GitHub Censors Catalonian App Tsunami Democratic

https://www.elconfidencial.com/tecnologia/2019-10-29/github-bloquea-tsunami-democratic-aplicacion_2305027/

by zoobab • 7 years ago

259 56 7 years ago

notkaiho• 7 years ago

From a machine translation of the article: "announced through its Telegram channel that the US company had thrown access to the Tsunami repository from our country. You only need to go to one of their last available web links: tsunamidemocratic.github.io to see that it is true. In a warning message written in English , the system alerts that "the repository is not available in your location"."

I'm not in Catalonia, and was able to click through to the repository. Surely no developer would be deterred by a simple IP ban?

wayoutthere2• 7 years ago

Surely no developer would be deterred by a simple IP ban?

Except it's not just for developers; it's the homepage for the app.

Though part of me has a feeling that GitHub complies with these takedown notices in the way that they do because they know how easily circumvented they are. Pretty much everyone involved with a modern protest movement has been taught some basic level of digital OpSec by the organizers.

EugeneOZ• 7 years ago

I'm in Barcelona and was able to open that page and download that app. My IP is not masked and few geo-ip services I tried says "Barcelona".

To avoid future possible misunderstandings: I do not support Tsunami Democràtic and I strongly disagree with their methods.

aeonflux• 7 years ago

https://github.com/github/gov-takedowns/blob/master/Spain/20...

lucideer2• 7 years ago

While it's fair to call out the owner of any property when something like this happens, the emphasis of "Microsoft" in the headline seems to imply that this is some newly introduced policy since the acquisition.

As far as I'm aware, Github has been honouring government takedowns of this nature since long before they were acquired by Microsoft.

Operyl• 7 years ago

The way I read it on the article, with punctuation, I don’t think it was necessarily intended like that? It’s in parentheses “Microsoft (GitHub)”. I don’t read Spanish fluently, though, so perhaps I’m not grasping it entirely. It felt like they were just adding context.

giancarlostoro2• 7 years ago

Microsoft (GitHub) blocks the Tsunami Democràtic to avoid the issues of their 'app'

Is how I'd translate it and depending on who you are, you might just ignore the GitHub bit if you have no idea who that is and just assume Microsoft's doing this outright. It is confusing, but the subtitle specifically calls GitHub a service owned by Microsoft. They then mention since when Microsoft has owned GitHub, which I'm not sure how accurate it is or isn't. Is it wholly owned by Microsoft at this time? Though as others have said, it's an existing policy.

wayoutthere2• 7 years ago

In the first paragraph, they say "GitHub, the service owned by Microsoft since June 2018, has begun to block access to the repository that hosts the web page and the application from Spain."

hiccuphippo3• 7 years ago

The article is aimed at regular people who's probably not familiar with GitHub but surely know Microsoft. Maybe they should have written it "GitHub (Microsoft)" instead.

hnuser77• 7 years ago

It would be more clear for everyone to call it Microsoft Github at all times.

raxxorrax3• 7 years ago

I don't know the details here, but there can be takedown notices from governments that I certainly wouldn't want a software repository to agree to. I think we would need a solution for this problem of central repositories.

lucideer2• 7 years ago

IANAL but it's a question of legal jurisdiction. Github is a business selling to Spanish users, so presumably are beholden to Spanish law.

Github also have a HQ in Amsterdam and likely there's some further ramifications for those based in an EU states in terms of compliance with laws of respective EU states

hiccuphippo3• 7 years ago

That's the beauty of git. You just need to:

git add remote plan-b one-of-dozens-of-git-hosts-or-your-own-server

git push plan-b master

And then let people know of your new repo(s).

diggan2• 7 years ago

As far as I'm aware, Github has been honouring government takedowns of this nature since long before they were acquired by Microsoft.

What makes me worried is that this was not a normal takedown where GitHub thought the content was harmful for their platform. It seems it's only geographically blocked, as in, not available for people in Spain. So GitHub thinks the repository is fine, just that it's not fine in Spain specifically.

This indicates that it's more hairy than just "it was harmful for GitHub"

DangerousPie2• 7 years ago

It was a warrant issued by a Spanish court that Github legally had to comply with. So Github did the minimum it could do, which was to block the website within Spain.

cptskippy• 7 years ago

Your observations are not at odds with what the OP said.

Github has been honouring government takedowns

The Spanish government requested the information be taken down but only has jurisdiction over it's own users. It therefore makes sense that Github would just restrict access to the content.

cosarara• 7 years ago

They have an official repo with all the government takedown letters: https://github.com/github/gov-takedowns (Only from China, Russia and Spain at the moment).

kozhevnikov• 7 years ago

I find it interesting that they removed user and repo names from the Spanish notice, but kept links in the Chinese and Russian ones.

eitland• 7 years ago

I wonder how the Spanish government and courts feel about being in this exclusive club?

hiccuphippo3• 7 years ago

There's a pull request to reverse it: https://github.com/github/gov-takedowns/pull/8

xondono• 7 years ago

It’s a mainstream newspaper, nobody of the general public would understand what or who is github if it wasn’t written like that

jedimastert• 7 years ago

I mean, I really don't think "Microsoft's Github" does anything to explain what Github is to the laymen.

reallydontask• 7 years ago

If you ask the average person about GitHub they won't know what you are talking about, everybody knows Microsoft though, that's the only reason.

buboard• 7 years ago

Yeah in reality it's the Spanish Military Police where complaints should be submitted

ojosilva2• 7 years ago

Not the Military Police.

The Guardia Civil, the takedown petitioner, is one of the two Spanish national police forces, the Military Police is a different corps entirely which belongs to the Army.

The Guardia Civil is similar to the Gendarmerie corps from many countries, such as France. However it does follow a military-style rank structure, which nothing out of this world for a police force.

dang3• 7 years ago

Most likely they put that Microsoft in the title because the general audience hasn't heard of GitHub. We don't need it here though.

zozbot234• 7 years ago

Takedown notice is discussed at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21395629

dang3• 7 years ago

Most comments moved thither. Thanks!

maaaats• 7 years ago

OT, but some headings with all capitalized words are impossible to decipher. Where does one put the groupings here? Looks like a gibberish sentence to my (non-native) eyes.

Microsoft's GitHub Censors Catalonian App Tsunami Democratic

Miraste• 7 years ago

Subject: GitHub, which is owned by Microsoft

Verb: Censors

Object: the Catalonian app called "Tsunami Democratic"

jdmichal• 7 years ago

(Microsoft's GitHub) censors (Catalonian App (Tsunami Democratic))

Some quotes around the app name, "Tsunami Democratic", would have helped a lot. The structure of the original Spanish headline delineates the app name from other nouns a lot better.

mfer• 7 years ago

Microsoft Spain sources have confirmed to Teknautas that they have not received any request from the security forces and bodies of the State to close Tsunami repositories

Note, this is a translation. If I understand it right, GitHub is a wholly owned subsidiary. That means it may have been (likely?) GitHub legal rather than Microsoft legal that received the request.

Did the reporter not know to check with GitHub or was it something else?

There is a little bit of organizational dynamics at play here. We may know how these companies are organized but do the masses? How much of the international reporters should we expect to know this?

dang3• 7 years ago

We have deep respect for languages other than English, but HN is an English-language site, so this is off topic here.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21395629 was posted earlier, so we'll merge (most) comments there.

GitHub Censors Catalonian App Tsunami Democratic

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