Cambodia to switch on internet gateway Feb. 16: NYT

Phones, Internet, Computers and such.
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ExPenhMan
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Cambodia to switch on internet gateway Feb. 16: NYT

Post by ExPenhMan »

Posted in the Bangkok Post is this New York Times story:

Headline: Cambodia internet soon to be like China
Cambodia's National Internet Gateway, set to begin operating Feb 16, will send all internet traffic — including from abroad — through a government-run portal. The gateway, which is mandatory for all service providers, gives state regulators the means to "prevent and disconnect all network connections that affect national income, security, social order, morality, culture, traditions and customs."

Government surveillance is already high in Cambodia. Each ministry has a team that monitors the internet. Offending content is reported to an internet crime unit in the Ministry of Interior, the center of the country’s robust security apparatus. Those responsible can be charged with incitement and sent to prison.

But rights groups say that the new law will make it even easier for the authorities to monitor and punish online content, and that the recent arrests are meant to further intimidate citizens into self-censorship in a country where free speech is enshrined in the constitution.

"The authorities are emboldened by China as an example of an authoritarian state that gives Cambodia political cover, new technology and financial resources," said Sophal Ear, a dean at the Thunderbird School of Global Management at Arizona State University whose family escaped the Khmer Rouge, a murderous regime that seized power in Cambodia in 1975.

"The National Internet Gateway is merely centralizing what has been a decentralised system of control over Cambodia’s internet," he said. "The outcome will be to crush what little remains of freedom of expression online."
More details:

https://www.bangkokpost.com/world/22478 ... controlled
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Re: Cambodia to switch on internet gateway Feb. 16: NYT

Post by Doc67 »

What about people who have crypto which is illegal here? Will they ban access to Binance and the other exchanges and the multitude of platforms?

And what about the security of any other financial transactions and passwords used when accessing them?
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Re: Cambodia to switch on internet gateway Feb. 16: NYT

Post by Freightdog »

Sometimes I do wonder if the spectre of Democratic Kampuchea is simply having its influence in other ways, ironically using technology to stop the people being people in the a modern world, and moulding them accordingly.
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Re: Cambodia to switch on internet gateway Feb. 16: NYT

Post by xandreu »

The World Wide Web was deliberately designed so that data packets would always find a way of reaching their destination. If one route were blocked, it would simply take another route. But I guess there's nothing you can do when there is only one route which can be turned off like a light switch. As we have seen in places like Myanmar and more recently Kazakhstan, cutting off internet access is the one of the first lines of defence when quelling any sort of uprising. Having a single connection with a single switch makes this much easier. Many people will cite VPN's as the answer but again, they are of no use if the internet itself has been disabled.
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Re: Cambodia to switch on internet gateway Feb. 16: NYT

Post by siliconlife »

xandreu wrote: Sat Jan 15, 2022 1:32 pm The World Wide Web was deliberately designed so that data packets would always find a way of reaching their destination. If one route were blocked, it would simply take another route. But I guess there's nothing you can do when there is only one route which can be turned off like a light switch. As we have seen in places like Myanmar and more recently Kazakhstan, cutting off internet access is the one of the first lines of defence when quelling any sort of uprising. Having a single connection with a single switch makes this much easier. Many people will cite VPN's as the answer but again, they are of no use if the internet itself has been disabled.
Useful, for sure. And surely in other ways too. But while the gate is open, encrypted data can still pass through.
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Re: Cambodia to switch on internet gateway Feb. 16: NYT

Post by nerdlinger »

xandreu wrote: Sat Jan 15, 2022 1:32 pm The World Wide Web was deliberately designed so that data packets would always find a way of reaching their destination. If one route were blocked, it would simply take another route. But I guess there's nothing you can do when there is only one route which can be turned off like a light switch. As we have seen in places like Myanmar and more recently Kazakhstan, cutting off internet access is the one of the first lines of defence when quelling any sort of uprising. Having a single connection with a single switch makes this much easier. Many people will cite VPN's as the answer but again, they are of no use if the internet itself has been disabled.
I saw a study a few years ago that concluded that even in the free world the Internet has become a lot more centralised than it was in the 90s. Back when it was mostly universities they’d all peer to each other in a big mesh. If you were an organisation and wanted to get on the internet it was a perfectly reasonable option to find nearby orgs with internet and run cables to their data center.
Nowadays 99.99%* of users in most countries rely on a single digit number of providers for their connection, and most inter-isp traffic goes down the same backbone.

The UK for example could effectively block the internet for almost everyone (including universities) by going to all of about 5 telecoms companies.


* can’t remember the exact number
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Re: Cambodia to switch on internet gateway Feb. 16: NYT

Post by Tootsfriend »

Is this the answer to the problem ? Not now, but in the near future.

https://r.search.yahoo.com/_ylt=Awr9J.s ... Sz7eaTH_c-
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Re: Cambodia to switch on internet gateway Feb. 16: NYT

Post by xandreu »

Doc67 wrote: Sat Jan 15, 2022 1:21 pm What about people who have crypto which is illegal here? Will they ban access to Binance and the other exchanges and the multitude of platforms?

And what about the security of any other financial transactions and passwords used when accessing them?
For as long as the gate remains open, ie, there is a connection to the rest of the world, VPN's will always be a viable alternative, as are often used in other countries with more authoritarian government control over the internet, such as China. There is little that can be done to circumnavigate a VPN. It encrypts all of your data to and from the world wide web so while people can see that data is being transmitted and received, it is impossible to know if you're watching YouTube, PornHub or trading in Crypto currencies. To an outside observer, including your own ISP, it is just a jumbled mess of 0's and 1's. They don't hide your identity however, and while many VPN's proclaim to not keep logs of your activity (they are the only ones who can see what you're really up to) it is impossible to tell if they really do keep logs and if they are prepared to hand those logs over to law enforcement agencies upon request.

And because VPN's, or more specifically, encryption, has legitimate uses, for example, your banking app on your mobile phone could not work without the data being encrypted, plus many (most?) websites now use HTTPS, which is a form or encryption as well as messaging apps such as Telegram and Whatsapp, it would be impossible for a government to make using encryption somehow illegal.

My gut feeling is that this is a mixture of having the ability to monitor the internet more closely (but again, anyone with a casual knowledge of VPN's and the like will always find a way around this) and also, perhaps even more so, about having a single switch that can be turned off in an emergency, which would cut the internet off in its entirety, as we have seen in other countries.

However, again, as we see in other countries with the ability to do this and which have done this, there is a limited amount of time where the internet can remain 'off' for before it starts to severely damage an economy. Aside from the banks inability to trade, either with their customers, with each other or in international markets, you'd be amazed how much of a country's economy in general relies on internet access these days. Millions of dollars change hands online every hour, even in places like Cambodia.
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Re: Cambodia to switch on internet gateway Feb. 16: NYT

Post by ali baba »

it would be impossible for a government to make using encryption somehow illegal.
I thought they wanted to install backdoors everywhere and make encryption irrelevant.

I remember Egypt shut down the net during the Arab Spring and the only traffic in and out was from the stock market. I wonder what would happen if they tried that here. Would the protest they're trying to suppress get 10 times larger when no one can pay with ABA?
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Re: Cambodia to switch on internet gateway Feb. 16: NYT

Post by Darkcel »

ali baba wrote: Sun Jan 16, 2022 2:08 pm
it would be impossible for a government to make using encryption somehow illegal.
I thought they wanted to install backdoors everywhere and make encryption irrelevant.

I remember Egypt shut down the net during the Arab Spring and the only traffic in and out was from the stock market. I wonder what would happen if they tried that here. Would the protest they're trying to suppress get 10 times larger when no one can pay with ABA?
I guarantee there would be a change of government if they rid the country of Facebook or YouTube

Hell, you'd have some crazy pissed off kids if they took away tiktok
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