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Cubans Evade Censorship By Exchanging Flash Drives
concealment sends this quote from an article about evading internet censorship with the sneakernet: "Dissident Cuban blogger Yoani Sanchez on Saturday told newspaper publishers from around the Western Hemisphere that 'nothing is changing' in Cuba’s ossified political system and that 'the situation of press freedom in my country is calamitous.' But Sanchez said underground blogs, digital portals and illicit e-magazines proliferate, passed around on removable computer drives known as memory sticks. The small computer memories, also known as flash drives or thumb drives, are dropped into friendly hands on buses and along street corners, offering a surprising number of Cubans access to information. 'Information circulates hand to hand through this wonderful gadget known as the memory stick,' Sanchez said, 'and it is difficult for the government to intercept them. I can't imagine that they can put a police officer on every corner to see who has a flash drive and who doesn't.'"
The delivery speed of these underground blogs is actually not bad. A memory stick with 64GB of material -- a whole library that would take a lifetime to read -- can be walked across town in less time than it would take to beam it across Cuba's slow Internet. What's more, it can be read at one's convenience is virtually impossible for someone to snoop and see what they are reading (ala Facebook / Google / Feds). It is amazing at how fast data is moved around nowadays compared to the last few thousand years For example, the KJV Bible is 4.35MB in size and it used to take the scribes a year to make a single copy. It would also cost a centurion's annual salary. (I studied Near Eastern Archeology in school.) Now, many times that amount of data can be copied in mere moments. An entire "subversive" library in Cuba can spread like wildfire even at walking speeds.
How many word phrases do you know for a removable storage device?
I got this flash drive from a Cuban and was instructed to relay this message here.
Hello my friends,
I would have gotten first post if the stupid messenger got to the computer on time.
Regards
Anonymous Cuban
With Venezuela's only remaining independent tv station stated to be sold to a government sympathizer next month, the country is going in the same direction as Cuba.
Despite export controls, one has to wonder if they'd be better off protecting themselves w/ encryption on these drives, in case of undesired interception. It's unfortunate that encryption bans can't distinguish between malicious government intent and citizens avoiding the restrictions applied by the same oppressive government.
$ man woman *
-bash:
What about her? She has lots of money (way more than any cuban can have), and lots of help by the CIA & friends (various "pro-USA" NGOs), she doesn't care about "censorship", she only cares about money. She's just a troll. But she won't say that, of course.
Poor Yoani! She can't talk! Except that that is bullshit, you can read her blog, her articles in international, US govt.-backed or associated, right wing media, she manages to get out of the country when she wants, etc. And she GETS PAID for doing that.
Let's not talk about most "journalists" and their "morals."
Seems like "defending cubans" and their "freedom of speech" is highly lucrative. I can only dream having her money...
Sometimes a big problem can have a simple solution.
I can't imagine that they can put a police officer on every corner to see who has a flash drive and who doesn't.'"
Why not? The United States does. We already have given the police broad authority to stop and search people for flash drives, mobile phones, or other electronic gear without warrant or cause. If a "free" country like the United States can do this, what makes people think Cuba can't (or won't)?
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
I'm from the era in which 8" floppy diskettes were used and passed around. So here we are almost 4 decades later and Cuba's Sneakernet is saving the day. Glad to see it.
I deny that I have not avoided attaining the opposite of that which I do not want.
I'm still not quite sure what this new-fangled device is they use in Cuba to pass along information. A "memory stick"? "thumb drive"? "Flash drive"? "removable" or "small" "computer memories"? This is all just too much, please explain using a car analogy.
What better vector?
Similar techniques were used in the old Soviet Union and former eastern bloc countries, called samizdat, except that with today's technology it's even easier. A US$40 64 GB flash drive can hold a lot of data, more text than a person could read in their lifetime, and to copy data from one to another would take only minutes. With a program like Truecrypt it even becomes possible to hide such incriminating data on it without anyone being the wiser. The only way to restrict this practice would be to ban or regulate all computers and computer equipment the way printers were, and I doubt that this is in any way feasible for Cuba.
Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnête homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre.
So it's a trivial process by the O.S. to determine who has every used a particular Thumb-drive, now add virus scanning software which uploads serial numbers and MD5 signatures of all files then you'll realize that you're screwed.
But, seriously, with freedom of expression being attacked or chilled to silence, and government and corporate snooping on who says what and who looks at what, and insane laws for information sharing and consumption crimes...
INFORMATION IS THE NEW ILLICIT DRUGS!
We will need "mules" to carry information that should be legal across borders.
I forecast that porn will be the new marijuana -- where a few over-enthusiastic politicians might manage to make it illegal to possess or distribute, and a society convinced that's the right course, until decades pass, and new generations reverse the gross injustice.
Every time someone posts about some awful dictatorship like Cuba, someone on Slashdot invariably equates them to the US. I like putting freedom in "scare quotes," that was a nice touch, but also really lazy. You basically did not have to substantiate or prove your point at all, yet you still got 3 points, phenomenal. I am sorry, but having to swap forbidden books using flash drives dwarfs whatever first-world problem crawled up your posterior and made you feel like you could ever possibly understand what it is like to live in a mind-controlling, life-or-death, blighted country like Cuba.
--"You are your own God"--
Dont use an installed os and use a bootable disc os instead.
It is like a clown car; it fits a lot.
Cuba is also like a clown car. It's driven by silly people in circles.
__
Big apple, new Yorik, undig it, something's unrotting in Edenmark.
Yoani Sanchez is obviously not an independent blogger, as she can afford translation of her blog in 20 languages. She must be backed by some bigger entity, but which one? And in what extent does she speaks for who is paying?
Perhaps flash drive helps evading censorship, but I wonder if the widespread usage could not just be a workaround for poor network coverage. Everyone use a flash drive when hit by network connectivity problems.
Movies and music for example .....
JumpShot
I can't imagine that they can put a police officer on every corner to see who has a flash drive and who doesn't.
Bah. If the regime truly can't crack down on this in an effective way, it only indicates that they have grown spineless and unable to contemplate drastic measures. Here's how you deal with "flash drive samizdat":
1. Ban possession of flash drives, with very stiff penalties (e.g. capital punishment).
2. Do random spot pat-downs and dwelling searches. Also follow up on any tips.
The idea is to make getting caught a possibility - not likely, but not outlandish, either - and making it hurt really bad, so that most people would think twice before participating. It won't completely shut the network down, but it'll make it very small, and will exclude the majority of the population from having day-to-day access to it, which is good enough.
Alternatively, if you want people using computers, and need them to be able to own flash drives, require them to be registered, and make the possession of a drive not registered to you a crime with a very stiff penalty.
Cubans aren't doing any of this. Why would they? They have free health care, the capitalist pig dogs were chased out so long ago most Cubans can't remember them, their per capita energy use is really low, high literacy prevails, they have no RIAA, no middle-east conflicts to fight... what would a Cuban possibly have to say that might offend one of their wonderful apparatchiks?
Commie-hating 'murikans around here, I swear.
please note you just freely criticized the us govt, from within the usa, and no one stopped you, no one watch listed you, no one knocked on your door, no one cares
understand the difference?
you should. and you should value it. because it actually is a significant, material difference between the usa and repressive countries
in your whiny clueless post you have exercised a luxury many people in this world wish they had. and you don't even fucking notice. what does that say about your level of awareness and knowledge about the world?
the usa certainly has problems. the usa is certainly not perfect. but on this measure: freedom of expression, especially on religious and political matters, the usa is heads and shoulders above the likes of cuba
i am certain there are whiny clueless characters like you in china, iran, cuba, etc too
the difference between them and you is they are petrified with fear to say a damn thing about their governments
don't be ignorant and count your blessings
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway.
Tanenbaum, Andrew S. (1996). Computer Networks. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall. p. 83. ISBN 0-13-349945-6.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a Yank Tank full of flash drives hurtling down the Carretera Central.
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
> Cubans Evade Censorship By Exchanging Flash Drives
No, the are not evading censorship, they are infecting their computers with some advanced USB-borne malware like Stuxnet. You see, nation states are NOT stupid, else they would not be continously in existance for something like 5000 years.
67 posts and no one has mentioned TOR yet? Everyone above has geek credentials suspended for a week.
On top of doing this, I suggest creating a TOR site mirroring all this material. The USB sticks can include the Tor Browser Bundle for all platforms and a txt file (or better yet, bookmarks) with the urls. Maybe also a note saying "Be patient, anonymous browsing is *slower*"
Can we change Serial Numbers then? I'm been looking for a simple command-line program for this.
Just for the fun to see if it's even possible, or if it's set in stone in hardware... im curius.
"Help me internet - you're my only hope"
Wait. We were told there were no vehicles, no frigdes and of course no computers under communism. Where the hell would a cuban plug a flash drive?
Mod parent up! I'm sorry you got downvoted. I was going to add a comment about the "no-fly-zones" added around wherever the president is flown, but those are usually covered by prior notifications as NoTAMs and TFR's (Temporary Flight Restrictions). Except for when the Prez makes an unscheduled flight and screws everyone over by landing at a major airport near other airports, effectively closing down that and the surrounding airport within 30 nautical miles for scheduled flights (10 nautical miles for unscheduled flights). They also put TFRs around big events like the Superbowl and televised golf classics (and also around big hollywood weddings to restrict helicopters used by paparzazi to photograph the stars).
So, after 5 years without Fidel nothing has changed huh?
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/06/world/americas/06cuba.html?ref=cuba&_r=0
I imagine that most of you are like me and have a drawer full of thumb drives that will never be used. Is anyone accepting these and sneaking them into Cuba? Or do they have all they want and need already?
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
" I can't imagine that they can put a police officer on every corner to see who has a flash drive and who doesn't.'" Wanna bet?
Thanks for explaining that, grandpa...
The government could distribute malware infected drives themselves. It isn't as though the Cuban underground isn't full of double agents and provacatuers. The malware will of course scream it's head off to the mothership anytime it finds itself on a network connected machine. To be sure, the tech savvy can avoid this but the distribution of the savvy in the underground just like in all other walks of life will be concentrated on one end.
All you do is declare that you can sieze any memory stick or computer to "combat terrorism".
Look, the "censorship" of the media in Cuba is NO DIFFERENT to the censorship that you get anywhere else. AlJazeera is banned in the USA, Abu Hamza was extradited because he preached against christianity and the western governments, asking them to be torn down in the UK. The police kettle protestors until an accident and then use that to proclaim the protesters were getting violent (yeah, hitting back is violence...).
What is being censored are no different than "terrorist cells" in the USA, UK, France, ....
But because Cuba is a proof of how communism CAN WORK, it gets demonised.
It's the same with the national postal services. They demonstrate how government can do a job better than the private industry, so the government has to kill it by mandating it jump through hoops to kill the service off and proclaim that it failed because private business is the only way to run a successful business.
i wonder whats on the drives. Is it folders of content organized by subject? ... to other flash users and to the public internet.
Would be cool if they had a way for people forwarding messages
Like UUCP.
You know, the private businesses that got kicked out of Cuba because they were so totalitarian that a popular uprising and revolt happened. Indeed, it was very very much the same as the USA when kicking out the UK (or later on, India's independence uprising against the UK, again).
They want their fiefdoms and slaves back. They want the billions to themselves, not to go to the people of Cuba.
So they push and create a fake controversy abroad and, genuinely, exhort treason against the state (which is illegal in EVERY country) and criminal attacks (much like the IRA in the UK) to try and throw out the POPULAR DEMOCRATICALLY ELECTED government.
You know when you pretended you'd done some good in Gulf War 2 by proclaiming you were "bringing democracy to the middle east"? Well why are you so hell bent on removing democracy from Cuba and Venezuela? Is there only a limited amount of democracy and you want to save it up for the middle east?
You can in Linux, but probably not in Windows.
Then by now there should be nobody left.
Unless they're importing people to keep numbers up.
I call BS on that claim.
So has (RFC1149) http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1149 been modified to cover sneakernet yet?
And the USA wanted their keylogger trojan to be unrecognised by anti-virus scanners. Many complied, otherwise they would be extraordinarily renditioned if necessary and prosecuted for criminal acts of their foreign country by allowing US citizens to buy their product without it being broken.
Just been to Cuba last week. First, there actually _is_ some sort of policeman or at least official at every street corner. Second, given how people wait in line for things like bread or shampoo, and how the national currency (cuban peso) won't buy much, I wonder how many devices people actually have to read blogs, let alone read an SD card. Last week, I have seen more horse-drawn cars and bicycles on very bumpy roads than modern IT devices. Computers that people do have are at businesses such as hotels (for tourists), at airport checkpoints and the like.