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Comment by mm263 | Hacker News Reader

This is just laying down the ground work for Russia-style deep packet inspection. “We don’t have a capability to censor the foreign internet, so we need measures to cut off the violating sites from our side”

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I think it’s an open question whether the British state has the technical chops, money and willingness to implement a Great Firewall type solution.

The state isn’t totally incompetent but doing it properly would be a serious undertaking, the kind of thing where the recent track record of big government tech projects isn’t great

They already track everything going through the undersea cables, why couldn't they start blocking at those points?

Getting the raw data is relatively straightforward, but my understanding is doing real time DPI at country scale without being easily circumvented (and without breaking the rest of the internet you want to work) isn't so easy.

If you want to really make sure nobody in the uk can easily access 4chan (PRC style) it needs some effort, and you're in an arms race with attempts to mask/tunnel traffic so it gets through

i too love the idea of deep government inspection of every piece of data i send

Splicing and mirroring a cable is about 10x easier than filtering it.

Why are you assuming that they aren't totally incompetent? They look pretty incompetent from my perspective. Or they just want to present the appearance of incompetence for an ulterior motive? That seems needlessly complex when they are already admitting their malevolence daily.

There are examples of the apparently ineffective British state suddenly gaining some teeth and some competence when they actually care.

One example is after the Southport riots, miraculously the justice system became hyperefficient and the perpetrators were found, arrested, charged and jailed within a week.

That suggests a lot of what looks like incompetence (potholes, petty crime, maybe also this) is actually just the state not really caring about a lot of issues.

If they decide they really care about internet censorship, I wouldn't rule out them suddenly becoming a lot more competent in that specific area

I heard the same argument for several years in Russia while government was building competences. They have money, so could just hire top tier commercial companies who are the best it their field.

Sorry for copypaste, but I still hope people will see true intentions of govt.

Just a recap how it happened in Russia:

1. First, year ~2015 legal framework was created under disguise of banning pirated media(specifically torrents.ru)(legislative push). State-wide DNS ban introduced. Very easy to circumvent via quering 8.8.8.8

2. Then, having legal basis, govt included extra stuff in banned list(casinos, terrorist orgs, etc)(executive push). IP bans introduced, applied very carefully.

3. Legal expanded allowing govt to ban specific media on very vague criterias(legislative push). IP blocks tried on some large websites. DPI hardware mandated to be installed by ISPs to filter by HTTPS SNI(executive push).

4. At ~2019 Roskomnadzor(RKN) created, special govt entity which enforces bans without court orders(legislative push).

5. ~2021 sites become banned if they are not filtering content by Russian laws by request of RKN(executive push). VPN services were obligated to also DPI-filter traffic(legislative push).

6. ~2023 Crackdown on VPN started(executive push). Popular commercial services were IP-banned, OpenVPN and IPSec connections selectively degraded by DPI.

7. ~2025 Heavy VPN filtering(vless, wireguard, etc) introduced(executive push). Performance of certain sites were degraded(youtube, twitter, etc ).

That's already been done, on the ISP level, some time ago. For torrent sites and similar, if I remember correctly.

I'm pretty sure it was to protect the children, or fight terrorism, or to save the NHS, or lower taxes.

That's not based on deep packet inspection; it's just low tech stuff like IP blocks. ISPs don't have the resources or expertise to DPI encrypted traffic (which is the majority of network traffic now).

The UK already has a very extensive block list which most ISPs already implement:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_blocking_in_the_United_Kin...

I don't see the need for extra tooling like DPI when the willingness and methodology to outright block sites at a higher level is already in place. Also bear in mind that the groups who have compiled the most widely implemented block lists are also major sponsors of the bill which this 4chan story refers to, so they have largely gotten what they wanted.

deep packet inspection is not really necessary, headers contain information about the destination, as long as you don’t encrypt those, there is no need to do any decryption.

You just need to follow this to the logical conclusion. They’ll ban using your proposed method, people will switch to VPN and other modern methods and to combat people still accessing the forbidden internet they will need DPI and TSPU-like devices

I think the conclusion is more like mandating home and business web access is proxied at a national level and most other protocols disallowed. Use of VPNs without a VPN tax stamp and key escrow is prima facie evidence of violation of the Counter-Terrorism and Security act. Use of non-standard protocols is assumed to be criminal intent. Check with your approved internet provider for how to access the Internet safely.

What proposed method? I'm explaining how things work. In order to send a packet, the destination address needs to be known to the delivering entities. Encryption occurs by using enveloping, the envelope is unencrypted, but the content is encrpyted.

This is how it works, if you want I can explain to you why it works like this, or you can work it out from first principles. But this is not a proposal.

VPNs are an asterisk and they work not by avoiding this natural unavoidable principle, but by tunneling, the VPN or proxy vendor is putting themselves on the headers, and on the backend they still route the packets to the destination by putting the intended destination on the headers.

If these VPNs don't comply with local regulations and are used to evade national restrictions they can and are often themselves subject to bans. But even if not, it acts as a sort of waiver and compromising element for all illicit activity.

Sometimes it's not necessary to completely outlaw something, it is sufficient to make it so that engaging in the outlawed activity is sufficiently uncomfortable and clear that it is illegal, forcing users to undeniably acknowledge they are avoiding the law. An example of this is trying to watch pirated movies without paying for them, yeah you can do it, but you gotta do some shady shit and dodge a lot of malware, and eat shady gambling ads and etcetera.

In addition to making you feel like an asshole, it removes any recourse you may have, it's very hard to make any claim later, you cannot really complain later if you were accessing it illegally to begin with. Nobody is going to pursue you to the end of the world not to access a pirated movie or an illegal website, but they pursue the distributor and make things very uncomfortable enough so that you are effectively hiding like a fiending outlaw.

Likely yes IMO, especially since the UK is making moves to militarize.

Sounds good. Why don't you want a strong military in European countries? They should pay their own military tab.

Did I say anything about not wanting nations to have a strong military? Why are you making shit up?

The bad thing would be tying that process in with growing internet restrictions.

I hate to break it to you, but the UK has had a military for some time now.

This isn't what "militarize" means in this context or mostly anywhere

So has France, but their nuclear weapons program is new.

I don’t think it’s weird to point out the little guys (especially former or current EU) getting strapped.

I think both the UK and France have had nuclear weapons programs since the 50s and 60s. Are you thinking about the "Northwood declaration" ? Where they both said they would coordinate their nuclear responses?

The first nuclear weapon tests for the UK and France were in 1952 and 1960, respectively. Nothing about that is new.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapons_of_the_United_...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/France_and_weapons_of_mass_des...

> Nothing about that is new.

Now we’re both wrong!

The French are now using submarines (striking distance and speed, blah blah)

and are apparently being looked at as the leader of “forward deterrence” in the region.

https://tvpworld.com/93637117/frances-nuclear-umbrella-which...

The French have always had a very strong submarine fleet with nuclear launch capability. Nothing new about this in the slightest. This puts them in a very select group and is what still gives them some clout on the international stage.

> Nothing new about this in the slightest

Deep inland strikes from miles out while underwater/at sea.

France has had submarine-launched ICBMs with nuclear warheads since 1971.

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