

Tor: Directly connecting users from Turkey - hexa-
https://metrics.torproject.org/users.html?graph=userstats-relay-country&start=2013-12-23&end=2014-03-23&country=tr&events=off
After having censored the turkish people via DNS and thus restricting their access to Twitter everyone moved on to other DNS Services like Google Public DNS (8.8.8.8, 8.8.4.4) and OpenDNS. Earlier today an IP-Ban was issued and immediately Tor-Usage from Turkey starts rising. What a magnificent people. Keep on fighting!
======
joeblau
It's amazing what humans beings will do for information. This reminds me of a
time in 2007 where my friend was a teacher at an elementary school. The school
blocked MySpace and Facebook to stop the students from visiting those sites.
Somehow, the students figured out how to use proxies and get around the
firewalls and what ended up happening is that the teachers were the only ones
who couldn't figure out how to get around the firewalls. My friend came to me
asking how the kids were getting around the firewall, but my explanation was
over his head.

~~~
chacham15
The solution I used to use in high school: add a period to the end of the
domain name. E.g. "www.facebook.com" became "www.facebook.com.". Apparently,
the last dot does nothing, but gets around almost all pattern matchings.
Everyone I told was amazed, but it actually worked (and
teachers/administration were clueless).

~~~
girvo
My favourite was that http was blocked, but https wasn't at my school. Easy
peasy :)

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
I use that for a different trick at school. It gets around keyword filtering
on search terms :)

~~~
jonmetz
This type of filtering made the EFF's HTTPSEverywhere common in my last school

------
Oculus
My biggest fear is once dictatorships/governments become aware of the ability
to sidestep their bans, they'll begin blocking websites such as
torproject.org. Keep in mind this traffic spike is because people who don't
normally use Tor, started using it (i.e. they downloaded it). At that point I
think we'll begin to see an arms race between the public and government which
might finally bring us to decentralization of the Internet - or complete
censorship.

~~~
higherpurpose
Others could mirror Tor (more risky, yes, but better than nothing).

~~~
hexa-
There already exists a mirror list at
[https://www.torproject.org/getinvolved/mirrors.html.en](https://www.torproject.org/getinvolved/mirrors.html.en).
Of course this is hard to come by, when the whole torproject website is being
censored.

~~~
devcpp
People can just look at the cached version of this page on Google over SSL, I
doubt they will ban Google...

~~~
fragmede
> In February 2006, Google made a significant concession to the Great Firewall
> of China, in exchange for equipment installation on Chinese soil, by
> blocking websites which the Chinese government deemed illegal.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_the_Peo...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China)

So I think they _would_ ban Google Search over this if they had to, but it
sounds like Google would just hide it on Google.cn.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_websites_blocked_in_Ch...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_websites_blocked_in_China)
is another interesting read, the first 6 URLs are Google products.

~~~
r12e
> the first 6 URLs are Google products

One of which is Google+, every cloud has a silver lining.

------
Ihmahr
Doing my part by hosting a relay, and so can you!

[https://www.torproject.org/docs/tor-relay-
debian.html.en](https://www.torproject.org/docs/tor-relay-debian.html.en)

~~~
maglev45
Why don't you try hosting an exit relay? It would be fun.

~~~
Ihmahr
I am. Have been for 9 months now and didn't have significant trouble.

~~~
tedchs
I tried hosting an exit relay, even with limited outbound ports, and my VPS
provider immediately received about 9 DMCA requested within 24 hours. I was
able to email them the Tor boilerplate response and it went away, but I won't
be trying that again.

------
kiba
Freedom of speech. It always seem to be under attack.

I wonder though, do we have more or less freedom of speech over time? I tried
to google those things, but I couldn't find the graph of freedomness over
time.

(No, ancedotes don't count. Our perceptions can be skewed by media bias.)

~~~
adrusi
I remember reading an article a couple weeks ago, I'm not sure where, but I
think it was posted on HN, about democracy over time. While not the same,
that's a good proxy for measuring freedom. It said that democracy reached a
peak around 2000, and that it's declined a little since then, but much slower
than it was increasing before then.

I think this article was either on The Atlantic, The Economist or BBC, if you
want to go digging.

~~~
saryant
It was probably The Economist. Paired with an interesting experiment (for
them) in their presentation of long-form essays.

[http://www.economist.com/news/essays/21596796-democracy-
was-...](http://www.economist.com/news/essays/21596796-democracy-was-most-
successful-political-idea-20th-century-why-has-it-run-trouble-and-what-can-be-
do)

~~~
sly_g
"Freedom score"? Really? Some number, representing "freedom", calculated from
the US point of view - it's, how should I put it... Less than impartial. Not
to mention method of calculating freedom.

~~~
adrusi
It doesn't seem any less contrived than standard of living scores or happiness
scores. It's obviously an imperfect metric, but while it might be useless for
comparing the freedom of Germany and the US, it's perfectly adequate for
comparing the freedom of the US and Croatia, or of Croatia and China. For the
sake of calculating the overall freedom of the world over time, as in the case
of the great-grandparent's question, it works as well as anything.

------
nikcub
the Turkish government will eventually figure out how to block Tor, and when
that happens the users will need bridges.

You can help out by dedicating some spare resources to run as a relay +
bridge, takes a minute to install and setup.

Share your bridge info to those who require it (not publically).

Example install + config:

[https://gist.github.com/nikcub/9722068](https://gist.github.com/nikcub/9722068)

~~~
slacka
Setting up a private bridge only helps if you have friends or family living
living under an oppressive regime. Anyone who run an obfsproxy bridge will be
helping the to alleviate the shortage of bridges.[1] The quickest and easiest
way is to setup your free Amazon EC2 account with the Instructions at the Tor
Cloud Project page[2]. It took me just a couple of minutes to install my free
EC2 account. Another option is to donate money to pay for the bandwidth that
Tor relay and exit nodes require.[3]

NOTE: A bridge is not the same as an exit node. Only exit nodes could possibly
attract attention from authorities. If you are just running a bridge, you are
only helping people circumvent government firewalls to join the Tor network.
The default EC2 Tor Cloud images only run as a bridge.

[1] [http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/04/tor-
ca...](http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/04/tor-calls-for-
help-as-its-supply-of-bridges-falters/)

[2] [https://cloud.torproject.org/](https://cloud.torproject.org/)

[3] [https://blog.torproject.org/blog/support-tor-network-
donate-...](https://blog.torproject.org/blog/support-tor-network-donate-exit-
node-providers)

------
pdevr
Thank you. I looked at other countries' graphs as well. India's [1] make no
sense. Distorted sinusoidal wave?!

[1] [https://metrics.torproject.org/users.html?graph=userstats-
re...](https://metrics.torproject.org/users.html?graph=userstats-relay-
country&country=in#userstats-relay-country)

~~~
arjie
Drops every Sunday¹. Employees of companies are using Tor to bypass company
site blocks.

¹ [https://metrics.torproject.org/users.html?graph=userstats-
re...](https://metrics.torproject.org/users.html?graph=userstats-relay-
country&start=2014-03-01&end=2014-03-11&country=in&events=off#userstats-relay-
country)

~~~
1ris
No, I don't think so. Look at a bigger time frame:

[https://metrics.torproject.org/users.html?graph=userstats-
re...](https://metrics.torproject.org/users.html?graph=userstats-relay-
country&start=2013-01-01&end=2014-03-23&country=in&events=off#userstats-relay-
country)

There was a huge spike in Mid 2013, cause by a botnet that installed tor.
Before there was almost not oscillation. After that there is quite a bit. I
think there are many infected PCs at companies.

~~~
keule
Do you still got a reference to news/blogs about that botnet install?

~~~
1ris
There is something form the official tor blog.
[https://blog.torproject.org/blog/how-to-handle-millions-
new-...](https://blog.torproject.org/blog/how-to-handle-millions-new-tor-
clients)

------
d0ugie
It's touching that people want and have the means to help the Turks continue
to communicate thanks to Tor. But it's too bad that running a Tor exit node,
due to what Tor is so commonly used for by nature of anonymity, is such a
glaring liability[1] to the operator -- and, due to how easily and commonly
Tor exit nodes can be used nefariously, a liability to the users[2].

Hopefully uProxy, slated to be released this summer, will address these issues
effectively by incorporating a trust model[3] into facilitating circumvention
through such censorship walls. Meanwhile, more and more https[4] would be
helpful.

[1] [http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/11/tor-operator-
char...](http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/11/tor-operator-charged-for-
child-porn-transmitted-over-his-servers/) [2]
[http://cryptome.org/2014/01/spoiled-
onions.pdf](http://cryptome.org/2014/01/spoiled-onions.pdf) [3]
[https://www.asl19.org/en/know-more-about-uproxy-live-qa-
with...](https://www.asl19.org/en/know-more-about-uproxy-live-qa-with-lucas-
dixon-from-google-ideas/) [4] [http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2014/03/staying-
at-forefront-...](http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2014/03/staying-at-forefront-
of-email-security.html)

------
tim333
Also: "As the Turkish government’s effort to ban use of Twitter continued
Friday, the country’s Internet users rushed to install apps such as Hotspot
Shield, which had 270,000 downloads from Turkish users within 12 hours,
according to David Gorodyansky, the company’s chief executive."

I think Tor's a bit of an overkill. This message sent over Hotspot Shield from
Vietnam because of my Facebook addiction (blocked on and off here)

~~~
middleclick
Why and how is Tor an overkill? With Hotspot Shield, you are trusting them
with everything you are doing. With Tor, there is no trust with a single
server because it is decentralized.

~~~
fabulist
Tor is certainly far more decentralized, but you seem to harbor a common
misconception that Tor doesn't reuqire trust. The exit node of your circuit
(the last hop before the "real" internet) handles your directly. At best, the
destination of your packets is unencrypted, giving the exit node a narrow but
pertinent view into your communications. At worst, the entire packet is
unencrypted, and the exit node can manipulate it in whatever way it wishes,
undetectably. This is why you must, must, must layer other encryption on top
of Tor, ie, HTTPS. As they say at the Tor Project, "plaintext over Tor is
still plaintext," except that you've attracted a lot attention to send it.

------
neotek
Turkey's government is getting really good at turning molehills into
mountains.

------
panza
A bit OT, but does anyone know what happened in Australia to cause this:
[https://metrics.torproject.org/users.html?graph=userstats-
re...](https://metrics.torproject.org/users.html?graph=userstats-relay-
country&start=2011-12-23&end=2014-03-23&country=au&events=off#userstats-relay-
country)

~~~
Cameron_D
There was a huge increase in global usage at that time:
[https://metrics.torproject.org/users.html?graph=userstats-
re...](https://metrics.torproject.org/users.html?graph=userstats-relay-
country&start=2011-12-23&end=2014-03-23&country=all)

------
Zenst
Twitter yesterday, TOR tomorrow, what next FB and G+ and then what will they
block to stem people speaking things about the Turkish government.

From what I understand the whole blocking twitter is due to the Turkish
government not liking what is said about them on twitter. Now by their actions
they have created more people saying things they will not like on many other
platforms and with that, were will it end. Will they block of the entire
internet or will they deal with the issues being raised about them in a
constructive way beyond effectively gagging everybody as they are unable to
put there hands over there ears.

Either way, this is a dangerous path they are taking and the fallout will be
greater than the problem they perceive too be abating.

------
higherpurpose
More people should be working on making the P2P Twister a reality, sooner:

[https://github.com/iShift/twister-webkit](https://github.com/iShift/twister-
webkit)

Centralized Twitter is too easy to stop/block by countries.

------
csomar
What amazes me in this mess is how ignorant the government (and the people
running it) about methods to overcome censorship. They are, basically,
computer-illiterate. Really very illiterate.

After the Tunisian revolution, there were thoughts and plans by politicians to
do censorship again. This was dismissed as politicians, officials and
government finally recognized that censorship can be overcome no matter what
they try. Religious complaining about "porn" and that stuff can ask their ISP
for a traffic filter.

------
Intermediate
I guess what they are going to do when Turkish government will buy some
advanced DPI hardware with SVM (Support Vector Machines) which is capable of
blocking TOR

~~~
userbinator
Doesn't TOR look like other encrypted traffic, specifically to avoid detection
methods like this?

~~~
Intermediate
TOR is effectively blocked in China, the only way to use it there is to setup
a private obfsproxy somewhere abroad, but I believe it's beyond an average
user skills.

~~~
narrowrail
Do you happen to have a technical explanation for this? I don't think I
understand how it is possible.

Edit: Ok, after reading a bit more, I think I understand. For anyone else
looking for more info:
[https://www.torproject.org/projects/obfsproxy.html.en](https://www.torproject.org/projects/obfsproxy.html.en)

~~~
boklm
About Tor in china: [https://blog.torproject.org/blog/how-to-read-our-china-
usage...](https://blog.torproject.org/blog/how-to-read-our-china-usage-graphs)

------
edoloughlin
It's still nowhere near its peak. I wonder what happened around Sep last year?

[https://metrics.torproject.org/users.html?graph=userstats-
re...](https://metrics.torproject.org/users.html?graph=userstats-relay-
country&start=2013-06-23&end=2014-03-23&country=tr&events=off#userstats-relay-
country)

~~~
Stormcaller
Im from Turkey and I don't recall any particular move let alone this big. It
was probably "deep web fad" or something about Tor.

Also, this peak also happens at other countries, alth. they vary by size.
[https://metrics.torproject.org/users.html?graph=userstats-
re...](https://metrics.torproject.org/users.html?graph=userstats-relay-
country&start=2013-06-23&end=2014-03-23&country=sg&events=off#userstats-relay-
country) This is singapore, I have looked at others(uk etc.) and they are same
too.

------
alexnking
I wonder if twitter alternatives have also become more popular in Turkey
lately - it seems like if people are willing to setup Tor, they might also try
App.net (you're of course loosing your network of followers, but your
followers in Turkey can't see twitter anyway).

Of course then you can just block that other service as well.

------
voltagex_
[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/tor-
flashprox...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/tor-flashproxy-
badge/) \- host a Tor bridge from Firefox.

------
systematical
I hope my tor bridge relay is helping: Mar 23 13:44:08.000 [notice] Heartbeat:
Tor's uptime is 9 days 17:59 hours, with 2 circuits open. I've sent 894.13 MB
and received 1.04 GB.

------
darkhorn
By the way, [https://mobile.twitter.com/](https://mobile.twitter.com/) is not
blocked.

------
edoloughlin
I'd like to help, but without also facilitating paedos. Is there an easy way
to limit my tor exits to Twitter and its subdomains? I.e., can I do the
configuration in Tor rather than messing with routes/firewall on the OS?

~~~
wiml
Yes, it's really easy if you know what IPs and ports you want to allow. You
can whitelist a handful of services in your torrc and reject all others by
default. I've been running a mostly-relay node for years now with a few
allowed exits, with never any trouble at all. Though, I don't think my node
gets used as an exit node very often; whenever I've checked, it's just doing
normal relaying, which is basically what I want/expect.

[https://www.torproject.org/docs/faq.html.en#ExitPolicies](https://www.torproject.org/docs/faq.html.en#ExitPolicies)

------
tyrant_device
Just for kicks, does Twitter have an onion server?

~~~
higherpurpose
I was wondering if Twitter is doing anything to help the people in Turkey
circumvent the censorship there. They should, but so far I've heard nothing
about it. Hosting an onion server and an exit relay could help.

~~~
cturhan
Twitter provided a SMS based system to send tweets from users

------
iotakodali
what are they gaining of it, extra protests?

~~~
1ris
I wish i had your optimism.

------
tyrant_device
Too bad Twitter can't put a server at 140.140.140.140

~~~
MichaelApproved
I know you're joking because of the twitter 140 character limit but accessing
twitter directly by IP address won't help much. The govt can easily block a
specific IP. So knowing the IP helps when DNS is down but, in the long run,
it's not too helpful when someone is trying to block a site.

~~~
sp332
Recently, people were getting around the ban by switching to Google's DNS.
[http://jussiparikka.net/2014/03/21/google-dns-freedom-
fight-...](http://jussiparikka.net/2014/03/21/google-dns-freedom-
fight-8-8-8-8/) So it would have helped for a while anyway.

