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Turkey Doubles Down On Censorship With Block On VPNs, Tor (vice.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: In what's a significant escalation in its censorship efforts, the Turkish government now wants to block the very same tools that tech-savvy citizens use to get around the government-imposed social media blocks. On Friday, the Turkish information technologies and communications authority, or BTK, ordered internet providers in the country to block Tor and several other censorship-circumvention Virtual Private Networks or VPNs, such as VPN Master, Hotspot Shield, Psiphon, Zenmate, TunnelBear, Zero, Vypr, Express, according to multiple local reports. Earlier in the day, the government had already blocked Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, and restrictions on messaging apps like WhatsApp and Skype were also reported. The independent monitoring organization TurkeyBlocks also reported throttling and other forms of censorship on Friday, linking the disruptions and blocks to the arrests of pro-Kurdish party leaders.
... but even IS confiscating all phones and computers has failed to cut the population completely from the outside world. The actions of the Turkish authorities are leading them down a slippery slope to a total, hated police-state.
Isn't it great that we live in the US, where we have freedom of the press.
The press is free to report on any story without worrying about how the government will react. They are free to cover both sides of a story, to give a different perspective, and not have to worry about what the people in charge will do.
The press is also free to leak information which would paint the government in a bad light, and which might uncover corruption, collusion, or crime. Additionally, the press isn't liable for publishing this information, as the pentagon papers have clearly shown. (Here I'm making a distinction between "publishing" and "getting". Just publishing, without addressing how the information was obtained, is allowed.)
There's also a strong sense of "protect your sources" in the mainstream media, so that anyone can feel safe identifying themselves to members of the press as they pass information.
Living in the US is great, because we have freedom of the press.
Yay.
leading down? Turkey were way down that road long before this was announced.
Ataturk would be spinning in his grave if he knew of the things Erdogan has done to the country.
This is what happens when a government attempts to censor the internet. First, they start with a few "objectionable" sites. Then they expand the list. Then they clamp down on the workarounds that people use to accessed banned content. At some point, they'll have to either relent or go Full DPRK and cut off the external internet entirely.
Never go Full DPRK.
(Score: -1, Stupid)
What a farce