
Uganda Bans VPNs to Prevent Users from Dodging Its New Social Media Tax - benryon
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20180702/12431840157/uganda-bans-vpns-to-prevent-users-dodging-absurd-new-social-media-tax.shtml
======
temp-dude-87844
The Uganda OTT tax is probably meant to stifle online political speech and
organizing, but the concept itself, taxing most over-the-top communication
mediums that use the mobile networks solely as an opaque data pipe (and
typically only work with their captive apps) is a concept that merits more
discussion than being patently called "absurd". These services aren't
interoperable, they exfiltrate data to foreign countries (where they may be
subject to foreign intercept), and they surface ads for whose placement these
foreign companies are paid. This perpetuates a wealth transfer from Uganda to
abroad.

Then again, it's awfully convenient for the President that these services are
places where one can organize an opposition against him, and he can use the
excuse of rumours, lies, or "fake news" to justify legislating against them.
The tax regime now sets up a wealth transfer from every Ugandan to the state,
where it will be squandered I'm sure.

What I find frustrating is that most coverage about this falls into the same
tired tropes, like pointing out how little most Ugandans make in real US
dollars as an insidious appeal to well-to-do westerners to envision the
subjects of this tax as downtrodden poor who are being exploited by their
(presumably) oppressive government. I thought we were beyond this kind of
coverage, and recognize that people in less prosperous countries have the same
agency, despite systemic problems with the 5-term Ugandan president's
authoritarian tendencies, corruption, voter intimidation, lack of
transparency, and poverty.

What this tax will do is hasten the decline of civil society and respect for
the current administration's law in Uganda. It will broaden the gulf between
the cronies of the President and everyone else, leaving more and more people
dissatisfied with the governing party that once promised (and, in fairness,
delivered) real reforms. He obviously knows this, and has been making moves to
prolong his power as he feels the winds of change shift around him.

~~~
wmf
_exfiltrate data to foreign countries (where they may be subject to foreign
intercept)_

If you're, say, a Ugandan dissident would you rather be spied on by the NSA or
the Ugandan government? Tunneling all data out of the country may be safer for
the majority of people, but maybe I'm falling for the trope of downtrodden
poor who are being exploited by their (presumably) oppressive government.

~~~
StudentStuff
Better that users be spied on by no one (like with Briar or Signal), but
digital protectionism like what Russia and China do isn't infeasible.

------
walrus01
As a professional network engineer this is utterly preposterous. Ignorant
government officials who know nothing about how the Internet actually works,
trying to fuck with it because it's something beyond their petty attempts at
control. When will people realize that blocking VoIP and blocking a ton of
other stuff (Ethiopia and the UAE are great examples), in the long term and in
aggregate, results in more economic damage and a poorer telecom/Internet
ecosystem than allowing all traffic freely? They're short sightedly trying to
raise revenue by taxing the mobile phone carriers, who are 95% of the data
connections in the country, when they should be focused on allowing telecoms
to build better pipes for domestic and international traffic.

Quick edit: People who run major international ASNs and medium sized regional
ASNs have a responsibility to not aid and abet this bullshit. Don't contract
for government entities that want to implement filtering/blocking of stuff.
Refuse to participate with network engineering and architecture decisions and
implementation that hurt net neutrality. There is a finite pool of people with
the real talent, clue and 15+ years of experience who can build carrier-grade
ISP infrastructure. If people want to fuck up their domestic Internet in
$COUNTRY, _do not help them_. No matter how lucrative it might appear at first
glance.

There is such a thing as ethics in network engineering, just as there is in
software engineering. Think long and hard about what you think defines an
ethical ISP. If you're asked to do something contrary to that, refuse to
participate.

~~~
pas
Incompetence at that level is malice. Short sightedness is nothing new in
politics. As is fucking with the middle class. (I mean with those who
understand the problem of blocking certain kinds of Internet traffic.)

~~~
walrus01
Oh, it's absolutely malicious. In a typical $RANDOM_DEVELOPING_NATION the
amount of corruption and graft that goes on between the "Minister of
Communications" and other government entities (quasi-state-owned telco in the
UAE for example) is something that has to be seen first hand to be believed.
Those who are in power have no interest in actually having something like a
diverse IP transit and transport carrier ISP ecosystem (as the US, Western
Europe do, take a look at how many carriers and ISPs are connected to the AMS-
IX and DE-CIX). They care about their short term personal financial gain.

------
purge
I'm living in Uganda at the moment and have a couple of things to add:

1\. VPNs still work fine (I'm using one right now, though its one I installed
on a digitalocean instance - it's possible those receiving lots of traffic
have now been blocked).

2\. This tax is unaffordable for many Ugandans (it would be about 5% of the
average wage here). Whatsapp is very popular here and this has impacted
everybody I know. Most people I've talked to are using a free VPN (they aren't
aware of the risks here).

I haven't done much analysis of the blocking yet but I will be doing a more
in-depth post about this whole debacle in a few days.

~~~
walrus01
Correct me if I'm wrong, but Uganda has a somewhat reasonable diversity of
domestic ISP AS that are connected to other east African AS for international
connectivity outbound via Kenya and Tanzania. It's not like a single
government controlled bottleneck situation (As in Iran, where all ISPs have to
be downstream of the government AS, which operates all of the international L2
transport and L3 transit/peering connections).

~~~
purge
I'm not sure about the peering connections but Uganda does have a good range
of ISPs (outside of Kampala connectivity is mobile network only).

The mobile providers are:

\- Africell (was orange)

\- MTN

\- Airtel

\- Smile

\- Uganda Telecom

------
callahad
The title seems misleading -- looking at the image in the article, it appears
that the tax isn't on _social media_ per se, but on any service that provides
mobile voice / messaging functions over cellular data.

Which is effectively a tax against cellular data being treated as a dumb pipe.
Still not OK, but a fundamentally different beast than the title implies.

If you're a telco in Uganda, and you have sufficient sway with the government,
why not go for broke and try to tax your way back into cellular voice /
messaging revenue streams? They can be quite lucrative: in the UK, I'm paying
about £1/GB of data, but a single MMS costs 43p. Turns out you can send a
_lot_ of group messages on WhatsApp before it uses 43p worth of data...

~~~
sangnoir
> The title seems misleading -- looking at the image in the article, it
> appears that the tax isn't on social media per se

The title is not misleading at all - the purpose of the tax is to discourage
the use of social media. The (likely) president-for-life Museveni has
expressed his strong displeasure with social media (particularly when it was
used to mock him in the run up to removing term-limits) well before this law
was promulgated. Strong-men do well with traditional media, which they can
easily control.

Few Ugandans are going to spend 43p (per MMS) to send a meme gif mocking the
government to 7 friends - this is entirely according to plan. Nevermind the
local police (secret or otherwise) has easy access to MNO's servers compared
to WhatsApp or Facebook for their investigations to support the charges of
"incitement/treason".

~~~
jkulubya
Funny you mention easy access to MNO servers. This happened last night -
[https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/companies/telecoms-and-
tec...](https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/companies/telecoms-and-
technology/2018-07-06-mtn-uganda-raided-by-security-personnel-who-disconnect-
several-servers/)

~~~
sangnoir
I am not surprised by this. The excuse they gave came from the left-field
though ("investigating intrusion reported by anonymous sources"). I also
wouldn't be surprised if there are Italian/Israeli/American "security
consultants" doing the analysis behind the scenes in the mold of HackingTeam.
A dictator's dollar is just as green, I guess.

------
rb808
I'm not sure why this tax should be labelled as absurd. Lots of countries tax
TV, phone already. Taxing social media sounds weird only because no one else
has done it yet.

~~~
exabrial
Because tax, in general is absurd. You're literally taking people's money
under the threat of force. Just because it is done quite universally does not
justify the practice.

More specifically, taxes are abused near universally. From the sugar taxes in
Seattle (unless you are Starbucks), or forced Union dues that fund political
campaigns, the practice is abused. Meanwhile necessary services like police,
firefighters, and rescue workers are always under underfunded, even though
that's why we think we're paying them.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _You 're literally taking people's money under the threat of force_

Money that would have no meaning, earned for work which would largely be
impossible, without said threat of force.

~~~
exabrial
That doesn't sound any better. So if I have an asset that I'm not using, it's
morally just to take it from me because I'm not using it?

~~~
giggles_giggles
The devil's in the details. Depending on the asset and the situation, it may
be morally correct to take it, yes.

To give an absurd, extreme example: if you lived in a nation going through a
famine and your hobby was watching bread mold, it might be morally just to
take away your warehouse of stockpiled bread to let the starving people eat,
even if it meant you couldn't continue your thrilling bread-mold-watching
hobby.

------
parliament32
I'm interested to see how they go about filtering VPN traffic. AFAIK, running
openvpn over port 443 is pretty much indistinguishable from normal TLS
traffic.

~~~
ryan-c
China's gotten pretty good at it.

OpenVPN running over port 443 is generally going to be using a CA that is not
a public CA, and issues certificates directly rather than through an
intermediate.

Even if you tunnel something over normal TLS, the type of traffic can
potentially be determined by analyzing how much data flows in which direction
and when.

If circumvention is seen as too widely spread, Uganda may simply decide that
all TLS traffic leaving the country must be intercepted by a MitM proxy, and
require everyone to trust their CA.

I'm sure there are plenty of companies that would be happy to get the contract
to provide this service.

These blocks can often be circumvented by methods that do not scale, but if
only tech savvy people who can afford to run their own VPN server on a VPS
somewhere can circumvent the block, it's "mission accomplished".

~~~
SomeRandomDev
I feel like China is good about public/shared VPN's. If you set up your own
and keep the details to yourself I was under the impression that it'd work
just fine. That being said I love to travel and can work wherever but haven't
been to CN yet for this reason in particular.

~~~
ryan-c
From what I've heard second-hand (my SO has a friend who frequently travels to
China), they do actually block people's private one-off VPN servers quite
effectively.

Have a look at
[https://www.cs.tufts.edu/comp/116/archive/fall2016/ctang.pdf](https://www.cs.tufts.edu/comp/116/archive/fall2016/ctang.pdf)
\- it talks about GFW using machine learning with flow analysis to do this.

~~~
userchris
I took that class (comp 116) a few years ago! Just had some fun finding and
rereading my own final paper from the archives (the one you linked to makes
mine seem way less interesting). Ming is a really awesome and unique lecturer.

~~~
mar77i
If I may ask, why pass the perfectly appropriate opportunity to... link it
here?

------
jk_danson
Someone needs to make a small sketch of the Uganda government with 7 year olds
making up the laws.

Child 1 - "Let's tax people for being on social media to stop them from saying
bad things about us" Child 2 - "Yeah that's a great idea. Plus we'll have more
money for candy." Govenments notice - "Social media is hereby taxed. Your
local ISP will be collecting the tax automatically." People - "Whatever, we'll
just use VPN" Government Screams- "AND NO VPNs ALLOWED!"

So much for free speech.

Good luck stopping the tor network.

~~~
nodesocket
I see this all the time on HN, the dismissal of real problems by suggesting
the wide spread use of using highly technical solutions. It is naive and
frankly arrogant.

The vast majority of the population, and I'd bet it's even higher in Uganda
does not even know what Tor is, yet alone how to use it.

My mom just figured out how to send photos via text message for heaven's sake.

~~~
jk_danson
It is true the TOR does not solve the problem. But I don't think discussing
how to solve it here would do anything for Uganda.

But if anybody from Uganda does find this. It's time to stand up and fight for
your rights as a people and not let the corrupt politicians push you around.
In the meantime, if you want to know how to use TOR here is a great tutorial:
[https://www.pcworld.com/article/2686467/privacy/how-to-
use-t...](https://www.pcworld.com/article/2686467/privacy/how-to-use-the-tor-
browser-to-surf-the-web-anonymously.html)

And here is the Facebook site for TOR:
[https://facebookcorewwwi.onion/](https://facebookcorewwwi.onion/)

Good Luck!

------
wgerard
It's interesting (that's my equivocating adjective, anyway) to note that
"social media" doesn't just include Facebook/etc. here, it also includes
things like:

* LinkedIn

* Skype

which, while sure, are "social media" platforms, are also tools that you might
use as a professional to do things like get jobs, or talk to clients, etc.

I'm not sure how pervasive those platforms are in Uganda, but certainly
something that could really harm aspiring professionals without much in the
way of resources.

------
have_faith
We've got a sugar tax here in the UK as our newest form of indulgence tax. I
wonder how a social media tax would go down with the public.

~~~
claudiawerner
Isn't it only a tax on sugary drinks? And from my personal experience it just
seems to be pushing people to buy Coke Zero/Diet Coke instead. Most people I
know haven't complained much about it. I wonder if it will have the indended
effets of reducing sugar consumption.

~~~
i_cant_speel
Chicago had a soda tax of a penny per ounce. Unfortunately it included all
sodas and juices, sugary or not. There was so much backlash from it they got
rid of the tax a few months later. I honestly would have been for it if it
didn't include diet drinks. I believe it would have had a positive impact on
public health.

------
tanilama
Or they use this social media tax as disguise to enforce internet censorship

------
gruez
>I think it is very unwise to think that because the data consumption under
VPN is very high, I think you’re aware of that.

nobody is going to call them out on this blatant lie?

------
j45
The reasons being used to ban encryption, including VPN seems to be
increasingly trivial and arbitrary.

------
olalonde
How do you even define social media? Is HN social media?

~~~
ptaipale
I'd guess the definition goes along the lines "El Presidente does not like
what someone said on this platform, so it is social media and banned". It'll
be highly arbitrary.

------
goldenkey
Queue the Ugandan Knuckles memes...

------
NedIsakoff
The government needs money, its gonna get it from you one way or another.

------
sonnyblarney
I agree with almost all of the frustrated comments here, and the premise of
the article.

I was also involved with a major F50 that was warily forced to deal with
various regimes trying to filter content.

But consider for a moment:

'Globalization' is having many nefarious effects on the world - and the
'openness' of the internet is generally only a mostly positive aspect from
powers that are large and centralized. America is relatively free, and nobody
100x the size of America is going to come along and 'control your internet',
and therefore potentially control your economic and political system.

The ubiquitous internet means that a small or mid-sized nation that is not a
G7 is at major risk of having the almost the totality of their nation
overturned by foreign powers.

Consider: Facebook, or Google, could very easily change electoral outcomes in
many nations, possibly even by accident. A small change in their algorithm
that suppressed some, and promoted others, an accidental ban of a political
group, etc. - can happen. I don't suggest FB or G are interested in this, but
remember they also do have relationships with the US Government, and it's
reasonable for these nations to be very cautious.

Moreover, an open Internet allows fully malicious actors (hacker groups, bad
international enterprises, bad governments), to do some really quite dangerous
things to other nations, most of whom are too small to be able to protect
themselves.

'The Internet' is the new 5th column if you will, and to some extent it can
have more power than government or the Supreme Court in many nations. If 80%
of a nation is convinced of some truth/mistruth perpetuated by 'whoever' on
the Internet, well, then legality hardly matters. It has more revolutionary
potential than perhaps any historical ideology.

Even on the economic front - Globalization means that all of the talent is
getting sucked up like a vacuum into centres in the biggest economies. So many
of the best go to America. So many European professionals flow into Germany or
the UK - to their advantage.

Both of these issues come to head with issues like journalism - it's one thing
if 'American journalism' is concentrating in a few American outlets, but
imagine if your country was losing most of it's journalistic opportunity and
that centralization was happening _in another country_ \- a large country like
America with whom your nation may not have a great history.

Tax bases are a _real thing_ \- and though the Internet should in the long run
provide more opportunity for local governments, in the present it's causing
losses in tax revenues, or at least, those revenues created by new economies
are not being realized locally.

Recognize that these issues are a problem, and that the erstwhile 'open
internet' which positioned as a very positive and aspirational aspect of
global development by American/Western forces, does not necessarily represent
the same opportunity in the rest of the world.

So yes, so many corrupt and stupid leaders doing corrupt and stupid things to
their own nations, but the answer is definitely not "Just let Google be the
Ministry of Truth" for the nations of the world. Definitely not.

~~~
walrus01
> Tax bases are a real thing - and though the Internet should in the long run
> provide more opportunity for local governments, in the present it's causing
> losses in tax revenues, or at least, those revenues created by new economies
> are not being realized locally.

nothing is stopping governments from taxing physical, tangible things. Nothing
is stopping governments from taxing the gross revenue (such as the WA state
business and occupation tax) of ISPs and telecoms in general. Nothing is
stopping governments from taxing per-subscriber revenue from mobile phone data
connections. The four HSPA+/LTE operators in Pakistan pay a shitload of tax to
the government and it works generally quite well.

Where this breaks is when they start deciding to tax specific types of
internet content at TCP/IP layer 3, and layers 4-7 in the OSI model. That's
fucked.

~~~
sonnyblarney
"nothing is stopping governments from taxing physical, tangible things."

When information is the product of the new economy, and where value is
created, it has to be part of the tax base.

"Nothing is stopping governments from taxing the gross revenue (such as the WA
state business and occupation tax) of ISPs and telecoms in general."

True, but this layer of the value chain is not where the new information
economy is being developed.

"Where this breaks is when they start deciding to tax specific types of
internet content at TCP/IP layer 3"

'Content' and 'Layer' are separate issues - they are intertwined for pragmatic
reasons, and I agree doing it at 'an internet layer' is dumb ... but there's
no clear way around it.

------
nyrosis
Pathetic.

If I put a sign in front of my home demanding money every time someone passes
by that is considered illegal. Even if it's my road that I built. If a
government does it it is considered a toll. Even if they didn't build the
road.

Should we pay for every hop on the internet? That is where this is going.

Keep it up... This will only further private network development. We will be
quite selective on who we give access this time.

