specific pages on our websites can no longer be blocked. Recently the BBC Chinese language site has changed to this new format," a BBC spokesperson told WikiTribune on Wednesday.

The spokesperson added that the corporation’s online audience in China has had no access to any of the BBC’s websites for "around a week."

The BBC recommends a VPN to bypass Chinese web filtering, but that suggestion only goes so far in country where VPN use has been banned for the most part. Businesses still rely on VPNs for securing their communications and content, so the capitalist heart of the authoritarian government has granted exceptions. But the exceptions are limited to VPNs registered with the government, which presumably contain government backdoors.

Government-approved VPNs won't be much use to citizens looking to read news the government has already expressed an interest in blocking. And citizens looking to keep their Citizen Scores™ from dropping will be better off seeking out approved news sources using the heavily-regulated web the government provides.

Filed Under: blocked, china, encryption, https
Companies: bbc

Lenovo Accused Of Locking Linux Out Of Certain Laptops At Microsoft's Request

from the that-would-be-dumb dept

A thread on Reddit is getting a fair bit of attention today, claiming that Lenovo has set up some of its Yoga laptops to block anyone from installing Linux -- and a Lenovo representative then pointed the finger at Microsoft, saying that it's part of what Lenovo was required to do as part of the Microsoft "Signature Edition" Windows 10 program, though there are reasons to doubt this is true. What is clearly true is that there's a problem installing Linux on a bunch of Lenovo machines. Here's a giant thread on the problems (which apparently disappeared for a while, but is back as I write this). And here's another. And here's another. Some of these threads go back many months. But the issue that has suddenly made it big news is a comment supposedly from a Lenovo "product expert" that the company is forced to block it as a part of the Signature Edition program: If you haven't heard of the Windows "Signature Edition," it's a program from Microsoft to offer a "clean" (read: no annoying bloatware) version of Windows. Think of it like a Google Nexus phone with a clean Android install, as compared to one from a carrier or handset maker stuffed with annoying bloatware you'll never use. The Signature Edition PCs have received some fairly glowing reviews -- and many (ironically given this story today) of the news stories about the Signature Edition program use the Lenovo Superfish malware fiasco as a reason for why people should look at a Signature Edition computer if they want to run Windows.

So, yeah, based on this storyline so far, you have Microsoft making a clean install of its operating system without bloatware (good idea!), but then being accused of making Lenovo design its BIOS to block the installation of Linux (bad idea!). There is at least some reasonable skepticism that the problem here is really because of the Microsoft Signature Edition program. First of all, Signature Edition computers are supposed to only be available directly via Microsoft's stores -- and the laptop that kicked this off was purchased at Best Buy. Also it wasn't labeled as a Signature Edition PC. And it's certainly not unheard of for low level employees in forums to post incorrect information -- and there is even some question as to whether or not the "Lenovo Product Expert" in the forum post above is even a Lenovo employee or a third-party contractor anyway.

So whether Microsoft is truly to blame here is still an open question. At the very least, it does seem like Lenovo has some questions to answer -- and one hopes that the company will be more forthright and honest than it was back during the Superfish episode when it basically lied through its teeth until it couldn't lie any more.

Filed Under: bios, blocked, competition, linux, locked, secure boot, signature edition, windows
Companies: lenovo, microsoft

Once Again All Of Whatsapp Is Being Blocked In Brazil Because A Judge Is Upset It Won't Turn Over Data

from the whats-up-brazil? dept

Brazilian judges are apparently not very big fans of the popular messaging app Whatsapp, which is owned by Facebook (but run independently). Judge Marcel Montalvao has ordered the app blocked entirely across Brazil, because Whatsapp has refused to provide data (which it likely does not have) to help out with a drug investigation. Any phone companies that don't block Whatsapp will be fined about $143,000 per day.

If this sounds familiar, it's because we went through this back in December in another case with another judge. And, of course, in March a Facebook (not Whatsapp) exec was arrested over a similar issue in a different case. When Whatsapp again refused to turn over information, because it could not, the judge had the exec arrested (another judge freed the exec pretty quickly).

Once again, Whatsapp points out that it's cooperated as much as possible:

“After cooperating to the full extent of our ability with the local courts, we are disappointed a judge in Sergipe decided yet again to order the block of WhatsApp in Brazil,” WhatsApp said in a statement. “This decision punishes more than 100 million Brazilians who rely on our service to communicate, run their businesses, and more, in order to force us to turn over information we repeatedly said we don’t have.”

The order is shutting down Whatsapp for 72 hours, but considering just how widely the app is used there (it is basically the way many Brazilians communicate) the impact is pretty massive. As Glenn Greenwald and Andrew Fishman over at the Intercept note, this is a ridiculous move that harms many people, but is also a sign of what's to come as governments continue to freak out over encrypted communications:

It is stunning to watch a single judge instantly shut down a primary means of online communication for the world’s fifth-largest country. The two Brazilian communication experts in the NYT wrote of the first WhatsApp shutdown: “the judge’s action was reckless and represents a potentially longer-term threat to the freedoms of Brazilians.” But there is no question that is just a sign of what is to come for countries far from Brazil: there will undoubtedly be similar battles in numerous countries around the world over what rights companies have to offer privacy protections to their users.

Filed Under: blocked, brazil, encryption, going dark, messaging
Companies: facebook, whatsapp

Once Again, Millions Of Rickrolls Go Silent As The Original Rickroll Is 'Blocked' On YouTube

from the disappearing-culture dept

Apparently, like clockwork, the original RickRoll video on YouTube has to disappear from the site every two years. In 2010, we wrote about the video being taken down from YouTube due to a "terms of service violation" that was never explained. In 2012, the video was once again taken down, this time due to a copyright claim from "AVG Technologies." Both times the takedown didn't last too long, but it did happen. Here we are two years later, and guess what? The video is currently blocked in the US and other countries for no clear reason: I'm assuming that someone will notice the attention this is getting and flip a switch to turn it back on, but it once again highlights the unfortunately transient nature of today's cultural milestones. This is a problem when we build a world of digital silos where third parties get to have control over what you can and cannot access. The ability to just wipe away a piece of culture that people always expect to be there is rather troubling.

Filed Under: blocked, copyright, culture, geoblocking, rickroll
Companies: google, youtube

The SHOCKING Photos That Violated Facebook's Policies!

from the avert-yer-eyes! dept

Update: The account is now unblocked, with this message from Facebook:

I'm so sorry for the inconvenience caused, there was a temporary misconfiguration in our photo review systems which caused a very small subset of users to be incorrectly enrolled in one of our checkpoints. There was no issue with your original photo, we have a combination of automated and human-review systems dedicated to keeping people safe, and a bug caused one of these systems to incorrectly enroll a small number of users into checkpoints.

We have since remedied the issue, and remediated all affected accounts. Please let me know if you or others are still experiencing any difficulties.

Yesterday I posted this adorable photo on Facebook:

Being a cute picture of a cute cat, it got a lot of "likes" and comments. A few hours later I followed up with this photo (accompanying text in the caption):

Another photo of Nut and me. Here you can see in more detail how Nut presses her face as hard as she can into mine. She does this all night, by the way. If I move my face away, she rearranges herself to grip the back of my head as tightly as possible. If I'm face-down on the pillow, she slides her paws under into my eye sockets and mashes her head into my ear. It's very cute but I don't think I could stand it every night.

Shortly thereafter, FB wouldn't let me view my feed, instead giving me this message:

"We noticed you may be posting photos that violate our Community Standards. Help make Facebook better by cleaning up your photos and removing friends that post nudity or other things that violate our standards."

Then it took me directly to all my photos and said,

"To keep your account active, please remove any photos that contain nudity or sexually inappropriate content. Check the box next to each photo you need to remove."

I didn't have a single dirty photo to check, so I checked none and then clicked the box that said, "I have checked all my photos that violate Facebook’s policies." For that, I was rewarded with this:

"Because you uploaded photos that violate our policies, you won't be able to upload photos for 3 days.

"If you have other photos on the site that violate our policies, be sure to remove them immediately or you could be blocked for longer. After this block is lifted, please make sure any photos you upload follow Facebook’s Policies."

Followed by another checkbox that says,

"I understand Facebook's policies and I won't upload any photos that violate these policies."

But I haven't checked that box yet, because I really don't understand Facebook's policies. At all. Maybe Franz Kafka could explain them to me. Can you?

UPDATE: several hours later, I still can’t see my FB home page/news feed. This is what I continue to get instead:

Filed Under: blocked, cats, censorship, nina paley, photos

How Did Syria Turn Off The Internet... And What Other Countries Can Just Hit The Off Switch Like That?

from the government-cut-off dept

After the internet was almost entirely cut off in Syria last week, it came back over the weekend, and people are still puzzling through exactly what happened. The government keeps trying to blame others, such as attacks by those fighting against government forces. However, an analysis by Cloudflare has made it clear that it's almost certain that the government was behind the shut down:

To begin, all connectivity to Syria, not just some regions, has been cut. The exclusive provider of Internet access in Syria is the state-run Syrian Telecommunications Establishment. Their network AS number is AS29386. The following network providers typically provide connectivity from Syria to the rest of the Internet: PCCW and Turk Telekom as the primary providers with Telecom Italia and TATA for additional capacity. When the outage happened, the BGP routes to Syrian IP space were all simultaneously withdrawn from all of Syria's upstream providers. The effect of this is that networks were unable to route traffic to Syrian IP space, effectively cutting the country off the Internet.

Syria has 4 physical cables that connect it to the rest of the Internet. Three are undersea cables that land in the city of Tartous, Syria. The fourth is an over-land cable through Turkey. In order for a whole-country outage, all four of these cables would have had to been cut simultaneously. That is unlikely to have happened.

Furthermore, they note that the shutdown was quite systematic, suggesting "this was done through updates in router configurations, not through a physical failure or cable cut."

Meanwhile, the folks at Renesys look into just how difficult it is to cut a country off from the internet, and whether other countries are at risk of the same sort of thing. Basically, it comes down to how decentralized the internet is in various countries -- and in many countries there isn't much decentralization. As Renesys notes, some countries have just one or two telcos who handle all internet traffic to and from the world. Those countries are easy to cut off. Renesys helpfully provides a map: They then go into more details. Here are the two bullet points on the more at risk countries. If you want to learn about the somewhat more safe countries, click on over and read their full post (which has a much bigger discussion on all of this, which I highly recommend):

• If you have only 1 or 2 companies at your international frontier, we classify your country as being at severe risk of Internet disconnection. Those 61 countries include places like Syria, Tunisia, Algeria, Turkmenistan, Libya, Ethiopia, Uzbekistan, Myanmar, and Yemen.
  

• If you have fewer than 10 service providers at your international frontier, your country is probably exposed to some significant risk of Internet disconnection. Ten providers also seems to be the threshold below which one finds significant additional risks from infrastructure sharing — there may be a single cable, or a single physical-layer provider who actually owns most of the infrastructure on which the various providers offer their services. In this category, we place 72 countries, including Oman, Benin, Botswana, Rwanda, Pakistan, Kyrgyzstan, Uganda, Armenia, and Iran. Disconnection wouldn't be trivial, but it wouldn't be all that difficult. Egypt falls into this category as well; it took the Mubarak government several days to hunt down and kill the last connections, but in the end, the blackout succeeded.

As the internet is increasingly a global phenomenon, this kind of stuff matters a lot.

Filed Under: blocked, internet, syria

Japanese ISPs Decide That Criminal Confessions Should Be Blocked Online

from the common-sense-is-dead dept

With various governments pushing for laws that require ISPs to block "objectionable" content, it's not hard to come up with scenarios where that will backfire. Of course, who needs to come up with fictional scenarios when reality will serve up examples on its own. Over in Japan, some mentally disturbed individual used the web to detail how he planned to stab a bunch of people. After he carried out the stabbings, rather than focusing on how such sites can be useful in stopping homicidal maniacs before they kill, the Japanese are focusing on figuring out how they can block such content as "objectionable" so that people can't see it. Is common sense dead? How could it possibly make sense to try to hide the fact that someone is confessing to the crimes they plan to commit before they commit them?

Filed Under: blocked, japan, objectionable content, stabbing

Google.com Inaccessible From The UK?

from the first-i've-heard-of-it dept

I'm a bit surprised by this, but apparently google.com has been inaccessible from the UK for a week. I'm sure our many UK readers will chime in shortly to confirm or deny this, but apparently there's been a technical problem. Google.co.uk has been accessible this whole time, but the original .com address doesn't resolve. Two things seem odd about this: the fact that it's lasted a week and that this hasn't garnered very much news.

Filed Under: blocked, uk
Companies: google