
Show HN: Cecibot – Censorship Circumvention Bot - boramalper
https://cecibot.com/index.html
======
boramalper
Hello HN, author here!

I am a developer from Turkey, currently residing abroad for studying CompSci.
Throughout the years I watched the Internet censorship in my country getting
worse and worse each and every day under the Islamist regime of Erdoğan, to
the extent that of Wikipedia getting blocked.

As they _improved_ their methods of censoring (and _worsening_ the life of
their citizens), such as from DNS blocking to blocking VPNs today, I was
afraid that there any _direct_ solution can (and will) one day get blocked
(for instance, Tor website is currently blocked in Turkey but it works if you
manage to install it somehow, whereas you'll need a bridge to connect to the
Tor network in Iran if memory serves me well).

I came up with the idea (though not sure of its uniqueness) to use channels of
everyday communication (such as e-mail, Telegram, (Facebook) Messenger...) to
circumvent censorship. Because "even under the most repressive regimes, people
do need to communicate with others, both within and outside of the country."

I'd love to hear your feedback!

Bora

P.S.
[https://github.com/boramalper/cecibot](https://github.com/boramalper/cecibot)

~~~
Fnoord
Are you afraid for repercussions for writing the software and/or your
statement(s) about the regime?

~~~
boramalper
On the one hand, yes I am afraid, but on the other, I am sick & tired of
silence (which quickly leads into learned helplessness).

I think it's better to speak up and to face the consequences than to see
(first) your country (and then the world) ruined. I am currently studying
abroad in UK and even though they cannot directly harm me (though they can
hurt me through my family and beloved ones living back home).

I kept thinking about the idea of _settling_ in a nicer country, but then, I
realise that people (in the West) have paid the price of their freedom (if not
their wealth), and then idea of "(e|im)migrating" doesn't feel like a solution
any more but postponement of the problem, whose responsibility is on my (our)
shoulders and no one else's.

More than what you asked for I assume, sorry. =)

~~~
Fnoord
Brave of you, good luck with your efforts.

------
Yetanfou
The terms of service seem a bit odd to me:

    
    
       I do not tolerate:
    
       - Exploitation of _children_ (including child pornography)
       - _Religious_ terrorism
    

May I suggest changing this into something a bit less specific? The way it is
written now you seem to be OK with political terrorism and exploitation of any
other group. Just state you won't hesitate to report obvious criminal activity
and leave it to the user to decide whether they feel they can trust you.

~~~
random4369
> Just state you won't hesitate to report obvious criminal activity

Bypassing censorship is a criminal activity in a number of countries. Pick
censorship or pick an internet with illegal content. You can't have a world
with neither.

~~~
Yetanfou
If you don't trust the tool, don't use it. The fact that '[b]ypassing
censorship is a criminal activity in a number of countries' seems to be what
drove the creator of this tool to its creation so I assume that he will not
report you for 'bypassing censorship'. This does not mean it is impossible of
course, a smart Erdolf-follower could make a similar tool (or even this one)
with the purpose of catching those who try to escape censorship. In the end it
comes down to trust, no matter which tool you use.

------
jstanley
This is really cool, nice work.

In addition to censorship-circumvention, it also provides a way to read the
content of potentially-malicious sites without risk of browser vulnerabilities
being exploited, and without revealing your IP address, User-Agent, etc.

Now we can all browse the web like we're Richard Stallman :)

EDIT:

> try downloading it, if it is a file smaller than 5 MiB;

I found that even pages smaller than 5MB get rendered to PDF.

Are you using headless Chrome or similar to implement this? It seems
Javascript isn't getting executed (which is probably wise, I was just
surprised it renders the pages so faithfully if it's not also running some
sort of engine that will execute JS).

(Update: UA is "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML,
like Gecko) HeadlessChrome/67.0.337")

EDIT2:

It doesn't seem to support chunked transfer-encoding:

> Your request [...] has been unsuccessful due to following error:

> file size unknown: "content-length" header is missing

~~~
heinrich5991
>it also provides a way to read the content of potentially-malicious sites
without risk of browser vulnerabilities being exploited

PDFs have the same kind of vulnerabilities, they can even execute JS (JS is
probably not contained in the ones generated by the author).

>and without revealing your IP address, User-Agent, etc.

Yep.

>> try downloading it, if it is a file smaller than 5 MiB;

>I found that even pages smaller than 5MB get rendered to PDF.

I believe the text is supposed to mean "if it's not a web page but a file
[offered for download], it will download the file if it's less than 5MB".

~~~
Yetanfou
Some PDF _readers_ can execute JS which can be embedded in PDF files. Just use
a reader which doesn't support embedded JS (or switch it off if it does
support it) to avoid this whole class of vulnerabilities.

------
programmarchy
Seems like this just creates a honeypot where censorship regimes can easily
detect people attempting to circumvent their systems. Use this tool and you're
liable to be a list.

Maybe combined with a form of stenography, this could be more useful.

------
dannyw
This is a cool bot. I wonder how well this concept can work for two way
communication: not just GETting webpages but also allowing messaging when it’s
blocked.

------
Cenk
Excellent idea! Congrats on launching, and I love the minimalist website.

Quick note, /ar/ and /zh/ don’t currently seem to work.

~~~
boramalper
Thanks. =) It's currently being translated into Arabic, and I'm yet to find a
Chinese speaker (who is willing to translate).

------
werber
Religious terrorism... What about domestic terrorism?

~~~
smoll
I think the point is that the label of “terrorist” is often forced upon those
using justified force against a violent oppressor.

To use an example from American history, the American revolutionaries (AKA
“patriots”) were almost certainly seen as terrorists from the perspective of
Great Britain and its loyal subjects.

