I just chaired a session at the FOCI conference earlier today, where people were talking about Internet censorship circumvention technologies and how to prevent governments from blocking them. I'd like to remind everyone that the U.S. government has been one the largest funders of that research for decades. Some of it is under USAGM (formerly BBG, the parent of RFE/RL)
and some of it has been under the State Department, partly pursuant to the global Internet freedom program introduced by Hillary Clinton in 2010 when she was Secretary of State.
I'm sure the political and diplomatic valence is very different here, but the concept of "the U.S. government paying to stop foreign governments from censoring the Internet" is a longstanding one.
It goes deeper than that. The U.S. Government funds it, discourages other nations from using it, and spies on all web traffic as a result of it.
Almost 80% of communications go through a data center in Northern VA. Within a quick drive to Langley, Quantico, DC, and other places that house three letter agencies I’m not authorized to disclose.
Say I'm a UK citizen with advanced glioblastoma (implying loss of faculties, seizures, and pain; no cure, and things to worsen before eventually passing away, possibly some time from now). Suppose I wish to view websites on euthanasia options, but am blocked from doing so by the UK's Online Safety Act.
How does/will Freedom.gov help? (is it essentially a free VPN?)
Also, as others have pointed out, couldn't the censoring government simply block access to freedom.gov?
Amusingly, there typically are various exceptions made for those. All technical and whatnot, but for example, Iran is heavily sanctioned, but has all sorts of exceptions for stuff like that precisely because of the impact it can have.
I wonder if American citizens from states which requires age verification to access porn (25 US states today) will be fine with it or these states will start demanding ID to access freedom.gov. It would be delicious irony.
There is a lot more blocked than porn and neo-nazis. This will also allow access to sites that block access because of laws: Imgur is not accessible from the uk, nor are a lot of smaller US news sites. Ofcom are after 4 chan too.
Government mandated uncensored free porn access. I wonder if this will this also apply in US states requiring age verification to legally access such content?
It is like ultimate throwing stones in a glass house. Americans are dependent on other countries following IP and copyright protections and yet they will go great lengths to undermine it because it is short term beneficial for their companies.
I was in Paris the other week and my girlfriend was having issues connecting to reddit from a Google search. Mine was working fine. She was using a local SIM while I roamed on my US carrier that gives me an American IP address.
That's how I learned that Reddit is currently blocked nationwide in France. Say what you want about the porn restrictions some states are doing but blocking reddit and crippling most google searches is a bit ridiculous.
EDIT: Yes it was blocked. It even included a message about it being blocked by "your provider". She wasn't on WiFi and IIRC she was using Saily for her SIM.
I theorize it might have to do with user age verification of some kind that maybe others here did, but it was definitely blocked for us during our visit.
And it worked again once we crossed the border to Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, and it worked when we were in Germany before France. Only France was an issue.
French courts /love/ to do blocking orders. Of all the Western European nations, they have the most expansive use of DNS blocking, and other technical orders from courts. Sometimes related to the mundane things you might imagine like counter-terrorism, anti-piracy, and obscenity, but sometimes for absolutely bonkers reasons nobody agrees with.
Knowing what I know about French blocking orders, I wouldn't be surprised if all of Reddit got blocked because of an order related to a single comment, instead of some larger reason that might make sense in the meta.
Weird title, but worthy of discussion. From the little info available so far this appears to be little more than political posturing. If you want to fight censorship, an "online portal" to access all the censored content is the wrongest possible way to go about it. But we'll see.
Why? Seriously, why do we care so much about this?
Do we not have better uses of our money. Also the irony considering recent moves by the US government in terms of control of the internet and free speech.
> Also the irony considering recent moves by the US government in terms of control of the internet and free speech.
Well you've got plenty of countries doing it, including France, Iran, the United Kingdom, Germany, China, Brasil, Australia, you name it. Not that it's good, but a criticism for the goose is a criticism for the gander, as a manner of speaking.
As to which, why or why do we care so much about this? Idk, same reason our government funds tens of thousands of initiatives and cares about lots of different things that people find equally important or unimportant.
Historically the US did care a lot, in a way it reminds me of the Crusade for Freedom [1] and Radio Free Europe [2].
So I find this in line with the behavior of many American administration, the weird thing being that this time the target is not the just usual suspects (China, Iran, etc.) but also European allies.
(not saying this is a good thing btw, just trying to put it in perspective)
No, the Trump administration is an enormous supporter of propaganda outlets, just not the ones that already existed. They don't care about maintaining the rules based world order. Their propaganda is much more inward-focused.
These things have been going on forever. Since WWII and until right now, there has been radio stations broadcasting into enemy territory, to bypass censorship.
It's not sad. It's smart to ban hate speech, blatant lies and things like that. We know, we had the Nazis. Seems the US still has to learn a lesson or two, considering the current political situation. Hope it will not be as bad
I would have loved to be in the meeting where they were wondering how to replace the highly costly and complex influence tool that was USAID, and then someone said:
The world will be exposed to hardcore pornography, child endangerment, AI CSAM, and militant algorithms by force, if needed!
Surveillance Valley: The Secret Military History of the Internet by Yasha Levine (2018) directly claims the internet is “the most effective weapon the government has ever built,” tracing its roots to Pentagon counterinsurgency projects like ARPA’s efforts in Vietnam-era surveillance.
The book argues surveillance was “woven into the fabric” from the start, linking early ARPANET development to intelligence goals, and extends to modern tech giants like Google as part of a military-digital complex.
I just chaired a session at the FOCI conference earlier today, where people were talking about Internet censorship circumvention technologies and how to prevent governments from blocking them. I'd like to remind everyone that the U.S. government has been one the largest funders of that research for decades. Some of it is under USAGM (formerly BBG, the parent of RFE/RL)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Agency_for_Globa...
and some of it has been under the State Department, partly pursuant to the global Internet freedom program introduced by Hillary Clinton in 2010 when she was Secretary of State.
I'm sure the political and diplomatic valence is very different here, but the concept of "the U.S. government paying to stop foreign governments from censoring the Internet" is a longstanding one.
It goes deeper than that. The U.S. Government funds it, discourages other nations from using it, and spies on all web traffic as a result of it.
Almost 80% of communications go through a data center in Northern VA. Within a quick drive to Langley, Quantico, DC, and other places that house three letter agencies I’m not authorized to disclose.
Speed of light establishes certain latency minima. Experimental data can falsify (or not) at geographical locations far enough from VA.
Correct but local governments using Palantir will need to provide it to them somehow.
It’s a clear way to project soft power: make sure your message and culture can get through.
Didn't Doge gut the USAGM?
Can someone ELI5?
Say I'm a UK citizen with advanced glioblastoma (implying loss of faculties, seizures, and pain; no cure, and things to worsen before eventually passing away, possibly some time from now). Suppose I wish to view websites on euthanasia options, but am blocked from doing so by the UK's Online Safety Act.
How does/will Freedom.gov help? (is it essentially a free VPN?)
Also, as others have pointed out, couldn't the censoring government simply block access to freedom.gov?
Can it be used to help people in the Bible Belt watch porn?
Won't those other nations just ban freedom.gov?
They wouldn't dare ban a .gov domain and we will hide all of behind Cloudflare! /s
A state sponsored vpn is probably not (only) gonna do what you think it's doing.
If something looks like MITM, chances are it is MITM.
What's MITM?
Man In The Middle. They're saying that the US is intercepting the traffic.
Can I use freedom.gov to bypass age verification though? :)
Fun hypothetical question - will it be restricted to users in sanctioned locations (where it's most needed) because of, well, sanctions?
Amusingly, there typically are various exceptions made for those. All technical and whatnot, but for example, Iran is heavily sanctioned, but has all sorts of exceptions for stuff like that precisely because of the impact it can have.
So it'll have porn?
I wonder if American citizens from states which requires age verification to access porn (25 US states today) will be fine with it or these states will start demanding ID to access freedom.gov. It would be delicious irony.
Right. Porn will probably be most of the traffic. The number of people in Europe who really want to access US neo-Nazi sites is probably not large.
There is a lot more blocked than porn and neo-nazis. This will also allow access to sites that block access because of laws: Imgur is not accessible from the uk, nor are a lot of smaller US news sites. Ofcom are after 4 chan too.
Government mandated uncensored free porn access. I wonder if this will this also apply in US states requiring age verification to legally access such content?
They will probably (first) have to bounce off freedom.ccTLD for any ccTLD but .us.
Maybe they can redirect from stupid.gov
Is that going to accelerate copyright violations for AI training? https://cuiiliste.de/domains contains just a lot of piracy sites.
It is like ultimate throwing stones in a glass house. Americans are dependent on other countries following IP and copyright protections and yet they will go great lengths to undermine it because it is short term beneficial for their companies.
The quest for quarterly returns will be our downfall.
I was in Paris the other week and my girlfriend was having issues connecting to reddit from a Google search. Mine was working fine. She was using a local SIM while I roamed on my US carrier that gives me an American IP address.
That's how I learned that Reddit is currently blocked nationwide in France. Say what you want about the porn restrictions some states are doing but blocking reddit and crippling most google searches is a bit ridiculous.
EDIT: Yes it was blocked. It even included a message about it being blocked by "your provider". She wasn't on WiFi and IIRC she was using Saily for her SIM.
I theorize it might have to do with user age verification of some kind that maybe others here did, but it was definitely blocked for us during our visit.
And it worked again once we crossed the border to Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, and it worked when we were in Germany before France. Only France was an issue.
I'm in France, I browse reddit daily. Don't know what the two of you were smoking while in Paris but it must have been very strong.
All these strange stories about Europe. Reddit is not blocked in France. I live in Paris and can access it as usual
I couldn't find any news items or announcement about France blocking access to reddit. Any links to this?
Reddit is currently blocked nationwide in France? I can't seem to easily find corroborating info.
It isn't blocked? I'm in France and I can see it just fine.
Then saily or whatever esim provider she used is dogshit and mitm'd her at every step lmao
Reddit is not blocked anywhere in France.
France of all countries is the least I expected, but I guess their stance on libertine sex has nothing to do with porn
French courts /love/ to do blocking orders. Of all the Western European nations, they have the most expansive use of DNS blocking, and other technical orders from courts. Sometimes related to the mundane things you might imagine like counter-terrorism, anti-piracy, and obscenity, but sometimes for absolutely bonkers reasons nobody agrees with.
Knowing what I know about French blocking orders, I wouldn't be surprised if all of Reddit got blocked because of an order related to a single comment, instead of some larger reason that might make sense in the meta.
So going forward all countries will be providing citizens of other countries free access to the internet whilst censoring their own citizens?
Do they plan to allow residents of various US states to access sites that are now required to have documented ID evidence?
Until you have to validate your id/age to continue...
Seriously though... we have one segment undermining foreign lockdowns while the same and other segments are literally doing the same here.
Previous discussion: https://www.reuters.com/world/us-plans-online-portal-bypass-...
Weird title, but worthy of discussion. From the little info available so far this appears to be little more than political posturing. If you want to fight censorship, an "online portal" to access all the censored content is the wrongest possible way to go about it. But we'll see.
(This comment was posted to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47072613 but we merged the threads)
Cool, maybe I'll be able to access www.census.gov from outside the US now
At least the starting page is reachable from Germany without a VPN.
Why? Seriously, why do we care so much about this?
Do we not have better uses of our money. Also the irony considering recent moves by the US government in terms of control of the internet and free speech.
> Also the irony considering recent moves by the US government in terms of control of the internet and free speech.
Well you've got plenty of countries doing it, including France, Iran, the United Kingdom, Germany, China, Brasil, Australia, you name it. Not that it's good, but a criticism for the goose is a criticism for the gander, as a manner of speaking.
As to which, why or why do we care so much about this? Idk, same reason our government funds tens of thousands of initiatives and cares about lots of different things that people find equally important or unimportant.
Historically the US did care a lot, in a way it reminds me of the Crusade for Freedom [1] and Radio Free Europe [2].
So I find this in line with the behavior of many American administration, the weird thing being that this time the target is not the just usual suspects (China, Iran, etc.) but also European allies.
(not saying this is a good thing btw, just trying to put it in perspective)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crusade_for_Freedom
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Free_Europe/Radio_Libert...
Ironically, this effectively is a pro-Trump comment because it's the Trump administration that defunded US propaganda outlets.
No, the Trump administration is an enormous supporter of propaganda outlets, just not the ones that already existed. They don't care about maintaining the rules based world order. Their propaganda is much more inward-focused.
You're probably right, I was speaking as someone from outside the States, and hence more familiar with the outside-focused US outlets.
These things have been going on forever. Since WWII and until right now, there has been radio stations broadcasting into enemy territory, to bypass censorship.
The irony is big in this one.
Sad that western Europe is pushing so hard for limits to free speech & privacy. I'm not surprised given their history, but it's sad nonetheless.
It's not sad. It's smart to ban hate speech, blatant lies and things like that. We know, we had the Nazis. Seems the US still has to learn a lesson or two, considering the current political situation. Hope it will not be as bad
Or they could just make a donation to Tor and similar projects, and get way more mileage for their money.
They do support Tor, actually[0]. Which makes this even more confusing.
[0]: https://www.torproject.org/about/supporters/
That funding was recently cut: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47070658
The point is for them to track their users, which they can't do if their users are all using Tor.
Fantastic! Now EU just needs to setup freedomgov.eu that bounces off freedom.gov so americans also can browse whatever with no restrictions.
What restrictions do Americans have now that would make that useful?
But will they put the complete Epstein files on there?
I would have loved to be in the meeting where they were wondering how to replace the highly costly and complex influence tool that was USAID, and then someone said:
- Why don't we just make a website?
- Yes let's just do that.
Great! I sure hope it means Americans will stop censoring pro-Palestinian and pro-workers movements!
After the Trump checks and the Trump jabs ....the Trump porn?
I'd rather not...
What even is this? It looks to technically be Next JS with a single canvas element. But what does in protend...?
visuals with the only text on screen being...
---
"Freedom is Coming"
Information is power. Reclaim your human right to free expression. Get ready.
What it is is a teaser for what will undoubtedly be a giant load of far-right propaganda.
Turns out it's to "uncensor" content blocked in other countries, which we know will be a process free of bias /s
They also gutted the prior org that helped people do this in other countries on the ground
How long until Europe says, "fuck your copyright claims then?"
Just tell everyone who wants to downloads warez to use the US .gov VPN and refuse to resolve the IP addresses when they complain.
Wow, it's actually real:
https://freedom.gov/
And the site even has a French translation.
Thanks - we'll put that link in the toptext.
The world will be exposed to hardcore pornography, child endangerment, AI CSAM, and militant algorithms by force, if needed!
Surveillance Valley: The Secret Military History of the Internet by Yasha Levine (2018) directly claims the internet is “the most effective weapon the government has ever built,” tracing its roots to Pentagon counterinsurgency projects like ARPA’s efforts in Vietnam-era surveillance.
The book argues surveillance was “woven into the fabric” from the start, linking early ARPANET development to intelligence goals, and extends to modern tech giants like Google as part of a military-digital complex.
When U.S. Govt sponsors Tor, which does expose exactly what your describe, the reaction is usually positive.
"Portal team includes former DOGE member Coristine"
"...user activity on the site will not be tracked."
Ok, stopped reading right there.
The joke that I saw online was "Does it have Colbert on it?"
Yes, but you'll have to spend equal time browsing Pravda^W Truth Social.