There are a category of things that are technically impossible until a burly man threatens to break your arm if you don't do them, and a category of things that are still impossible.
Doesn't help your arm, but when they're asking for things in that second category, it doesn't help them either.
I use VPN most of the time. My work requires it, and I like Mozilla VPN for personal privacy. (Note: it has ad blocking DNS built in which is nice!)
I occasionally get blocked by websites or services, especially streaming apps, if I'm on VPN. I suspect they're just looking out for Amazon/Microsoft/etc IP address blocks. It's very annoying
Depends on how you define "reliably". You can get pretty damn close by triangulating on traffic patterns and browser fingerprinting. There is a lot of research in this area. But it'll never be perfect.
Yes but isn't it suspicious that all your traffic goes to the friend's house and not to Facebook and Reddit? If you claim it is not a VPN does it mean your friend is providing illegal unlicensed hosting? That's even worse.
Split tunnel is a thing, and in that instance the platform required to comply (like a porn site) doesn’t have any way to see all your traffic to determine if it’s a VPN/proxy connection or not.
You do not need to know "reliably". You can block everything remotely suspicious, and in case someone is blocked by mistake, they can file an application with all necessary documentation proving the connection is not a VPN.
>As we’ve said time and time again: the internet will always route around censorship.
Is this still true, or has it become a truism? It seems nations like Iran and China (and events like Kashmir come to mind) have progressed the state-of-the-art and playbook to where we can't actually say it definitively will route around it.
Now seeing that the US and EU are flirting with these similar restrictions it's making me wonder how we'll be able to keep hold of these principles.
Maybe my concern with that adage is ultimately its passive voice, since it takes 'active' action by people to give us those options, and will probably take more actions by more people to keep it alive now.
The layer 2 and 3 of ISO/OSI stack does indeed "route around censorship". But the Internet as we know it is all Layer 7, and it's as centralized as it gets.
That's why regulators often aim straight at Layer 7 entities - companies providing consumer services over the web. Because no matter how unblockable the route between you and some server is, it doesn't mean anything when the server itself is refusing to talk to you.
Is China that successful at it lately? I see a lot of posters and info from China getting around the great firewall, and my understanding was that they don't really care if 1% of users do that so long as it mostly holds and only the technical minded or really fixated will see it.
So there is a route around censorship, but maybe the public doesn't really care about it.
I'm not sure whether it's 1% or 0.1% or only Xi Jinpin can access YouTube. China can adjust the surveillance level dynamically. It's a matter of cost and effect.
There is also the difficult reality that the government doesn't need to block vpn entirely, but just make it a credible risk of being detected. If you have to worry about the state police barging into your home, you are likely to decide it isn't worth the risk and self-regulate.
I’m pretty sure with Iran, and I assume other authoritarian nations, the state controls what traffic can and cannot leave their borders. When they go dark, they just effectively cut off access to the outside world entirely. Sure they may have their own state run servers that provide some services, but then they can inspect and manage all traffic being routed inside the country. Don’t have to try and find the VPN if there’s just no traffic.
I suppose Utah could impose some sort of strategy here, but would be so burdensome and anti-American I’m not sure they could pull it off. Instead of a blacklist of sites dictated by the site provider, you go the other way where all Utah ISPs maintain a whitelist of IPs permitted to Utah citizens. Any traffic attempting to reach a non-white listed IP, would be rejected.
Doesn't help your arm, but when they're asking for things in that second category, it doesn't help them either.
Is it even possible to reliably know that a connection is from a VPN? Anyone can proxy through a random hosting provider.
I use VPN most of the time. My work requires it, and I like Mozilla VPN for personal privacy. (Note: it has ad blocking DNS built in which is nice!)
I occasionally get blocked by websites or services, especially streaming apps, if I'm on VPN. I suspect they're just looking out for Amazon/Microsoft/etc IP address blocks. It's very annoying
Since when do you have to pull permits to put a server on the web?
Is this still true, or has it become a truism? It seems nations like Iran and China (and events like Kashmir come to mind) have progressed the state-of-the-art and playbook to where we can't actually say it definitively will route around it.
Now seeing that the US and EU are flirting with these similar restrictions it's making me wonder how we'll be able to keep hold of these principles.
Maybe my concern with that adage is ultimately its passive voice, since it takes 'active' action by people to give us those options, and will probably take more actions by more people to keep it alive now.
The layer 2 and 3 of ISO/OSI stack does indeed "route around censorship". But the Internet as we know it is all Layer 7, and it's as centralized as it gets.
That's why regulators often aim straight at Layer 7 entities - companies providing consumer services over the web. Because no matter how unblockable the route between you and some server is, it doesn't mean anything when the server itself is refusing to talk to you.
So there is a route around censorship, but maybe the public doesn't really care about it.
I suppose Utah could impose some sort of strategy here, but would be so burdensome and anti-American I’m not sure they could pull it off. Instead of a blacklist of sites dictated by the site provider, you go the other way where all Utah ISPs maintain a whitelist of IPs permitted to Utah citizens. Any traffic attempting to reach a non-white listed IP, would be rejected.
A VPN/proxy could exist at almost any single address at any given time.