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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."
If you can't blend in, you're no damn good! This also reaffirms the necessity of accessing the Wide Area Network without an ISP
Just admit Communism and Socialism just don't work. Unless you are the Dictator then it works GREAT!
Isn't Tor supposed to be still uncrackable? And if not, can't the resistance use the Telegram app, which so far has held up against the Iranian religious police?
Now that the population has no guns to fight back, a socialist retaining power, and propaganda allowed to flourish and not subjected to ridicule...let the executions begin.
Compared to Syria's, Venezuela's is not worse.
Donald Trump is a Whigger.
Late-stage socialism strikes again. Venezuela has run out of other people's money.
And the response is always oppression.
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.
....we thought the Internet (sic) interpreted censorship as damage, and routed around it? My, how times have changed.
Finding God in a Dog
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.
people who say that are the same crowd how think bitcoin's going to take down the international banking system. You don't fix oppression by working around it. You treat the root cause, which is poverty that allows desperate people to be organized into violent mobs.
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except maybe on a very, very small scale. I wish I could stop having to say this but Mao and Stalin were _not_ communists. They were fascists who happened to borrow Marx's books for rhetoric.
Socialism works just fine. Just ask Norway, Germany, France and Canada. But if you're entire country's basic systems fall apart and the rest of the world decides to punish you with sanctions for no particular reason (besides maybe not liking your system of economics) then no amount of socialism can save you.
Let me put it this way, does the American Great Depression mean Capitalism is a failure?
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You can block VPN. You can block Tor. But the Resilient Internet Protocol (ResIP) over a HTTPS transport combined with Remoted API Server is a full technology stack that can be used to neatly circumvent any firewall in BOTH directions with countless avenues for deployment.
I will admit that pure capitalism and socialism don't work. A blend of them seems to work the best, though.
I don't respond to AC's.
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.
Ummmmm. Have you looked at Ontario finances? We're on the verge of going broke to the same extent as Greece.
Odd, I thought "real socialism hasn't been tried"? You were holding them up as an example of success not very long ago, you know.
You guys argue like too much of a good thing can't be bad. Yes, public infrastructure is great, but a more complete oil-based socialism with no regard for fiscal prudence (i.e. an answer to 'what happens to public benefits when oil prices change?') turns out to be bad. Who could've predicted that? Oh, Norway. They invested their money, funny that.
Funny how giving governments unfettered power doesn't work out well.
I seriously doubt that access to the entire set of hidden bridge nodes has been blocked. These nodes are not advertised, and I am assuming that they do not appear in the public consensus documents.
The distribution points of the bridge node IP addresses were likely blocked. If and when Tor users find new bridge nodes by some means or other, they will be able to access the network again.
"Have you looked at Ontario finances? We're on the verge of going broke to the same extent as Greece."
Greece has a debt to GDP ration around 180%, and Ontario's is around 40% ?
"Have you looked at Ontario finances? We're on the verge of going broke to the same extent as Greece."
Greece has a debt to GDP ration around 180%, and Ontario's is around 40% ?
Ontario is a province and as such doesn't take most of the tax revenues while Greece is a country and as such its national government takes a much larger share of the taxes paid by its citizens. California at its worst point (which only lasted about a year) had about $50B in debt which is a debt to GDP ratio of around 5% which is bad for a US state. So its apples and oranges comparing Greece to Ontario. Certainly any province or state (or other sub-national government) shouldn't have more than about a 10% debt to GDP ratio and that's being very generous (it should probably be about half of that). So Ontario being 40% is certainly quite worrisome.
The real problem with a debt of that size is that you won't possibly be able to pay it back over the duration of the bonds so it will be rolled over. And since the debt to GDP ratio is sky high, those interest rates will be high which causes the debt to be harder to pay off. This causes a vicious cycle of larger debt and higher rates leading to default. This is a bad deal and the World Bank and WTO are often and rightly criticized for trapping poorer countries in this same cycle but in those cases it was the lenders suggesting the loans in the first place. In the case of Ontario (and Greece), they did it to themselves.
"Those that start by burning books, will end by burning men."
they were a third world hell hole until the price of oil spiked. Normally when that happens (a commodity becomes extremely valuable) nothing changes. A violent dictator takes it all for themselves. See the Congo and "Blood Diamonds" for a good example of what usually happens.
What made Venezuela so unique is Hugo Chavez. Instead of killing everyone in his way to claim the oil money for himself he used to it buy his way into the people's hearts, and in the process make the country a first world nation almost overnight.
They needed more time. Corruption was bound to happen. It's like a poor person winning the lottery. They don't know how to manage it. If they can hold onto enough of it for a few generations it becomes a dynasty. But right now it looks like Venezuela just didn't have enough time. Again, if the international community wasn't shitting all over them with sanctions (I suspect at the behest of the ultra rich, who don't like the idea of socialism spreading and biting into their status as God-Kings over mankind) then they might have pulled themselves up.
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If you're not doing anything wrong you shouldn't have anything to hide. I wonder what the government is trying to hide?
Yeah! It is well known that Communism is the declared enemy of Socialism. See National Socialism and how those people felt about commies.
Just as German Socialist politician Julius Leber how the Nazi's felt about Socialists.
Firstly the NSDAP was 'socialist' in the same way the that the Democratic Republic of Korea is 'democratic.' Don't be fooled by branding.
OK, it's not exactly that simple: there was the Strasserian tendency within the NSDAP which could be described as 'socialist', and certainly as 'anti-capitalist.' But remember Hitler personally objected to the inclusion of 'Sozialistische' in the name NSDAP, when the DAP re-branded. At that time, of course, Drexler not Hitler was the head of the party, so Hitler just had to work with the name he got. And it is also true the early DAP and NSDAP policy documents contained socialist-like and anti-capitalist points. However, all that changed once Hitler took over the party, and despite the 'S' being maintained, the party quickly became avowedly anti-Socialist, as Ernst Röhm, among others, was to discover to his peril.
Hitler also became a huge supporter of the giant German corporations, who of all the institutions of German society, were the only significant ones to escape Gleichschaltung (whereas 'Socialism' means, in the first instance, the socialisation of the "means of production"). Unlike the current Venezuelan regime, he knew better than to kill the proverbial goose. To call the Hitler-led NSDAP "Socialist" is simply wrong.
Secondly, far from Communism being the "declared enemy of Socialism," note that Communist Parties, where they have come to power, have generally set up "Socialist Republics." You may recall the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics centred around Russia, which was, throughout much of the C20th, a not insignificant state run by a nominally 'Communist' party. Why?
Because according to Marxist theory, Socialism was the transitional state required for the accomplishment of Communism. Thus a Capitalist revolution (from Feudalism) was necessary to establish modern productive forces and create both the wealth necessary to enable Socialism and the Communism to be born, and also to create the industrial working class, who would be humanity's saviour.
Socialism, for which Marx described the distribution of wealth as "to each according to their contribution," was supposed to be a state run by this working class (the 'universal' class, for owning nothing they did not have the interest in out competing any other concern, as capitalists were doomed to do), which was to pave the way for Communism, where humanity reached a social adulthood where the apparatus of the 'State' was no longer necessary, and the state simply faded away. The distribution in this stateless Communist society was instead to be "from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs" (ie. FOSS extended to all goods and services in society). And note needs also includes that which allows people to express their ability, so, to stretch out the FOSS conceit: society would see to it that software developers are supplied with hardware concomitant to their requirements as well as an lmitless supply of Mountain Dew and Krispy Kreme Doughnuts (or Peoples Dew and Peoples Doughnuts as they would then be called ;).
In any case, I'm not entirely convinced Venezuela is on this ineluctable road to paradise.
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke
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.
People inside China desperately need your help !
Are you willing to help them?
ftfy
Somebody bust Maduras face ? Smash neekaps and fingers too ... Trotsky bitch needs never again to write or walk.
LOL except all the countries you list aren't socialist, they just have more government services than the U.S. and less freedoms.
What US freedoms do you refer too? Getting harassed for jaywalking? Open container laws? Drinking age 21? Treasure chests of software patents? Getting choked to death by the police? Zoning laws that say this square mile is residential only, no shops to make it livable? Getting raided by the police or SWAT like Israelis do to Palestinians?
Please educate me on those great "freedoms" I'm missing.
Seems like the i2p protocols for anonymous peer-to-peer web + networking would be the next logical step if a routing framework like TOR can be blocked.
Just my two cents.
It's amazing what happens to any country that decides the challenge the financial hegemony. If Venezuela was standing at the edge of the precipice, our betters would be sure to give them the extra push that's needed.
At the very least, now they can point to the mangled corpse and righteously proclaim "See? This is why our way is best!"
Huh, I hadn't heard that one before.
It emerges pretty clearly even just from the narrative in Chapter 1 of the Manifesto,:
The bourgeoisie, historically, has played a most revolutionary part. ... The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together. Subjection of Nature's forces to man, machinery, application of chemistry to industry and agriculture, steam-navigation, railways, electric telegraphs, clearing of whole continents for cultivation, canalisation of rivers, whole populations conjured out of the ground ... But with the development of industry the proletariat not only increases in number; it becomes concentrated in greater masses, its strength grows, and it feels that strength more. The various interests and conditions of life within the ranks of the proletariat are more and more equalised, in proportion as machinery obliterates all distinctions of labour, and nearly everywhere reduces wages to the same low level. ... What the bourgeoisie, therefore, produces, above all, is its own grave-diggers.
So if you assume that late-stage capitalism degrades from frontier entrepreneurship to what is essentially market feudalism where a small handful of companies control sectors of the economy and have walled themselves in with sufficient barriers to entry and regulatory capture, then is it fair to assume that Marx would argue we need a revolution to simply go BACK to captialism? Or would he argue that the wealth is there, so captialism has done it's job, so choo-choo it's socialism time?
Nice question. I'm not. by any means, a scholar of Marx, but I've read a little, so I'll attempt to field it.
Firstly, if you will allow me this platitude, Marx was a man of his time, responding to the world as he found it, so we cannot really know what \ he would have argued had he seen contemporary conditions. He clearly did advocate revolution towards capitalism where it didn't exist! So for example, and this would/does upset our contemporary 'post-colonialist,' he wrote in support of French colonialism in Nth Africa as being an advance over what he saw as the theocratic tribalism of the Barbary coast. (Sorry, I can't recall the reference, I believe it was in a letter he wrote someone). He also, in communication with Russian radicals, dismissed the idea the Russia could stage a Socialist revolution (which led Lenin to revise Marx with his theory of 'Imperialism,' thus Marxism-Leninism), arguing that it was really mainly the US and England who were near enough advanced to accomplish this.
But more directly to your question. I think though we need to be careful of the use of "market feudalism" here. By 'feudalism' we (historians, lawyers and probably Marx) would usually understand, as a kind of idealised model, the social arrangement where land is parcelled out by a superior Lord to his vassal Lords (eg. King -> Baron -> Lords), but otherwise that land is inalienable (cannot be bought or sold) and where the resident population (serfs) are bound to that land, unable simply to leave it (though escape routes like becoming a soldier existed in practice). Similarly in the towns (burghs), the burghers are constrained almost by birth to follow certain vocations, which are tightly restricted in size etc by the guild system (the spillage ending up in monasteries). For (non-aristocratic) women, of course, social position would be even more restricted.
Marx' insight was that each stage of economic development (which then created a particular kind of society and person), at first represented an advance of productive capacity over the previous, but that eventually the very aspects which originally recommended a system because "fetters on production" and thus change would ensue. If you like check out the
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke
Public roads are not socialism. Socialism is government control of the means of production. They were even built by private companies.
Maybe strictly speaking that's true, but it is a form of "soft" socialism!
Who paid those private companies? It was the government, and they paid them with taxes they stole from you and me! I know people don't like paying tolls, but think about this: it's only a step from free public roads to free public education and then to free public health complete with death panels. And once you let the government decide whose gonna live and die its a very short road to Auswitz!
Public roads? No thanks!
As of today (June 28, 2018 1630 gmt-4) TOR is working for me in TAILS 3.6 on a Vbox VM
Yes, not the most secure configuration, but I am busy with a few things rigth now, no BW to Torrent 3.8, and not rich to have multiple machines.
Every Time I torrent the latest version of TAILS, I take the time to fire up the VM, and connect to TOR, just to practice.
TOR and TAILS, not being the most user-friendly things to set up, give me grief each time I change version. Maybe that'spart of the problem that the other guys reported...
The other part is that the guys at CANTV (the government main ISP) have been conducting "internet censorship" experiments for weeks now (DNS blocks, HTTP filtering, DoS,). Highly uncoordinated, and semi-random... but Still....
Also, and this is anecdotic: Ping times to 8.8.8.8 have gone (at least for me) from a reasonable 90ms to a woping 150ms. Wonder what is being done with my packets those extra 60ms. Will ask some contacts (I was technical trainer for cloud computing to some of those guys, and have my fair share of contacts in Vz Telecoms Companies)
Having said that, for the time being, a change of DNS and a VPN is a the moment enough to evade most blocks (Unless you are a high value target).
Anyway, just to say that TOR is back to normal (if it ever was out).
PS: Not anon coward, because my position is widely known, here and elsewhere (and in meatspace too), no point in hiding it now.
*** Suerte a todos y Feliz dia!