I wonder how that can best be expressed without overly cluttering the forum. The purpose of the forum is to track that, so it would be useful if someone would post lists of signficant or essential public resources that are in walled gardens. Maybe one thread for all of North Korea and a thread for Russia, … Venezuala, etc. But note as well if Tor is blocked but not in a fiefdom (walled garden), then !exclusive_public_resources@lemmy.sdf.org is the best place to post them.
You confuse bandwidth and resources.
Bandwidth is a resource. Citations needed for claims to the contrary.
Bots are often the most impactful clients of any site, because serving an image costs virtually nothing.
Nonsense. Text compresses extremely well. Images and media do not in the slightest approach the leanness of text.
Try using the web through a 2400 baud modem. Or try using a mobile connection with a small monthly quota of like 3gb and no other access. You will disable images your browser settings in no time.
Generating a dynamic page is WAY more resource intensive.
Bots and humans both trigger dynamic processing, but bots and humans of text-based clients to a lesser extent because the bandwidth-heavy media is usually not fetched as a consequence and JavaScript is not typically fetched and executed in the first place.
“Should be” embarrassed and “caring” are two different things. Indeed they do not care about the embarrassment as this shitshow rolls out. If they cared, they would make corrections.
Just like Trump is an embarrassment to the country. He is too oblivious and cannot step outside himself to even know of the embarrassment he brings to the country.
In the case of DOGE, the embarrassment is only visible to the small segment of informed digital rights proponents. We should of course express the embarrassment to spread awareness.
I’m behind a CGNAT and I have never encountered any issues? And when I think about it I don’t believe I have noticed any issues with using VPN either.
All shared IPs have a propensity to face Cloudflare’s preemptive attack on them. Some people on VPNs and CGNAT face chronic CAPTCHAs and hostile treatment just like Tor users do. And some get lucky and escape the collective punishment. It’s a game of chance. If you happen to be on a subnet or IP range without any significant or notable bad actors, it’s quite possible that you don’t get targeted by Cloudflare. I’ve even seen public libraries that get harsh treatment by Cloudflare, likely because a bad actor used the library and ruined the library’s IP reputation.
Someone in this thread reports hostile treatment when they use Opera GX, which is a VPN service.
This article covers some of the groups of people excluded by Cloudflare.
Your continued failure to grasp the fact that the Tor community does not need server-side support is the main reason you have failed to understand why your main thesis has been defeated. Not understanding how Tor works to at least the most basic extent has ensured you’ve based everything in your position on misinformation (which most certainly comes from poor assumptions). Then you wonder why you think you see repititon as you repeat defeated claims because you don’t understand the facts that make your claims indefensible. Until you learn enough about To to realise there is no need for server-side support, you have no hope of even understanding the silly absurdity of your thesis.
You’re just recycling defeated drivel. There are no new arguments here and unless you figure out how to attack the arguments that defeated yours, using sound logic, this drivel of personal attacks only exposes the weakness of your indefensible position further. Relying on rudimentary information sources like a general purpose dictionary is consistent with the lack of English nuance from which your misuse of terms and obtuse language manifests.
Your fixation on insults indicates no formal background in debate. You’ve used the most common logical fallacy (among others) while naming it to call out multiple situations where it did not apply. This shows you’ve picked up common buzz phrases without grasping them (implying ad hoc hot-headed cloud fights without basic formal debate training). In the very least you could benefit from studying logical fallacies and taking a debate class. But to be clear that will only improve the quality of your dialog, it won’t compensate for the infosec deficit. In any case, none of that is going to happen in time for you to dig yourself out of your embarrassing position in this thread.
Not sure what you mean by token agency. I know there was a tug-of-war under the various POTUS w.r.t netneutrality, and recall that a flood of letters under fake identites of individuals was sent to Congress opposing netneutrality (paid for by a coporate lobby who masqueraded as natural people to fool Congress).
Amid all those shenanigans, the FCC’s OIAC (Open Internet Advisory Committee) has always had a Comcast rep and a Cloudflare rep taking seats in discussions that should be against them. That stark corruption persisted through all administrations going at least 15 years back AFAIK.
Trump certainly opposed netneutrality and neutered the FCC the first time he was in office. And it’s important to notice that a huge shitshow is rolling out at the FCC as we speak. Trump is restructuring it to be weaponized against media outlets that criticize Trump – when in fact it’s the purpose of the news media to criticize the gov.
I am just now seeing your image because I normally have images disabled. So when I 1st saw your msg, I only saw “you are here” and didn’t understand what you were conveying. Colon needed! Thought you were saying i would be a human subscriber.
Wow, that’s a clean inbox you keep!
It’s worth noting that this forum is an attempt to collect cases where essential public interaction is forced into a walled garden. It’s perhaps rare that a government would force the general public to connect to MS Github. I should probably clarify that on the sidebar.
It’s also worth noting that the EU has a public git instance which they self-host. So it implies that there is a reasonable chance that a gov would push Github onto people.
(update: just noticed the FCC exposes the public to Github)
I don’t think anyone is embarrassed to be not supporting tor, bud. … misunderstanding basic English
Your 1st statement would actually be reasonable enough if we disregard the meaning you are trying to convey and treat the words at face value. If you had a good grasp on English and weren’t misusing the phrase tor support to begin with, your literal words are fair enough in that phrase. This is because supporting Tor requires deploying an onion host. Yet no one here has brought up the lack of onion host. The embarrassment is indeed not about lack of Tor support. It’s that they cannot handle fully serving clearnet traffic.
The Tor network needs no support because it is self-supporting. The Tor community bent over backwards to maintain gateways on the clearnet to accommodate the clearnet server without requiring any server-side support whatsoever. The Tor community is generally content as long as services do not go out of their way to sabotage the Tor network.
It’s of course not an embarrassment that the IRS does not support Tor. The embarrassment arises from the lack of competency that led them to proactively block segments of clearnet based on the crude and reckless practice of relying on IP reputation; which led to disservicing the Tor community.
There is no moral obligation to support tor.
I realize that you have dropped the direct and accurate language (tor blocking) in favor of indirect, vague, weasel words of “tor support” because you believe this choice of words will somehow serve you by deceiving your audience. By intent, your comment is perversely naive. But it’s arguably sensible enough in the literal sense of the words because moral obligation to add an onion server is debatable. Although a case could be made for a government’s moral obligation to respect and embrace data minimization, and even to the extent of deploying onion services. But when the bar of digital rights is so low, it would be premature to have that discussion particularly when you’re not even in a position to accept the idea that a tax administration owes taxpayers any dignity or respect. Which, to be clear the lack thereof is demonstrated by this messaging:
There is not even enough respect to tell Tor users that service is refused as a consequence of their IP address. Nor do they extend enough dignity to explain to those users why they block the Tor community, or which oversight office the excluded taxpayers may complain to.
Not supporting tor does not indicate a security fault.
It’s a demonstration of incomptence and it’s embarrassing for the federal government.
The McDonald’s analogy doesn’t apply to the context of this discussion.
Wooosh – how could that go so far over your head? The analogy had similarities and differences both of which demonstrate how indefensive your stance is. The similarity exposes as clearly as possible how your claims about not “owing” quality service misses the thesis entirely. The difference in the analogy contrasts the lack of choice in the tax situation compared to the private market (where you can simply walk when the service is poor). Moral obligation arises out of the mandate.
There are other ways to handle your taxes, if you find them lousy or undignified, that’s a real bummer for you.
The moral obligation of treating taxpayers with dignity and respect is an equal obligation to all taxpayers. Undermining data minimization and forcing the needless disclosure of IP addresses of those contributing to the revenue service is indefensible and morally reprehensible. You’ve wholly failed in your effort to support the needless and intrusive practice of reckless forced disclosure of personal information irrelevant to the tax obligation.
Nobody owes you tor access. Nobody is obligated to allow tor access.
You continue with this useless claim. There are legal obligations. Then there are moral obligations. It’s an attempt at the equivocation fallacy to state a fact that is true of one meaning while the other is implied to the contrary. But more importantly, the arguement fails to counter the thesis. If someone says McDonald’s burgers are poor quality, and you come along and say “McDonald’s does not owe you good quality food”, it’s as if you are trying despirately and emotionally to defeat the critic with an argument using an claim that misses the thesis (that the burgers are poor quality). Citing incompetent security does not in itself inherently impose obligation. Obligation can be argued either way depending on which side of the meaning under the equivocation fallacy refers to. But the more important thesis remains: that service quality is poor due to a deficiency of competence.
You have options, you’re just refusing to use them
Unlike telling the burger consumer they have “options”, tax is not optional. Everyone is obligated one way or another to interact with the tax authority. So when service quality is poor, the option to walk is not there. It’s a mandate that you are trying to dress up as if taxpayers are given autonomy. Autonomy is compromised when forced to choose between lousy or undignified options therein.
Really recommend you go look at a dictionary, thesaurus, and some introductory material on security.
You absolutely should not be giving anyone infosec advice; most particularly given these rudimentary and arbitrary information sources, respectively.
You have to go out of your way to have your access reduced.
That would only be true of someone without a Tor setup to begin with. Some of us have Tor baked into our scripts and apps to the extent that using clearnet is going out of our way.
There are endless ways to achieve that and tor is just one of them.
They all have benefits and drawbacks, some cost money, some entail more effort, etc.
Besides the sigint opportunities on tor aren’t as minimal as you want them to be.
It serves the purpose for the case at hand.
Also, you’re connecting to the site and acting in behalf of yourself.
Only if you login, which is often not the case for irs.gov.
I’m at a loss why this should rank at all in the context of a tidal wave of measurable abuses.
Read the sidebar. It’s a service that is essential and intended for the whole pulblic. As the digital transformation forces people do perform transactions with public agencies, those agencies are progressively removing offline options. Exclusivity is trending as a consequence. Essential public services should be inclusive and open to all.
You’re trying to turn this into semantics.
That’s what you’re doing when you say:
They don’t support tor. That’s a factual statement.
That’s not the words of intellectual honesty. The honest and straight-shooting way to say it without weasel wording is to say they are blocking Tor. Accurate. Simple. Does not mask the fact that it’s a proactive initiative.
You presented a strawman and attacked that strawman.
An analogy is not a strawman. If I wanted to present I strawman, I would have had to present the analogy as your argument. I did not. It was my analogy.
Did I make that claim?
you did, in the context of Tor:
That’s not anonymous. Neither is tor.
I recall saying tor doesn’t provide you with perfect anonymity. Another factual statement.
That is not what you said. Look above. Also, your newly revised statement (Tor not being perfect anonymity) is tue but an irrelevant waste of time, as you have been told twice already. Again, you’re distracting yourself with this pointless chase for perfection. Forget about perfection. It’s not a reasonable expectation for the infosec discipline.
It’s a synonym.
Not it’s not.
Maybe you should look up…
Your reliance on a dictionary is not helping you. You’re not going to understand nuanced differences between near synonyms from a dictionary. You need to be immersed in an English speaking culture to reach that level of understanding.
Well, that’s notable. I’ve not installed mullvad so I can’t test it… but that’s the sort of thing that could be posted to this forum. It seems odd that a VPN would be blocked by the USDA but not Tor.
It is important. Which is why claiming there’s a security issue because they don’t support tor is silly.
Reread the thread. You’ve already been told that you can’t dress up a deliberate act of sabatage as merely “neglecting to support”. It’s the same silly claim that it was the first time you made it.
like the Amish
The Amish did not have a viable means of access that was artificially removed by a proactively inserted firewall rule. This fallacy of analogy shows your inability to grasp the absurdity of the comparison.
Of course if you don’t grasp the fact that the Tor DoS is not lack of support but rather a proactive disabling of something that naturally works, then it’s clear why it appears absurd to you. But the appearance in your view is due to not understanding that servers serve Tor out of the box by default (unlike the Amish).
This is a stawman.
You clearly don’t know what that word means. I presented my own argument, not yours. My words - my argument - simply exposes the absurdity of the basis of your claim as quoted. Hence why I quoted you without paraphrasing.
Tor is notorious for bad actors.
Sure, but you’re neglecting proportionality. Cars are notorious for drive-by shootings. But we don’t ban cars on that basis because (like Tor) the numbers of legit users far outnumber the baddies. We don’t oppress a whole community because less than 1% of that community has a harmful element – unless we are a corrupt tyrant deporting all possible deportable immigrants, or an incompetent admin blocking the whole Tor community.
Not even remotely the same as blocking addresses at random.
Of course it is. Both scenarios block an arbitrary group of legitimate users who are exposed to collateral damage as a consequence of prejudiced trivia with the effect of collective punishment. Only to then claim “security is better” on the off chance that a baddy was blocked, without realizing that availability consequences are selectively overlooked.
Indeed, that’s what I was saying.
While claiming that anonymity is non-existent on the basis of lack of perfection – perfection that you now concede we never have.
So does a VPN, you twit.
Yes, to a much lesser extent than Tor in far fewer scenarios, of course, with higher doxxing risks by a motivated adversary. And? Are you just going to leave the red herring there like that or did you have a point?
English your second language?
I was about to ask you that. You clearly are struggling. “Owing” is /not/ a drop-in replacement for “obligation”. Anyone who speaks English as their first language would be aware of that nuance and spot your conflation of the words instantly. It’s like you are entering an off translation.
Anything to be a victim. Grow up. Nobody owes you tor access.
There it is again. You continue to misuse that word – in this case to build a man of straw. I already rejected your first attempt at redefining my position as being owed something.
I was able to reach that over tor. E.g.:
It’s really not. You’ve been asserting that there’s somehow a lack of security because they don’t support tor because that means they’re failing on the “availability” point of the CIA triad. That’s incorrect.
Before you can claim it’s not a red herring, you must first grasp what is claimed as the red herring. Your reply displays that you don’t. When a demographic of people are wholly denied availability, and you make the false assertion that availability is /never/ binary, it’s both incorrect and irrelevant. Incorrect because you can have 100% loss of availability in a context. Context is important. And it’s incorrect because people without access are inherently without availability.
This is also incorrect. The scope is the American taxpayer who is able and willing to utilize the website. You are either unable or unwilling. You are not in the scope.
THAT’s incorrect. That’s the sort of weasel wording that people can see right through. You’ve taken the whole of taxpayers who are entitled (in fact obligated) to file tax, and excluded some of them as a consequence of infosec incompetence. You cannot redefine the meaning of a term to justify incompetence. It’s purpose defeating for PR damage control.
You absolutely can block entire swaths of address ranges and, in fact, have better security because you did so.
This is where your lack of infosec background clearly exposes itself. You can also /randomly/ block large swaths of people arbitrarily and with the same mentality claim “better security” because you think a baddy likely got blocked, a claim that inherently requires disregarding availability as a security factor. You will fool people with that as you’re pushing a common malpractice in security which persists in countless access scenarios because availaibility to the excluded is disregarded by the naive and unwitting.
A lot has changed from decades ago, you might consider going back to school.
Nonsense. Infosec, comp sci, and all tech disciplines cover most diligently principles and theory which are resilient over decades, not tool-specific disposable knowledge. The principles and theories have not changed in the past 20 years. You seem to be in a program that short-cuts the principles and fixates on disposable knowlege, likely a vocational / boot camp type of school, in which case you should consider transferring to a school that gives more coverage on theory - the kind of knowledge that doesn’t age so fast.
Neither is tor. And even if tor did provide perfect anonymity, tough shit.
WTF? You don’t know how Tor works. Perfection is never on the table in the infosec practice. You should forget about perfection – it’s distracting you. But Tor most certainly provides anonymity in the face of countless threat agents, among other features.
Nobody owes you the ability to “anonymously” download tax material at your preferred comfort level of anonymity.
“Owes” implies a debt. I never spoke of owing or debts. The IRS has an obligation to inform the public. When they exclude demographics of people from their service (in particular people who funded them), it’s an infosec failure and an injustice.
Indeed, it is not binary. I’m glad you can see that now.
I said not necessarily binary. Your inability to grasp the various different contexts is profound. The non-binary usage is a red herring in this discussion. When you universally deny a whole demographic of people access, that’s binary. It’s a hard and fast total loss of availability for that demographic.
Availability has scope, and for the IRS, tor is not in that scope.
The scope is the American taxpayer. Of course Tor users are in that scope. You cannot deny access to a whole demographic of people on the crude and reckless basis of IP reputation and then try to redefine the meaning and purpose of availability to offset your incompetence. You need to face the facts and admit when you don’t have the skill to separate threat agents from legit users. Screaming until your blue in the face about how you would like availability to be defined does not bring availability to the demographic of legit users being denied access.
Given you seem to keep bringing up course work and professors and this naive view of security, I’m assuming you’re a student. Keep studying.
I only brought up school because at your level that seems to be where you are. My infosec MS came decades ago.
It is an option. Saying “nuh uh” doesn’t make it not an option.
Saying the contrary does not make a demographic of people magically part of a different demographic of people. Who do you think you are fooling by pointing to demographic A saying “they have access” in response to demographic B not having access?
This serves as availability. You have TLS,
Wrong demographic. That’s not anonymous.
postage,
You mean postal service. Again, wrong demographic. That’s not anonymous. The IRS needs your physical address in the very least.
and physical locations you can utilize.
Wrong demographic. That’s neither anonymous nor reachable outside the country.
You are just whining. Your refusal to use any of the plethora of means available to you has no relation to the competency of the IRS’ security. Grow up.
Your refusal to accept that a demographic of people are denied availability has backed you into a corner making absurd claims to justify incompetence. The growth and evolution is needed on your part. To give demographics of non-anonymous people access to tax material continues to miss the point about loss of availability to people who are.
First of all you have to separate Cloudflare’s pre-emptive attack on Tor from that of other targets (VPN, CGNAT). The difference is that the Cloudflare patron is given control over whether to block Tor but not the others.
Non-Tor blocks
Cloudflare is of course at fault. CF made the decision to recklessly block whole groups of people based on the crude criteria of IP reputation associated to a member of the whole group. It would be like if someone was spotted shoplifting as they were running out the door, and security only got a glimpse of red hair. And then the store would refuse service to all people with red hair to make sure the one baddy gets blocked. It’s discriminatory collective punishment as a consequence of sloppy analysis.
It’s an anti-feature because it’s blunt tool cheaply created by a clumbsy tech giant who has the power to bully and write-off the disempowered who they marginalize as acceptible collateral damage.
Tor blocks
Cloudflare defaults to harrassing Tor visitors with CAPTCHAs which are usually broken (because the CAPTCHA service CF hires is itself tor-hostile, but CF is happy because CF profits from the uncompensated labor from the captcha solutions). The CF patron can whitelist Tor or blacklist Tor (in addition to default shit show). DOGE proactively chose to blacklist the Tor community.
Defaults are important. Read about “the power of defaults” and how Google paid billions to Mozilla just to be a default search engine in the browser. The money speaks to that importance. CF is 100% responsible for the default state of their sites. Cloudflare (and CF alone) decide what the default setting is.
Exactly why someone using Cloudflare rightfully gets the blame for their shitty choice to use CF. Most particularly when it is a tax-funded service. At least in the private sector we have the option of walking. I will not use a CF website (even if Tor is whitelisted) - so they lose my business. But when public money is spent on CF who denies demographics of people who are entitled to the gov service, it’s an injustice because you cannot boycott gov services (you cannot get a tax refund if you are excluded).