
Apparent use of Sandvine devices for malicious or dubious ends in two countries - pjf
https://citizenlab.ca/2018/03/bad-traffic-sandvines-packetlogic-devices-deploy-government-spyware-turkey-syria/
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buraktamturk
I wonder what prevents them to order TurkTrust to issue ssl sertificates to do
this kind of attack to the secure websites. Turkey recently has gained power
to take over companies, if they don't comply with their order (temporary,
State-of-emergency law). I think they had issued a certificate to *.google.com
before: [https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2013/01/08/the-turktrust-
ss...](https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2013/01/08/the-turktrust-ssl-
certificate-fiasco-what-happened-and-what-happens-next/)

edit: Ankara was the target. Like this one.

~~~
Sephr
Nothing at all, and CAA doesn't help solve the problem either unfortunately.

Even when it comes to CAs that voluntarily adopted CAA, their implementations
have silently failed on occasion. See
[https://www.net.in.tum.de/fileadmin/bibtex/publications/pape...](https://www.net.in.tum.de/fileadmin/bibtex/publications/papers/caa17.pdf)

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mabbo
An acquaintance of mine that I've known since high school (and apparently we
had play dates when we were toddlers) works for Sandvine. Travels often to
handle installations.

I had not realized this is what they do, what he was setting up. Kind of sad
to hear it. He's no fool, which means he probably fully understands what he's
doing. I do wonder how he justifies it to himself.

~~~
Waterluvian
I've spoken to a few engineers at Sandvine. Both said they knew what their
product was being used for. One quit (at least partly) because of it.

I also went to school with a bunch of people who were pretty seriously
environmentally-focused (environment faculty programs). Some ended up in the
oil and mining industries. When probed about this, the general response boiled
down to "I want to find something else but I also want to be employed."

I'm no psychologist but I think it's just kind of part of the human condition
that our needs > our wants. Morals are less of a _need_ than employment,
maybe? Just spitballing.

~~~
dictum
> I'm no psychologist but I think it's just kind of part of the human
> condition that our needs > our wants. Morals are less of a need than
> employment, maybe? Just spitballing.

Morals are part of the "self actualization" tip of the pyramid in Maslow's
hierarchy of needs (and to some extent the middle part, belonging, but that's
only if you're likely to be shunned for breaking a moral principle).

~~~
Waterluvian
So I guess if we accept Maslow's hiararchy of needs, morals would be a need,
but less important than the money needed to have shelter, food, water, etc.

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sosilkj
Facebook also aids the Erdogan regime:

[https://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/27/world/europe/facebook-
sai...](https://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/27/world/europe/facebook-said-to-
block-pages-on-muhammad-to-avoid-ban-in-turkey.html)

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yoran
This shows again that the vast majority of corporations are non-ethical
entities and only seek profit. Only when their profits are endangered, e.g.
backlash from the general public, do they act "ethically".

~~~
vollmond
Corporations are made up of people. How many people are assisting in exactly
this sort of thing? Military servicemembers, bureaucrats, judicial workers,
etc? As long as humans are violating ethics, the organizations they create
will as well. It's by no means a business-specific feature of society.

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coretx
I'm not so in the loop anymore regarding helping out dissidents, but what I do
remember is that the BGP based censorship in Turkey is executed by the
Militairy. Perhaps it's a idea for citizenlab to sue the Turkish state for
using it's militairy agains't it's own people. The political price of
censorship would rise even if the litigation fails.

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sorokod
According to the map here
[https://www.sandvine.com/company](https://www.sandvine.com/company), very few
countries are not a customer.

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tehwebguy
Hopefully someday we can hold accountable those helping dictator Recep Erdogan
to oppress his people as war criminals!

