
Tor blocked in Turkey as government cracks down on VPN use - gokhan
https://turkeyblocks.org/2016/12/18/tor-blocked-in-turkey-vpn-ban/
======
eloy
Events like this is the reason I operate a few Tor Bridges. It gives
uncensored internet to vulnerable people in countries that are
(semi-)dictatorships.

The Streisand VPN includes a Tor Bridge by default, so if you ever have
problems with an advanced firewall that blocks most VPN protocols, Streisand
with Tor is your friend.

Tor Bridges are also a nice playground for modern cryptography, they are
working on PQ Crypto:
[https://gitweb.torproject.org/user/isis/torspec.git/plain/pr...](https://gitweb.torproject.org/user/isis/torspec.git/plain/proposals/XXX-
newhope-hybrid-handshake.txt?h=draft/newhope)

~~~
rokosbasilisk
I think uncensored internet is under attack in general even in the america and
europe. No one with power seems to like the idea of stuff they cant control.

~~~
benevol
> I think uncensored internet is under attack in general even in the america
> and europe

...where the actors are more subtle and use mass surveillance to manipulate
people and undermine "dissidents".

~~~
the8472
The UK is also putting quite a filtering infrastructure in place. To fight
terrorism, extremists, porn, filesharing etc.

~~~
velox_io
I read about this too, it sounds like a firewall to me.

Source: [http://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/police-must-be-given-
po...](http://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/police-must-be-given-power-to-
shut-websites-in-child-abuse-and-revenge-porn-fight-a3422131.html)

------
willvarfar
Anyone else remember the time the TurkTrust cert was used to mitm Google?
[https://www.google.se/amp/s/nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2013/01...](https://www.google.se/amp/s/nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2013/01/08/the-
turktrust-ssl-certificate-fiasco-what-happened-and-what-happens-next/amp/)

Does Turkey still have a key the gov can use to mitm connections terminating
there?

And if so, can someone make instructions in Turkish on how to blacklist the
Turkish TLS certs in mainstream browsers so that the gov can't mitm their own
citizens?

For that matter, I don't want a Turkish root of trust in my own browser
either, but the list of roots in our browsers is so long it's kinda
meaningless to start zapping them - I mean, who trusts Verisign anyway?

~~~
rahrahrah
I've heard about problems with trusting certain certificates. Any suggestion
where I can read about these specific matters that you mentioned? Thanks.

~~~
Bombthecat
Mozilla has a Google discussion forum for stuff like that. Just Google stardom
and Mozilla discussion:)

------
Tepix
Decentralization is key to bypass these type of firewalls. All commercial VPN
vendors will be on blacklists sooner or later.

Hang around lowendtalk / lowendbox and rent a tiny dir cheap VPS. Just SSH
there and use the SOCKS5 proxy built into SSH. I hope they will not block SSH
any time soon.

If they do you can set up a HTTPS website on your VPS with a secret proxy.

~~~
gruez
>I hope they will not block SSH any time soon

GFW already does that. it's not that hard either, if you're using ssh for
forwarding purposes, chances are you're using way more bandwidth than if
you're using it for teletype only.

~~~
Tepix
SSH can also be used for SCP...

~~~
funnyfacts365
And SFTP

------
coldcode
Could happen in any country, including the US, unless you have options to
connect to the internet which is not heavily controlled. Sadly in the US we
have only a few remaining ISPs with monopolies who in the near future will
likely gain even more power to restrict the internet for profit; after that
what is to stop the government from adding a few more "additions", like making
illegal connections to TOR or unapproved VPNs. Sadly the most vulnerable part
of the internet is the point where you connect. No matter what you do after
that, if you can't connect you are generally stuck.

~~~
marcoperaza
I don't think the number of ISPs is really relevant. The rule of law is pretty
strong in the United States. If the government made Tor illegal, and that law
withstood constitutional scrutiny, it wouldn't really matter if there was one
or one thousand ISPs.

~~~
rahrahrah
Yeah. I think that crypto-ideologues (although I'm not saying that the parent
is one) often underestimate the impact that the law has in practice on these
matters.

~~~
d0mine
You underestimate the selective use of law by the elites. How many bankers are
behind bars? Do you see anybody punished for starting a war under false
pretenses? for mass surveillance? for lying to Congress about it?

~~~
CurtMonash
I think the claim was along the lines that if you want to restrict people's
freedoms in this country, it's best to get a law passed allowing you to do so.
That's oversimplified, of course, as is common in such online discussions, but
it makes considerable practical sense.

Your claim seems focused on other categories of wrongdoing.

Now, the two areas could overlap in the future. To date, there's been a lot of
illegal surveillance that has gone unpunished, but few people have actually
suffered, at least in the US, because the government has been quite restrained
about its actual domestic use of the resulting information.

In the future, of course, the government might not show such restraint.

By "future" I mean, for example, the period starting next January 20.

------
kilroy123
I wonder if they can do the same thing they're doing in Iran? Beaming down
packets of internet content from satellite TV.

[http://wired.com/2016/04/ingenious-way-iranians-using-
satell...](http://wired.com/2016/04/ingenious-way-iranians-using-satellite-tv-
beam-banned-data/amp)

~~~
makomk
Probably not. That's funded by a foreign government (almost certainly the US
government) as a kind of propaganda tool against Iran. I don't think anyone's
interested in doing the same thing to Turkey currently.

~~~
kilroy123
I doubt it. Did you read the article? They badly _need_ funding and are having
a tough time keeping it afloat. I see no evidence to suggest foreign interests
at play.

~~~
makomk
Yes, I read the Wired article. It mentions the government funding. I'm
guessing the US because it's very much the kind of project they fund.

------
sandstrom
If you want to donate to Tor bridges/nodes, these are two alternatives:

\- [http://tor.noisebridge.net/](http://tor.noisebridge.net/)

\- [https://www.torservers.net/](https://www.torservers.net/)

------
bogomipz
This is the same President that turned to the internet - via Twitter and
Facetime when there was a coup attempt against him, asking for them to help.

[http://www.wsj.com/articles/erdogan-embraces-social-media-
to...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/erdogan-embraces-social-media-to-repel-
coup-attempt-in-u-turn-1468760698)

~~~
Yaggo
(Cannot read the paywalled article.)

I wonder how FaceTime was utilized, given that it's one-to-one link, not
social media.

~~~
tyingq
It was super low tech...a CNN Turk anchor held her phone up to a TV camera.
[http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2016/07/17/01/3658391B0000057...](http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2016/07/17/01/3658391B00000578-0-image-m-14_1468716660357.jpg)

------
rhlala
I wonder how many ℅ people using tor/vpn will still using it if it was
strongly punished by government(s) with jail for exemple..

------
walrus01
Remember a short time ago when there was a failed coup in turkey, and the NEXT
DAY, the regime fired 4000 judicial officials and civil servants? It's almost
as if they had the list of people ready to go before the false flag coup...
Nah,an autocratic regime would never do that!

------
kutkloon7
The arrest and torture of an exorbitant number of 'enemies of the state',
including judges, police officers, and teachers, indicates more important
problems in Turkey.

For some reason, a lot of Turks still seem to support Erdogan. The West
doesn't really care what he does, as long as Turkey takes care of most of the
refugees.

A disgusting European policy.

~~~
myf01d
Because there is now a sufficient majority of Turks who want to destroy the
secular Turkey, apply gradually more and more islamic country and get rid of
Turkey's within enemies: Secular people and Kurds. Erdogan is just listening
to the people like he says, he only additionally wants to destroy and
humiliate his personal and political enemies because he is a psycho.
Furthermore, he adores money, his family built an multi-billion empire during
his reign.

~~~
shsyqbaw
That's a good question: if there's a majority of Turks who support the regime,
what's the problem? Can't we like, leave them in peace? Do we have to impose
western politics everywhere in the world??

~~~
myf01d
The real question should be: Why does the US want to apply "democracy" and
"human rights" using all means including interventions and civil wars like in
Iraq, Syria and Libya but it acts as if there nothing happens for more
criminal regimes like in Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar?

~~~
Zenst
Indeed and does highlight a level of corruption in which money allows you to
get away with murder, most literally in some Middle Eastern countries you
mention. This and the EU's pokemon attitude to the European tectonic pklate of
got too collect them all, seems to allow some serious issues to get dismissed
and overlooked in Turkey alone.

As for Qatar and Saudi Arabia, again, if they were not rich countries would
they be allowed as much slack as they do.

Still, maybe people had enough of this level of corruption and double-
standards being allowed; Which may in part explain how people vote in today's
times.

------
danjoc
I wonder how much this has to do with tor rebranding from privacy service to
human rights service.

[https://medium.com/@virgilgr/tors-branding-pivot-is-going-
to...](https://medium.com/@virgilgr/tors-branding-pivot-is-going-to-get-
someone-killed-6ee45313b559)

------
towb
Nothing unexpected for the 2016 Turkey. With everything that goes on in there
now, it won't be too long until something really horrible happens.

Boycott everything turkish is the only thing we can do as normal persons I
guess. That is at least what I've done for a long while now.

~~~
spaceplane
Please don't. Poorer they are, more fanatic they get.

~~~
towb
The poorer they get, more reason to get rid of the leaders. And that is
something only the people can do.

Anyway, I can't justify it with what I know and what we hear almost daily now.

------
louithethrid
If only internet could be smuggled on the cellphones of citizens, one huge
encrypted package at a time, hidden away, and the infrastructure of this
spread like a virus- TOR could be everywhere.

------
edblarney
In my experience, these countries do not have the sophistication to do such
things on their own, they usually hire (often Western) outside firms to do
this.

I think it would be helpful if the press would 'name names' in terms of the
companies that are enabling this.

~~~
wfn
> _they usually hire (often Western) outside firms to do this._

Yep, such as Cisco which helps China, to quote Cisco's pitch slides, "combat
‘Falun Gong’ evil religion and other hostiles"
([https://www.wired.com/2008/05/leaked-cisco-
do](https://www.wired.com/2008/05/leaked-cisco-do) ;
[https://www.wired.com/images_blogs/threatlevel/files/cisco_p...](https://www.wired.com/images_blogs/threatlevel/files/cisco_presentation.pdf)
(PDF)).

~~~
edblarney
China definitely has the capabilities they need. They might get help from
Cisco, but they don't need to.

I worked in an F50 that sold services, and we were constantly having to 'help'
countries like Tunisia, Kazakstan etc. do some things we didn't want them to
do, we tried to steer clear of being involved but we could not in some
circumstances. But it wasn't that bad, it was mostly porn filtering and such.

~~~
bogomipz
What's an F50?

~~~
vurpo
I guess it means Fortune 50.

------
gaius
Tor was funded by the US State Department specifically so that anti-government
elements in foreign countries could plot against their equivalent of "the
establishment". Given the recent furore about "hackers" stealing the election,
how is it surprising that foreign governments don't want US interference in
their internal politics?

------
Roritharr
Is this a political post or a technical one?

~~~
bluesign
I think it is fair to say it is technical enough to be here

~~~
Roritharr
It surely is, but since this site lately has taken a stance against politics
here, I wanted to understand where the line is drawn.

~~~
dfgasfjhjhsdojj
The one week experiment ended early. Politics has been allowed again for
longer than the experiment ended - I think we are supposed to remain civil
though.

