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Tor: Directly connecting users from Turkey (metrics.torproject.org)

180 points by hexa- ↗ HN
After having censored the turkish people via DNS and thus restricting their access to Twitter everyone moved on to other DNS Services like Google Public DNS (8.8.8.8, 8.8.4.4) and OpenDNS. Earlier today an IP-Ban was issued and immediately Tor-Usage from Turkey starts rising. What a magnificent people. Keep on fighting!

82 comments

[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 164 ms ] thread
neotek
Turkey's government is getting really good at turning molehills into mountains.
kiba
Freedom of speech. It always seem to be under attack.

I wonder though, do we have more or less freedom of speech over time? I tried to google those things, but I couldn't find the graph of freedomness over time.

(No, ancedotes don't count. Our perceptions can be skewed by media bias.)

adrusi
I remember reading an article a couple weeks ago, I'm not sure where, but I think it was posted on HN, about democracy over time. While not the same, that's a good proxy for measuring freedom. It said that democracy reached a peak around 2000, and that it's declined a little since then, but much slower than it was increasing before then.

I think this article was either on The Atlantic, The Economist or BBC, if you want to go digging.

saryant
It was probably The Economist. Paired with an interesting experiment (for them) in their presentation of long-form essays.

http://www.economist.com/news/essays/21596796-democracy-was-...

sly_g
"Freedom score"? Really? Some number, representing "freedom", calculated from the US point of view - it's, how should I put it... Less than impartial. Not to mention method of calculating freedom.
adrusi
It doesn't seem any less contrived than standard of living scores or happiness scores. It's obviously an imperfect metric, but while it might be useless for comparing the freedom of Germany and the US, it's perfectly adequate for comparing the freedom of the US and Croatia, or of Croatia and China. For the sake of calculating the overall freedom of the world over time, as in the case of the great-grandparent's question, it works as well as anything.
adrusi
That's the one. The whole article is a great read, but the visualization a couple screenfuls down is what the grandparent was looking for.
pdevr
Thank you. I looked at other countries' graphs as well. India's [1] make no sense. Distorted sinusoidal wave?!

[1] https://metrics.torproject.org/users.html?graph=userstats-re...

esert
It looks like a weekly cycle. Maybe some businesses use TOR during weekdays.
predius
From my experience in internet businesses in developing countries, you tend to get quite strong weekly patterns as a lot of people only have access to computers at work, so usage tends to drop on the weekend.
arjie
Drops every Sunday¹. Employees of companies are using Tor to bypass company site blocks.

¹ https://metrics.torproject.org/users.html?graph=userstats-re...

1ris
No, I don't think so. Look at a bigger time frame:

https://metrics.torproject.org/users.html?graph=userstats-re...

There was a huge spike in Mid 2013, cause by a botnet that installed tor. Before there was almost not oscillation. After that there is quite a bit. I think there are many infected PCs at companies.

arjie
Nice. That sounds like a good explanation.
tim333
Also: "As the Turkish government’s effort to ban use of Twitter continued Friday, the country’s Internet users rushed to install apps such as Hotspot Shield, which had 270,000 downloads from Turkish users within 12 hours, according to David Gorodyansky, the company’s chief executive."

I think Tor's a bit of an overkill. This message sent over Hotspot Shield from Vietnam because of my Facebook addiction (blocked on and off here)

middleclick
Why and how is Tor an overkill? With Hotspot Shield, you are trusting them with everything you are doing. With Tor, there is no trust with a single server because it is decentralized.
fabulist
Tor is certainly far more decentralized, but you seem to harbor a common misconception that Tor doesn't reuqire trust. The exit node of your circuit (the last hop before the "real" internet) handles your directly. At best, the destination of your packets is unencrypted, giving the exit node a narrow but pertinent view into your communications. At worst, the entire packet is unencrypted, and the exit node can manipulate it in whatever way it wishes, undetectably. This is why you must, must, must layer other encryption on top of Tor, ie, HTTPS. As they say at the Tor Project, "plaintext over Tor is still plaintext," except that you've attracted a lot attention to send it.
tyrant_device
Too bad Twitter can't put a server at 140.140.140.140
MichaelApproved
I know you're joking because of the twitter 140 character limit but accessing twitter directly by IP address won't help much. The govt can easily block a specific IP. So knowing the IP helps when DNS is down but, in the long run, it's not too helpful when someone is trying to block a site.
CSDude
They have already switched to IP blocking so the only option you have is proxy or VPN
tyrant_device
Just for kicks, does Twitter have an onion server?
higherpurpose
I was wondering if Twitter is doing anything to help the people in Turkey circumvent the censorship there. They should, but so far I've heard nothing about it. Hosting an onion server and an exit relay could help.
cturhan
Twitter provided a SMS based system to send tweets from users
hakanderyal
They hired a lawyer in Turkey to negotiate with the government.
joeblau
It's amazing what humans beings will do for information. This reminds me of a time in 2007 where my friend was a teacher at an elementary school. The school blocked MySpace and Facebook to stop the students from visiting those sites. Somehow, the students figured out how to use proxies and get around the firewalls and what ended up happening is that the teachers were the only ones who couldn't figure out how to get around the firewalls. My friend came to me asking how the kids were getting around the firewall, but my explanation was over his head.
cbhl
I remember being one of these kids.

My high school put in a transparent squid-based filter for all HTTP content in my second year, and all traffic going to ports 80 and 443 went through it. They blocked all UDP traffic (even internal to the school, and all outbound TCP traffic except to ports 80, 443... and port 21, which the Yearbook people needed to upload files somewhere. Once I realized that the traffic on port 21 didn't go through an active sniffer, I just started running my SSH server at home on port 21, and bringing PuTTY around on my USB key.

Cameron_D
My school did filtering on port 80 but allowed all TCP traffic out on port 443 so I just ran SSH there. I changed schools and it seems as though they did further filtering on packets (They close connections of 443 if the server sends data first - like happens with SSH), after some testing I managed to get OpenVPN using TCP on port 443 running great.
cwilson
Hell, I remember this being common when I was in high school between 1999 - 2003. It started with the computer savvy kids figuring it out, but eventually the word spread and before you know it football players were using proxies to play stupid games on Newgrounds. Good times.
chacham15
The solution I used to use in high school: add a period to the end of the domain name. E.g. "www.facebook.com" became "www.facebook.com.". Apparently, the last dot does nothing, but gets around almost all pattern matchings. Everyone I told was amazed, but it actually worked (and teachers/administration were clueless).
girvo
My favourite was that http was blocked, but https wasn't at my school. Easy peasy :)
TazeTSchnitzel
I use that for a different trick at school. It gets around keyword filtering on search terms :)
jonmetz
This type of filtering made the EFF's HTTPSEverywhere common in my last school
pavanred
What's more amazing is why human beings try to block information in the first place, at least in places where its unnecessary, even for their own cause. For instance, the Indian IT firm Infosys (many other similar companies in India too), block use of personal email, social networking sites etc. which I personally find pointless but probably can be argued about. But, what surprises me is they also have policies in place to not provide internet connectivity to software developer recruits who are new grads. And, these developers are provided internet access only after a few months and only if they obtain an approval from their manager that their work requires them to have internet access.
higherpurpose
In communist countries people used to listen to radio from the same nationality people that lived in other countries (speaking the same language).

In fact, that's happening in North Korea right now, too. North Koreans who fled have radio stations in South Korea and some of them also smuggle some radio units in NK.

agumonkey
Centralized authority is weak against distributed desire and eyes. We will constantly attempt any potential hack. And as soon as a crack is found, it diffuses everywhere.
Intermediate
I guess what they are going to do when Turkish government will buy some advanced DPI hardware with SVM (Support Vector Machines) which is capable of blocking TOR
userbinator
Doesn't TOR look like other encrypted traffic, specifically to avoid detection methods like this?
Intermediate
TOR is effectively blocked in China, the only way to use it there is to setup a private obfsproxy somewhere abroad, but I believe it's beyond an average user skills.
iotakodali
what are they gaining of it, extra protests?
1ris
I wish i had your optimism.
Oculus
My biggest fear is once dictatorships/governments become aware of the ability to sidestep their bans, they'll begin blocking websites such as torproject.org. Keep in mind this traffic spike is because people who don't normally use Tor, started using it (i.e. they downloaded it). At that point I think we'll begin to see an arms race between the public and government which might finally bring us to decentralization of the Internet - or complete censorship.
logicchains
The TOR website is blocked in mainland China, as is TOR itself, but it works via obfsproxy, all it requires is someone to send you the executable/source. Most people who bypass the great firewall use VPNs, however.
hershel
Is it common for chinese citizens to do this , or is it only done by some tech guys ?
spiffytech
I once spoke with a student from China who told me bypassing the Great Firewall with a VPN is quite common. Not practiced by anything close to a majority of the population, but common enough that it would probably be used by e.g., that guy you know who couldn't tell Ruby from Python, and has never touched Linux, but is quite capable of figuring out how to fix his Windows box when it breaks.
arg01
I don't know the answer to this and of course the following was easily dismissed with a tinfoil hat comment, but when China decided recently to unban porn there were people suggesting it was to make bypassing the great firewall less 'necessary' for the average user.
higherpurpose
Others could mirror Tor (more risky, yes, but better than nothing).
hexa-
There already exists a mirror list at https://www.torproject.org/getinvolved/mirrors.html.en. Of course this is hard to come by, when the whole torproject website is being censored.
devcpp
People can just look at the cached version of this page on Google over SSL, I doubt they will ban Google...
fragmede
> In February 2006, Google made a significant concession to the Great Firewall of China, in exchange for equipment installation on Chinese soil, by blocking websites which the Chinese government deemed illegal.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_the_Peo...

So I think they would ban Google Search over this if they had to, but it sounds like Google would just hide it on Google.cn.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_websites_blocked_in_Ch... is another interesting read, the first 6 URLs are Google products.

r12e
> the first 6 URLs are Google products

One of which is Google+, every cloud has a silver lining.

josu
Or just send the program via email or through P2P. They can't make it less available, but unless they unplug the internet, the people will still be able to get it. Specially if there is a need. Just remember the days before the internet, the programs, songs, movies used to spread via magazines, floppy disks, tapes...
Ihmahr
Doing my part by hosting a relay, and so can you!

https://www.torproject.org/docs/tor-relay-debian.html.en

maglev45
Why don't you try hosting an exit relay? It would be fun.
Ihmahr
I am. Have been for 9 months now and didn't have significant trouble.
tedchs
I tried hosting an exit relay, even with limited outbound ports, and my VPS provider immediately received about 9 DMCA requested within 24 hours. I was able to email them the Tor boilerplate response and it went away, but I won't be trying that again.
csomar
What amazes me in this mess is how ignorant the government (and the people running it) about methods to overcome censorship. They are, basically, computer-illiterate. Really very illiterate.

After the Tunisian revolution, there were thoughts and plans by politicians to do censorship again. This was dismissed as politicians, officials and government finally recognized that censorship can be overcome no matter what they try. Religious complaining about "porn" and that stuff can ask their ISP for a traffic filter.

nikcub
the Turkish government will eventually figure out how to block Tor, and when that happens the users will need bridges.

You can help out by dedicating some spare resources to run as a relay + bridge, takes a minute to install and setup.

Share your bridge info to those who require it (not publically).

Example install + config:

https://gist.github.com/nikcub/9722068

mandelbulb
I wonder, they tried to block DNS blocking Google's servers...

It might take them a while to look up what a bridge is.

slacka
Setting up a private bridge only helps if you have friends or family living living under an oppressive regime. Anyone who run an obfsproxy bridge will be helping the to alleviate the shortage of bridges.[1] The quickest and easiest way is to setup your free Amazon EC2 account with the Instructions at the Tor Cloud Project page[2]. It took me just a couple of minutes to install my free EC2 account. Another option is to donate money to pay for the bandwidth that Tor relay and exit nodes require.[3]

NOTE: A bridge is not the same as an exit node. Only exit nodes could possibly attract attention from authorities. If you are just running a bridge, you are only helping people circumvent government firewalls to join the Tor network. The default EC2 Tor Cloud images only run as a bridge.

[1] http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/04/tor-ca...

[2] https://cloud.torproject.org/

[3] https://blog.torproject.org/blog/support-tor-network-donate-...

Zenst
Twitter yesterday, TOR tomorrow, what next FB and G+ and then what will they block to stem people speaking things about the Turkish government.

From what I understand the whole blocking twitter is due to the Turkish government not liking what is said about them on twitter. Now by their actions they have created more people saying things they will not like on many other platforms and with that, were will it end. Will they block of the entire internet or will they deal with the issues being raised about them in a constructive way beyond effectively gagging everybody as they are unable to put there hands over there ears.

Either way, this is a dangerous path they are taking and the fallout will be greater than the problem they perceive too be abating.

edoloughlin
I'd like to help, but without also facilitating paedos. Is there an easy way to limit my tor exits to Twitter and its subdomains? I.e., can I do the configuration in Tor rather than messing with routes/firewall on the OS?
d0ugie
uProxy will be hopefully released a few months, which should help you help others in a censorship jam that you trust with greater confidence not to use your connection for such activity. And I imagine speech freedom will still need your help whenever it's released.. To whoever downvoted this, how is his question and concern not valid?
wiml
Yes, it's really easy if you know what IPs and ports you want to allow. You can whitelist a handful of services in your torrc and reject all others by default. I've been running a mostly-relay node for years now with a few allowed exits, with never any trouble at all. Though, I don't think my node gets used as an exit node very often; whenever I've checked, it's just doing normal relaying, which is basically what I want/expect.

https://www.torproject.org/docs/faq.html.en#ExitPolicies

edoloughlin
It's still nowhere near its peak. I wonder what happened around Sep last year?

https://metrics.torproject.org/users.html?graph=userstats-re...

eliteraspberrie
That was the Sefnit botnet which started to use the Tor network heavily in mid-August 2013.
d0ugie
It's touching that people want and have the means to help the Turks continue to communicate thanks to Tor. But it's too bad that running a Tor exit node, due to what Tor is so commonly used for by nature of anonymity, is such a glaring liability[1] to the operator -- and, due to how easily and commonly Tor exit nodes can be used nefariously, a liability to the users[2].

Hopefully uProxy, slated to be released this summer, will address these issues effectively by incorporating a trust model[3] into facilitating circumvention through such censorship walls. Meanwhile, more and more https[4] would be helpful.

[1] http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/11/tor-operator-char... [2] http://cryptome.org/2014/01/spoiled-onions.pdf [3] https://www.asl19.org/en/know-more-about-uproxy-live-qa-with... [4] http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2014/03/staying-at-forefront-...

alexnking
I wonder if twitter alternatives have also become more popular in Turkey lately - it seems like if people are willing to setup Tor, they might also try App.net (you're of course loosing your network of followers, but your followers in Turkey can't see twitter anyway).

Of course then you can just block that other service as well.

systematical
I hope my tor bridge relay is helping: Mar 23 13:44:08.000 [notice] Heartbeat: Tor's uptime is 9 days 17:59 hours, with 2 circuits open. I've sent 894.13 MB and received 1.04 GB.