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Venezuela Is Blocking Access To the Tor Network (theverge.com)
An Access Now report finds that Venezuela has blocked all access to the Tor network. "The latest block includes both direct connections to the network and connections over bridge relays, which had escaped many previous Tor blocks," reports The Verge. From the report: According to network metrics, Tor access in Venezuela had recently spiked in response to recent web blocks placed on local news outlets. Unlike previous blocks, the latest restrictions could not be circumvented by using a censorship-resistant DNS server like those provided by Google and CloudFlare. For many Venezuelans, Tor seems to have been the only way left to access the restricted content. "This is the latest escalation in Venezuela's internet censorship efforts, as it blocks higher-profile sites with more sophisticated methods," said Andres Azpurua of Venezuela Inteligente, in a statement provided through Access. "This is one of their boldest internet censorship actions yet."
China is providing all the network hardware to Venezuela for deep packet inspection (among other things) in exchange for no-bid infrastructure projects. That's how they're getting this done.
These "projects" are just the government handing them money for work that never gets done. It's an escape path for the elite once the shit really hits the fan but until then their primary focus is exfiltrating enough resources from Venezuela to maintain their lifestyle.
They shipped these devices to Venezuela about 10 years ago and it's taken the inept government this long to put them in.
It's rumored that they "funded" these infrastructure projects to the tune of $100m but exact numbers are impossible to get as the constituent assembly has ruled that all government contracts are state secrets.
TFA is light on technical detail. Even Chinese firewall is ineffective against tor's latest steganographic transports. But even basic tor is hard to block, at least outgoing traffic.
This is why I run a tor relay node. Everytime I hear about something like this, it reminds me that tor is used by people in countries like this to bypass censorship.
OK, I really run it because of the EFF's tor challenge where I got a free T-shirt, but that's the reason I've kept it running after the challenge was over.
Your comment is a non-sequitor.
Socialism...
a political and economic theory of social organization that advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole.
Socialism is about how people and their governments choose to run society as a whole... NOT an interconnected collection of networks, computers, or devices.
Take this article itself for example... is Venezula blocking TOR really a product of "socialism" or is it a product of a dictator taking advantage of a nation full of socialists? There really is a difference!
for the most party society has zero say over how the internet works... just just have a say on where they go on it. You do not get to vote, or tell businesses how they must operate either. You can call up a senator and give them ideas, but that is not really socialism. The moment a small group of people decide the rules Socialism has failed... which means by that virtue a Government "always composed of by a small group of people" cannot be socialist ever. Socialism in actual practice is utopian and much closer to libertarian or anarchy, and I think we all know how well that works based on human history.
A small group of people always want to control the majority and they will do, say, or try to get you to believe in any "ism" they can dream up to get you to go along with it.
Only a true direct democracy has the possibility of being an actual socialist society, and given the number of people on the internet with some serious Dunning-Kruger psychosis going on... well we all know that would be a fast failure!
While I am not fond of Internet blocking, my understanding is that Venezuela must try to fend fierce psyops attacks from the CIA, that this is one of the tools available.
Remember when Obama declared Venezuela a national security threat? If the CIA does its job correctly, it must be trying to destroy Venezuela state since that time.