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Dropbox, Google Drive, GitHub and Microsoft OneDrive Cloud Services Blocked In Turkey (turkeyblocks.org)

An anonymous reader quotes the censorship-monitoring site Turkey Blocks: Turkey has blocked access to Dropbox, Microsoft OneDrive and partially restricted Google Drive cloud file sharing services following the leak of a set of private emails allegedly belonging to Minister Albayrak by hacktivist group RedHack. Both Google Drive and Dropbox services were issuing SSL errors, indicating intercepted traffic at the national or ISP level. Microsoft OneDrive was also subsequently blocked off throughout Turkey.
The emails reportedly document Turkey's use of pro-government trolls on Twitter -- though ironically, it's Twitter that's now being used to document the censorship. (GitHub was also blocked last night, according to a status update from the group.) Google Drive was even displaying an official notice from the Turkish government's Information and Communication Technologies Authority describing their block as an "administration measure" -- although another Twitter update this morning says Google Drive is now back online after Google complied with the government's takedown order.

75 comments

  1. Open source a tool for subversion by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Another government stands up to communism by turning the screws on GitHub.

    1. Re:Open source a tool for subversion by hsmith · · Score: 1

      being forced to use subversion would be torture

    2. Re:Open source a tool for subversion by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not GitHub!!! Every open source project is hosted at GitHub.

      Eggs, basket, one.

      Notice how SourceForge is not blocked. Because nobody uses SourceForge!

    3. Re:Open source a tool for subversion by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Subversion isn't so bad for a solo project with one maintainer who occasionally accepts patches. The linear revision history only becomes unworkable for distributed projects with multiple maintainers where each keeps a separate fork and each occasionally sends in pull requests.

    4. Re: Open source a tool for subversion by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Tortoise?

    5. Re: Open source a tool for subversion by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So you'll use subversion if you don't have to touch the icky command line?

    6. Re:Open source a tool for subversion by Zontar+The+Mindless · · Score: 1

      Subversion does great for small teams whose members mostly work on different parts of the project. Been using it this way for about 10 years.

      --
      Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
    7. Re: Open source a tool for subversion by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It was meant as a joke on "torture".

  2. Anyone surprised? by Opportunist · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Seriously, this regime is worse than a lot of the shit that's going down in the middle east.

    Anyone still wants that country and its tinpot dictator in the EU?

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    1. Re:Anyone surprised? by Zontar+The+Mindless · · Score: 1

      I certainly won't be voting for any MEP that supports their entry sans régime change.

      --
      Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
    2. Re:Anyone surprised? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Istanbul = Boston. Ankara = New York. Rest of Turkey = Arkansas.

    3. Re:Anyone surprised? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      EU citizens don't want it, but EU leaders want a bigger EU so there position looks more important. The EU isn't a real democracy, Only one country held a vote about adding Ukraine and those citizens voted no, and that country has not ratified the paperwork so officially Ukraine did not join the EU, but EU leaders have put the whole treaty already in motion years ago and ignore the no vote.

    4. Re:Anyone surprised? by Zontar+The+Mindless · · Score: 1

      WTF has that to do with anything?

      But fine, I'll play along:

      Any/All of Turkey = Erdogan.

      Happy now?

      --
      Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
    5. Re:Anyone surprised? by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 2

      I was going to make a comment about how the EU is actually the GU (Deutsch Union), but Europeans often don't have a sense of humor so I've reconsidered.

      --
      #DeleteChrome
    6. Re:Anyone surprised? by fustakrakich · · Score: 1

      They serve(d) as a buffer against Russia.

      --
      “He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
    7. Re:Anyone surprised? by Zontar+The+Mindless · · Score: 1

      We have a sense of humour. It helps if you're saying something that's actually funny, though.

      --
      Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
    8. Re:Anyone surprised? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I forgot to add that I obviously know nothing whatsoever about how the EU actually works, and can only parrot what our Dear Leader Vladimir tells me.

    9. Re:Anyone surprised? by Zocalo · · Score: 5, Informative

      You think it's bad now? Having been to Turkey in September, the situation on the ground is a definitely lot more divided than people in the West might grasp from the media reports; there's clearly a huge amount of resentment and suspicion bubbling away beneath the surface, and many Turks are clearly not happy about the supression of the media and widescale arrests if you get them to talk candidly. Likewise, the effect of every arrest, sacking or suspension ripples out across family, friends and acquaintances who have no idea why that person should have been singled out by the government (or, as is now starting to become the case, denounced). To take that analogy further there's also a huge propaganda drive in progress with Turkish flags and nationalist slogans on just about every place you could put some one - hanging from windows of home and offices, bridges, on taxis and buses... any of this starting to sound scarily familiar yet?

      Meanwhile, the economy is on the verge of imploding because the big cash cow of tourism has all but collapsed. The area around the Blue Mosque and Haghia Sophia and the Topkapi in Istanbul were all but deserted in comparison with the norm and traders are getting truly desperate and are selling things at a fraction of what they normally go for just to pay the rent and put food on the table - or at least they are trying to, given that there are so few tourists to actually buy them. Wrecked lives, many social hubs like mosques, schools, media, and stores shutdown, an abundance of resentment, widespread distrust and fear, an oppresive government... Pretty much a perfect environment for any of the several militant Islamic and Kurdish groups present that might be looking to snag some new recruits. Yeah, this is going to end really well.

      As for the EU though; forget it. Turkey's progress towards EU membership requirements before the coup attempt was glacial at best - plate tectonics might actually be a better analogy - and since then it's all but stopped; Ergodan is even toying with things like bringing back the death penalty which would kill and remaining chance of membership dead in its tracks. With everything else that's going on in the EU, especially the growing pushback against globalism and immigration (both internal to the EU and from outside), it would be insane for them to even consider Turkey's membership at this point, although the flipside of that course is that's more likely to result in much tighter links between Ankara and Moscow.

      --
      UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
    10. Re:Anyone surprised? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I think they want a EU == NATO, hence Turkey in.

    11. Re:Anyone surprised? by Zontar+The+Mindless · · Score: 1

      Matches pretty closely what I've heard from others who've recently visited there. Thanks for the report.

      --
      Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
    12. Re:Anyone surprised? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Call it by name, the people of the Netherlands voted against the Ukraine joining the EU. Most likely many other countries would too.

    13. Re:Anyone surprised? by jonwil · · Score: 1

      I suspect Ataturk would be spinning in his grave if he knew some of the things Edrogen is currently doing to the country he started...

    14. Re:Anyone surprised? by myowntrueself · · Score: 1

      I forgot to add that I obviously know nothing whatsoever about how the EU actually works, and can only parrot what our Dear Leader Vladimir tells me.

      In that case you are in the same position as Boris Johnson and David Davis, the UK politicians in charge of Brexit. Davis believed that a UK outside the EU/EEA could negotiate trade deals with individual EU member states and Boris just recently suggested that the UK could forge favorable trade deals with Turkey (which is in the EU customs region).

      So lack of knowledge on how the EU actually works is no barrier to even the highest positions in UK government.

      --
      In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
    15. Re:Anyone surprised? by unixisc · · Score: 1

      The 1980s called. They want their enemy ideology back! Islam has replaced Communism as the main enemy of the West since at least 2000, if not 1993 (first WTC bombing). Trump has the right instincts - we need to ally w/ Russia and against all the Islamic powers across the world

    16. Re:Anyone surprised? by unixisc · · Score: 1

      He'd probably be regretting that he didn't stamp out Islam when he had the chance

    17. Re: Anyone surprised? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The EU hasn't ever voted on Ukraine joining, so you're ignorant, lying, or both.

    18. Re:Anyone surprised? by Opportunist · · Score: 1

      Hey! Merkel isn't Germany.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    19. Re:Anyone surprised? by Maritz · · Score: 1

      EU leaders want a bigger EU so there position looks more important.

      You'll forgive me for not taking you at your word.

      How exactly would you know this? Your mate Bill? Does he know the difference between their and there?

      The ongoing correlation between illiteracy and being anti-EU seems to continue.

      --
      I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
    20. Re:Anyone surprised? by Maritz · · Score: 1

      Oh that's a shame, it would have been completely hilarious.

      --
      I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
    21. Re:Anyone surprised? by Maritz · · Score: 1

      I hope for a EU collapse, there will be economic hardships but that's always better than war.

      Keep on hoping.

      --
      I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
    22. Re:Anyone surprised? by Maritz · · Score: 1

      So lack of knowledge on how the EU actually works is no barrier to even the highest positions in UK government.

      Knowledge is a significant hinderance. We are in an age where ignorance is flaunted.

      --
      I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
    23. Re:Anyone surprised? by Maritz · · Score: 1

      I find it hilarious that wusses like you are so scared of Islam. Why be scared of people who are quite so scared of women? Fucking hell. Grow a pair. Islam is not an existential threat and never fucking will be.

      --
      I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
    24. Re:Anyone surprised? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Europeans have a great sense of humour. Your delivery needs work.

      Watch some 'allo allo' and come back to us with a funny version of the same joke.

    25. Re:Anyone surprised? by DeVilla · · Score: 1

      I don't know about that.

  3. The internet is broken by fustakrakich · · Score: 1

    It's too easy to block stuff. What ever happened to all that *route around the damage* bullshit?

    --
    “He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
    1. Re:The internet is broken by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      The internet is broken
      It's too easy to block stuff. What ever happened to all that *route around the damage* bullshit?

      When every client was also a server, it routed around the damage. Now that the only servers are walled gardens - and yes, GitHub is a walled garden, it just happens to have low walls - we're all clients, and there are no servers. We recentralized everything - SMTP got replaced with Gmail/Yahoo/Microsoft's mail servers. IRC became Facebook and Snapchat and Slack.

      The internet isn't broken. We broke the internet.

    2. Re:The internet is broken by Z00L00K · · Score: 1

      I still run my own mail server, it's useful from time to time.

      --
      If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
    3. Re:The internet is broken by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How do you get that working these days?! Last I tried, gmail blocked it entirely within 3 or 4 test messages.

    4. Re:The internet is broken by Zontar+The+Mindless · · Score: 1

      I'm thinking about setting up my own mail again.

      And maybe a family-only Diaspora setup as well.

      --
      Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
    5. Re:The internet is broken by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Works great. Many mail servers will not accept mail from known residential DHCP blocks, IP addresses that do not have valid reverse DNS record, and other configuration issues.

    6. Re: The internet is broken by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's never been a feature of the internet.
      You'd be thinkin' of ARPANET. It is an exact 180 apart.

      The internet has always been heavily central.
      The web, being on said internet, heavily central too.
      The web generally had more 'nodes', independent sites.
      But as the web grew, more and more internet services got translated to web services, wrappers for the underlying service if you will.
      Many services died over the years, which lead to stagnation for a good while until a sudden explosion of new services from 2007~ onwards.
      People that say there isn't variety or diversity on the web are fucking morons. By ratio there are more independent-run sites these days than ever. Sure there are loads of people that run through 3rd parties, it is the only realistic way to achieve web-scale these days.

      Regardless of these facts, there is one fact that all these services still depend on: a heavily central internet.
      Mesh-networks of scalable sizes can be iffy, many implemented systems using all kinds of different setups.
      But don't let anyone fool you in to thinking the internet is anything but centralized. To the very rotten, often-abused, core.
      The very core of the internets operation is based purely on trust between peers. Peers which are open to corruption and bias. This trust is abused pretty much every month.
      Sometimes this trust is abused so much you even hear about it. (Like when Pakistan blocked Youtube for most of the planet for half a day, 'purely by accident')

    7. Re:The internet is broken by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's too easy to block stuff. What ever happened to all that *route around the damage* bullshit?

      The CIA and NSA got a clue. Or more accurately, the rest of the world figured out they weren't clueless.

  4. Death to the Western pig-dogs! by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

    Cardigan snackbar!

    --
    Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  5. note: i don't browse safely on purpose. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    heu guys, do you know that sucker from the pthc vicky movies? she and her dad moved to novio hamburgo rio grande do sul brazil, and bought many IT companies. pretty serious for fighting against tor if they finish their isle here huh?

  6. Erdogan Internet: Great! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This demonstrates the Political control over the internet.

    Which means there is now the need to build a new internet free of both political borders, national governments and their dictators.

    Face the facts. Every "democracy" or "democratic republic" is just a dictatorship waiting in the wings to happen.

    1. Re:Erdogan Internet: Great! by Zontar+The+Mindless · · Score: 1

      Every car, bus, and train is just a road accident waiting to happen. Tell us--what's it like, walking everywhere?

      --
      Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
  7. Maybe... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It's because those cloud services sell their users' info. to "questionable" third parties. Seriously, this asinine everything-in-the-cloud shit needs to be killed off.

  8. whew by GrahamJ · · Score: 2

    Lucky for the Turkish government there are no other ways to send documents over the internet. If only there was a way anyone could publish a document and have it visible by anyone with some sort of a document browser. If they could be linked together it would form sort of a web. That'd be awesome!

    1. Re:whew by Zontar+The+Mindless · · Score: 1

      The one good thing about Erdogan is that his monster hard-on for social media tends to block his view of anything else on the 'Net.

      --
      Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
    2. Re:whew by gtall · · Score: 1

      I couldn't read your comment without thinking of that Seinfeld scene at the beach house when Rachel sees George naked after he's been in the pool and she leaves laughing.

    3. Re: whew by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hey now, that's shrinkage and isn't a laughing matter. Cold water causes shrinkage.

  9. Twitter is Enforcing Additional Censorship by Kunedog · · Score: 3, Informative

    The emails reportedly document Turkey's use of pro-government trolls on Twitter -- though ironically, it's Twitter that's now being used to document the censorship.

    According to a Turkish journalist, Twitter is also helping out with the censorship:
    https://twitter.com/MahirZeyna...

    At the request of Turkey, Twitter decided to block my Turkish account within Turkey.

    I'm not the only journalist whose Twitter feed is restricted in Turkey. The process is simple: Turkey asks, Twitter shuts down.

    And lists a few more who have been banned.

  10. What if. by Gravis+Zero · · Score: 2

    What if we had a network of LEO satellites that replaced the internet backbone, providing high speed internet access to all people and only a handful of governments were even capable of disrupting this network? Would it be worth pissing off every nation state that censored the internet and possibly causing a war?

    --
    Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
    1. Re:What if. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      See Iran and BBC television.
      They bombard and overload the satellites.
      Only now are they deploying satellites that have counter-measures against that.
      And even that requires
      1) only sending data down from the satellite
      2) no infrastructure on the ground for local jamming of the satellite
      (3) potentially harsh punishments for owning satellite equipment)

      1) could probably be worked around by a kind of teletext style broadcast providing specifically the censored pages - though with the static internet dying out that still would be a challenge.
      2) still means that people in big cities could be quite easily prevented from access though

      So this is likely a very high cost solution that doesn't really work any better (and due to 3) is likely more risky for the people using it) than many of the other solutions to avoid censorship that already exist.
      On the plus side, it's more likely to make the dictators of the world die from laughing about your waste of money than causing a war...
      At least I don't remember e.g. Iran starting a war with the BBC/England/anyone at all actually over the analog equivalent to your idea.

    2. Re:What if. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      the fact that you used the terminology 'high speed' demonstrates you are (probably subconciously) regurgitating propaganda already. You seem to be talking about access to Free Speech and forbidden information. That doesn't require high-speed internet, or even internet at all. The modern equivalent of dropping a leaflet would be gently droning in some crap android tablets with 1tb microsdhc/xc/whatever and mirrors of wikipedia. Then people could actually ingest the information without leaving evidence of that ingestion halfway across the internet where tyrants can easily counter it with any number of nasty tactics.

  11. Turkey voting for Christmas by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Nice one Turkey. Try to save a corrupt minister by pulling the plug on the 21st century. Good thing you don't have any industries which rely on these services. Oh you do?

    1. Re: Turkey voting for Christmas by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      just crazy

    2. Re:Turkey voting for Christmas by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      By slowly turning their democracy into a Muslim Theocracy they already pulled the plug on the 21st, 20th, 19th, 18th and 17th century. It is just a question how far they wish their society to devolve: rejection of every European scientific discovery and back to theology > science or still accept science.

  12. Turkey is also jailing many for downloading app by schwit1 · · Score: 2
    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...

    Teachers, judges, journalists, businesspeople, bankers, shoemakers, chefs, police officers, florists... All of these people are in Turkish prisons for simply downloading ByLock. Thousands of children were left orphans in a country where child social services are broke. There are dozens of cases where entire families were jailed because of this app.

    1. Re:Turkey is also jailing many for downloading app by Zontar+The+Mindless · · Score: 1

      Maybe people will actually think of the possible consequences to others before posting their shitty "secure" messaging app, next time?

      --
      Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
  13. European Union full membership by CanEHdian · · Score: 0

    It's obvious Turkey should be awarded a full membership in the EU as they have proven themselves to be on the same level as the European Commission, the non-elected elitist Rulers of the union. See: European Constitution, and Dutch Ukraine Referendum.

    --
    When the copyright term is "forever minus a day", live every day like it's the last.
    1. Re:European Union full membership by Zontar+The+Mindless · · Score: 0

      We already know that Putin doesn't like the EU.

      You can crawl back into your warren now.

      --
      Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
    2. Re:European Union full membership by myowntrueself · · Score: 1

      It's obvious Turkey should be awarded a full membership in the EU as they have proven themselves to be on the same level as the European Commission, the non-elected elitist Rulers of the union. See: European Constitution, and Dutch Ukraine Referendum.

      Of course. And the death penalty and holocaust denial aren't that important really...

      --
      In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
    3. Re:European Union full membership by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's obvious Turkey should be awarded a full membership in the EU as they have proven themselves to be on the same level as the European Commission, the non-elected elitist Rulers of the union. See: European Constitution, and Dutch Ukraine Referendum.

      Funnily enough, the only country who tried to push to get Turkey into the EU was the UK, the EU's harshest critics. Exact same thing with the TTIP. Isn't irony entertaining?

  14. Weak Nations by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Only weak governments and nations need to use trolls. The strong can let the facts speak for themselves.

    1. Re:Weak Nations by myowntrueself · · Score: 1

      Only weak governments and nations need to use trolls. The strong can let the facts speak for themselves.

      Strength is having control over the facts.

      --
      In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
    2. Re:Weak Nations by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The strong don't have to control the facts. Controlling them creates weakness.

    3. Re:Weak Nations by myowntrueself · · Score: 1

      The strong don't have to control the facts. Controlling them creates weakness.

      Yeah, you should say that more like Yoda...

      --
      In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
  15. 20GB of corrupt Turkish Govt emails: link included by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The Turkish Government, i.e. Erdogan, is trying to hide a 20GB email dump of his (Erdogan's) corrupt son-in-law who is also Minister of Energy.

    The emails were obtained and linked by the RedHack Turkish hacking group.

    The email dump is, apparently, chock-a-block with oil-from-ISIS, money-to-ISIS and everyday Turkish governmental corruption, grand-scale corruption.

    A magnet link to the email dump is here: http://pastebin.com/LGc2vakc

  16. Danger! by h8sg8s · · Score: 1

    Erdogan is modeling himself after something between Mussolini and Stalin, with a touch of the Shah thrown in. 'Purity' has been used for centuries as a convenient yardstick with which to measure one's competitors and find them lacking. Looks like he learned from the best at that game.

    --
    Organization? You must be joking..
  17. Partially blocked? by manu0601 · · Score: 1

    Google drive partially blocked? How is it possible to partially block an SSL-enabled service? And TFA shows https:/// URL with HTTP responses codes, but SSL should prevent and error insertion by in-the-middle ISP.

  18. Turkey is NOT European by unixisc · · Score: 1

    Anybody who knows the first thing about Turkey knows that that country does not belong in the EU - regardless of what criteria is used.

    Culturally, the Turks are not Europeans. While they may have lived close to a century of Kemalism, it neither made them a pluralistic, free-thinking society like any of the new EU entrants are, nor did it even make them - the people - less Islamic. Kemalism may have succeeded had it replaced Islam w/ some other imaginary friend that the Turks could have had. Regardless, when Turkey was a secular country, the EU didn't want it b'cos the army had complete power, or at least enough of a power to veto any regime going Islamic. The EU, you see, wanted only complete democratic countries who would ratify the gazillions of EU rules and regulations

    Finally, when Turkey did have a democratic government, the people elected Erdogan, who is more Islamic than any since the Ottoman caliphate. Now, it's Turkey that finds the EU a lot less interesting than rediscovering its old Turkic glory, particularly its leadership of the Muslim world that it had not only during the Ottomans, but even prior. On one hand, Turkey heads a club of the ex Soviet stans - Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan. On the other hand, they've been allied w/ the Saudis and Qatar to try and topple Assad's regime, and hence their current friction w/ Russia.

    About the above story, Turkey could well start an Islamic Cloud Service and give ISIS access to it. They'll then have clientele in >30 countries.

  19. They are very liberal in other circumstance by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Turkey, the country in which corrupt police officers kidnap run-away girls and sell them into prostitution where they are murdered if they do not comply.