Internet Censorship

[Johny2x4]

Apparently is inevitable, according to certain CTers, but is it really doable? Or are there any limitations?

[ComfySlippers]

Of course it's doable. Ever heard of China?

But if by "inevitable" you are spouting Alex Jones drivel..... then.... no

[elbe]

It's possible, but it tends to depend on how the censorship is enacted. The conspiracy "censorship" where specific information is "removed" from an otherwise open web would be very, very difficult, but a complete crackdown and control over all traffic would allow you to do many, many things.

[Greedo]

How funny, I was just about to start pretty much the same thread, on how CTists always seem to believe teh interwebz will be shut off.

Back in my nut days, I used to believe that that would be the first step teh NWO would make. Shutting down the internet, so the only information would be teh mainstream media!

Has anyone ever heard of the whole Obama internet "kill switch" thing?
A couple of CTists I used to follow constantly ranted about that.

Turning off the internet would be desastrous to the twoof movement. It would cease to exist!

[Horatius]

Originally Posted by Greedo

Has anyone ever heard of the whole Obama internet "kill switch" thing?
A couple of CTists I used to follow constantly ranted about that.

Turning off the internet would be desastrous to the twoof movement. It would cease to exist!

Yeah, there was a documentary made a few years ago about this, that exposed the truth.

[Greedo]

Originally Posted by Horatius

Yeah, there was a documentary made a few years ago about this, that exposed the truth.

http://s3.amazonaws.com/stripgenerat...00/00/full.png

http://s3.amazonaws.com/stripgenerat...00/00/full.png

http://s3.amazonaws.com/stripgenerat...00/00/full.png

[Spindrift]

Inevitable? It has always existed.

[The Greater Fool]

Internet Outage Forces Public Into Street To Voice Their ... - The Onion

[IdiotWhacker]

Originally Posted by Greedo

How funny, I was just about to start pretty much the same thread, on how CTists always seem to believe teh interwebz will be shut off.

Back in my nut days, I used to believe that that would be the first step teh NWO would make. Shutting down the internet, so the only information would be teh mainstream media!

Has anyone ever heard of the whole Obama internet "kill switch" thing?
A couple of CTists I used to follow constantly ranted about that.

Turning off the internet would be desastrous to the twoof movement. It would cease to exist!

If they did this it would look like Egypt revolt, but larger.

[Gazpacho]

Originally Posted by Johny2x4

Apparently is inevitable, according to certain CTers, but is it really doable? Or are there any limitations?

As long as you can install any software on your node and exchange arbitrary bytes with other nodes, it's technically possible to get around anything. It can also be **** slow, as Tor and Freenet demonstrate.

The realistic risk is not cutting off access completely, but making it just hard enough to find dissenting material or unpleasant enough to read it (due to low production values, for example) that those who bother are considered weird.

[corbin]

Why assume absolute censorship would be the goal in a totalitarian society? It would be a bit too obvious if every dissenting website suddenly disappeared.

The real issue of the internet isn't in its ability to be censored (although I think that does occur), its the privacy concern. With the computing power we have today it is feasible to create an essential psychological profile on the interests and beliefs of every internet user. Its as close to reading somebody's mind as we'll ever come. The way the economic structure is makes it easy for this kind of information to be centralized, which isn't a good thing if you want a free society.

[FatFreddy88]

I started this thread...
http://www.nynjsurf.com/forum/mariov...-t32269.0.html

...and the moderator deleted my last post and banned me just for being a truther.

I'd started a thread similar to this one...
http://www.spurstalk.com/forums/showthread.php?t=144746

...on the same forum. The moderator deleted it as soon as he'd seen it.

Some evidence of US government lies is so clear that the disinfo agents know their attempts to obfuscate it will be of no avail and the moderators know that so the only thing they can do is try to keep people from seeing the evidence.

I posted some info I'd found on Barbara Olsen in post #62 of this thread.
http://www.volconvo.com/forums/polit...ide-job-4.html

Look at post #65. The moderators are so afraid of this info that they don't even want it discussed. They try to avoid the appearance of censorship in their wording but I don't think many of the viewers are taken in.

When I post summaries of evidence that Apollo was a hoax or that 9/11 was an inside job, about ninety five percent of the time the moderators delete the threads and ban me as soon as they see them. I don't know if those sites are bending to pressure from the government, or are managed by public relation agencies hired by the government but censorship is really heavy right now.

[LSSBB]

Originally Posted by FatFreddy88

When I post summaries of evidence that Apollo was a hoax or that 9/11 was an inside job, about ninety five percent of the time the moderators delete the threads and ban me as soon as they see them. I don't know if those sites are bending to pressure from the government, or are managed by public relation agencies hired by the government but censorship is really heavy right now.

FF, unless you have definitive evidence that these people are under government control, I believe you need to also consider that those moderators thought your views were extreme or inappropriate for the forum you posted them in, based purely on their own judgement.

[Horatius]

Originally Posted by FatFreddy88

I posted some info I'd found on Barbara Olsen in post #62 of this thread.
http://www.volconvo.com/forums/polit...ide-job-4.html

Look at post #65. The moderators are so afraid of this info that they don't even want it discussed. They try to avoid the appearance of censorship in their wording but I don't think many of the viewers are taken in.

Uhm, yeah, not so much....

Quote:

Quote:

Quote by: FatFreddy View Post
Check out this thread about Barbara Olson that I found...

Ahhh...I don't think so. Introducing debates from another forum as a rebuttal to a topic on this forum is many things, none of them good. What you're not doing is actually debating. Present your own arguments in your own words. Do not send our members down a rabbit hole of links.

So asking you to refrain from just posting links, and explicitly asking you to "Present your own arguments in your own words" means "they don't even want it discussed"? In a thread where they let lots of other people continue posting 9/11 truth "evidence"?


Yeah, that's some terrifying "censorship", there.

[Nosi]

Originally Posted by ComfySlippers

Of course it's doable. Ever heard of China?

But if by "inevitable" you are spouting Alex Jones drivel..... then.... no

Yes, China censors the web. They do have hackers that work around the censors very effectively squirting information that the government would rather have kept wrapped up tight.

Even North Korea, the land that is Internet free, has information leaks.

America has information disentary.

[Eligbak]

Latest in the "Internet kill switch" debate/conspiracy, but raises an interesting point: Why does a company such as Google - which is a domain registrar itself - outsource that privilege to an Anti Fraud/Anti Piracy/Brand name protection outfit?

Source: http://www.pastie.org/3867284

The Internet Kill Switch; With Global Wiretapping Capability?

One company to rule them all
One company to find them;
One company to bring them all
And in the darkness bind them


Recently run any whois queries on Google? No? How about Facebook? MSN, or Hotmail? Yahoo? You might be surprised, comparing the results.

Nice, innit? See the "Last Updated" part also.

The brand-protecting, anti-piracy company MarkMonitor Inc. has had all these DNS names under its control for several months now.

They also control the Wikimedia name services, even though that doesn't show up on the Wikimedia.org whois record. There are many others. Apple.com falls under their jurisdiction, as does ubuntu.com. Nokia.com? Yep, under MarkMonitor. See a pattern here? ... ...

Go check out the whois records for Google, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, Mozilla etc., if you like: http://who.is/whois/google.com/

MarkMonitor is ranked 33th among ICANN registrars according to volume. Google holds place 900. (January 2011 data or 3 months old, I'm not sure, http://www.dotandco.net/ressources/i...ls/position.en)

Even if this is blown up way out of proportion, it is interesting that so many of the biggest names in computing and communication should have their domains in the "hands" of this specific registrar, taking into account its other "Anti Fraud/Anti Piracy/Brand name protection" business line. Especially for Google, this would seem out of character to me.

Nobody has yet fiddled with DNS for taking down a country's internet (to my knowledge). That's usually done better and far quicker by shutting down major BGP routes (Egypt) and/or severing connections (Libya).

But assume for the sake of argument that these companies were somehow persuaded to choose this registrar, what does this mean, in practical terms?

Domain name registrars (Wikipedia)
Domain registration information is maintained by the domain name registries, which contract with domain registrars to provide registration services to the public. An end user selects a registrar to provide the registration service, and that registrar becomes the designated registrar for the domain chosen by the user.

Only the designated registrar may modify or delete information about domain names in a central registry database. It is not unusual for an end user to switch registrars, invoking a domain transfer process between the registrars involved, that is governed by specific domain name transfer policies.

Registration of a domain name establishes a set of Start of Authority (SOA) records in the DNS servers of the parent domain, indicating the IP address (or domain name) of DNS servers that are authoritative for the domain.

Registration of a domain does not automatically imply the provision of DNS services for the registered domain. Most registrars do offer DNS hosting as an optional free service for domains registered through them. If DNS services are not offered, or the end-user opts out, the end-user is responsible for procuring or self-hosting DNS services.

In short, a domain name registrar is allowed to keep the records and renew the domain. Wiretapping requires actual or remote control over a company's servers or communication lines. I suppose you could hijack/man-in-the-middle a domain by altering its SOA records, but there again BGP is probably easier, quicker and less public when done properly, like when Pakistan Telecom temporarily hijacked Youtube in 2008.

(see this in action below - video taken from the RIPE article)

YouTube Video This video is not hosted by the JREF. The JREF can not be held responsible for the suitability or legality of this material. By clicking the link below you agree to view content from an external website.

I AGREE

Without knowing what level of access a registrar - that is not your ISP/hosting service provider, like it usually is for most small folk who hold a domain - has, it's pretty hard to come up with the conclusion that every Google user is being wiretapped by MarkMonitor Inc.

[geni]

Originally Posted by Eligbak

The brand-protecting, anti-piracy company MarkMonitor Inc. has had all these DNS names under its control for several months now.

They also control the Wikimedia name services, even though that doesn't show up on the Wikimedia.org whois record. There are many others. Apple.com falls under their jurisdiction, as does ubuntu.com. Nokia.com? Yep, under MarkMonitor. See a pattern here? ... ...[/indent]

Go check out the whois records for Google, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, Mozilla etc., if you like: http://who.is/whois/google.com/

MarkMonitor is ranked 33th among ICANN registrars according to volume. Google holds place 900. (January 2011 data or 3 months old, I'm not sure, http://www.dotandco.net/ressources/i...ls/position.en)

Even if this is blown up way out of proportion, it is interesting that so many of the biggest names in computing and communication should have their domains in the "hands" of this specific registrar, taking into account its other "Anti Fraud/Anti Piracy/Brand name protection" business line. Especially for Google, this would seem out of character to me.

Short answer is that they are fairly cheap, don't have the political issues of Godaddy (the whole SOAP thing) and the brand name protection stuff is useful to anyone who works on a global scale (having to phone up WIPO because someone has registered wikipedia.whatever is tiresome).

see:

https://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/03/0...addy-complete/

[geni]

Originally Posted by Johny2x4

Apparently is inevitable, according to certain CTers, but is it really doable? Or are there any limitations?

Depends to what extent you are prepared to intervene and how comprehensive you want your censorship to be. At minium if you are looking to stop people just stumbling on a certian item thats pretty easy. The UK's cleanfeed system will do that. If you want to stop people who are actively searching for something it can become near impossible if they are skilled enough.

[Eligbak]

MarkMonitor is very well placed in the market. According to Wikipedia, half of the Fortune top 100 companies use some of its services, and 22 percent of the top 500 websites register their domains.
The Wikimedia article about their transfer from GoDaddy mentions they were already using MarkMonitor’s brand protection services and plan to make use of "additional security features" provided by them. Of course, all of this is legitimate. But somebody with his fingers in that many, large pies would make an appetizing target.

[threadworm]

Originally Posted by FatFreddy88

I started this thread...
http://www.nynjsurf.com/forum/mariov...-t32269.0.html

...and the moderator deleted my last post and banned me just for being a truther.

I'd started a thread similar to this one...
http://www.spurstalk.com/forums/showthread.php?t=144746

...on the same forum. The moderator deleted it as soon as he'd seen it.

Some evidence of US government lies is so clear that the disinfo agents know their attempts to obfuscate it will be of no avail and the moderators know that so the only thing they can do is try to keep people from seeing the evidence.

I posted some info I'd found on Barbara Olsen in post #62 of this thread.
http://www.volconvo.com/forums/polit...ide-job-4.html

Look at post #65. The moderators are so afraid of this info that they don't even want it discussed. They try to avoid the appearance of censorship in their wording but I don't think many of the viewers are taken in.

When I post summaries of evidence that Apollo was a hoax or that 9/11 was an inside job, about ninety five percent of the time the moderators delete the threads and ban me as soon as they see them. I don't know if those sites are bending to pressure from the government, or are managed by public relation agencies hired by the government but censorship is really heavy right now.

There is a big difference between vested interests, be it governments or corporations, controlling the internet as a whole, and small communities of people protecting their websites from trolling spam. I've been a mod and an admin on websites, and people like you are a royal pita. I have never had a problem moderating and deleting threads, or banning users, where people don't abide by the rules of a forum that its members pay for. If you want true freedom of your expression, spend some money of your own and buy your own webspace

I got into the internet as an academic when it was pretty much solely used for the exchange of information.

Now its primary purpose is the exchange of money, and I think that is what has really changed the nature of it. As soon as it started making money, or threatening the interests of those who do, people started taking notice of it.

Censorship of the internet as a structure is wrong.

Self-censorship and community consent of that censorship is perfectly acceptable.

Even nutjobs who think no planes flew into the twin towers, the apollo landings were faked or that nobody died in concentration camps in WW2 should be able to post their deranged nonsense on the web. If they didn't, we'd have no-one to laugh at, the stupidity and lack of education of cretins would not serve as a lesson to all of us, and we wouldn't know where they were at all times.

[000063]

Originally Posted by corbin

Why assume absolute censorship would be the goal in a totalitarian society?....

Who said that?

[geni]

Originally Posted by Eligbak

MarkMonitor is very well placed in the market. According to Wikipedia, half of the Fortune top 100 companies use some of its services, and 22 percent of the top 500 websites register their domains.
The Wikimedia article about their transfer from GoDaddy mentions they were already using MarkMonitor’s brand protection services and plan to make use of "additional security features" provided by them. Of course, all of this is legitimate. But somebody with his fingers in that many, large pies would make an appetizing target.

Not really. You've got to remeber that their customers contain a lot of people who are rather tech savy and really don't want anyone other than them messing with their customers (or in the case of wikipedia have a strong cyber libaterian bent). As a result trying to mess with them would likely end poorly.