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Anti-TPP Website Being Blacklisted

so.dan writes: The CTO of Fight for the Future — the non-profit activism group behind Battle for the Net, Blackout Congress, and Stop Fast Track — Jeff Lyon, is seeking advice regarding a problem with facing the website they created — stopfasttrack.com — to fight the secret Trans Pacific Partnership trade deal.

The site been blacklisted by Twitter, Facebook, and major email providers as malicious/spam. Over the last week, nobody has been able to post the website on social networks, or send any emails with their URL. Lyon has posted a summary of the relevant details on Reddit in the hope of obtaining useful feedback regarding what the cause might be. However, none of the answers there right now seem particularly useful, so I'm hoping the Slashdot community can help him out by posting here.

Lyon indicates that the blackout has occurred at a particularly crucial point in the campaign to kill the TPP, as most members of the House of Representatives would likely vote against it were it brought to a vote now, and as pro-TPP interests have started to escalate their lobbying efforts on the House to counteract what would otherwise be a no vote.

40 of 180 comments (clear)

  1. Free Speech by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Is not guaranteed from private organizations.

    1. Re:Free Speech by Runaway1956 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      If you run a messenger service, you aren't entitled to decide that select groups can't use your service. You can't decide that you will monitor the messages, and only deliver those messages that you approve of. You don't get to decide that you will deliver partisan messages that favor your position, and just lose messages that support the other side.

      As an email provider/carrier/whatever, Google has a responsibility to pass the messages on, unless and until they actually violate some law.

      How about if your phone company listens in to your conversations, and cuts you off when they disapprove of your conversation?

      Now - you can twist a pair of panties into any kind of a wad you like, but you cannot twist morality and ethics enough to justify censorship of private communications. Nor can you justify political communications. Can't even justify censorship of business communications, until those communications violate a valid law.

      --
      "Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
    2. Re:Free Speech by laird · · Score: 5, Informative

      The site isn't claiming that they're being censored, or that it's a Constitutional free speech issue, just that they're being blocked. It's possible that some anti-spam rule triggered against their site for some reason - anti-spam systems use statistical models and rules, and aren't always right, which is why they all have some appeal mechanism to get human judgement involved. So right now they're trying to get enough public visibility to the issue, demonstrating that the site is legitimate and that many people care about it, which gives whoever's blocking the site to have an incentive to pay attention and fix it.

      If they don't raise a fuss, they'll almost certainly be ignored and stay blocked, which isn't a good outcome.

      If I had to guess, the site might have gotten flagged by one of the black-listing services, and since many people subscribe to those services the one flag could cause them to be blocked everywhere. So if they can get enough attention to get that service to un-block them, it'll get better everywhere.

    3. Re:Free Speech by mrchaotica · · Score: 4, Insightful

      How about if your phone company listens in to your conversations, and cuts you off when they disapprove of your conversation?

      The phone company isn't allowed to do that because it's legally defined as a "Common Carrier."

      Facebook et al., on the other hand, aren't. I'm not sure, but I doubt most email services are either.

      It may be arbitrary, unfair and anti-democratic, but that what happens when citizens can't be fucking bothered to pay attention and give the goddamn lobbyists free reign to write the laws!

      --

      "[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz

    4. Re:Free Speech by Anon-Admin · · Score: 3, Insightful

      You may want to re-think your position.

      The FCC redefined common Carrier to INCLUDE ISP's.

      ISP's are defined as "an organization that provides services for accessing, using, or participating in the Internet."

      I am sure Google and Google mail qualify under that definition, as would Facebook and Twitter.

    5. Re:Free Speech by Bengie · · Score: 3, Insightful

      ISPs, not services. FCC made a clear distinction between Internet Access Providers and Services on the Internet.

    6. Re:Free Speech by Bengie · · Score: 2

      My guess is something triggered a spam filter. Something akin to Occam's razor and Hanlon's razor combined.

    7. Re:Free Speech by sumdumass · · Score: 4, Informative

      Huh? There were plenty of huge multinational organizations when the first amendment was created. Part of the revolutionary war was because of several and all but two of the original 13 colonies was sponsored/created by them. They largely operated under Proprietary charters and many of the state names are derived from them. Most of them were revoked and a royal charter was in place by the 1760s but even then, we have the Boston Tea Party which was a protest over taxes created to reward the failing East India Company.

    8. Re:Free Speech by Sibko · · Score: 5, Insightful

      ...but that what happens when citizens can't be fucking bothered to pay attention and give the goddamn lobbyists free reign to write the laws!

      Literally blaming the victim. Heh.

      Look, it's not simply a case of "We just weren't prepared enough for this, didn't take any precautions, and did nothing to stop it." this is systematic rot that has been eating away at our rights for decades. We've fought it all over the place. Our method of rooting it out has itself been rotted away. We live in "democracies" where our votes are meaningless now.

      There is no internal solution to this anymore. It's more than evident that our votes don't matter, and anyone voted into office will be bribed or worse. This is no longer a matter of voting the right person in. That doesn't mean 'give up'. It means 'start working outside the system'. You'll know it's effective when the government starts banning whatever method it is you've chosen for changing the system, the media starts demonizing you to destroy any popular/public support, and the intelligence agencies infiltrate your group to destroy it from within.

      In fact, we have two prime examples already of this taking place: Occupy Wall Street, and the Tea Party movement. Anyone who thinks we haven't been fighting the blatant corruption in our government hasn't been paying attention. We've been fighting plenty; it's just that we've also been losing.

      As I mentioned earlier - this is only going to get worse as time goes on. I'd honestly argue that many western nations are practical powderkegs right now. I don't think it's going to take much more for armed rebellion to start taking place. Another 2008 "recession", a sharp rise in the price of food, a couple more serious scandals like snowden, or CIA torture. People are getting fed up. People are noticing that their votes aren't changing anything.

      Pretty soon people are going to start changing things in their own ways - and that isn't going to be pretty. It's going to leave many people wondering if we weren't better off just being the cattle we're being treated as.

    9. Re:Free Speech by Runaway1956 · · Score: 2

      Reading comprehension. It is patently obvious that they CAN censor the email that crosses their servers. I said that it is unethical and immoral. I said that they are not ENTITLED to censor the mail on a whim.

      In short, this goes a long way toward convincing me that the Google haters are right after all.

      --
      "Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
    10. Re:Free Speech by turning+in+circles · · Score: 3, Informative

      The site isn't claiming that they're being censored, or that it's a Constitutional free speech issue, just that they're being blocked.

      So, I posted a link to the Stop Fast Track website on Facebook, to see if it would be blocked, and it wasn't. I can see the website link from Facebook, my friends can see the website and post on it. So, if it was a mistake to block it, it's fixed now. Get all fired up people.

      --
      Might as well face it I'm addicted to data.
    11. Re:Free Speech by Runaway1956 · · Score: 2

      Still not getting it, are you?

      Morality is a higher standard than legality. Anyone can buy a law, if they have enough money. You cannot buy a moral.

      --
      "Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
    12. Re:Free Speech by dryeo · · Score: 2

      Anyone can buy a law, if they have enough money. You cannot buy a moral.

      Of course you can buy morals. Just takes a big advertising budget, time and a message that resonates.. Examples include how drinking and driving has become immoral, throwing out litter, a bit further back, shitting in the river that we drink from or dumping your sewage in the gutter and in process, smoking tobacco.
      Doesn't always work 100%, eg illegal drugs but it is amazing how many people believe heroin is pure evil.

      --
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
    13. Re:Free Speech by Cyberdyne · · Score: 2

      If you run a messenger service, you aren't entitled to decide that select groups can't use your service. You can't decide that you will monitor the messages, and only deliver those messages that you approve of. You don't get to decide that you will deliver partisan messages that favor your position, and just lose messages that support the other side.

      As an email provider/carrier/whatever, Google has a responsibility to pass the messages on, unless and until they actually violate some law.

      How about if your phone company listens in to your conversations, and cuts you off when they disapprove of your conversation?

      Now - you can twist a pair of panties into any kind of a wad you like, but you cannot twist morality and ethics enough to justify censorship of private communications. Nor can you justify political communications. Can't even justify censorship of business communications, until those communications violate a valid law.

      Morally and ethically, you have a point - but legally, no. Telephone companies in the US have specific laws regulating what they can and can't do - but if Google decided that from now on, any email containing the word "viagra" would get blocked from Gmail, that's up to them. Probably not a useful choice (spammers already use workarounds like "\/iagra" anyway, and the occasional legitimate email would get caught) but it is theirs to make. Indeed, this very site has a few rules to reduce spam and misuse - so you can't post very long words without getting random whitespace added (to combat the old "page widening troll"), you can't post more than a certain number of messages in one period of time - all rules they are perfectly entitled to adopt and enforce, since it's their own site/service.

      Someone posted here earlier that the domain looks quite "spammy" on some of the heuristics Facebook and co probably use internally: it wouldn't exactly be the first time legitimate content got caught by a spam filter. More likely than a conspiracy theory about Twitter and Facebook being so determined to stifle criticism of TPP. As of right now, stopfasttrack.com is not listed in Spamhaus's database; probably someone got over-enthusiastic promoting it, and some of those messages got reported as spam. Nothing new there, either.

  2. Censorship in the US by Travis+Mansbridge · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Censorship in the US doesn't have to be about the first amendment as long as you can get Facebook, Twitter and Google to agree.

    1. Re:Censorship in the US by sumdumass · · Score: 5, Insightful

      That or use URL shortening service.

      My bet is it is actually being spammed and appropriately being marked as such.

    2. Re:Censorship in the US by phantomfive · · Score: 4, Insightful

      If you live in walled gardens, the owners control what you see.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    3. Re:Censorship in the US by Wain13001 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I know after what seemed like my 5 millionth email from this group I marked it spam.

    4. Re:Censorship in the US by Teun · · Score: 2

      Exactly!
      That's why I carefully selected my ISP and mail provider, I can choose to receive all mail, including what is spam for others.
      Now the problem is that a very large part of the world's population has selected Google (gmail) for mail and Facebook and Twitter for their information, dumb, yes but that's the present situation. (for dumb people).
      It's similar to watching Fox News and declaring you're watching the news.

      --
      "The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
  3. Never attribute to maliciousness etc etc ... by daveime · · Score: 5, Informative

    So, he's using a domain without an SPF record (allowing it to be spoofed), and Cloudflare hosting which is notorius for spam and botnets. The same domain name with .RU extension is already associated with generating spam.

    Furthermore, his homepage is chocka-block with links, that anyone could mistake for a link-farm / spam page.

    There's no grand conspiracy here, just a webmaster who's not terribly savvy and some overzealous AI heuristics at Spamhaus, FB and Twitter playing it safe.

    Nothing more to see here, please move along.

    1. Re:Never attribute to maliciousness etc etc ... by freeze128 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      That might explain SMTP email being blocked as spam, but how do you account for the fact that the URL is not able to be posted on Facebook? SMTP has nothing to do with HTTP.

    2. Re:Never attribute to maliciousness etc etc ... by ckatko · · Score: 4, Informative

      Duh. A domain identified as malicious gets banned universally on Facebook. Not on a single protocol level.

      If you saw one IP address pelting your computer with spam, would you block a single port, or the whole damn thing?

    3. Re:Never attribute to maliciousness etc etc ... by Travis+Mansbridge · · Score: 2

      It's interesting to see current reactions to what is essentially the new SOPA/PIPA/CISPA (plus a boatload of other "free trade" inequities). It seems like the low profile TPP negotiations have succeeded in keeping down the public uproar.

      This is the same organization that ran the 2012 internet blackout to protest SOPA, yet somehow it seems that if people had been unable to post about the internet blackout in the very days leading up to it, there might have been a bit more indignation than we have today.

    4. Re:Never attribute to maliciousness etc etc ... by hairyfeet · · Score: 4, Informative

      Uhhhh...they've been spamming the fuck out of their emails? I often sign petitions on sites like Change.org and I got hit with a shitload from this yahoo, I of course know how to find the unsubscribe button at the bottom but if the rest of the Change.org users got even half the emails that I did? Well its easier to just hit that big spam button at the top of the page than it is to find a teeny tiny unsubscribe at the bottom.

      So I'd say this isn't a conspiracy, just a classic example of a noob doing it wrong.

      --
      ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
    5. Re:Never attribute to maliciousness etc etc ... by l0n3s0m3phr34k · · Score: 2

      I don't remember the domain, but a few months ago a friend and I were on FB chat, He was trying to send me a link to some redirector he set up for his minecraft server and FB chat wouldn't let either of us put the domain in the chat window. It kept giving some error, the error had a link about "highly abused URLS" or something. So yes, there is some kind of real time blocking lists going on.

    6. Re:Never attribute to maliciousness etc etc ... by Demonoid-Penguin · · Score: 3, Informative

      You're probably looking at the wrong page.....there are a lot of them in the summary. I believe this is the relevant page: https://www.stopfasttrack.com/. Note they've already added an SPF record.

      Except any old SPF record isn't the same as a correct one.

      for i in fightforthefuture.org blackoutcongress.org stopfasttrack.com;do dig -t ANY $i|grep '$i\|spf';done fightforthefuture.org. 299 IN TXT "v=spf1 include:mailgun.org include:spf.dynect.net ~all" fightforthefuture.org. 299 IN TXT "v=spf1 include:sendgrid.net include:spf.dynect.net include:_spf.google.com include:salsalabs.net ~all"

      stopfasttrack.com does not have an SPF record.

      The SPF record for fightforthefuture is wrong

      No DKIM, no DMARC, no fucking idea what they are doing - 'cause email administration is not counter-intuitive. Right? (sigh)

      And it's not like the top response to his Reddit whine didn't point out why Google dumps his email - or how to check the SPF record.

      But WTF, you don't need to be competent to lead a revolution (good intentions is all that counts when you're paving the road to a better world, right?)

      Note also that in some (enlightened?) parts of the world unsolicited commercial (you want money?) that is not opt-in IS spam.

  4. Re:Really? by Svartalf · · Score: 2

    Unless they abide by the Constitution, they shouldn't be signing them because they lack authority to do so (Some have taken to believing that Treaty is a convenient way to "Amend" the Constitution as a "loophole" which would be wrong. Doesn't mean they won't keep trying...)

    --
    I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
  5. Nothing to see... move along. by denbesten · · Score: 4, Informative

    From the comments below the article....

    1) Site was on spamhaus's blacklist.
    2) Someone with more exerience than the poster suggested he add SPF records.
    3) Poster added SPF records and thanked the other person.
    4) Site is no longer on spamhaus's blacklist.

    I got tired of reading comments before I figured out if this resolved all the poster's complaints.

  6. Re:"Nobody has been able to..." by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Facebook is not the internet. Facebook is its own cryptic walled garden of bullshit that you've adopted as your medium of self expression. It's not public property.

  7. obvious questions by Spazmania · · Score: 5, Informative

    1. Were you in fact spamming? If you injected your message lots of places where it was off topic, then you were spamming and earned your ban. If you failed to follow email best practices (this means *confirmed* opt-in prior to receiving any list content) then you were spamming and earned your ban.

    2. Has the web site been hacked with malicious code? Assume yes until you can get a clean bill of health by bona fide security expert.

    --
    Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
    1. Re:obvious questions by CBravo · · Score: 2

      And, for some background for the non-email-experts: The 'free speech'/censor arguments are often used by spammers. And many non-profit/political orgs do care less about such trivial things as 'optin' ('who could be against saving whales' etc).

      --
      nosig today
    2. Re:obvious questions by Spazmania · · Score: 4, Interesting

      It's the "imediately unsubscribe anyone who wishes to unsubscribe" comment that sent up a red flag for me. That's opt-out. Spammer language.

      Best practices are that after you receive a request to subscribe to the mailing list you send a single email requesting confirmation, typically with a link or a code. Only after the recipient enters the code or clicks the link is he subscribed to the list.

      This protects individuals from having unauthorized third parties subscribe them to the mailing list, as is often attempted especially with political mailing lists.

      --
      Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
    3. Re:obvious questions by GargamelSpaceman · · Score: 2

      Also, UIs for popular email clients may be to blame. Sometimes it's easier to hit the big friendly Mark as Spam button to get the functionality of unsubscribing. If enough people do this, then all your mail is going to be blocked as spam, even if it was legitimately subscribed to.

      --
      ...
  8. Kind of half-assed... by Lord+Duran · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Apart from the pretty colors, it's pretty badly designed. There's only the one video explaining why it's bad, no text, no in-depth analysis, no outside opinions, no nothing. There isn't even (that I could find) a link to the text of the TPP. This might be a seriously important cause, but the website's not making a very good case against it.

    Anyone know and want to elaborate on what this TPP is?

    1. Re:Kind of half-assed... by davidwr · · Score: 2

      Apart from the pretty colors, it's pretty badly designed.

      Excess use of pretty colors is frequently a sign of bad design.

      Note - I didn't visit the site so I'm not saying that this site has a problem with excess use of pretty colors. I'm just saying that "apart from pretty colors" shouldn't imply that using pretty colors is always a good idea.

      --
      Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
    2. Re:Kind of half-assed... by Halo1 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Apart from the pretty colors, it's pretty badly designed. There's only the one video explaining why it's bad, no text, no in-depth analysis, no outside opinions, no nothing. There isn't even (that I could find) a link to the text of the TPP.

      Even members of the US Congress only get extremely limited access to the text of the TPP:

      Only members of the House and Senate are currently allowed to view the text of the deal, and even they are forbidden from discussing what it contains. As a new report from Politico published Monday details, "If you’re a member who wants to read the text, you’ve got to go to a room in the basement of the Capitol Visitor Center and be handed it one section at a time, watched over as you read, and forced to hand over any notes you make before leaving."

      You basically have to be a negotiator or a representative of large business interests to get full access. Some chapters (5 out of 31) of the text have been made available via Wikileaks until now.

      Anyone know and want to elaborate on what this TPP is?

      The best, and definitely the most enjoyable, primer on the potential for abuse of the TPP (based on abuse of previously negotiated similar trade agreements) and the underhanded way it's being negotiated, is probably John Oliver's segment on it.

      --
      Donate free food here
  9. Re:Remember NAFTA? by laird · · Score: 4, Informative

    True, but that accelerated after NAFTA. In part because the promised protections used to get the votes to pass NAFTA were not delivered on. That history of lying to get profitable deals passed is why it's important not to agree to TPP, etc., without knowing what's actually in it, and not to believe promises about the future.

  10. When will we be done with useless acronyms? by Phoinix · · Score: 2, Funny

    Here at the Nigerian Research Agency (NRA) we are also developing TPP:
    Tele-Portation Protocol (TPP).

    Your contributions will be refunded in full. Send us you cash or wire transfer and we will Teleport it back to you in only few days after we receive it; the time required to incorporate the space-time continuum into the protocol.

    Also please inform the smart-ass Slashdot editor that placing an acronym (TPP) in the hope that the readers will click to find out is not much different than the cheap dim-witted Internet advertising methods.

    Best Regards
    Your friends from the "Nigerian Scammers Association" (NSA)

  11. Re:I just fired off three emails by Karmashock · · Score: 5, Insightful

    First, we don't know everything about it because it is being kept secret to a large extent and debate is being officially suppressed.

    Second, yeah there are a lot of problems we've gotten out of it via leaks.

    1. There is some sort of committee being set up to settle a wide array of disputes that the US will have to submit itself to whether or not it wants to. The committee will be made up of unelected officials from many nations and their decisions will be binding on the US. That all by itself is unacceptable. Its like wishing for infinite wishes. You write into the agreement that some group can obligate you to abide by new regulations that some other committee comes up with whenever they want? No.

    2. There is a lot of information security stuff in there. Basically they're exporting a lot of the NSA wire tap stuff to the rest of the world and they're forcing the US to continue to spy on its own people to comply in turn.

    3. There are a lot of regulations on labor unions that shouldn't be involved in a trade agreement.

    4. There are an almost endless list of ticky tacky regulations that they're requiring on everything including paying private hospitals money if you open a public hospital near them to compensate them for POTENTIAL losses to their profits. But really there are an almost endless list of these.

    5. Basically no one in government has read the thing and yet they want to have a vote on it when no one has read it. They will let congressman go in there and read it. But they can't take it with them, they can't take notes out of the room with it in there, and they can't tell people what is in the thing.

    6. THat it is secret is a bad sign in and of itself. If it isn't going against US interests then there is no reason to suppress knowledge of it or suppress debate. The argument is being made that if more people knew about it, then it would make negociations harder. However, that isn't rational because you can use the US congress as defacto bad cop in the negociations. Where in the administration could say "well, I'd like to do that but I'd never get that through congress". Suppressing information means our bargaining position is weakened and it is more likely that bad legislation or bad regulations will get through congress because no one will have read them before they were signed into law.

    Congressman rarely read all these bills. They're too long. They use staffers and interest groups and the media to do the heavy lifting. And by denying congress the ability to use those features, they're basically forbidding congress from reading the law. Has Obama read the whole thing? Of course not. He's used his own staffers, interest groups, etc to read it for him and distill it to what he's going to care about.

    Congressman do the same thing. You can't deny their staffers and interest groups and the media access to the legislation and expect them to know what was in the bill.

    --
    I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
  12. Re:Obama and his administration would NEVER do thi by sumdumass · · Score: 2

    I would say quite a few of them do. They invade slashdot quite heavily any time there is an election or some protest we are supposed to be behind because it's the social justice warrior thing to do or something. Some have accounts and some post anon.