Yes, we were censored

Proof of the blockade to Twitter images and Pastebin.com in Venezuela

[ Translated by @anibal from https://medium.com/des-venezuela/1a0c71136371 ]

Both CONATEL (National Comission of Telecommuniction) and CANTV (largest venezuelan ISP run by the goverment) deny that there has been any censorship in the venezuela internet in the last couple days, here is the proof that there has been.

The first one was targeted to the Twitter image services under the domain pbs.twimg.com on February 13th 2014. Under this domain are served Twitter images, for both profile pictures and user generated content.

This blockade was imposed by CANTV only. You can see the results of trying to download an image and later running a traceroute both in Inter (the biggest ISP after CANTV, privatelly run, and that actually worked) and through CANTV (that had the service blocked). If you can’t see the files, this is because pastebin.com is still being blocked, as it is in this moment that I am writing this article: 04:49:13 UTC-0430.

The blockade reports weren’t isolated and they were felt by a big number of users. Those reports confirmed that CANTV was the only ISP showing this behaviour. While switching to alternate ISPs Movistar, Digitel and Inter, the images loaded normally.

William Castillo, CONATEL’s president, gave a statement to Telesur TV where he asserted thatthe failure was reported in other countries of latinamerica also. I have been unable to to find a source that confirms this. This argument is also repeated by CANTV in a similar release. Even mexcian sources that covered the censorship of Twitter’s images in Venezuela never mention such behaviour in México. CANTV’s release repeats this argument, again without citing any sources.

This, while Nu Wexler, Twitter’s spokesman, confirmed to Bloomberg that their images where being blocked in Venezuela.

More traceroute evidence showing CANTV stopping the route to reach to pbs.twimg.com hereand here .

But the blockade didn’t stop there, CONATEL’s president in his Twitter account assures that they have blocked many sites where attack where originating to government sites and a few hours later complaints for the blocking of pastebin.com start to rise. Pastebin is a place where plain text is shared ,mostly source code between programmers, no attack can be executed from this plase. However, it is still blocked not only by CANTV, but by Inter also.

Making traces and testing domain resolution for pastebin.com we found that CANTV blocked domain resolution for pastebin.com from their DNS and that trying to reach the IP address using a trace is impossible. These DNSs are controlled directly by CANTV. Other DNS properly resolve the domain pastebin.com.

Now, Inter didn’t remove pastebin.com from their DNS but they only blocked the IP address.

Meanwhile, William Castillo says in his Twitter account: «IT experts from the opposition have recognized in radio that it’s improbable a blockade of Twitter from Venezuela #DisinformationWar». I have no idea, who are this so called experts, but that’s a mere opinion and the reality is that in Venezuela the ISP have been blocking whole web sites. Considering the facts, and not opinions, it is worthwhile to remember the joint statement made by the the freedom of speech and opinion rapporteurs from the United Nations on Jun 1st 2011.

To stop computer/network attacks it is not necessary to block websites, less sites like pastebin.com that only store information. These attacks are handled through the use of a solid infraestructure, load balancing and content distribution by regions (CDN). Pastebin.com is a place that only stores information and blocking it is an act of censorship.

Censorship is unconstitutional, as it is established in the article 57 of Venezuela’s Constitution. A blockade is an act of censorship. And worse, there is no transparency about what are they blocking or why. The Constitution article forbids censorchip to civil servants to report about the matters they are responsible, and the recently approved infogoverment law in its 13th article promotes transparency and maximum promotion that should be given to their actions. I hope the public servants show themselves as an example of citizenshsip and fully enforce the laws. There are already computer crime laws and there is no need to break a law, neither the Constitution, to enforce another one.