Cuba Is Blocking Text Messages That Contain Words Like 'Democracy' (theverge.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: The Cuban government is blocking text messages that contain words such as "democracy," "human rights," and "hunger strike," according to an investigation from local dissidents. In a Spanish-language report published last week, prominent blogger Yoani Sanchez and journalist Reinaldo Escobar found that the government is filtering 30 keywords and blocking the transmission of any texts that contain them. Reuters later confirmed that messages containing the Spanish words for "democracy" and "human rights" did not reach their destination, nor did those containing Sanchez's name or "Somos Mas": an opposition group that worked on the investigation. Texts that included the word "protest" were transmitted, the agency reported on Tuesday, and those that were blocked were marked as "sent" on the sender's phone. It's not clear how long the communist government has been filtering keywords and blocking texts, and activists suspect that there may be more terms that it is targeting. Cuba has long been accused of committing human rights abuses, including arbitrary detentions and restrictions on freedom of speech. "We discovered not just us but the entire country is being censored," Eliecer Avila, the head of Somos Mas, tells Reuters. "It just shows how insecure and paranoid the government is."

Comments

Cuban Firewall

[zenlessyank]

is state of the art I am sure. Have a cigar!

Re:Cuban Firewall

[TheGratefulNet]

Well I've always had a deep respect
And I mean that most sincerely.

Re:Cuban Firewall

[zenlessyank]

You whooshed me. Decipher.

Re:Cuban Firewall

[Guy Harris]

Well I've always had a deep respect And I mean that most sincerely.

I think the band's fantastic
That is really what I think.

Re:Cuban Firewall

[Guy Harris]

You whooshed me. Decipher.

Do a Web search for the words from any of the two followups, or just for "have a cigar".

Re:Cuban Firewall

[zenlessyank]

OK. I didn't google anything but I think I may just have unwhooshed myself. I am famous for not knowing some of the lyrics of a few songs. Especially if they may be from England. I was, in fact, going to make a diff quote from that song, but skipped on it. Thanks.

Re:Cuban Firewall

[zenlessyank]

Which one is Pink?

Re:Cuban Firewall

[zenlessyank]

RIP Syd & RIchard.

Re:Cuban Firewall

[Guy Harris]

Which one is Pink?

Pink Anderson, I guess.

Re:Cuban Firewall

[Anonymous Coward]

The band is just fantastic.

Just sayin'...

Re:Cuban Firewall

[Falos]

If I was guessing (well, I still am) they're workaround lingo. I hear China has lots of words and phrases used to get around.

The governments are probably aware, even expected it. They're satisfied affecting the sizable pool of Casuals. The same mentality is seen in all kinds of muzzles and gags, like DRM.

Re:Cuban Firewall

[zenlessyank]

Now you have been whooshed.

Re:Cuban Firewall

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh well, I guess Florida is as controlled as Cuba now, no big surprize!

Democratic hunger strike for human rights!

[Anonymous Coward]

Take THAT, amigo!

Just hope Cuba doesn't end up like this

http://www.rinconcete.com/imag...

Democracy Is A Failure

[alternative_right]

So is socialism, but mob rule is also a failure. These are just false ways of ruling ourselves that do not work, but we are afraid to abandon.

What is best for Cuba? I do not know... but it is not socialist leaders, nor mob rule.

Re: Democracy Is A Failure

[Anonymous Coward]

The Middle East method of just killing everyone has been working well for them for thousands of years

Re: Democracy Is A Failure

[Anonymous Coward]

"Who are we to say our system is better than theirs?"
Said every internationalist I knew back in college.

Re:Democracy Is A Failure

[Immerman]

Government always rules with the consent of the governed, all that changes is the method of gaining that consent. Ballots are usually preferred by the populace, ruthless subjugation of dissent by the rulers.

Democracy hasn't failed as a principle, just most of the implementations. In fact, some of the happiest nations with the (per capita) strongest economies in the world are socialist democracies, so exactly how have they failed?

What has failed is most of the attempts to keep democracies democratic, especially as they scale up. And frankly, there doesn't seem to have been a whole lot of serious attempts to do so. And why would there be? Pretty much everyone directly involved in creating the rules of a democracy is already part of the ruling class, and you rarely join that group through idealism. Pretty much every step of government towards self-rule has come through populist violence, or at least the threat of it, and the new government begins to decay towards corruption and self-importance before the ink has even had a chance to dry.

That doesn't mean that democracy has failed, it means that, like every other human construct, it's unstable and needs regular maintenance. It's also a relatively new technology, one we haven't really mastered yet. Would you ask the Wright Brothers first plane to fly for 240 years without a serious overhaul? Why then should we be surprised that the US government has degraded so far in the same time span?

Re: Democracy Is A Failure

[Anonymous Coward]

What is best for Cuba begins with a lynching-execution of all the communist scum involving crushing bones with heavy hammers and burning flesh with electricity on live television. You are too weak-stomached cattle to appreciate this, but a Fidel Castro with most of his hair ripped out, nude being struck with hammers and shocked with cattle rods on live television would make the point fast.

Re: Democracy Is A Failure

[Anonymous Coward]

What is hilarious is that now the alt-right ultra nationalist libertarians are all in college, and they grow up to be wise learned socialists when they're older.

Re:Democracy Is A Failure

[Coren22]

Democracy is the worst way to run a government, except for all the other types of government that have been tried.

Name one form of government that has turned out better in practice than Democracy.

That's why the Cuban love the Castros so!

[ScentCone]

The sure sign of a treasured system of government and a joyous society: you're not allowed to talk about other people's way of life. Or leave.

Re:That's why the Cuban love the Castros so!

[Anonymous Coward]

Or leave.

Nope, that option is off the table since the Exodus of Mariel.

Really?

[wbr1]

This is a surprise? In Cuba? If you leave out failed states like Somalia, Cuba is not far behind NK. It is not a democracy by any stretch, it is a communist nation, and has a government and tactics similar to the olf USSR, and current China and Vietnam.

I am curious why some of the Somos Mas leadership are not yet wearing Colombian neckties.

Re:Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

I am curious why some of the Somos Mas leadership are not yet wearing Colombian neckties.

Please explain.

Re:Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Cuba is NOT communist. There has never been a communist society ever.

Re:Really?

[Gavagai80]

Cuba is efficient at constraining dissent, yet surprisingly less brutal about it than most dictatorships. They have political prisoners, but they never execute them anymore. Often they let them out of jail and just harass and disrupt them.

Re:Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it's not communist, but there are plenty of examples of communist societies. The reason you never hear of them is that they don't scale well past about 6 members.

Re:Really?

[jcr]

Oh, fuck off. Every goddamned time there's a discussion of the crimes that a communist dictator inflicts on the people he rules, some little commie twat pops up with that "no true Scotsman" excuse.

The Castro brothers are communists. Quit your idiotic lying.

-jcr

Re:Really?

[Immerman]

Read your post again. See those two words right next to each other, "communist dictator"? Those are two unrelated concepts, like capitalist democracy - one refers to the politics of government, which is the part you seem to be objecting to, and the other refers to the economy, and has never been implemented at scale, for all that it's often been emblazoned on the banners of the revolution in order to gather populist support. And in fact "communist dictator" borders on the oxymoronic.

Communism: economic system where the means of production is owned by the people
Now, go ahead and name even one "communist" country where *the people* own the means of production. You can't. What you actually see is the *government* owning the means of production, and that's not remotely the same thing unless the people own the government. Which is clearly NOT the case in a dictatorship. Hell, I challenge you to name even one democracy where you can make that claim with a straight face.

Until such time as we develop the social technology to allow a nation's people to maintain ownership of their government, communism is likely to remain a theoretical impossibility.

Re:Really?

[KiloByte]

If every single implementation of a concept suffers the same set of flaws, perhaps that concept isn't that good in the first place?

Re:Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

If every single implementation of a concept is countered by trillions of dollars of economic and physical warfare from the US, paid for by your tax dollars, who's fault is it? If your house gets set on fire every day, do you blame yourself for building it or do you blame the arsonist stopping by with gasoline and matches every day?

Re:Really?

[jcr]

"communist dictator"? Those are two unrelated concepts,

Tell it to all the people Mao, Pol Pot, and Stalin killed.

-jcr

Re:Really?

[jcr]

Communism: economic system where the means of production is owned by the people

Nope. That's just the sales pitch. Communists NEVER deliver anything of the kind.

-jcr

Re:Really?

[jcr]

Bingo.

-jcr

Re:Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

And everyone ignores the billions of people directly killed by capitalism, and allow capitalist dictators free passes for murder, rape, and pillage.

Re:Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Even if everything you say is true, even if someone did, somehow, magically, create a true communist state I would still despise it and every dirty little commie douche in it because the whole concept is fundamentally self-righteous, immoral, and unfair.

If you think communism is such a great idea then go create a "true" communist cesspit somewhere else and stop trying to ruin other people's countries (regardless of how "free market" those other countries are).

Re:Really?

[Immerman]

If I a cat is defined as a furry creature with four legs and a tail, and you complain that every cat you've seen has scales, fins, and gills instead, is the problem in the definition of a cat, or that the people claiming to give you "cats" are actually lying through their teeth?

Communism has in fact been deployed very often throughout the world to good effect - in families, communes, monasteries, etc. The problem is that nobody has figured out how to scale it beyond the size of a tight-knit community. And frankly, I can think of very few examples where anyone has even tried. Certainly at the national level, every example shows strong evidence that the leaders of the revolution never had any interest in actually implementing communism, but were simply using it as a rabble-rousing ideal to gather populist support for their own ascent to power.

If you can offer any counterexamples I'd love to hear them - I find the topic very interesting in a "future technologies" sort of way, as something we might try to implement centuries from now, sometime after we've managed to implement a democracy that actually answers to the people and doesn't degrade over time. Until then it seems like something that, even with the best of intentions, is going to almost inevitably foster corruption and abuse of power.

Re:Really?

[Coren22]

Are there any capitalist dictatorships?

Re:Really?

[Immerman]

Except that it doesn't. Communism is actually not uncommon within small, close-knit communities. It just doesn't doesn't seem to scale well beyond that (though there's precious little evidence that anyone has ever honestly attempted it) I think though that that is not so much a flaw in the concept itself, as it is a lack of prerequisite social technologies.

In order to honestly claim that "the people" own something, "the people" need to share equal voice in its use - something that sounds suspiciously similar to democracy. And frankly, our attempts at democracy so far have been pretty terrible. There are a few countries that seem to be making some progress, but mostly it rapidly devolves into, at best, an unresponsive bureacracy, and at worst, a corrupt bureaucracy that's *very* responsive to the whims of a small group of wealthy "lobbyists" rather than the people. Certainly the US is a good demonstration of just how far a government can decline even in a nation that was once held up as a shining beacon of the ideals of democracy.

At a small scale democracy can live up to its ideals. And so can communism. At large scale though, both seem to be invoked more as an ideal to distract the populace from reality. The big difference is that democracy has been making slow, painful, forward progress - in large part due to the fact that we started out with inefficient, centralized, totalitarian governments, and have been gradually progressing, in fits and starts, with lots of backsliding, toward increasingly decentralized power structures allowing for more individual autonomy and voice in governance.

Communism though, that's kind of an all-or-nothing gig - I haven't heard a lot of ideas for how to implement communal ownership without centralized control. And that means that economic power will reflect political power. Great if political power is truly democratically distributed, but out here in reality political power is generally even more consolidated than economic power, so any attempt to implement Communism will only serve to re-concentrate economic power into the hands of the few.

Give me a true functioning democracy that lives up to the ideal, and I'd be willing to bet it could implement communism effectively. Whether it would want to or not is a separate question - conflating political and economic power is going to put that much more strain on the integrity of the democracy, plus communism has its own shortcomings in terms of incentive structure. Moreover, a true democracy would likely have already eliminated the gross economic inequality communism is a response to, and it's not at all clear that people actually object to others being richer than them, provided everyone has ready access to a comfortable living and the opportunity for advancement if they choose to pursue it.

Demonizing the ideals of communism though, that is almost always a symptom of someone that wants to shut down conversations about wealth redistribution - i.e. someone that wants to promote the further concentration of wealth, but doesn't have the political power to want it to be under political control.

Re:Really?

[jcr]

Communism has in fact been deployed very often throughout the world to good effect - in families, communes, monasteries, etc.

That's voluntary cooperation, not communism. You're confused.

Communism is the practice of violently attacking anyone who declines to hand over the fruits of their labor to the communists, or even raising an objection to being looted at gunpoint.

-jcr

VPN

[Anonymous Coward]

use a VPN

The Swedes

[Anonymous Coward]

The Swedes love Cuba. They go there by the boat load and clog up the beaches. They never leave the tourist areas though.

Re: The Swedes

[Frankzy]

Can confirm, Cuba is pretty fucking great - A Swede

news @11:00

[Anonymous Coward]

no shit it's a communist country

Evidence?

[Anonymous Coward]

> according to an investigation from local dissidents

In other news, according to an investigation by local vegans, tofu tastes just as good as steak!

Re:Evidence?

[Coren22]

Have you ever received a text message from Cuba with the "banned" words? There is your evidence. /s

This could be hard to get around

[Snotnose]

I'm not an encryption expert, nor have I ever been. I was a CDMA expert some 20 years ago, when Qualcomm was drinking their Ovaltine. Twitter is based on SMS (Short Message Service), as defined by the IS-95 spec. Every once in a while, defined by the slot cycle index, itself defined by the carrier (it's a tradeoff between battery life and how long the user waits for their phone to ring), the handset will query the base station "Hey bud, got anything for me?" and gets a yea/nay response. One of these messages has to be 255 bytes long, and there are an unused 153'ish unused bytes in it. Those 153'ish bytes are how SMS messages are sent. Twitter has overhead, hence you have 142 byte twitter msgs.

Keep in mind this is just a simple "hey bud!" shouted across a crowded party. The handset and the base station never setup a call, which is a lot of overhead.

To encrypt this channel you need an app on both ends to do the encryption, send the encrypted message over SMS (which uses some binary codes to do things like send long DTMF tones so ya gotta convert to ASCII first), then the other end needs to decrypt the message. Which to my encryption == magic mind means you have to set up a call.....

Re: This could be hard to get around

[Noah Haders]

Maybe you could defeat the filter using i33t sp33k. D3m0crACy ftw!

Re:This could be hard to get around

[Immerman]

There's no reason you couldn't easily encrypt texts, so long as you trusted your phone. Encryption is basically a math function that takes two numbers: an encryption key, and a really long arbitrary number that's the message to be encrypted (say, the 150 bytes of a text interpreted as one 1200 bit number), and as a result it generates another number, generally roughly the same length as the input message.

Decryption is a very similar process that takes a decryption key (sometimes, but not always, the same as the encryption key), and the really long answer from step one, and will generate the original contents as the result. The implementation details... yeah, mostly magic to me too. The applications though...

For encrypted messaging services like email, each user typically generates two keys with a subtle mathematical relationship to each other so that messages encrypted with either key can only be decrypted with the opposite one, and that knowing one key won't let you guess the other. You then keep one key secret (your private key), and share the other one with the world (your public key). Those keys can then be used in two different ways (or both)

1) Secrecy: If I "lock" my message with your public key, it can only be "unlocked" with your private key. So anyone can send you messages that only you can read (assuming nobody steals a copy of your key)

2) Validation: If I "lock" my message with my private key, then anyone can "unlock" it with my public key, and thus verify that it actually came from me, (not really related to the topic at hand)

So, to send me an encrypted text (assuming the phone supported it) you'd simply need to add my public key to my contact info in your phone. Then, when you send me a text your phone first locks the message with my public key, and then sends the resulting gibberish as though it were a normal text message. Then, once I receive it, my phone unlocks the message using my private key before displaying the original contents.

So far as the phone network is concerned, nothing has changed except that the messages are now gibberish.

You may be getting confused by other forms of encryption, such as used for secure web sites. In that case nobody has any keys to begin with, and the software on both ends does indeed have to first set up a two-way "conversation" to generate a key. With that there's an extra layer of "magic" involved in being able to hold a completely public conversation that ends with you both having a copy of the same secret key, without eavesdroppers being able to figure out what it is.

There's pros and cons to both techniques. The public/private key strategy is generally used in messaging services precisely because it allows for completely one-way communication like texts and emails, as well as "free" verification that the sender is who they claim to be using the same function. It has a major weakness though in that sooner or later your private key is likely to be stolen, and the thief can then read every message you've ever received (that they've recorded of course). Though that can be mitigated by changing your keys regularly.

Negotiating a new key for every conversation is far more resistant to human imperfection, but *requires* 2-way communication, and doesn't directly offer any sort of verification that you're actually talking with who you think you are.

What about dem0cracy?

[Gussington]

We all know these things are trivial to bypass. Dem0cracy, Hemocracy, Lemocracy, Democray-cray, that's the beauty of language. Youse carn mekitup azz yo gogo un thur missage stil gitz throo. If all else fails send an MMS of the txt.

Re:What about dem0cracy?

[ScentCone]

So you'd really play change-the-spelling games with SMS when the local government has a habit of locking up people for saying the word out loud, and killing people who say it several times?

Re:What about dem0cracy?

[Gussington]

So you'd really play change-the-spelling games with SMS when the local government has a habit of locking up people for saying the word out loud, and killing people who say it several times?

No revolution ever started through compliance. If it were me I'd be looking for something a little more sophisticated than simple letter shifting eg OTP is low tech but very robust.

Re:What about dem0cracy?

[ScentCone]

I'm referring to the highly user-identifying nature of SMS.

Re:What about dem0cracy?

[Anonymous Coward]

No revolution ever started through compliance.

Now, I want you to remember that no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country.

If you're realistic about revolution, then you don't want to get arrested. You won't be executed on national television while they read a neutral description of your crime and give you a chance to share last words with the nation. They'll just shoot you and a bunch of your friends at a mass grave. The whole "stand up and get arrested to send a message!" only works in non-Orwellian states where the public actually cares. Not Cuba, not the USA.

Re:What about dem0cracy?

[Gussington]

I'm referring to the highly user-identifying nature of SMS.

So am I. If you intercept my SMS: "XCVGP MTHYU FPOLW TUSHA", what does that mean to you? Without a OTP it is meaningless
If I put in more than 5 minutes effort I would create a OTP that has built-in plausible deniability (eg using real phrase instead of random characters such as "pick up milk from the corner store after work please").
My point is that screening for known dictionary words is amateur-hour security measures. It doesn't really stop anything other than the casual bystander (who is unlikely to be the mastermind behind any potential revolution)

Who wouldn't be insecure and paranoid?

[Anonymous Coward]

"It just shows how insecure and paranoid the government is."

You'd be too if you've been the target of covert campaigns by major world powers the last few decades

Suspicious

[Anonymous Coward]

I would be suspicious about this story. Yoani Sanchez's independance has been suspicious for a long time for the support she got: what independent blogger can afford to translate in more than 20 languages? And how could she get major media coverage in such a short time?

Moreover, the keyword censorship would be a rather stupid move from the government, as it is quite easy to spot.

Re:Suspicious

[Jzanu]

Machine translation is free and quite good now, it's just that Google is at the bottom of the quality curve even for the free ones so few realize it. Look at http://www.freetranslation.com... for a better result.

Re:Suspicious

[Gavagai80]

I used your link to translate your post to Chinese and back, and got "Machine translation is free and very good now are google's bottom quality curve even free so rarely realize it. See the Http://www.freetranslation.com... freetranslation.com] better results."

Re:Suspicious

[Anonymous Coward]

Idioms are difficult to translate but machine translation it is a valid option when you write directly.

Re:Suspicious

[Jezral]

"Chinese and back" is not a valid metric. Translation party sites are fun and all, but translation engines are not symmetric because languages are not symmetric. A translation is often going to be imperfect, so using a raw translation as input just amplifies the error level.

The metric you want is: How much effort would a human have to put in to make the translation output idiomatic for the target language? And the answer to that is decreasing rapidly with modern quality rule-based translation engines.

Re:Suspicious

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree language->back shouldn't necessarily carry the same words, phrases or even MEANING on the way back, but it should be valid English.

Columbian Necktis

[Okian Warrior]

I am curious why some of the Somos Mas leadership are not yet wearing Colombian neckties.

Please explain.

Google "Columbian Necktie". It doesn't mean what you think it might mean.

Do they block "Recursion"?

[Anonymous Coward]

They are also blocking "Streisand effect", the irony

Censorship Arms Race

[Anonymous Coward]

Time for some 31337 speak then eh?

Re:Censorship Arms Race

[Anonymous Coward]

175 41\N4Y5 713M 2 B 1337

Re:Censorship Arms Race

[Anonymous Coward]

I was just gonna go with something like "Ehrmahgerd dehrmerkrercy!"

Game the system like everyone else, Cuba

[Anonymous Coward]

Democracy is a fucking farce. We're brainwashed from birth it's the best system of government in the world but every Democracy has been captured by the elite. The people think they're empowered but at elections they only get to choose between one or two establishment candidates who looking after themselves and their donors and not the sucker who votes for them.

So do what everyone else does, Cuba. Tell the punters the have a democracy, hold sham elections where only establishment candidates can win and boast about your "Democratic" values. https://www.google.com/search?...

Re: Game the system like everyone else, Cuba

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would Fidel do that when he's already the president FOR LiFE. His system is in place, he ain't going to tear it down now.

Re:Game the system like everyone else, Cuba

[Coren22]

Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the rest.

Please, name a single form of government that has been better in practice than Democracy.

A dictator knows a competitor when he sees one

[udachny]

'Democracy' is a collectivist system that puts the power of the majority over minority, allowing the majority to vote themselves a nice subsidy by taxing the minority and using government violence to achieve that.

A dictator would notice a competitor to his own way of controlling and stealing from the entire population pool and he would know that in competition like that he is likely to lose politically so of-course a dictator will censor.

Re:A dictator knows a competitor when he sees one

[GLMDesigns]

Hence the idea of a constitutionally limited government. A government that cannot do whatever it wants. And knowing that people want power have a competing set of powers (checks and balances so to speak) so that the federal government can do only what it's constitutionally allowed to do; local governments (states if you will) have other powers and the people in government - namely Executive and Legislative branches are jealously guarding their powers and privileges.

Of course if the population (hence their elected officials) think that the purpose of government is the distribution of largess then things dissolve.

In sum - Democracy does suck. Thankfully the framers of the US Constitution were aware of that. Hopefully our population will return to the sentiment that giving more and more power to the government - especially the Federal Government - is a very bad idea.

Vote Third Party in 2016 and beyond.

Re:A dictator knows a competitor when he sees one

[Immerman]

I can't see the parent comment (anyone else unable to change their browsing thresholds?) , so I apologize if I misinterpreted anything that would be clearer in context.

The problem in maintaining a democracy is I think not the distribution of largess - obviously such distribution needs to be coupled with a societal awareness that you can only squeeze the golden goose so hard without killing it, but while that excess may lead to the collapse of an economy, it won't directly degrade the legitimacy of the democracy.

The problem is in how do you keep the government in line with the will of the people? As we can clearly see in the US, the elites have almost completely captured the process - the primary input of the populace is to, every few years, choose which establishment puppet they want to have sell them out. Even if 90% of the population disagrees with the decisions being made in the government, their opinion is essentially irrelevant.

Personally I like the idea of a "legislative jury" randomly selected from the populace for each piece of legislation. Give them absolute veto power - it doesn't matter if you have 100% backing from congress and the president, if you can't convince a supermajority of a randomly selected group of citizens that your bill is in the best interest of the nation, it's dead. Obviously jury corruption would have to be guarded against, but at the very least it would spread the bribes around.

Fuck em!

[Chas]

Darn
Embargoes
Mean
Others
Can
Ruin
All
Civility.
Yanno?

It's not just Cuba: The US censors stuff too

[Anonymous Coward]

This is not a defence of Cuba. It's calling out all the countries that are censoring content. Which in practice is *EVERYBODY*. It's called copy"right", but it's far from just copy"right"'d content. Canada, Europe and a bunch of countries censor Nazi related stuff (which is totally legal in the United States). And it goes a lot farther than just Nazi memorabilia/propaganda/opinions. Australia and other countries jail people who deny the holocaust. This is far from the only example. Most countries have a blacklist in the guise of protecting children. The boogie man that was used to justify the online censorship has been predominately FUD over paedophiles and child pornography. In reality it's been shown that these lists also censor political material, and in many cases completely legal, but controversial material, like adult pornography. Now they are also being used to censor copy"right"d content. The Freenet (anonymity network like Tor) guys say it best: "You cannot guarantee freedom of speech and enforce copyright law" and "The core problem with copyright is that enforcement of it requires monitoring of communications, and you cannot be guaranteed free speech if someone is monitoring everything you say."

Re: It's not just Cuba: The US censors stuff too

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not how copyright works ... govt doesn't need to monitor everyone to enforce copyright. Do what you want to do. When the owner of the copyright finds out and sues, and if it turns out you did violate the copyright, you will be liable. Government only provides the court and the enforcement of outcome.

No problem

[Solandri]

If there's anything kids these days are good at, it's taking common words and phrases we use in everyday speech and turning them into obscure undecipherable abbreviations for text messages.

Lets be honest here, even in the US

[Anonymous Coward]

Lets be honest here, even in the US do you even realize how often you are censored? For example, on Google, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and other sites while your comments are visible to you, often no one else can see them because you're on a secret blacklist. If only people knew... maybe they would watch more TV? ha

Re: Lets be honest here, even in the US

[Anonymous Coward]

Those are corporations doing the censoring, which is completely legal. They have that right just like you have the right to not do business with them. Now if the government did it then that's another issue..and is illegal under our constitution, to a degree.

So it's news now?

[Anonymous Coward]

when Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, Metafilter, and Hacker News were blocking words like "Gamergate" no tech site seemed to care

Cuba...

[bev_tech_rob]

....is a communist country! Duh!

Re:Cuba...

[Immerman]

Not really relevant, even if it were true. Communism is just an economic policy (one currently essentially impossible to implement at scale)

The statement you're looking for is "Cuba is a dictatorship!"

Chinese Democracy

[tylersoze]

Crap so that means the Chinese can't listen to Guns N' Roses latest album?

And, of course, the dissidents are reliable

[Anonymous Coward]

No conflict of interest there. You know, like owning infrastruture and making potloads of cash of owning people's lives.

Falling for US propaganda

[jodido]

Note that first of all this is not a "news" story. It's a bunch of charges made by one side in a deep political debate. There's no attempt at substantiation, and not even the pretense of the courtesy of allowing the other side to comment. Second, that so many fierce "independent thinkers" at Slashdot have just accepted the charges and assumed they must be true. Because after all everyone knows Cuba is bad, right? And how do we know? Because "a lot of people" say so. And you make fun of Trump supporters.

Re:Falling for US propaganda

[Anonymous Coward]

there's that and also, where did they get this blocking tech? siemens, vodafone or maybe ericsson? because they are not located on north korea

Um, CUBA has very high happiness ratings.

[Anonymous Coward]

Irony or just caught up in the rhetoric?

Re:Um, CUBA has very high happiness ratings.

[Immerman]

Very high happiness ratings... and people willing to risk their life crossing a hundred miles of open ocean in craft barely fit to float across a lake.

Either the ratings are a lie, or the picture is far more complicated than they can portray.

Still, some have claimed that the best form of government is a benevolent dictatorship, and there's some truth to that, but even if you truly have one, how do you keep it benevolent? Historically such arrangements have rarely outlasted a single dictator, and of course there's always the question of what happens to those who voice disagreement with the dictator's policy.

Signal

[JThundley]

Time for Cubans to install Signal.

Sinking ship

[ebvwfbw]

It's just a matter of time.