HN Distilled

Essential insights from Hacker News discussions

Geedge and MESA leak: Analyzing the great firewall’s largest document leak

Original Article

Hacker News Discussion

Based on the Hacker News discussion, here are the key themes and opinions expressed:

Export and Proliferation of Censorship Technology

A significant concern raised is the export of advanced censorship technologies, often developed in China, to other countries, including those with authoritarian regimes. Users noted that the technology discussed, similar to China's Great Firewall (GFW), is being sold and implemented globally.

  • "The same tool has been rolled out in Ethiopia and Myanmar, where it has been instrumental in enabling that country's military junta to enforce a ban on VPNs."
  • "Various western networking companies already sell such products to authoritarian regimes, such as Nokia[1], Blue Coat Systems[2] and Siemens[3]. China, for reasons that are well documented elsewhere, has always wanted to build it with 'their tech', the only thing that's new to me is their export of such tech to Chinese-allied nations." (supriyo-biswas)

Western Governments Copying Censorship Models

There's a fear and observation that Western governments, previously seen as bastions of freedom, are moving towards adopting similar censorship mechanisms, perhaps driven by various concerns.

  • "My first thought was unfortunately whether the UK and other Western nations would copy this to build their own Firewalls. To be honest i still don't think it's a goal anyone is actively working towards and that's a bit of an hyperbolic take. But the truth is that we are moving more towards such a system then we are moving away." (FridayoLeary)
  • "In the US, censorship is obviously a hot-button political topic (core values), but we are starting to see US concerns around things like troll farms, foreign influence, election misinformation etc and systems to quietly tamp that down. The sorts of things that appeared in the 'Twitter Files'." (xyzzy123)
  • "teekert: ... Our government has shown itself willing and (partly) able to block content from its citizens, regardless of their intent. Ie being pro-Putin, or wanting to study what opinions circulate in Russia to try and maintain some level human understanding for our fellow humans on the other side. Moreover a large part of our government is willing to implement something as egregious as ChatControl? So they are not above animing extremely invasive spying tech at their own citizens. 1+1=2. All prerequisites have been met for a European "firewall"."
  • "The original GFW was literally built by Cisco. The west already has the technology. They only need an excuse to deploy it." (feverzsj)

Surveillance and Data Interception by Governments

The discussion touched upon the widespread nature of government surveillance and data interception, drawing parallels between the leaked information and past revelations.

  • "At least one Jira support ticket shows evidence of plaintext capture of email" (miohtama)
  • "I would be surprised if western governments didn't do the same, and folks should act accordingly." (MangoToupe)
  • "We don't need to guess, we know they do. That was one of Snowden's big reveals." (nilamo)
  • "The NSA was storing bulk plaintext emails from (at least) Microsoft, as of the time of the Snowden leaks. Microsoft actively assisted them." (perihelions)

The "Think of the Children" Argument and Slippery Slope

A recurring theme is the exploitation of the "think of the children" argument to justify increased censorship and control, with many users expressing skepticism about its sincerity and warning of a slippery slope.

  • "Almost every company already uses some form of this on their network, especially those in highly regulated sectors like banking and other finance-related industries." (userbinator)
  • "They used the example that if you want to publish a very explicit book in the U.K., the Obscene Publications Acts would put limits on you doing so, but putting it online would be allowed" (physicsguy)
  • "The 'think of the children' argument. Does anyone buy that?" (bboygravity)
  • "'Think of the children' is a persistent nemesis of modern civil liberties precisely because people buy it so often! One of the easiest emotional arguments to make is 'your children are in danger' because parents have extremely low risk tolerance for the safety of their children." (ipnon)
  • "Parenting is necessary for continuation and health of society. 4k German stuff is not." (tesch1)

Government Control of Information and Social Harmony

Some users offered a more nuanced perspective on the motivations behind censorship, suggesting it's not solely about suppressing dissent but also about maintaining social order and preventing "junk food media" or harmful content from spreading.

  • "I understand that the Great Firewall is mostly about censoring dissent, but it's also to keep Chinese citizens away from junk food media sources. The type of videos you see on Douyin vs Tiktok is a great example of the difference." (jychang)
  • "A more nuanced take is that I don't think it's useful to measure Chinese govt behavior just mapped to 'amount of suppressing political dissent'. I actually think the level of censorship is above the level required for that. It's more useful to recognize that 'suppressing political dissent' is actually a subset of Confucian ' promote social harmony'- which is not strongly valued in the USA but is at least important enough to be paid lip service in China- and I suspect a big chunk of educated members of government may truly believe in that ideal. It explains behaviors like 'why the Douyin algo is so different from Tiktok' and other overreaches of the Chinese govt, because it's not solely about suppressing dissent." (jychang)
  • "I think there may be a lot of wisdom in the Chinese approach." (0xDEAFBEAD)
  • "Even if you disagree with that link, and believe social media is a positive force, do we really need to subject all countries to unregulated social media? Seems like putting all of our eggs into one basket, as a species. Why?" (0xDEAFBEAD)
  • "The apparatus we call GFW is really a Chinese CDC for memes. The CDC expects novel strains of bird flu every year, it’s okay, they closely monitor the situation, research the novel strains, cull risky populations, and develop vaccines for worst case scenarios. GFW expects novel strains of anti-CCP viral memes every year, it’s okay, they closely monitor the situation, they analyze the meme for spreaders and origin, they use the new meme to gauge changes in public sentiment, they fine or jail or imprison particularly quarrelsome netizens, and in the worst case scenario they prepare narrative shifts or outright censorship to maintain a net that is deemed healthy. It’s meme epidemiology, with mind viruses instead of RNA viruses." (ipnon)

The Nature of Internet Sovereignty and Governance

Several comments explored the concept of "Internet sovereignty" and the challenges governments face in regulating online content and influence, especially from foreign entities.

  • "I predict that all countries will end up with something like the GFW eventually because there's basically no other way for governments to achieve 'Internet sovereignty' (enforce laws regarding users and publishers on the web)." (xyzzy123)
  • "Having an overseas social media platform widely used in your country is basically giving foreign intelligence direct access to the brainstem of your citizens." (xyzzy123)
  • "The US doesn't usually need 'big hammer' technical controls for this because they have legal control over the corporations involved and can ask them to moderate themselves in line with US law & natsec requirements." (xyzzy123)
  • "In America memes benefit the polity, because parties lose power all the time. We’re constantly switching who rules, and the baton passes frequently enough that we tacitly agree it’s better to just come back next election with better memes." (ipnon)

Technical Challenges and Evasion of Censorship

Users discussed the technical aspects of censorship, including how firewalls like the GFW attempt to block traffic and the methods used to evade these blocks, highlighting the ongoing cat-and-mouse game.

  • "The leaks show employees at the company working to reverse-engineer many popular tools and find means of blocking them. One set of documents lists nine commercial VPNs as 'resolved,' and provides various means of identifying and filtering traffic to them." (miohtama)
  • "I would be surprised if western governments didn't do the same, and folks should act accordingly." (MangoToupe)
  • "I bet that the recent wave of VPN bans implemented in Russia also uses this tech. For example the mechanism of how suspicious websocket endpoints are being 'knocked' by the firewall itself or how suspiciously traffic heavy ssh connections are being dropped suggests that Russian govt simply bought the entire stack from China." (bbminner)
  • "nromiun: AFAIK QUIC traffic is impossible to attack using MITM techniques. So I wonder how the GFW handles it. Do they block it entirely or still filter it somehow?"
  • "eptcyka: Kazakhstan literally forced their own cert for lots of popular sites for a while, expecting users to click the through and accept them. It was made illegal to not accept government certificates."
  • "It's not hard to identify those channels and block them. A connection used to interact with websites has completely different traffic patterns compared to a user sending all of their traffic over one specific connection." (jeroenhd)
  • "I guess the same IP rate limiter was at work with UDP at a lower level." (hks0)
  • "From my own personal experience with an outline server running on the same IP over 3 years, the GFW consistently ends up blocking it around 3 days after I first connect. Outline does use shadowsocks to obfuscate but I suspect the traffic detection is what triggers it after 3 days of observations." (hiddendoom45)