
Project Shield: DDoS Protection by Google for news and human rights orgs - david_shaw
https://www.google.com/ideas/products/project-shield/
======
kriro
""" So far we’ve protected hundreds of news organizations and human rights
websites that have faced attacks aimed at censoring free expression. By
protecting these sites, we’ve helped to keep vital information online during
elections, major crises and conflicts. """

The "major crisis" part of that sentence might be overlooked by some people
but it's actually pretty important. It's a well known problem that accidental
DDoS happens during crisis situations (if you read a lot of crisis related
academic papers you'll see Twitter infrastructure mentioned as very valuable
for news updates). The Germanwings crash was a recent example, the official
sites were accidentally DDosed and Twitter served as an emergency news
propagation platform.

The nasty thing about a crisis is that you usually have your hands full with
all sorts of other stuff and keeping up web infrastructure slides down on the
todo list and/or it comes unexpected and IT isn't prepared. It's often not
part of regular planning (this is changing a bit).

So yeah I hope they open it up for other organizations and "switching it on"
will become a reasonably fast process.

~~~
codecondo
How do you accidentally DDoS something?

~~~
icot
This happens in my country every New Years Eve with the telephone/cell
networks. Communication networks are in general designed for a certain base
capacity and foreseen spikes withing certain limits.

Imagine all the people in your near proximity wanting to use their phones at
the same time...

Another example is the 'hug of death' small (unprepared) web sites suffer when
exposed to legit traffic due to being mentioned in HN, Reddit, etc.

~~~
corobo
It also happens within the electrical grid here in the UK when popular TV
shows and major sporting events finish and everyone flicks their kettle on.
Sometimes the demand can be so huge we have to borrow power from France to
cover it

"Grid employees must also be familiar with popular soap-opera storylines as
one might cause a sudden rise in demand"

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_pickup](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_pickup)

------
moepstar
This seems to only be for human rights orgs, news and election -related sites.

[https://projectshield.withgoogle.com/public/#application-
for...](https://projectshield.withgoogle.com/public/#application-form)

~~~
dang
Thanks, we updated the title to say that.

------
xxdesmus
2013 ->
[http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2013/10/21/googles...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2013/10/21/googles-
project-shield-will-offer-free-cyberattack-protection-to-hundreds-of-at-risk-
sites/)

------
jacquesm
CloudFlare has extensive anti DDoS measures as well.

~~~
ceejayoz
And a harder (in the good way) line on freedom of speech. They've been
criticized for hosting sites from Anonymous to ISIS/Al-Qaeda. Media
organizations should find a pretty good partner in them.

~~~
x5n1
Google acting for this sort of thing is right in line with their association
with the Council for Foreign Relations which basically runs foreign policy in
the United States.

[http://www.cfr.org/staff/b13037](http://www.cfr.org/staff/b13037)

------
junto
Devils advocate here. Would wikileaks qualify?

------
draugadrotten
Isn't Google creating an indirect security risk for the reader here by
funneling all sensitive HTTP accesses through one service? Google logs will
now have information on who is reading human rights material that is in need
of protection from censorship. If someone sets out to index the readership,
it's now sufficient to get the whole list of readers from Google by legal or
illegal means.

~~~
kpcyrd
Same thing applies to cloudflare. Even HN is proxied through them and
connections are decrypted at their servers. Looks like nobody cares.

------
SEJeff
Seems like this is going to be a huge blow for cloudflare if they open this up
past the initial scope.

~~~
xxdesmus
This was originally announced in October 2013 by the way. CloudFlare is still
doing OK so far.

------
themeek
Please also see the reams of discussion in this thread from earlier today:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9679674](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9679674)

------
lucb1e
Page is completely blank for me with some darkblue background. Any idea what's
going on? (Using the Tor browser, if that helps.)

------
adrianbg
The front lines are online.

------
paulhauggis
I wonder if they will support news sites that don't align with their political
views.

~~~
paulhauggis
What I said is the truth. Google has been known to sensor pages based on
political view points and not sensor in the same situation when it is in their
favor.

I forgot. Too many google employees here on HN.

~~~
groby_b
[citation needed]

~~~
paulhauggis
[http://thesop.org/story/politics/2009/11/25/outrage-
google-c...](http://thesop.org/story/politics/2009/11/25/outrage-google-
censors-michelle-obama-monkey-pic.php)

Google censored Michelle Obama monkey pictures. While this is in poor taste,
all of the Bush monkey pics were never censored. Even worse were the results
for Santorum, which I'm sure the employees of Google thought was hilarious.

More recently:

[http://www.thenewamerican.com/tech/computers/item/20408-goog...](http://www.thenewamerican.com/tech/computers/item/20408-google-
s-new-algorithm-modern-version-of-old-fashioned-censorship)

"The truth algorithm that Google researchers are developing will compare
websites to a vast store of information the corporation has been compiling
over the years"

Almost nothing in this world is black and white. When one organization decides
that they have the the best version of the "truth", it's pretty scary.

Facebook also censors with political motivation:

[http://dailycaller.com/2014/10/20/facebook-marks-yahoo-
story...](http://dailycaller.com/2014/10/20/facebook-marks-yahoo-story-on-
crowd-walking-out-of-obama-speech-as-spam/)

The Obama campaign even used spam techniques during the campaign:

[http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2012/10/03/obama-
to-...](http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2012/10/03/obama-to-
supporters-spam-facebook-twitter/)

Facebook allowed it during his campaign, but have since changed the rules. If
anyone else did this, the campaign would have been shut down immediately.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised, since Zuckerberg even tried to get his
employees to read the propaganda filled book by the Chinese president:

[http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2014/12/08...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2014/12/08/why-
does-mark-zuckerberg-want-facebook-employees-to-read-the-chinese-presidents-
book/)

It's just more examples of political leaders being in bed with our media
companies. Everybody talks about corruption and the 1%, but nobody seems to
care about this.

------
calvintennant
"for people who wants to censor" AAARRRRGH. Grammar.

------
ddon
Can't open :) looks like it is under DDOS :)

------
funkyy
Did Google just closed similar service that was intended to speed up sites and
secure them against attacks? How anyone can trust Google if they just keep
closing useful services without blinking an eye.

