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Paraguay Telco Hijacks DNS Before Elections
MrJones writes "In Paraguay we are at T-9 days to national elections. The ruling party has been in power for nearly 61 years (including more than 30 years of dictatorship). Now the state-run ADSL company is hijacking the DNS nationwide of a site that denounces the corruption in the party."
Hm.. yes.. but is there much to stop them from putting up "phony" exit nodes that also hijack the site?
Unfortunately, for most computer users, "Clicking the blue E" is the most they know about getting on the internet. Someone out there needs to create a really handy Active-X plugin that does TOR and put it out there for people to click on. I know, it'd probably cause more problems than it's worth, and may not even work that well as far as getting people to use it... perhaps someone else has a better idea on how to get some of these fundamental technologies out there to the unwashed masses? TV ads might do it...
In 1993, Internet pioneer John Gilmore said "the net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it", and we believed him. In 1996, cyberlibertarian John Perry Barlow issued his 'Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace' at the World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland, and online. He told governments: "You have no moral right to rule us, nor do you possess any methods of enforcement that we have true reason to fear."
At the time, many shared Barlow's sentiments. The Internet empowered people. It gave them access to information and couldn't be stopped, blocked or filtered. Give someone access to the Internet, and they have access to everything. Governments that relied on censorship to control their citizens were doomed.
Today, things are very different. Internet censorship is flourishing.
Read more at: Internet Censorship.
never heard of Tarija, Bolivia, right?
yeah trade one broken DNS for another except opendns shows adverts, resolves everything (breaking apps) and tracks every DNS request just like spyware except the t&c does mention this if you read it
to be honest you have to be ignorant and stupid if you think opendns is a solution to anything (except the owners pocket books)
In fatc, the issue now at Paraguay is different.
China is a communist country, where manipulating the media is justified by their ideology.
Paraguay is a country ruled by a conservative coalition. Their means of manipulating the media are much more occidental, and ruled by market news.
In other words, what happens now in Paraguay is just an expanded version of what happens in most occidental countries. Big interests control everything, corrupt government people follow those interests, and use the weight of government + corporations to keep in power.
In South America, we call that "la rosca". In the US it would be "coporate lobbysts".
What I mean is that you shouldn't look at what happens in Paraguay as a third world thing. To me, it's a risk we all have.
Same thing happened in Venezuela last year during the last referendum (which Chavez lost, BTW). The newly nationalized CANTV (the main Telco) hijacked all of its customers DNS to block access to the two biggest anti-chavez websites (NoticieroDigital and Noticias24). Nothing new here but good, old fascist techniques....
Wow. Some tinfoil hatter had mod points today. I'm not even going to qualify your ramblings as theories. They're paranoid delusions. Not to mention, completely wrong, even in the questions you're asking. Sheesh.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
I'm not trying to pretend I know what Gilmore MEANT by his statement, but the way the first statement reads to me I certainly think is true. (I'm not saying there aren't bad things going on we should fight against - only that the statement is only false for a very idealist and broad interpretation.)
/., that's part of routing around, and so is when we blog about it. This includes us doing hard work to keep it that way.
First let's strip away youthful idealism - routing around it doesn't mean it NEVER works or magically disappears - it just means it's much less likely to work, easier to fix, etc.
Second, let's be clear that "the Internet" includes all of us. When someone involved with that site posts it to
Finally, while it's obviously possible to keep information _out_ (away from some people), it's very hard to keep information _in_ on the internet. If you're going to (for the purposes of this discussion) strictly interpret the word censorship until it was only one of these things, it would definitely be the attempt to keep information in.
Traditionally censorship is keeping you from printing a newspaper (or killing you if you do) - that's different than going around town and taking away all the newspapers you can find, which is what's really going on here. The second technique only completely silences the _author_ if the newspaper only circulates inside that town.
Again, I'm not saying this isn't bad... but in pre-Internet censorship we wouldn't even HEAR about this story. Wikileaks is a great example of the Internet being positive in this regard. The world knows about Tibet. The Great Firewall doesn't even really keep people from viewing outside content - you just need a little technical savvy - and a lot of bravery! - to view outside content.
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Try living in the US. You think we're in the picture with honest "news"?
Which only goes to show what my old bolshie Uncle Ivan used to say. "Kid," he'd say, "nobody believes in capitalism. Nobody believes in socialism. It's socialism for me, and capitalism for you!" Ivan may have been a red, but he was a cynic first and foremost, and that keeps you honest.
In the end, there is only one thing that really matters in any system: transparency. At least if the system is supposed to be run for the benefit of the people who live under it. You can be all for the proletariat, or all for the free market, but if you're pulling the wool of the peoples' eyes, you aren't any different from anybody else running a con behind high sounding priciples.
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