Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Turkey Heightens Twitter Censorship with Mandated IP Blocking

Posted by timothy on from the until-tomorrow dept.

The Net may have briefly routed around Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdoan's DNS-based anti-Twitter censorship, but the minister's next move has been to mandate that Turkish ISPs block Twitter's assigned IP addresses. Reports Ars Technica: " This move essentially erases Twitter from the Internet within Turkey—at least to those people who don’t have access to SMS messaging, a foreign virtual private network or Web proxy service, or the Tor anonymizing network. 'We can confirm that Turkey is now blocking the IP addresses of Twitter after the previous DNS blocking technique proved ineffective,' said Doug Madory, of the Internet monitoring company Renesys, in an e-mail to Ars. A Turkish government webpage shows that there is an IP address block order in effect for 199.16.156.6, the primary IP address for twitter.com."

28 of 102 comments (clear)

  1. Whack-a-mole by Rinisari · · Score: 3, Interesting

    And now, if Twitter wants to, it can make Turkey play whack-a-mole by moving IPs every time one gets blocked...

    --
    Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
    1. Re:Whack-a-mole by mysidia · · Score: 5, Insightful

      And now, if Twitter wants to, it can make Turkey play whack-a-mole by moving IPs every time one gets blocked...

      Perhaps someone can persuade Twitter to get a cloudflare account, and use GeoDNS to send Turkey users to some IP addresses shared by a large number of legitimate websites, in order to maximize the amount of collateral damage Turkey will inflict if it keeps attempting to ban Twitter by blocking IP addresses.

  2. Good luck with that. by pla · · Score: 2

    Well now! That should buy them a whole five minutes of government-mandated third-worlditude. Good job, boys!

    Remember, if they outlaw Twitter, only outlaws (and the Turkish President... And... Okay, just about everyone) will have Tweets!

  3. Those who refuse to learn by mudshark · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Cue the reverse proxy mirror sites in 3...2...1

    --
    In other news, astrophysicists have announced that they now know what all that dark matter is: it's stupidity.
    1. Re:Those who refuse to learn by houstonbofh · · Score: 3, Informative

      It also caused a huge jump in VPN signups. http://torrentfreak.com/turkey...

  4. The Turkish PM is a fucking imbecile by bazmail · · Score: 5, Informative

    What an embarrassment of a human being that guy is.

    As well as being corrupt as all hell hes trying to stop people talking about it in the most clown-fuck stupid way. Mr. Recep Tayyip Erdogan I am embarrassed to be a part of the same species as you.

    1. Re:The Turkish PM is a fucking imbecile by Applehu+Akbar · · Score: 5, Interesting

      And he rules the most advanced part of the Middle East. Besides tour groups carefully shepherded around the Valley of Kings by Egyptian soldiers Turkey is the one part of the area that tourists actually want to go to. Great job destroying your one decent source of revenue. Erdogan seems intent on undoing the work of Kemal Ataturk and bringing back the seventh century.

    2. Re:The Turkish PM is a fucking imbecile by cold+fjord · · Score: 2

      That may be, but he is PM, isn't he? And don't be surprised if he gets reelected. He has plenty of supporters. There are growing numbers of people in Europe with views similar to his.

      --
      much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
    3. Re:The Turkish PM is a fucking imbecile by Opportunist · · Score: 2

      I'm a human being and I resent being lumped together with something like that! I kindly ask you to take that statement back!

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    4. Re:The Turkish PM is a fucking imbecile by Opportunist · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Erh... no. Turkey was way more "western" shortly after Ataturk turned it towards the west than it is now after a few years of rule from this old, backwards man. He pretty much did everything in his power to turn back time in Turkey, undoing so much progress that it hurts to watch how this beautiful and so promising country has to suffer from that regime.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  5. Hello Recep, meet Tor by Rosco+P.+Coltrane · · Score: 2

    What does he think he's going to achieve with that? More people will get smarter on the internet and in the end, his state's ability to spy on its own citizens will suffer.

    --
    "A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
    1. Re:Hello Recep, meet Tor by Opportunist · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Well he's got to do something, hasn't he? Otherwise more people would hear the corruption allegations.

      Because that's the actual reason for the twitter ban. Twitter has been used time and again to publish various recordings of phone calls Erdogan allegedly made concerning how to move money "out of the way". Of course he's not really fond of those being published and circulated.

      Maybe he should ask Mrs. Streisand how trying to silence stuff worked for her.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  6. IPv6 needed by jonfr · · Score: 2

    It is clear that twitter and other such websites need to move into IPv6 space to avoid censorship. Twitter is not on IPv6 today.

    ping6 -c 4 twitter.com
    unknown host

    1. Re:IPv6 needed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It is just as easy to block a host by the upper 64 bits of its IPv6 address as it is to block a host by its IPv4 address. You get a bazillion addresses with your IPv6 allocation, but it's actually easier to block you on IPv6, because all your addresses are contiguous, whereas it's not unusual to have multiple discontiguous allocations of IPv4 addresses. That is one of the reasons for the big address space: To be able to give everyone more addresses than they will ever need so that nobody needs to get a second allocation, thus keeping the routing tables small.

    2. Re:IPv6 needed by houstonbofh · · Score: 2

      I doubt Turkey or anyone for that matter can block all of the IPv6 address all the time. The block file would be huge if it was to be done.

      I think you are unfamiliar with something called summary routes. https://learningnetwork.cisco....

    3. Re:IPv6 needed by petermgreen · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Twitter can get its own /32 range.

      And that whole range can be blocked in one go.

      What matters for avoiding blocks is not merely having lots of addresses, it's having lots of addresses spread out through the address space so that people can't effectively block you without either causing massive collateral damage or painstakingly hunting down your addresses.

      --
      note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
  7. Help out their dissidents by Nimey · · Score: 5, Informative

    Follow these directions to set up Tor obfuscated bridges and give them a path around the censorship:

    https://www.torproject.org/pro... (if you run Debian or Ubuntu)
    https://www.torproject.org/pro... (more generic instructions)

    More information in this email the Tor project sent out last year, including how to make an unpublished bridge that's harder to censor:
    https://lists.torproject.org/p...

    --
    Hail Eris, full of mischief...

    E pluribus sanguinem
  8. Democracy is like a bus trip for Erdogan by gtall · · Score: 5, Interesting

    King Abdullah of Jordan had this to say of Erdogan: “Erdoan once said that democracy, for him, is a bus ride,” King Abdullah said. “‘Once I get to my stop, I’m getting off,’ [Erdoan said].”

    The King saw little difference between Erdogan and Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood and considered Erdogan to be a softer version of Morsi. Of Morsi, he said Morsi had no depth. Now it appears Erdogan has little depth as well, attempting to ban Twitter will only advertise it for Turks.

    Right now, Erdogan is favored to win the next election, but how will the Turks feel in a few years when they realized they got off the democracy bus along with Erdogan.

    1. Re:Democracy is like a bus trip for Erdogan by MightyYar · · Score: 3, Insightful

      but how will the Turks feel in a few years when they realized they got off the democracy bus along with Erdogan.

      Sadly, they will elect him as the one who most represents their view of the world. It just shows how poorly democracy works when you have widespread ignorance. The same thing happens in the US, though we fell into a two-party system that forces people to get under the same tent.

      RICH PEOPLE: Free, compulsory, quality education for the masses is for YOU, not them. Please stop fighting it. Thank you.

      --
      W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
    2. Re:Democracy is like a bus trip for Erdogan by SternisheFan · · Score: 2

      Since the elections come up in less than a week from now, I'm cooking up my popcorn.

    3. Re:Democracy is like a bus trip for Erdogan by Luckyo · · Score: 2

      You appear to be under a naive misunderstanding that ignorant masses are something that elite does not want.

      This opinion is in a direct conflict with all known human history.

    4. Re:Democracy is like a bus trip for Erdogan by MightyYar · · Score: 2

      I'm suggesting that the elite are short-term thinkers and perhaps poor students of history. Thus my all-caps plea to rich people.

      --
      W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
    5. Re:Democracy is like a bus trip for Erdogan by Hognoxious · · Score: 2

      they were gradually moving the country into Europe

      Won't that block the Phosphorus (or the Hesperus, whatever it's called)?

      That'll make the Black Sea overflow.

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  9. Re:Censorship requested by people by dnaumov · · Score: 2

    Source, google-translated:
    The people asked for the ministry that on twitter, laws are broken (insults, privacy laws etc).
    Twitter was contacted by the ministry and did nothing, so a court ordered that the only way to preserve Turkeys peoples right is to block twitter.

    This is not how the internet works. You don't get to dictate what a service provided by a company located in another country does or does not offer. And the sooner your realise that your futile attempts to "erase" said service from "your internet" by various blocking methods, the faster you stop making a moron deserving utter humiliation out of yourself.

  10. Re:Censorship requested by people by houstonbofh · · Score: 3, Funny

    This is not how the internet works. You don't get to dictate what a service provided by a company located in another country does or does not offer. And the sooner your realise that your futile attempts to "erase" said service from "your internet" by various blocking methods, the faster you stop making a moron deserving utter humiliation out of yourself.

    Are you talking to the Turks, or US Media companies?

  11. Conflicted by TranquilVoid · · Score: 4, Funny

    Honestly not sure what to think of the guy. On the one hand he's suppressing free speech, but on the other he's blocking Twitter.

  12. Re:kick htem out of nato by Opportunist · · Score: 2

    Now? Heh, the only reason the old man dares to have some balls is that he knows that his control of the Bosporus is in this climate surrounding the Crimea is more interesting to the western nations than ever before.

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  13. How quaint by Opportunist · · Score: 2

    Still trying to silence the "rumors" (my lawyer said I should call them rumors instead of what I really think of them) concerning his corruption, embezzlement and money laundering with ancient means of the average tinpot dictator?

    Well, when you're backwards oriented and stuck in the past, new media are probably not going to be your forte.

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.