from the what-good-is-a-phone-call-if-you-are-unable-to-speak dept.
maratumba writes:
"Within the same day as the PM announced his intention to do so (previous story here), Twitter has been blocked in Turkey. Reports say that it is currently possible to circumvent the ban by using Google DNS. But the word is, they will not only prevent this method, but also block Facebook and Youtube."
Related Stories
maratumba writes:
"Turkey's Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan vowed to "eradicate" twitter and possibly other social networking sites.
For a few months now, a series of unverified incriminating surveillance tapes are being released regularly on Twitter alleging that they 'prove' that high ranking government officials including the PM, are committing bribery, corruption and censorship. The tapes and footage are alleged to have been collected as a part of secret criminal investigation which became public in late December by arresting relatives of ministers close to Erdogan. With a quick maneuver, the government removed all the state attorneys, judges, and police which, it is claimed, he deemed a threat and ordered to destruction of all the collected evidence to prevent the investigation from proceeding.
But it is alleged that the evidence collected for the investigation is now being leaked on Twitter and this is said by some to 'show the depths of the corruption for anyone with a Twitter account'. Erdogan, who has been trying to discredit the evidence, has now moved to shutting down the social networking sites altogether, which might start happening after the local elections in 10 days."
[Eds Note: Under the Turkish Constitution, members of the Turkish Parliament have judicial immunity, not only for what they say but also for what they do, including crime.]
Fluffeh writes:
"Following up on the earlier story where Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan put a nation-wide ban on Twitter after they didn't remove content that made him look less than stellar, Turkish citizens reacted in much the same that file-sharers around the world have done when sites such as The Pirate Bay were blocked by their ISPs. They took to the open web to spread the word on how to circumvent web censorship but in a fresh twist, they also took to the streets posting information, graffiti with DNS records to the point where according to analysis site Zete.com, tweets in Turkey before the ban numbered 10 million a day they now sit at 24 million.
The Turkish Government responded in turn by (Google Translation) blocking Google's DNS."
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Subsentient on Friday March 21 2014, @08:08AM
We just had a story about possibly blocking twitter, and also, I saw this story in the queue long before the previous one was published. The previous never should have been published. We need a standardized code of conduct for editors, and solid protocols that must be followed.
(Score: 4, Informative) by janrinok on Friday March 21 2014, @10:34AM
I understand your comment, but you have to realise that with only 2 active editors at present, even we have to sleep at some point. The stories are sometimes queued so that something is released even while neither of us is sat at a keyboard. In this case, the story was changing so quickly that the original story was overtaken by events before it was released. We are trying to correct the current problem regarding editor availability, but sometimes personal and professional matters take precedence over what is currently a volunteer commitment. Thus the 2 remaining editors are doing the best that we can do. It cannot be a (semi) dupe if it goes out before the next news item on the same topic. Also, we cannot hope to match our timeliness in reporting with that of an organisation spending millions of pounds on doing the same thing. The community are our reporters. I would ask that you report any relevant news items that you read elsewhere as promptly as you can and hope that they are in time for us to act upon them.
It's always my fault...
(Score: 1) by Subsentient on Friday March 21 2014, @11:07AM
It's nothing personal, this is a new site and it'll take a while to get things orderly. :^)
(Score: 2) by Open4D on Friday March 21 2014, @03:15PM
Well 2 obviously risks being unsustainable. But it sounds like you have the matter in hand; I hope it works out okay.
I seem to remember lots of eager volunteers for the job in the heady days of altslashdot.org, but I guess the reality of the commitment (and thick skin needed?) has set in. Personally I never volunteered, and won't be doing so in the near future. Instead I would just like to say thank you to the editors and everyone else making this site work.
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Friday March 21 2014, @07:21PM
How DARE you have a life? What do I pay you for?
Err, I mean what do I load these adverts for?
Err sorry, what do I donate for?
Ok, final go: what do I bitch and whine for while contributing nothing but witty, insightful comments for?
Oh Dang it. I'll be in my bunk.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Saturday March 22 2014, @11:04AM
At last - a comment that made me laugh! Thank you.
It's always my fault...
(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Friday March 21 2014, @10:46AM
It also has an exclamation mark at the end of the headline. What's that about?
(Score: 2) by neagix on Friday March 21 2014, @02:50PM
And no exclamation marks in titles.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by RobotMonster on Friday March 21 2014, @08:14AM
I'm jealous. How can I get Twitter blocked for my country?
And Facebook?
I'd like to leave YouTube unblocked though.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by VLM on Friday March 21 2014, @08:29AM
I'm willing to lose youtube in exchange for losing FB and twitter.
I wonder if this is journalist babble for blocking any and all social media, because officially the only social media that exist are FB and twitter. OR is it specifically those two companies, which seems rather pointless once everyone moves to G+ and status.net or whatever.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday March 21 2014, @09:20AM
In the U.S., all three are bad. They serve as propaganda platforms for corporate media and also as celebrity distractions from what Americans should be talking about. It's amazing how sites used as tools of freedom and liberty overseas are used as domestic tools of oppression.
While Youtube does have decent independent videos, it too engages in censorship-by-proxy, and the other 99% of it is 15 year old kids playing Nirvana's "Come as you are" on the bass guitar. Good job, kiddo, you just learned the easiest song in the universe.
All things considered, the "You" in youtube will eventually be the death of it. Try searching for "retards" and all you get are videos of normal people acting stupid -- despite Google's supposed technical search prowess, there are no actual videos of retards to be found via their search.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday March 21 2014, @08:26AM
(Score: 2) by marcello_dl on Friday March 21 2014, @09:43AM
ssssshhhh, I'm trying to read the linux serial howto.
(Score: 2) by marcello_dl on Friday March 21 2014, @09:46AM
(Unmechanical) Turks should start investigating stuff like project-byzantium.org and even better sneakernet stuff
(Score: 2) by tibman on Friday March 21 2014, @03:43PM
I could use some tips on optimizing my iptables drop list : /
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 3, Informative) by wantkitteh on Friday March 21 2014, @09:18AM
Just been told by a friend that Turks can still send tweets by SMS.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Open4D on Friday March 21 2014, @10:09AM
Indeed, and not just by SMS.
"Twitter use breaks new record in country as Turks defy ..."
"Turkish president, Abdullah Gül, openly criticised the ban - via his Twitter account" (N.B. the president has little power. [wikipedia.org] It was Prime Minister Erdogan who wanted the ban.)
Source: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/21/turk
(Score: 4, Insightful) by radu on Friday March 21 2014, @09:18AM
it is currently possible to circumvent the ban by using Google DNS
This is going too far. Maybe it's ok "to google" something instead of "to search the internet" because Google had a great impact on how we expect to be able to find things online.
Maybe I like gmail *that* much because of it's nice web interface, or I'm not able to configure my own email server, or I can't afford ~5$/month to rent a server - so I trade my privacy for the convenience gmail offers.
BUT:
What about Open DNS? Or *any* other DNS? Are we that stupid that we're voluntarily feeding Google data even when we don't need to? And advertising this to everyone?
What'll be next? gTCP/IP?
(Score: 5, Informative) by wantkitteh on Friday March 21 2014, @09:35AM
One would hope that folks reading this would know how to find other open DNS to use and it's certainly got the easiest IP address to remember and pass around, but never mind, here goes:
Google Open DNS: 8.8.8.8, 8.8.4.4 ...and about a trillion more for anyone who cares to Goo*ahem*search for "open dns server"
OpenDNS: 208.67.222.222, 208.67.220.220
DynDNS: 216.146.35.35, 216.146.36.36
Verizon: 4.2.2.1, 4.2.2.2, 4.2.2.3, 4.2.2.4, 4.2.2.5, 4.2.2.6
Level3: 209.244.0.3, 209.244.0.4
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 21 2014, @10:00AM
you forgot the important one:
http://www.opennicproject.org/ [opennicproject.org]
also you can use tor ...
(Score: 3) by Lagg on Friday March 21 2014, @09:47AM
http://lagg.me [lagg.me]
9467 6082 8A35 2E1E 2D6B 76C4 5E9A ED56 076F 9E89
(Score: 1) by Subsentient on Friday March 21 2014, @08:01PM
My ISP CenturyLink seems to be good about that with their DNS servers, also for $5, they give you a static IP on a consumer account, and allow you to run servers explicitly.
(Score: 1) by Subsentient on Friday March 21 2014, @08:05PM
Of course, if you aren't their customer, they might not let you use their DNS.
(Score: 2) by lhsi on Friday March 21 2014, @09:59AM
I read somewhere this morning (although I can't remember where exactly now) that the Google DNS servers were supposed to be some of the faster ones.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by umafuckitt on Friday March 21 2014, @09:40AM
I'm no expert on Turkey so I found this long and (I think) fairly balanced [nybooks.com] article on Erdogan and modern Turkey. It's worth a read if you want some info on the background against which this Twitter ban has occurred. In the second half of the article you will see that the press is being intimidated in Turkey and 60 journalists have been locked up (articled dated last year). You may also remember the Gezi Park [economist.com] protests from last year.
(Score: 1) by Drew617 on Friday March 21 2014, @01:53PM
I've been halfheartedly following this story. The action's deplorable but the implementation is what jumped out at me.
Someone in charge of internets at a national government thought blocking via DNS was going to work?
WTF?
(Score: 2, Insightful) by sgleysti on Friday March 21 2014, @03:51PM
It works for a large portion of the population. Measures like this are about population control, not technical perfection.
(Score: 2) by Boxzy on Friday March 21 2014, @04:42PM
Now maybe some people will leave the house.
Go green, Go Soylent.
(Score: 1) by maratumba on Friday March 21 2014, @08:06PM
Funny story: almost right after twitter was blocked, there was a trending topic 'twitterIcinSokagaCikiyoruz' which translates as 'we are going out on the streets for twitter'. Very soon people found out that this hashtag was initially being promoted by bots. [hurriyetdailynews.com] People interpreted this whole affair as an attempt for creating pretext to declare marshall law and postpone the upcoming elections. Soon another hashtag, which basically urged people to calm down and stay at home became trending topic.
I know how this must sound a little too Game-of-Thrones-like but it is only one of the many convoluted political maneuvers, and a rather obvious one at that, we have seen lately.
More about current state of turkish politics can be found here [nytimes.com] and here [mashable.com].