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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
You're targetable either way, although in cases like Cuba the propagation rate via Internet vs. flash drives is probably different than the rest of the world.
Yeah, the Cuban government could plant a few Mickey Mouse cartoons inside those USB sticks, wait for them to spread, then call some USA corporation and have them arrest, extradite and sue the owners for hundreds of thousands of dollars or the equivalent in jail-time.
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)
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?
Well first, I'm behind 14 proxies. Good luck, assholes. Second, how do you know I didn't get watch listed? It's not like they're published. And I have gotten knocks on my door for criticizing my government... usually for campaign contributions. I know, ha ha, but more seriously, yes I've been visited by the police for criticism of the government. Oh I'm sorry, did that not fit with your worldview?
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?
I think it says that I'm not above suspecting my own government of engaging in the same activities that every other government does, simply because the popular media tells me it doesn't happen here.
i am certain there are whiny clueless characters like you in china, iran, cuba, etc too
According to you, they don't exist, you know, since they're all in jail.
the difference between them and you is they are petrified with fear to say a damn thing about their governments
I seem to recall a major student uprising in Iran... something about the Spring... oh gee, if I wasn't so clueless and whiny, I might remember the name. Oh gosh darn it.
don't be ignorant and count your blessings
Yes. I'll count my blessings... let's see... gay rights? Don't got those. Non-discrimination in choice of housing? Don't got that either. Free healthcare? Yeah no, that's not on the list either. The right to be free of unreasonable searches? Nope... that one's dead. Uhh... the right not to have the President excercise unilateral authority to bomb me using a drone while I'm in my own house because of an unreleased and unknown secret memo that he drafted giving himself the power? Wait... checking... nope, that one's not there either! Well, damn. Do I at least have the right criticize my government? Actually, no. Something about the ability of the government to secretly declare certain areas "national interest zones" and then arrest anyone who protests there, with no prior notification to the public...
But please, you were saying?
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
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"
Same place where he would plug a thumb drive or a removable memory or a small memory or a USB stick or memory stick or a memory drive.
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.
Then by now there should be nobody left.
Unless they're importing people to keep numbers up.
I call BS on that claim.
I couldn't help but notice that you criticized your government again without any apparent fear of repercussions from said government. 14 proxies? That's cute.
Parent got rightfully modded down not only for calling everyone assholes but then continuing to spew lies.
Here in Brazil we have many people like Yoani: Reinaldo Azevedo, Paulo Francis, Merval Pereira, even magazines like "Veja". All working hard to say that Brazil is "threatened by The Red Terror" and that the only salvation would be free and unrestricted capitalism (you should know the threat that is a capitalism practiced without limits...).
Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
You are correct in your main point. A Cuban would or damn well should be afraid to post something, anything, critical of the government online. And the phones are known to be tapped so you can't even say something critical of the government on the phone. Although I've never personally heard of anyone getting in trouble for that.
the difference between them and you is they are petrified with fear to say a damn thing about their governments
Naw. The Cubans aren't afraid. Not at all. They just don't publish stuff online or anywhere else critical of the government. Other than that they aren't worried about what you seem to think they are worried about. The whole 'don't worry be happy' meme is a lot more popular over there. What they are really worried about is having enough food to eat and other financial issues. Communism doesn't work very well for stuff like that. Well, really for anything other than maybe keeping crime down.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
What they are really worried about is having enough food to eat and other financial issues. Communism doesn't work very well for stuff like that.
Cuba's economic situation would be a lot better if they hadn't been economically blockaded by the US for the last fifty years.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
"I'm behind 14 proxies"
Your latency must suck.
Competition Good, Monopoly Bad.