26 ms·

Turkish government takes down YouTube too

244 points by boolean 12y ago

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
- BgSpnnrs 12y ago
  "Earlier, what appeared to be a leaked audio recording of Turkish officials discussing Syria appeared on YouTube." A bit light on the details there, auntie beeb. This is some pretty damning evidence. Translation here: http://www.reddit.com/r/syriancivilwar/comments/21ib4d/leaked_recording_of_turkish_officials_discussing/ http://www.reddit.com/r/syriancivilwar/comments/21ib4d/leake...
hocaoglv 12y ago
After Twitter, this was expected. Just couple of hours ago, leaked audio recordings were uploaded to Youtube which show "Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu, National Intelligence Organization (MİT) Undersecretary Hakan Fidan, Foreign Ministry Undersecretary Feridun Sinirlioğlu and Deputy Chief of General Staff Gen. Yaşar Güler are heard discussing possible intervention into Syria and possible reactions from the world" They were planning to organize artificial attacks from Syrian border and put the blame on Syria and strength Erdogan's position before local elections.
- contulluipeste 12y ago
  This sounds like a political dismissal of an inconvenient tool. Can this be just temporary? Like YouTube being "rehabilitated" after those local elections?
- gkhnarik 12y ago
  I disagree with your last sentence. Because of the problem in Syria our borders are not secure and Turkey is trying to solve this problem diplomatically for a year. Recently ISID threatened Turkey to attack Sulaiman Sah and after that government started to think about a military attack to that area. You can't just say "they want to attack Syria to strength Erdogan's position."
  - hocaoglv 12y ago
    Actually I didn't say they wanted to attack, the Turkish government wants "Syria to attack" in order to justify a potential war.
  - gkhnarik 12y ago
    @hocaoglv Sorry I misunderstood this part. This tape really annoyed me.
  - higherpurpose 12y ago
    This implies that they do: http://www.reddit.com/r/Turkey/comments/21i3u1/turkish_foreign_minister_head_of_the_national/ http://www.reddit.com/r/Turkey/comments/21i3u1/turkish_forei...
- cryoshon 12y ago
  It's pretty ghastly that people are willing to fabricate rationale for getting into war. I really hope that the Turks dispose of their leaders expediently and forcefully.
  - toyg 12y ago
    Yeah, like US and UK populations voted out their chief warmongers pronto, once it came out that the rationale for getting into the Iraq war was fabricated... oh wait
    - oblio 12y ago
      Also Kosovo :)
    - MWil 12y ago
      just morbidly curious but what's the date that came out?
      - toyg 12y ago
        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niger_uranium_forgeries http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niger_uranium_forgeries http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_Dossier http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_Dossier By late 2003 it was already clear.
      - whiskeychaser 12y ago
        when we never found any WMD...so ongoing I guess.
    - jann 12y ago
      I'm very sorry but I really don't like that argument. That doesn't make it any less ghastly for others to be like that as well. The argument you bring seems similar to what people say about the Crimea-Crisis (that 'the west' isn't allowed to complain because of Bosnia). Just because 'the west' interfered illegally in Bosnia, doesn't give Russia a free pass to do so as well.
- narag 12y ago
  Is there any information about when the recordings were made? I ask because, well, after weeks knowing that their conversations were being intercepted, it would be utterly stupid to still discuss sensitive matters on the phone. If on the contrary, they're old recordings, this seems like a strategy by the spies to slowly release damning evidence. Nice.
  - toyg 12y ago
    99% of political activity runs over phone lines. Not using phones would basically shut down the whole government and parliament, throwing a country back to the XIX century, it just can't be done. What you can do is to change phones and to loudly complain with your counter-espionage and police arms that this stuff shouldn't happen. Except Erdogan has lost most of those constituencies already, which is why these leaks are happening in the first place.
- yread 12y ago
  Maybe they already started following the plan: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/23/turkey-shoots-down-syrian-plane http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/23/turkey-shoots-d...
  - cinquemb 12y ago
    Makes you wonder, if everything had gone to the original plan in syria already, nat gas pipelines would be headed to europe by now and the IMF wouldn't bother with the gazprom bill to russia… Also interesting how there has been very little action about the blackouts from the State Dept talking heads (beyond the toothless shaming), if this had been a country not doing the bidding of tptb we would probably hear of sanctions against turkish corps in the us.
    - bayesianhorse 12y ago
      Are you suggesting that a "western conspiracy" was responsible for the turmoil in Syria? That their people did not have serious grievances with a regime that tortured and murdered tens of thousands of people for political reasons even before the current conflict started?
      - pessimizer 12y ago
        >Are you suggesting that a "western conspiracy" was responsible for the turmoil in Syria? Who are you quoting? And is "conspiracy" just a pejorative word for 'intervention' or 'decision?' >That their people did not have serious grievances with a regime that tortured and murdered tens of thousands of people for political reasons even before the current conflict started? Are you suggesting that your first statement and your second statement are equivalent? That people did have serious grievances before the current conflict would lead me to ask 'why now?'
      - cinquemb 12y ago
        Not necessarily (because the conflict is not black and white), just that "the west" (if you include Qatar, Saudi Arabia[0], Israel, etc…) and "the east" all have interests in the region and have manipulated the conflict on multiple levels regardless of environment before Syria went "hot". Just like everywhere else in the world where someone is trying to make a buck… Some of those interests have been well stated by the CFR[1] and RAND years… Besides, "the west" didn't step into Iraq until the beginning of the 90's (and even then didn't dispose him until the 00's) while Saddam who was being bankrolled by the west was doing their bidding as well as torturing and murdering tens of thousands of people in the 80's… and even now, thousands more continue to die in northern Iraq and I don't hear people parroting that around, so lets not try to evoke the knee jerk emotions and remember all "sides" have blood on their hands in pursuit of their self interests… [0] http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/31/us-syria-crisis-saudi-insight-idUSBRE94U0ZV20130531 http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/31/us-syria-crisis-sa... [1] http://www.cfr.org/qatar/tiny-qatars-big-plans-may-change-mideast/p26143 http://www.cfr.org/qatar/tiny-qatars-big-plans-may-change-mi...
- shna 12y ago
  No where in that recording mention about strengthening Erdogan's position before local elections. On the contrary they mention that Erdogan actually not acting on it all, one of the voice proposes that Head of Turkish Army and couple of other officials should get together while PM present and clarify on how to help rebel groups.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
corkill 12y ago
This will just push everyone sharing info to Facebook. Next move bye bye Facebook...or internet. Any way to build a mobile app that rotates servers enough to circumvent this kind of blocking?
- arasatasaygin 12y ago
  I don't think that will happen. Though I didn't think that they would block twitter too :)
  - corkill 12y ago
    Would this picture change your mind? http://t.co/lCaMDBxZER http://t.co/lCaMDBxZER Seems they are working their way up the chain of services.
- clickok 12y ago
  And once Facebook is shut down, it'll be interesting to see if this finally drives real Google+ use.
ljd 12y ago
It's interesting to see a country dismantle internet access site by site. It challenges our notions of what we think will always be there. If your site has a dependency on YouTube, your site isn't going to be functioning in Turkey. It's like Netflix's Chaos Monkey [0], but in real life. [0]http://techblog.netflix.com/2012/07/chaos-monkey-released-into-wild.html http://techblog.netflix.com/2012/07/chaos-monkey-released-in...
- arbitrage 12y ago
  It was interesting when we saw governments attempt it last time, too. And then they stopped, because they were overthrown. I wonder if this is going to be a law, now ... a government that attempts to dismantle the internet a piece at a time in their country is going to fail.
  - o0-0o 12y ago
    From your lips to God's ears.
  - Joeboy 12y ago
    This reminds me of the "information wants to be free" and "the internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it" slogans of yesteryear. The internet isn't magic. There is no natural law that means it will always emerge victorious.
    - TeMPOraL 12y ago
      Well, it does "route around damage", but there's a difference between an infrastructure damage (be it a denial of service, or a tactical nuclear strike) and a continuous, intentional action of a sentient adversary. Unfortunately, conflating those two concepts is a common mistake when designing or thinking about systems.
      - toyg 12y ago
        TBH it's mostly about the fact that the "route around damage" really applies only to a very small stack. What does the browser do, to "route around damage"? What does a DNS client do? Very little, if anything. They were not built to "route around damage", they were built to do client/server.
erichurkman 12y ago
I hope enough copies of whatever damning evidence the Turkish government wants to suppress are being disseminated outside of Turkey as well as inside the country. Long live Sneaker Net.
- josephschmoe 12y ago
  People really underestimate the power of the sneaker net. The fastest way to transmit data is by carrier pigeon.
stephengillie 12y ago
At least we have a Redundant Array of Independent Social Networks to help us route around this intentional damage.
- logfromblammo 12y ago
  All we need now is a Border Rules Agnostic Network, and the RAISN BRAN will be part of this healthy information breakfast.
  - Terr_ 12y ago
    Dynamically Routed Independent Network Kludge Yields Oppression Unwinding Reaction Opposition Values Actions Leading Towards Individual and Nation Emancipation
PetoU 12y ago
and the next revolution comes to...
- gkya 12y ago
  We've had that 3 times a century, so I guess most would rather like this govt to get outvoted than overthrown.
DickingAround 12y ago
Blocking social media sites and expecting it to reduce tension is like turning off TV & radio broadcasting and expecting people to remain in their homes; it's a failure to understand modern systems of control. Orwell doesn't work at all. Huxley is your only hope Turkey :P
- InclinedPlane 12y ago
  Orwell does work, North Korea and Cuba are examples of that. But you can't create an Orwellian police state over night, and those sorts of oppressive regimes tend to be unstable (Libya, East Germany, Romania, etc. all gone now).
  - DickingAround 12y ago
    Fair point, good examples. Agree with stability issues.
  - twobits 12y ago
    "But you can't create an Orwellian police state over night, and those sorts of oppressive regimes tend to be unstable (Libya, East Germany, Romania, etc. all gone now)." Only if there is an "outside", to force reality in. If you are the emperor, and control everything, the Orwellian state works very nicely..
- ihsw 12y ago
  They aren't that naive -- it's one of very many systems to exert control over. Their issue is that Twitter doesn't bow to pressure in the same manner that CNN Turkey does.
- shna 12y ago
  I totally agree. There are so many venues on internet you can express yourself. However on a limited time frame it works. Only a week away from the elections, not many people will be able to reconnect through other means.
theverse 12y ago
Google's live traffic stats for Youtube: http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/traffic/explorer/?r=TR&l=YOUTUBE&csd=1394844554482&ced=1395412200000 http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/traffic/explorer/?r...
- jann 12y ago
  Not very 'live' ... The latest data I can retrieve is from the 23rd of March
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - theverse 12y ago
    If you skip to the very end, you can see data from March 27. Not significantly low volume though. http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/traffic/explorer/?r=TR&l=YOUTUBE&csd=1393939800000&ced=1395932815862 http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/traffic/explorer/?r...
MCarusi 12y ago
Since the Twitter block was working just so well.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
pearjuice 12y ago
All my support goes to the Turkish government for trying to abrupt the Western propaganda and disrupting the influences of American secret national agencies. It is no secret that the protests and revolutions in Syria, Egypt, Tunis and the like were caused by internal fabrications from American soil so they could use the uproar for settling marionettes and proper satellite states instead of having to deal with nations which are against America and Israel. Hopefully the Turkish government is successful in its endeavors to protect its citizens from a faux-revolution fed by propaganda easily spread in this digital age (i.e. Youtube and Twitter, Facebook is of high concern too). The only counter-measure is to shut. it. down.
- dandelany 12y ago
  Erdoğan, is that you?
- yulaow 12y ago
  Personally I think this reasoning is totally bullshit. People have a brain and can easily discern and analyze the information they get from different sources. Internet, in this sense, is the main "method" to get information for gazzillion different sources, compare them, discuss with other people with other ideas and, in the end, come to a objective conclusion. Shut it down is not at all a counter-measure... rather I suspect that only will push the people to rage against the oppressors of freedom to get information. That's a suicide measure and also the worst one because people will instantly think "woah, so this guy must have something really bad to hide if he is literally trying to shut down the internet".
  - digitalengineer 12y ago
    Isn't the saying something along the lines of "a person is smart but people are dumb"? It was proven there were NGO's stirring up things in Kiev. It was also proven they totally lost control and now we have armed militants (neonazi's?) even demonstrating their 'power' by showing up in parliament. (This made Putins say, now he can claim to protect the Russian minority).
- middleclick 12y ago
tzaman 12y ago
It's sad that one corrupt politian has this much power
_nato_ 12y ago
Q: do embedded videos on other domains (such as fixyt.com) get blocked, too? How does that work?
- icebraining 12y ago
  The embedded videos are still fetched by the browser from YouTube domains, so a DNS block should affect them as well.
  - _nato_ 12y ago
    Thanks. `Makes sense.
zmanian 12y ago
It is amazing the DNS system lasted this long. Turkey seems ready to push over this house of cards. Hopefully a namecoin type system will rise from the ashes. Trust without cryptography is dead.
- icebraining 12y ago
  For this kind of censorship, namecoin wouldn't have helped. Turkey could've just watched the namecoin blockchain and update their IP blacklist directly from it.
  - zmanian 12y ago
    IP blacklisting is not as appealing to governments as DNS blocking because of virtual hosts. The collateral damage from breaking DNS is bad enough. IP blocking runs the risk of breaking essential economic services. It is possible for governments to invest in session interruption like what China does is possible. Layering trustworthy DNS, ubiquitous SSL and Tor
- mrtksn 12y ago
  A Turkish scholar have nice analysis on this. She thinks that the Turkish government does not seek to completely ban the spread of information and knows that it's not possible. Instead the government tries to demonize the social media to keep it's supporters away from it. here is the full article: https://medium.com/p/cb596ce5f27 https://medium.com/p/cb596ce5f27
witty_username 12y ago
Technically videos could be accessed as they are served from googlevideo.com
cturhan 12y ago
This was expected and it was late than I expect. Now, they will block facebook and this will be their ending.
nine_k 12y ago
The Internet was designed to withstand damage due to nuclear warfare and other external disruptions. It apparently was not designed to reliably withstand serious attacks of malicious third parties controlling some segments of it. Time to adapt.
- toyg 12y ago
  The Internet certainly was; HTTP and DNS, not so much. Note how it's not TCP/IP failing here.
  - epimenov 12y ago
    You can make tcp/ip fail as well, just like Pakistan did back in 2008: http://www.renesys.com/2008/02/pakistan-hijacks-youtube-1/ http://www.renesys.com/2008/02/pakistan-hijacks-youtube-1/
- sliverstorm 12y ago
  External disruption != internal disruption
  - TeMPOraL 12y ago
    Also, infrastructural damage (like caused by a nuke) != ongoing activities by sentient and adapting enemy.
higherpurpose 12y ago
Decentralized (federated) video sharing alternative: http://mediagoblin.org/ http://mediagoblin.org/
jotm 12y ago
How can they do this knowing what's going on in Ukraine and Egypt?
frade33 12y ago
Question of the day! I am not supporting Turkish Govt here, nor I have any concern with this country. If a classified video is made live on a Turkish Video website, would US Govt block it or not? or Do you approve of releasing classified videos or calls?., because according to my understanding regardless of the content of those videos or calls, they are in violation of 'privacy' and perhaps are classified too.? I am just making sure, that I do not become a victim of double-standards here... :/
- orik 12y ago
  I don't believe the US Gov would do more than a DCMA takedown request. Wikileaks hasn't been taken down. If someone did have a recording of a Classified Video/Call I guess it would be up to their discretion to leak or not to leak.
  - frade33 12y ago
    That's a fair answer.
- dublinben 12y ago
  The US government practices pretty much no direct censorship of the internet. You can read about the number of laws that have been struck down, and the handful of cases where domains/servers have been seized: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_the_Uni...
bayesianhorse 12y ago
And in the following week some court will take down the takedown... On some part, yes, the Turkish government tries to restrict free speech, on the the other hand they seem to be abysmally bad at it!
mrkickling 12y ago
This is how you start a revolution.
- vacri 12y ago
  Usually the Turkish army would have stepped in and restored some sanity by now. Turkey is in the odd position that it's military coups tend to increase democracy. However, as I understand it, as Turkey wants (wanted?) to be an EU member, the army has been hesitant this time around, and the politicians have used this moment of political weakness to defang any unfriendly military chiefs.
MimiZ 12y ago
They can't cover up their corruption. It's like the whole world is watching...how could they be so stupid. What are they going to do next? Block Google? Apparently they top the list of "government requests that request content removal": http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/turkey-tops-google-content-removal-request-list-.aspx?pageID=238&nID=59887&NewsCatID=374 http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/turkey-tops-google-content-...
- darkhorn 12y ago
  Check your emails quickly, I'm going to shut down the electricity http://i.imgur.com/Dkf3QKR.jpg http://i.imgur.com/Dkf3QKR.jpg
shna 12y ago
I am a native Turkish speaker and I listened the recording. For one thing I did not hear anything you would not expect to hear from most of the statesman in the west in a similar situation. Conversation is about the future stance of Turkey for the civil war in Syria and lack of enough resolve for the last 3 years to intervene properly, and that does not mean directly involving but not supplying ammo to rebel groups against Assad regime. They are complaining that the civil war took a turn toward total destabilization of the region, especially after Al-Qaeda linked group called ISIL[1] started taking over anti-Assad rebel groups. They fear that if ISIL becomes an armed power next to Turkey's border it will be a huge security concern. The head of intelligence agency says that if Turkey going to engage against them in the future it should be done so on their terms but not the other side's choosing. The mention of alleged provocation of the head of intelligence by his minions firing rockets from the Syrian side into Turkish side is correct. He says his men can do that. However he says that in the context they want to be the one starting the assault on ISIL, not the other way around. They argue that if they should wait for the ISIL to attack first. So again it is about engaging al-Qaeda linked group but not starting war with Syria. In this recording foreign minister mention that they want to avoid any conflict with Syria due to their capabilities. I do believe that any war with Syria destabilizes Turkey grossly and it is definitely something they would want to avoid and they did. The al-Qaeda linked group (ISIL) invaded one the Syrian village about [4] 30-40km away from the Turkish border about a week ago. And like many Turkish I learned something new last week. In that village there's the tomb[2] of the grandfather of the founder of Ottoman Empire. Surrounding of that tomb which is a tiny tiny land in that village belongs to Turkish Republic. The monument is protected by Turkish soldiers who reside there permanently. After ISIL invaded the surrounding village they demanded [5] that Turkish soldiers leave the monument. However that land is part of Turkish sovereign land and Turkey reacted that she would intervene forcefully. Even we have been reading that couple of F-16 fighters are kept ready to take off on the tarmac and special ops can intervene in 90 seconds. In the recording, foreign minister mentions the option of intervention to ISIL using the Tomb as an excuse, even if they do not attack monument and the soldiers. They mention that world would support such intervention since this is a al-Qaeda linked group. So they would like to attack ISIL fully in the whole region. They are not warmongering against Syria, and they fear that ISIL's presence could become permanent and can become something of huge security concern for years to come.. In the recording, head of Turkish intelligence mention about lack of resolve of the government. He says if they did not intervene while thousands of people died, still attack on the Tomb of Suleyman Shah is a weaker argument to start an attack. Probably we need to consider how US would react if an Al-Qaeda linked group starts taking over northern villages of Mexico while a civil war is going on in there. However the main post is about YouTube ban due to this recording. I just wanted to give another perspective. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_State_of_Iraq_and_the_Levant http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_State_of_Iraq_and_the_L... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomb_of_Suleyman_Shah http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomb_of_Suleyman_Shah [3] https://plus.google.com/109044970213631232914/about?gl=us&hl=en https://plus.google.com/109044970213631232914/about?gl=us&hl... [4] https://www.google.com/maps/place/Tomb+of+Suleyman+Shah/@36.638775,38.207574,9z/data=!4m2!3m1!1s0x0:0x5adb35d180fca6a2 https://www.google.com/maps/place/Tomb+of+Suleyman+Shah/@36.... [5] http://www.worldbulletin.net/turkey/132062/isil-deadline-for-turkish-pull-out-from-suleiman-shah-tomb-expires http://www.worldbulletin.net/turkey/132062/isil-deadline-for...
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
twobits 12y ago
It's because of this leak: Turkish top political and military leaders, organizing a false flag attack, to have an excuse to attack Syria: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-03-27/here-youtube-false-flag-attack-syria-clip-erdogan-wanted-banned http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-03-27/here-youtube-false-...
- yawz 12y ago
  Just to add to this point: There are regional elections in Turkey on Sunday and the ruling party is expected to receive a serious blow. One of the rumours has always been that this government could even risk going to war rather than losing power. Well... now we have proof that it is the case.
blendergasket 12y ago
What's really interesting to me is that it seems like some very, very powerful and well-connected player, who either has access to the communication networks or people at the top of the Turkish totem pole is trying to use social media to destabilize/overthrow a government. I don't know much about what's going on in Turkey and the corruption that's being exposed is definitely hugely damning, but I'm curious if there is any credible idea as to who is behind all this leaking? It definitely isn't a group of your average concerned citizens.
- jballanc 12y ago
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%BClen_movement http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%BClen_movement
spoiler 12y ago
Isn't this the wrong approach, though? I mean, sure you can try to block people form finding the truth, but at least be covert about it; this is plain naïve. Their methodology is just putting them (the government) into the spotlight. Shouldn't they try and divert the attention? This ensures people find the truth sooner rather than later. I feel like they've been played by some high-up in the government techs person who just got sick of the corruption and decided to add a catalyst.

244 points by boolean 12y ago

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

BgSpnnrs 12y ago
"Earlier, what appeared to be a leaked audio recording of Turkish officials discussing Syria appeared on YouTube." A bit light on the details there, auntie beeb. This is some pretty damning evidence. Translation here: http://www.reddit.com/r/syriancivilwar/comments/21ib4d/leaked_recording_of_turkish_officials_discussing/ http://www.reddit.com/r/syriancivilwar/comments/21ib4d/leake...

hocaoglv 12y ago

After Twitter, this was expected. Just couple of hours ago, leaked audio recordings were uploaded to Youtube which show "Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu, National Intelligence Organization (MİT) Undersecretary Hakan Fidan, Foreign Ministry Undersecretary Feridun Sinirlioğlu and Deputy Chief of General Staff Gen. Yaşar Güler are heard discussing possible intervention into Syria and possible reactions from the world" They were planning to organize artificial attacks from Syrian border and put the blame on Syria and strength Erdogan's position before local elections.

contulluipeste 12y ago
This sounds like a political dismissal of an inconvenient tool. Can this be just temporary? Like YouTube being "rehabilitated" after those local elections?
gkhnarik 12y ago
I disagree with your last sentence. Because of the problem in Syria our borders are not secure and Turkey is trying to solve this problem diplomatically for a year. Recently ISID threatened Turkey to attack Sulaiman Sah and after that government started to think about a military attack to that area. You can't just say "they want to attack Syria to strength Erdogan's position."
- hocaoglv 12y ago
  Actually I didn't say they wanted to attack, the Turkish government wants "Syria to attack" in order to justify a potential war.
- gkhnarik 12y ago
  @hocaoglv Sorry I misunderstood this part. This tape really annoyed me.
- higherpurpose 12y ago
  This implies that they do: http://www.reddit.com/r/Turkey/comments/21i3u1/turkish_foreign_minister_head_of_the_national/ http://www.reddit.com/r/Turkey/comments/21i3u1/turkish_forei...
cryoshon 12y ago
It's pretty ghastly that people are willing to fabricate rationale for getting into war. I really hope that the Turks dispose of their leaders expediently and forcefully.
- toyg 12y ago
  Yeah, like US and UK populations voted out their chief warmongers pronto, once it came out that the rationale for getting into the Iraq war was fabricated... oh wait
  - oblio 12y ago
    Also Kosovo :)
  - MWil 12y ago
    just morbidly curious but what's the date that came out?
    - toyg 12y ago
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niger_uranium_forgeries http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niger_uranium_forgeries http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_Dossier http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_Dossier By late 2003 it was already clear.
    - whiskeychaser 12y ago
      when we never found any WMD...so ongoing I guess.
  - jann 12y ago
    I'm very sorry but I really don't like that argument. That doesn't make it any less ghastly for others to be like that as well. The argument you bring seems similar to what people say about the Crimea-Crisis (that 'the west' isn't allowed to complain because of Bosnia). Just because 'the west' interfered illegally in Bosnia, doesn't give Russia a free pass to do so as well.
narag 12y ago
Is there any information about when the recordings were made? I ask because, well, after weeks knowing that their conversations were being intercepted, it would be utterly stupid to still discuss sensitive matters on the phone. If on the contrary, they're old recordings, this seems like a strategy by the spies to slowly release damning evidence. Nice.
- toyg 12y ago
  99% of political activity runs over phone lines. Not using phones would basically shut down the whole government and parliament, throwing a country back to the XIX century, it just can't be done. What you can do is to change phones and to loudly complain with your counter-espionage and police arms that this stuff shouldn't happen. Except Erdogan has lost most of those constituencies already, which is why these leaks are happening in the first place.
yread 12y ago
Maybe they already started following the plan: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/23/turkey-shoots-down-syrian-plane http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/23/turkey-shoots-d...
- cinquemb 12y ago
  Makes you wonder, if everything had gone to the original plan in syria already, nat gas pipelines would be headed to europe by now and the IMF wouldn't bother with the gazprom bill to russia… Also interesting how there has been very little action about the blackouts from the State Dept talking heads (beyond the toothless shaming), if this had been a country not doing the bidding of tptb we would probably hear of sanctions against turkish corps in the us.
  - bayesianhorse 12y ago
    Are you suggesting that a "western conspiracy" was responsible for the turmoil in Syria? That their people did not have serious grievances with a regime that tortured and murdered tens of thousands of people for political reasons even before the current conflict started?
    - pessimizer 12y ago
      >Are you suggesting that a "western conspiracy" was responsible for the turmoil in Syria? Who are you quoting? And is "conspiracy" just a pejorative word for 'intervention' or 'decision?' >That their people did not have serious grievances with a regime that tortured and murdered tens of thousands of people for political reasons even before the current conflict started? Are you suggesting that your first statement and your second statement are equivalent? That people did have serious grievances before the current conflict would lead me to ask 'why now?'
    - cinquemb 12y ago
      Not necessarily (because the conflict is not black and white), just that "the west" (if you include Qatar, Saudi Arabia[0], Israel, etc…) and "the east" all have interests in the region and have manipulated the conflict on multiple levels regardless of environment before Syria went "hot". Just like everywhere else in the world where someone is trying to make a buck… Some of those interests have been well stated by the CFR[1] and RAND years… Besides, "the west" didn't step into Iraq until the beginning of the 90's (and even then didn't dispose him until the 00's) while Saddam who was being bankrolled by the west was doing their bidding as well as torturing and murdering tens of thousands of people in the 80's… and even now, thousands more continue to die in northern Iraq and I don't hear people parroting that around, so lets not try to evoke the knee jerk emotions and remember all "sides" have blood on their hands in pursuit of their self interests… [0] http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/31/us-syria-crisis-saudi-insight-idUSBRE94U0ZV20130531 http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/31/us-syria-crisis-sa... [1] http://www.cfr.org/qatar/tiny-qatars-big-plans-may-change-mideast/p26143 http://www.cfr.org/qatar/tiny-qatars-big-plans-may-change-mi...
shna 12y ago
No where in that recording mention about strengthening Erdogan's position before local elections. On the contrary they mention that Erdogan actually not acting on it all, one of the voice proposes that Head of Turkish Army and couple of other officials should get together while PM present and clarify on how to help rebel groups.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

corkill 12y ago

This will just push everyone sharing info to Facebook. Next move bye bye Facebook...or internet. Any way to build a mobile app that rotates servers enough to circumvent this kind of blocking?

arasatasaygin 12y ago
I don't think that will happen. Though I didn't think that they would block twitter too :)
- corkill 12y ago
  Would this picture change your mind? http://t.co/lCaMDBxZER http://t.co/lCaMDBxZER Seems they are working their way up the chain of services.
clickok 12y ago
And once Facebook is shut down, it'll be interesting to see if this finally drives real Google+ use.

ljd 12y ago

It's interesting to see a country dismantle internet access site by site. It challenges our notions of what we think will always be there. If your site has a dependency on YouTube, your site isn't going to be functioning in Turkey. It's like Netflix's Chaos Monkey [0], but in real life. [0]http://techblog.netflix.com/2012/07/chaos-monkey-released-into-wild.html http://techblog.netflix.com/2012/07/chaos-monkey-released-in...

arbitrage 12y ago
It was interesting when we saw governments attempt it last time, too. And then they stopped, because they were overthrown. I wonder if this is going to be a law, now ... a government that attempts to dismantle the internet a piece at a time in their country is going to fail.
- o0-0o 12y ago
  From your lips to God's ears.
- Joeboy 12y ago
  This reminds me of the "information wants to be free" and "the internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it" slogans of yesteryear. The internet isn't magic. There is no natural law that means it will always emerge victorious.
  - TeMPOraL 12y ago
    Well, it does "route around damage", but there's a difference between an infrastructure damage (be it a denial of service, or a tactical nuclear strike) and a continuous, intentional action of a sentient adversary. Unfortunately, conflating those two concepts is a common mistake when designing or thinking about systems.
    - toyg 12y ago
      TBH it's mostly about the fact that the "route around damage" really applies only to a very small stack. What does the browser do, to "route around damage"? What does a DNS client do? Very little, if anything. They were not built to "route around damage", they were built to do client/server.

erichurkman 12y ago

I hope enough copies of whatever damning evidence the Turkish government wants to suppress are being disseminated outside of Turkey as well as inside the country. Long live Sneaker Net.

josephschmoe 12y ago
People really underestimate the power of the sneaker net. The fastest way to transmit data is by carrier pigeon.

stephengillie 12y ago

At least we have a Redundant Array of Independent Social Networks to help us route around this intentional damage.

logfromblammo 12y ago
All we need now is a Border Rules Agnostic Network, and the RAISN BRAN will be part of this healthy information breakfast.
- Terr_ 12y ago
  Dynamically Routed Independent Network Kludge Yields Oppression Unwinding Reaction Opposition Values Actions Leading Towards Individual and Nation Emancipation

PetoU 12y ago

and the next revolution comes to...

gkya 12y ago
We've had that 3 times a century, so I guess most would rather like this govt to get outvoted than overthrown.

DickingAround 12y ago

Blocking social media sites and expecting it to reduce tension is like turning off TV & radio broadcasting and expecting people to remain in their homes; it's a failure to understand modern systems of control. Orwell doesn't work at all. Huxley is your only hope Turkey :P

InclinedPlane 12y ago
Orwell does work, North Korea and Cuba are examples of that. But you can't create an Orwellian police state over night, and those sorts of oppressive regimes tend to be unstable (Libya, East Germany, Romania, etc. all gone now).
- DickingAround 12y ago
  Fair point, good examples. Agree with stability issues.
- twobits 12y ago
  "But you can't create an Orwellian police state over night, and those sorts of oppressive regimes tend to be unstable (Libya, East Germany, Romania, etc. all gone now)." Only if there is an "outside", to force reality in. If you are the emperor, and control everything, the Orwellian state works very nicely..
ihsw 12y ago
They aren't that naive -- it's one of very many systems to exert control over. Their issue is that Twitter doesn't bow to pressure in the same manner that CNN Turkey does.
shna 12y ago
I totally agree. There are so many venues on internet you can express yourself. However on a limited time frame it works. Only a week away from the elections, not many people will be able to reconnect through other means.

theverse 12y ago

Google's live traffic stats for Youtube: http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/traffic/explorer/?r=TR&l=YOUTUBE&csd=1394844554482&ced=1395412200000 http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/traffic/explorer/?r...

jann 12y ago
Not very 'live' ... The latest data I can retrieve is from the 23rd of March
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- theverse 12y ago
  If you skip to the very end, you can see data from March 27. Not significantly low volume though. http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/traffic/explorer/?r=TR&l=YOUTUBE&csd=1393939800000&ced=1395932815862 http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/traffic/explorer/?r...

MCarusi 12y ago

Since the Twitter block was working just so well.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

pearjuice 12y ago

All my support goes to the Turkish government for trying to abrupt the Western propaganda and disrupting the influences of American secret national agencies. It is no secret that the protests and revolutions in Syria, Egypt, Tunis and the like were caused by internal fabrications from American soil so they could use the uproar for settling marionettes and proper satellite states instead of having to deal with nations which are against America and Israel. Hopefully the Turkish government is successful in its endeavors to protect its citizens from a faux-revolution fed by propaganda easily spread in this digital age (i.e. Youtube and Twitter, Facebook is of high concern too). The only counter-measure is to shut. it. down.

dandelany 12y ago
Erdoğan, is that you?
yulaow 12y ago
Personally I think this reasoning is totally bullshit. People have a brain and can easily discern and analyze the information they get from different sources. Internet, in this sense, is the main "method" to get information for gazzillion different sources, compare them, discuss with other people with other ideas and, in the end, come to a objective conclusion. Shut it down is not at all a counter-measure... rather I suspect that only will push the people to rage against the oppressors of freedom to get information. That's a suicide measure and also the worst one because people will instantly think "woah, so this guy must have something really bad to hide if he is literally trying to shut down the internet".
- digitalengineer 12y ago
  Isn't the saying something along the lines of "a person is smart but people are dumb"? It was proven there were NGO's stirring up things in Kiev. It was also proven they totally lost control and now we have armed militants (neonazi's?) even demonstrating their 'power' by showing up in parliament. (This made Putins say, now he can claim to protect the Russian minority).
middleclick 12y ago

tzaman 12y ago

It's sad that one corrupt politian has this much power

_nato_ 12y ago

Q: do embedded videos on other domains (such as fixyt.com) get blocked, too? How does that work?

icebraining 12y ago
The embedded videos are still fetched by the browser from YouTube domains, so a DNS block should affect them as well.
- _nato_ 12y ago
  Thanks. `Makes sense.

zmanian 12y ago

It is amazing the DNS system lasted this long. Turkey seems ready to push over this house of cards. Hopefully a namecoin type system will rise from the ashes. Trust without cryptography is dead.

icebraining 12y ago
For this kind of censorship, namecoin wouldn't have helped. Turkey could've just watched the namecoin blockchain and update their IP blacklist directly from it.
- zmanian 12y ago
  IP blacklisting is not as appealing to governments as DNS blocking because of virtual hosts. The collateral damage from breaking DNS is bad enough. IP blocking runs the risk of breaking essential economic services. It is possible for governments to invest in session interruption like what China does is possible. Layering trustworthy DNS, ubiquitous SSL and Tor
mrtksn 12y ago
A Turkish scholar have nice analysis on this. She thinks that the Turkish government does not seek to completely ban the spread of information and knows that it's not possible. Instead the government tries to demonize the social media to keep it's supporters away from it. here is the full article: https://medium.com/p/cb596ce5f27 https://medium.com/p/cb596ce5f27

witty_username 12y ago

Technically videos could be accessed as they are served from googlevideo.com

cturhan 12y ago

This was expected and it was late than I expect. Now, they will block facebook and this will be their ending.

nine_k 12y ago

The Internet was designed to withstand damage due to nuclear warfare and other external disruptions. It apparently was not designed to reliably withstand serious attacks of malicious third parties controlling some segments of it. Time to adapt.

toyg 12y ago
The Internet certainly was; HTTP and DNS, not so much. Note how it's not TCP/IP failing here.
- epimenov 12y ago
  You can make tcp/ip fail as well, just like Pakistan did back in 2008: http://www.renesys.com/2008/02/pakistan-hijacks-youtube-1/ http://www.renesys.com/2008/02/pakistan-hijacks-youtube-1/
sliverstorm 12y ago
External disruption != internal disruption
- TeMPOraL 12y ago
  Also, infrastructural damage (like caused by a nuke) != ongoing activities by sentient and adapting enemy.

higherpurpose 12y ago

Decentralized (federated) video sharing alternative: http://mediagoblin.org/ http://mediagoblin.org/

jotm 12y ago

How can they do this knowing what's going on in Ukraine and Egypt?

frade33 12y ago

Question of the day! I am not supporting Turkish Govt here, nor I have any concern with this country. If a classified video is made live on a Turkish Video website, would US Govt block it or not? or Do you approve of releasing classified videos or calls?., because according to my understanding regardless of the content of those videos or calls, they are in violation of 'privacy' and perhaps are classified too.? I am just making sure, that I do not become a victim of double-standards here... :/

orik 12y ago
I don't believe the US Gov would do more than a DCMA takedown request. Wikileaks hasn't been taken down. If someone did have a recording of a Classified Video/Call I guess it would be up to their discretion to leak or not to leak.
- frade33 12y ago
  That's a fair answer.
dublinben 12y ago
The US government practices pretty much no direct censorship of the internet. You can read about the number of laws that have been struck down, and the handful of cases where domains/servers have been seized: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_the_Uni...

bayesianhorse 12y ago

And in the following week some court will take down the takedown... On some part, yes, the Turkish government tries to restrict free speech, on the the other hand they seem to be abysmally bad at it!

mrkickling 12y ago

This is how you start a revolution.

vacri 12y ago
Usually the Turkish army would have stepped in and restored some sanity by now. Turkey is in the odd position that it's military coups tend to increase democracy. However, as I understand it, as Turkey wants (wanted?) to be an EU member, the army has been hesitant this time around, and the politicians have used this moment of political weakness to defang any unfriendly military chiefs.

MimiZ 12y ago

They can't cover up their corruption. It's like the whole world is watching...how could they be so stupid. What are they going to do next? Block Google? Apparently they top the list of "government requests that request content removal": http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/turkey-tops-google-content-removal-request-list-.aspx?pageID=238&nID=59887&NewsCatID=374 http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/turkey-tops-google-content-...

darkhorn 12y ago
Check your emails quickly, I'm going to shut down the electricity http://i.imgur.com/Dkf3QKR.jpg http://i.imgur.com/Dkf3QKR.jpg

shna 12y ago

I am a native Turkish speaker and I listened the recording. For one thing I did not hear anything you would not expect to hear from most of the statesman in the west in a similar situation. Conversation is about the future stance of Turkey for the civil war in Syria and lack of enough resolve for the last 3 years to intervene properly, and that does not mean directly involving but not supplying ammo to rebel groups against Assad regime. They are complaining that the civil war took a turn toward total destabilization of the region, especially after Al-Qaeda linked group called ISIL[1] started taking over anti-Assad rebel groups. They fear that if ISIL becomes an armed power next to Turkey's border it will be a huge security concern. The head of intelligence agency says that if Turkey going to engage against them in the future it should be done so on their terms but not the other side's choosing. The mention of alleged provocation of the head of intelligence by his minions firing rockets from the Syrian side into Turkish side is correct. He says his men can do that. However he says that in the context they want to be the one starting the assault on ISIL, not the other way around. They argue that if they should wait for the ISIL to attack first. So again it is about engaging al-Qaeda linked group but not starting war with Syria. In this recording foreign minister mention that they want to avoid any conflict with Syria due to their capabilities. I do believe that any war with Syria destabilizes Turkey grossly and it is definitely something they would want to avoid and they did. The al-Qaeda linked group (ISIL) invaded one the Syrian village about [4] 30-40km away from the Turkish border about a week ago. And like many Turkish I learned something new last week. In that village there's the tomb[2] of the grandfather of the founder of Ottoman Empire. Surrounding of that tomb which is a tiny tiny land in that village belongs to Turkish Republic. The monument is protected by Turkish soldiers who reside there permanently. After ISIL invaded the surrounding village they demanded [5] that Turkish soldiers leave the monument. However that land is part of Turkish sovereign land and Turkey reacted that she would intervene forcefully. Even we have been reading that couple of F-16 fighters are kept ready to take off on the tarmac and special ops can intervene in 90 seconds. In the recording, foreign minister mentions the option of intervention to ISIL using the Tomb as an excuse, even if they do not attack monument and the soldiers. They mention that world would support such intervention since this is a al-Qaeda linked group. So they would like to attack ISIL fully in the whole region. They are not warmongering against Syria, and they fear that ISIL's presence could become permanent and can become something of huge security concern for years to come.. In the recording, head of Turkish intelligence mention about lack of resolve of the government. He says if they did not intervene while thousands of people died, still attack on the Tomb of Suleyman Shah is a weaker argument to start an attack. Probably we need to consider how US would react if an Al-Qaeda linked group starts taking over northern villages of Mexico while a civil war is going on in there. However the main post is about YouTube ban due to this recording. I just wanted to give another perspective. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_State_of_Iraq_and_the_Levant http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_State_of_Iraq_and_the_L... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomb_of_Suleyman_Shah http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomb_of_Suleyman_Shah [3] https://plus.google.com/109044970213631232914/about?gl=us&hl=en https://plus.google.com/109044970213631232914/about?gl=us&hl... [4] https://www.google.com/maps/place/Tomb+of+Suleyman+Shah/@36.638775,38.207574,9z/data=!4m2!3m1!1s0x0:0x5adb35d180fca6a2 https://www.google.com/maps/place/Tomb+of+Suleyman+Shah/@36.... [5] http://www.worldbulletin.net/turkey/132062/isil-deadline-for-turkish-pull-out-from-suleiman-shah-tomb-expires http://www.worldbulletin.net/turkey/132062/isil-deadline-for...

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

twobits 12y ago

It's because of this leak: Turkish top political and military leaders, organizing a false flag attack, to have an excuse to attack Syria: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-03-27/here-youtube-false-flag-attack-syria-clip-erdogan-wanted-banned http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-03-27/here-youtube-false-...

yawz 12y ago
Just to add to this point: There are regional elections in Turkey on Sunday and the ruling party is expected to receive a serious blow. One of the rumours has always been that this government could even risk going to war rather than losing power. Well... now we have proof that it is the case.

blendergasket 12y ago

What's really interesting to me is that it seems like some very, very powerful and well-connected player, who either has access to the communication networks or people at the top of the Turkish totem pole is trying to use social media to destabilize/overthrow a government. I don't know much about what's going on in Turkey and the corruption that's being exposed is definitely hugely damning, but I'm curious if there is any credible idea as to who is behind all this leaking? It definitely isn't a group of your average concerned citizens.

jballanc 12y ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%BClen_movement http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%BClen_movement

spoiler 12y ago

Isn't this the wrong approach, though? I mean, sure you can try to block people form finding the truth, but at least be covert about it; this is plain naïve. Their methodology is just putting them (the government) into the spotlight. Shouldn't they try and divert the attention? This ensures people find the truth sooner rather than later. I feel like they've been played by some high-up in the government techs person who just got sick of the corruption and decided to add a catalyst.