this post was submitted on 14 Oct 2023
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Oh come on, did you write that article? I don't buy the human rights thing at all, it's incredibly far fetched, almost maniacal. In any case, the school decided to implement CF as a tool, why does it make CF to blame?
The document makes valid claims against CF (I'm against the whole MitM approach), but plucking out things like "software freedom" for a commercial product? It is idealistic to a fault.
Ctrl+F "tor", highlight matches, wow thats a lot -- could be summarised to a single paragraph of maybe 2 sentences. It repeats so often I started to roll my eyes.
A false statement in my opinion, its written in such an exaggerated fashion that there are repeated statements throughout, and is an all out attack on CF that begins to reach for some really minor infractions on idealistic viewpoints; case in point: vector vs bitmap images. It detracts from the real issues.
Dismissive because? Yes there are other tools, using similar technologies. Back in the day, a single disgruntled user would need to pool resources to perform a super simple DDoS using bandwidth as a tool alone (ie. smurf). Now the number of users with 1Gbit upload at home is rising (or just rent a few VPS), and the number of pooled resources required is much lower. That doesn't factor in slightly more sophistic DoS using expensive queries. Lemmy is susceptible to this, but the entire federated instances design is a natural defense. But your lone website? An open target that tools like CF come in handy for. The fact that it is implemented as a MitM is unfortunate, and I wish it were better as it makes CF the holder of all the keys.
My take on the article is:
MitM is bad, CF are capable of grabbing all our sensitive data. There is no evidence yet that this has been exploited. Tor has been blocked by default. The rest of the document is hyperbole.
Again, it would do you some good to read the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights (#UDHR).
Article 21 ¶2: “Everyone has the right of equal access to public service in his country.”
Article 26: “Everyone has the right to education. … higher education shall be equally accessible to all”
Do you understand what that means? Does it say “Everyone in Denmark except those who are excluded by the private US corporation Cloudflare or don’t agree with the terms of US corporation Proquest”?
What about public schools that force students to agree to Google’s terms of service and patronize Google Inc as a condition of class participation? Do you see a human rights problem there (assuming you’ve read and understand the above two UDHR paragraphs)?
There’s enough blame to go around to the school and all entities involved. Cloudflare gets blame for their defaults. Do a search on the #powerOfDefaults if you don’t grasp the importance of defaults.
This so-called “commercial” product is being used in the public sector, which means people who need public service are being forced to execute non-free software.
This logic doesn’t follow. First of all, repetition and exaggeration are completely different attributes. You seem to be claiming both yet cannot pin down either. Which claim is redundant? Which claim is exaggerated? It’s better if you copy exact statements here if you want to make any sense. So far you’re just generalizing and hand-waving. When I search for “Tor” in that article, I see no false statements. Be specific.
There’s no such distinction in the article between those types of images. The distinction was only made in this thread to illustrate the failure of your strawman by critical omission.
Not at all. infosec.pub is not using Cloudflare or anything like it. infosec.pub demonstrates how to avoid anything like CF.
This is like saying I don’t need to lock my car/house door because the lack of security has not been exploited. Of course it’s foolish to extend needless trust. In security we act on potential not just react to what has occurred. We lock our door even if we’ve not witnessed an intrusion.
Yes. It means you can't access the resource using the technology you prefer (seriously, who use wget to browse the web?), but it doesn't stop you from reaching the resource as a person. Hence human rights being the thing, not wget/tor rights.
I don't, for the same reason as I have to register at the library before taking a book.
No, I'm not uninformed. I just don't agree with you.
Ah, okay, I understand your view point here. I don't care much for that.
You brought it up, it was your example. The document says the fact CF use images, that they are a blight on the environment. Its like an onion article title. 🙄
Good for them.
(emphasis mine) This is not about preferences¹. If your ISP uses CGNAT because you’re too poor to afford a subscription that gives you a unique unshared IP address, you are blocked from Cloudflare sites regardless of which browser you use. It’s also not down to preference if you can’t afford to maintain a platform that supports the latest GUI browser. Libraries are also blocked and users of libraries have no control over the libraries IP or installed browser. The elitism you endorse is of course at the expense of excluding human beings.
1: what you perceive as a “preference” is perversely broad. I don’t use Chromium not because I have a persnickety problem with the UI or UX, but because it includes Google spyware. I object to privacy abuse. A vast majority of the population uses Chromium and so a vast majority of websites cater for Chromium & ultimately marginalizing non-Chromium users who object to the #privacy intrusion. It’s worth noting that privacy abuse is also a human rights issue in itself:
UDHR article 12: “No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence,…”
So when a public service imposes a means of access that arbitrarily abuses someone’s privacy, that is also a violation of human rights.
This logic doesn’t follow. To recap with emphasis the paragraph that applies to public libraries:
Article 21 ¶2: “Everyone has the right of equal access to public service in his country.”
Library registration in Europe is inclusive does not exclude people who do not agree with the terms of service of a US corporation like Google. It ensures eligibility by verifying residency. If library reg were to exclude locals who Google excludes by requiring a Google login/interaction, it would indeed by a human rights violation for the same reason.
That’s what I said. It’s my example, not the author’s. And it was an example that exposed your strawman attempt. The example did the job it was meant for.
CAPTCHA images are raster images. Did you follow the citation? The logic follows. Graphics are far heavier than text.
BTW, I personally disable images in my GUI browser. It makes me look more like a bot & get treated as such but I consume far less bandwidth - thus less energy.
I have several customers on CGNAT and they are not blocked from Cloudflare. Which puts the rest of your point on the back foot.
Of course it does. You missed the distinction between excluding a person and a means. If the user couldn't access a site from their current location, they could use another one that isn't blocked. Therefore the person isn't blocked, no human rights violation. Which is totally absurd, I can't beleive we are talking about human rights violation in this context.
Right, and in the document they just say images are a blight on the environment, which is laughable. Your attempt to clarify it, just made it look even weaker. No strawman rhetoric here, just calling it out to be a muted point.
And on that point I think you are in the extreme. An extremist that "can't be bargained with, it can't be reasoned with, it doesn't feel pity or remorse or fear, and it absolutely will not stop… EVER"
Putting a stop to this now, the effort far outstrips the fun factor.
The nuance is lost on your part. When you exclude a person’s only means of access, you exclude the person. When you make public service conditional on agreeing to the terms of a private corporation, you also exclude the people who disagree with the terms. Cloudflare is also non-transparent and never tells those they marginalize why they are being marginalized. The marginalized don’t even necessarily know there is an unblocked means of access or what that means of access entails.
You don’t know what “block” means. A block is an obstruction. It’s not necessarily absolute. If the road is blocked by a fence, of course you can circumvent the block by climbing the fence. This does not mean the roadblock ceases to exist. Anyone who is either unfit to climb the fence or unwilling remains blocked. The discriminatory denial of access to a public service is a human rights violation. If a black person is denied access to a library, we don’t say: “well they can paint their skin white and then they can get access, thus there is no human rights violation here”.
It’s a strawman because you misrepresented the original claim by leaving out critical details. Had you quoted the claim it would not have been a strawman. Or if you had been wise enough to know which details are too critical in the thesis for omission, you would not have created a strawman. But it’s clear that your goal was simply to smear the article so the strawman was obviously intentional.
When I load images it will sucks dry my limited monthly bandwidth credit. An unlimited connection would cost me more than triple the fees. And yet you call it “extremist” to be frugal & pro-environment/socially responsible rather than wastefully indulgent. This tendency to look to smear people who are either socially responsible or not corporate pushovers is apparently why you have this pro-repressive tech giant attitude that doesn’t mind marginalizing people.