

Help HN, lets make GitHub accessible again from India - eklavya

Please make the PM of India aware of this gigantic blunder in the name of security. No github means no work for me and I am sure a lot of you.<p>http:&#x2F;&#x2F;pmindia.gov.in&#x2F;en&#x2F;interact-with-honble-pm&#x2F;
======
prab97
This is the message I sent. If someone is lazy to write their own, please use
this as a template, make changes and send to the PM. Unfortunately, we can
send only upto 500 chars long messages. My message is 477 chars and
communicates the intent. If you want add/modify/remove something from/to the
message to make the message more effective.

Honorable Sir, Yesterday an order issued by DoT blocked 32 websites including
Github and Codepad which are used by scientists/engineers/researchers/students
for collaboration in academic/professional/research work. As an ambitious
engineer from India who is passionate towards nation building, I request you
to instruct concerned authorities to revisit the decision for blocking full
github.com website instead of just the specific pages which contained
objectionable material.

~~~
bosky101
This is the message i sent

    
    
        Should we ban pencils, because a terrorist wrote a threat on a paper? 
        This is exactly what has happened. 
        
        Honorable Sir, Yesterday an order issued by DoT blocked 32 websites 
        including Github which are used by scientists/engineers/researchers/students 
        for collaboration. 
        
        This is clearly an un-informed decision, and engineers across the 
        world are wondering how this was arm-twisted as a policy. 
        
        I have never interacted with the PMO, but I voice the opinion of 
        millions of engineers like me.

------
atmosx
Bypassing a mere DNS block such as this one, should be trivial for anyone with
basic network knowledge IMHO. I will offer a couple of solutions quickly:

1) Have you tried Tor[1]? Should be fast enough for Github push/pull and
browsing. You can route all your traffic easily through the Tor network or
even configure which requests (based on DNS) should be routed through the tor
network and which ones should not. There are other solutions as I2P (google
it).

2) You can buy a VPS and set-up a proxy from the Netherlands or the US, for 5
USD/month at Digital Ocean.

3) You can scan the internet for anonymous proxies, there are many lists
available.

The most secure and cheap solution of course is Tor.

UPDATE: Some people report that it's not a DNS level block?! Anyway, using Tor
should work for anyone. You can even setup a router running Tor and get over
with it, DNS requests are router through tor.

[1]
[https://www.torproject.org/about/overview](https://www.torproject.org/about/overview)

~~~
davidw
Sure, these things are usually easy to bypass, but addressing the root cause
is a good idea, long term.

~~~
esalman
+1. Also, these are not so easy to bypass for people with not-so-high level of
technical skills.

------
brickcap
This is a great initiative thanks. In the meantime would switching to google
dns help?

Also here is the clickable

[http://pmindia.gov.in/en/interact-with-honble-
pm/](http://pmindia.gov.in/en/interact-with-honble-pm/)

~~~
eklavya
Not a DNS level block so Google DNS doesn't work.

~~~
smurfpandey
I switched to Google DNS and it's working just fine.

~~~
eklavya
I must be unlucky then.

------
ivlad
Here is how to make git to use tor:
[http://oniondigest.wordpress.com/2010/04/16/using-git-
with-t...](http://oniondigest.wordpress.com/2010/04/16/using-git-with-tor/) so
you can push to Github. For browsing it, use Tor browser:
[https://www.torproject.org/](https://www.torproject.org/)

You are welcome.

I don't think India PM cares of you not able to use github when it comes to
what they think is national security.

------
jrockway
Off topic, but Indian English fascinates me. For example, "Honourable" is
abbreviated to "Hon'ble" everywhere on that site, saving very few letters. (Of
course, it's also somewhat weird to bestow a special formal title on someone,
and then abbreviate it out of laziness. If you don't type out their title, how
much are you really honoring them? English. Weird language.)

~~~
quesera
American English often abbreviates Honorable (the honorific for a judge or
magistrate) as "Hon.".

Which is also the colloquial shortening of the partners' pet name "Honey".

I have never received a reduced sentence after pointing this out.

------
shared4you
I'm getting an error message [1]:

"Sorry your session has expired. Kindly login again to continue."

even if I have just logged in. I cleared cookies, etc. but no use. And that
error text is in white font over pink background -- hard to read without
mouse-selecting.

[1]: [https://imgur.com/7aAViSu](https://imgur.com/7aAViSu)

------
nkishore
I see GitHub accessible to our team all day yesterday and today as well. A
news appeared that some of the sites where unblocked after the offending
material was removed and the websites complied to the governments ask.

I don't know yet what websites are unblocked.

~~~
joshschreuder
What was the offending material?

~~~
jezclaremurugan
Because they supposedly had anti India content from ISIS (sigh)

~~~
OedipusRex
AKA nothing changed and nothing was actually there.

~~~
Tobu
Name-checking terrorists is so thin it's transparent.

Also, the SourceForge link was for pastebin source code[0] and not an actual
pastebin.

IMHO it was a lazy request from the copyright lobby, which is seeking to
criminalize anonymous text and links. They don't care that it's insane, the
world isn't changed by being reasonable; at worst they'd have shifted the
Overton window and made the other wing of the lobby look sane. The politicians
barely care, and another level of jaded drones didn't bother to contact
anybody[1], put up a DNS block and went home.

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8820591](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8820591)

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8820289](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8820289)

------
sheetjs
> No github means no work for me and I am sure a lot of you

Out of curiosity, is bitbucket blocked? If not, why not use them as a mirror
and interact that way until github is available?

(I thought the whole point of DVCS was that your repo wasn't centralized)

~~~
nkishore
Do you have a github repo ?

If your release and branching is based on Git and all the work you did resides
there, it becomes difficult to switch horses mid stream. If your open source
contributors and have accept pull requests then the history gets lost.

Repo isn't centralized, its distributed amongst Github not across systems
(Github to Bitbucket or Cloudforge etc.)

~~~
sheetjs
You can use bitbucket with git. As far as the repo is concerned, all you need
to do is change the remote urls.

I understand if there are post-commit hooks that depend on github integration
and bitbucket integration is not available.

------
Arun2009
In addition to writing to the government and officials, everyone should also
push their ISPs to be more transparent about implementing internet censorship
diktats from the government. If we don't know that sites we're trying to
access are blocked and the reasons why, we won't be able to take up the matter
with the authorities.

I just called up my ISP (MTS) and made enough noise for them to hopefully take
notice.

------
mc_hammer
im curious what the % drop in # of commits is for the days its blocked.

~~~
atmosx
Generally speaking IMHO will be a drop in the ocean. If you're talking about
India-only devs/projects then you might have some drop but not substantial.
IMHO those who's job depend heavily on github are pushing/pulling code through
proxies already without even bothering about the silly block.

------
oglo
I made a chrome extension + desktop software a while ago so people can shield
themselves from this spontaneous blocking of websites and service. You can get
it from [http://getolive.org](http://getolive.org)

Hopefully, it will be of some help to you guys :)

------
dksidana
I am using airtel broardband and able to use github without any issue.

~~~
eklavya
I am on Bsnl and many isps lease from it, so many are affected.

------
geekam
I think the government Internet providers (MTNL etc.) have already blocked it.
I cannot access github without VPN.

~~~
chintan100
Can still access GitHub from BSNL.

------
bhaisaab
Checked four major ISPs, Github is accessible from India. Can anyone confirm
which ISP is (still) blocking it?

~~~
eager_noob
I use the Tata Nova DNS server and Github is still blocked here.

------
dShringi
Not blocked for me. Able to access through workplace network and home network
both.

------
kul_
Github is accessible with ACT also.

