Is it racist? I think it is.
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@CCWTech It looks like the usefulness of it was discussed here: https://mangolassi.it/topic/22519/linux-geoip-blocking
I'm not someone who finds racism in everything, but this just struck me as odd. Maybe I am totally off base. -
@CCWTech said in Is it racist? I think it is.:
@CCWTech It looks like the usefulness of it was discussed here: https://mangolassi.it/topic/22519/linux-geoip-blocking
I'm not someone who finds racism in everything, but this just struck me as odd. Maybe I am totally off base.A big former vendor here, xByte, lost TWO of their IT providers over these kinds of policies. They blocked "countries that speak Spanish" meaning anyone, that visits those countries for any purpose, or is detected as being in those countries even if they are not, would not only be blocked from xByte services, but provided with a screen that implied that their web hosting had failed, rather than been blocked. So they were willing to go out of their way to anti-market themselves, to convince would-be customers that their service was broken, to avoid getting them as customers. When asked about this, they doubled down that they had no interest in customers who might ever try to reach their sites from those regions. Foolish given that their entire IT team was in Costa Rica and blocked, and very upset about how they were treated prior to that outright blockage by "racial region".
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@CCWTech said in Is it racist? I think it is.:
Living outside the USA has shown me how many supposed 'IT Security Policies' are in my opinion, racist.
I got this today:
403 ERROR
The request could not be satisfied.
The Amazon CloudFront distribution is configured to block access from your country. We can't connect to the server for this app or website at this time. There might be too much traffic or a configuration error. Try again later, or contact the app or website owner.
If you provide content to customers through CloudFront, you can find steps to troubleshoot and help prevent this error by reviewing the CloudFront documentation.
Generated by cloudfront (CloudFront)
Request ID: zomv8JAx_0HrRCvqqrBVKdUVY0WYlrp6F0BhpVut-NLG060J2fKC-w==- I happen to be in Nicaragua right now, and I think it would be hard to argue that there are a lot of Nicaraguan hackers (In other words we aren't talking originating from China or Russia here).
- Do IT staff really think that the hackers they should worry about aren't familiar with VPN's or other ways of spoofing their IP or location?
This happens from time to time and today it I guess annoyed me more than it normally does.
Thoughts?
Not sure what race has to do with geographic restrictions. I'd say it more-so has to do with laws, regulatory, and other such things:
- legal and regulatory compliance
- export controls
- licensing
- infrastructure / performance concerns
- economic considerations
- fraud/security concerns
- content sensitivities
- strategic business decisions
- taxation and financial regulations
- local partnerships or agreements
- network abuse (sure there's one single aspect of your hacking point)
- language and support concerns
- etc.
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@Obsolesce said in Is it racist? I think it is.:
@CCWTech said in Is it racist? I think it is.:
Living outside the USA has shown me how many supposed 'IT Security Policies' are in my opinion, racist.
I got this today:
403 ERROR
The request could not be satisfied.
The Amazon CloudFront distribution is configured to block access from your country. We can't connect to the server for this app or website at this time. There might be too much traffic or a configuration error. Try again later, or contact the app or website owner.
If you provide content to customers through CloudFront, you can find steps to troubleshoot and help prevent this error by reviewing the CloudFront documentation.
Generated by cloudfront (CloudFront)
Request ID: zomv8JAx_0HrRCvqqrBVKdUVY0WYlrp6F0BhpVut-NLG060J2fKC-w==- I happen to be in Nicaragua right now, and I think it would be hard to argue that there are a lot of Nicaraguan hackers (In other words we aren't talking originating from China or Russia here).
- Do IT staff really think that the hackers they should worry about aren't familiar with VPN's or other ways of spoofing their IP or location?
This happens from time to time and today it I guess annoyed me more than it normally does.
Thoughts?
Not sure what race has to do with geographic restrictions. I'd say it more-so has to do with laws, regulatory, and other such things:
How does it not?
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@CCWTech said in Is it racist? I think it is.:
@Obsolesce said in Is it racist? I think it is.:
@CCWTech said in Is it racist? I think it is.:
Living outside the USA has shown me how many supposed 'IT Security Policies' are in my opinion, racist.
I got this today:
403 ERROR
The request could not be satisfied.
The Amazon CloudFront distribution is configured to block access from your country. We can't connect to the server for this app or website at this time. There might be too much traffic or a configuration error. Try again later, or contact the app or website owner.
If you provide content to customers through CloudFront, you can find steps to troubleshoot and help prevent this error by reviewing the CloudFront documentation.
Generated by cloudfront (CloudFront)
Request ID: zomv8JAx_0HrRCvqqrBVKdUVY0WYlrp6F0BhpVut-NLG060J2fKC-w==- I happen to be in Nicaragua right now, and I think it would be hard to argue that there are a lot of Nicaraguan hackers (In other words we aren't talking originating from China or Russia here).
- Do IT staff really think that the hackers they should worry about aren't familiar with VPN's or other ways of spoofing their IP or location?
This happens from time to time and today it I guess annoyed me more than it normally does.
Thoughts?
Not sure what race has to do with geographic restrictions. I'd say it more-so has to do with laws, regulatory, and other such things:
How does it not?
Race refers to the categorization of human beings into groups based on physical attributes such as skin color, hair texture, and facial features. Geographic restrictions, on the other hand, pertain to limits or boundaries set on certain areas or locations.
The primary reasons for geographic restrictions are usually grounded in legal, regulatory, and administrative decisions. These decisions might stem from concerns related to national security, resource management, public safety, or diplomatic reasons. Race doesn't inherently dictate these legal and regulatory restrictions. While it's true that some restrictions historically may have been influenced by racial prejudices, conflating race with the primary purpose of most contemporary geographic restrictions can be misleading.
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@Obsolesce said in Is it racist? I think it is.:
@CCWTech said in Is it racist? I think it is.:
@Obsolesce said in Is it racist? I think it is.:
@CCWTech said in Is it racist? I think it is.:
Living outside the USA has shown me how many supposed 'IT Security Policies' are in my opinion, racist.
I got this today:
403 ERROR
The request could not be satisfied.
The Amazon CloudFront distribution is configured to block access from your country. We can't connect to the server for this app or website at this time. There might be too much traffic or a configuration error. Try again later, or contact the app or website owner.
If you provide content to customers through CloudFront, you can find steps to troubleshoot and help prevent this error by reviewing the CloudFront documentation.
Generated by cloudfront (CloudFront)
Request ID: zomv8JAx_0HrRCvqqrBVKdUVY0WYlrp6F0BhpVut-NLG060J2fKC-w==- I happen to be in Nicaragua right now, and I think it would be hard to argue that there are a lot of Nicaraguan hackers (In other words we aren't talking originating from China or Russia here).
- Do IT staff really think that the hackers they should worry about aren't familiar with VPN's or other ways of spoofing their IP or location?
This happens from time to time and today it I guess annoyed me more than it normally does.
Thoughts?
Not sure what race has to do with geographic restrictions. I'd say it more-so has to do with laws, regulatory, and other such things:
How does it not?
Race refers to the categorization of human beings into groups based on physical attributes such as skin color, hair texture, and facial features. Geographic restrictions, on the other hand, pertain to limits or boundaries set on certain areas or locations.
The primary reasons for geographic restrictions are usually grounded in legal, regulatory, and administrative decisions. These decisions might stem from concerns related to national security, resource management, public safety, or diplomatic reasons. Race doesn't inherently dictate these legal and regulatory restrictions. While it's true that some restrictions historically may have been influenced by racial prejudices, conflating race with the primary purpose of most contemporary geographic restrictions can be misleading.
While it's true that you CAN have different raced people in every country, @scottalanmiller example of a vendor blocking Spanish-speaking countries... Well, sure, anyone can live there. Scott and I for example live in a Spanish-speaking country, so no, it's not 100% by race, but there are certainly a lot of Chinese people in China for example...
I guess it's discriminatory and has no real value.
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@CCWTech said in Is it racist? I think it is.:
@Obsolesce said in Is it racist? I think it is.:
@CCWTech said in Is it racist? I think it is.:
@Obsolesce said in Is it racist? I think it is.:
@CCWTech said in Is it racist? I think it is.:
Living outside the USA has shown me how many supposed 'IT Security Policies' are in my opinion, racist.
I got this today:
403 ERROR
The request could not be satisfied.
The Amazon CloudFront distribution is configured to block access from your country. We can't connect to the server for this app or website at this time. There might be too much traffic or a configuration error. Try again later, or contact the app or website owner.
If you provide content to customers through CloudFront, you can find steps to troubleshoot and help prevent this error by reviewing the CloudFront documentation.
Generated by cloudfront (CloudFront)
Request ID: zomv8JAx_0HrRCvqqrBVKdUVY0WYlrp6F0BhpVut-NLG060J2fKC-w==- I happen to be in Nicaragua right now, and I think it would be hard to argue that there are a lot of Nicaraguan hackers (In other words we aren't talking originating from China or Russia here).
- Do IT staff really think that the hackers they should worry about aren't familiar with VPN's or other ways of spoofing their IP or location?
This happens from time to time and today it I guess annoyed me more than it normally does.
Thoughts?
Not sure what race has to do with geographic restrictions. I'd say it more-so has to do with laws, regulatory, and other such things:
How does it not?
Race refers to the categorization of human beings into groups based on physical attributes such as skin color, hair texture, and facial features. Geographic restrictions, on the other hand, pertain to limits or boundaries set on certain areas or locations.
The primary reasons for geographic restrictions are usually grounded in legal, regulatory, and administrative decisions. These decisions might stem from concerns related to national security, resource management, public safety, or diplomatic reasons. Race doesn't inherently dictate these legal and regulatory restrictions. While it's true that some restrictions historically may have been influenced by racial prejudices, conflating race with the primary purpose of most contemporary geographic restrictions can be misleading.
While it's true that you CAN have different raced people in every country, @scottalanmiller example of a vendor blocking Spanish-speaking countries... Well, sure, anyone can live there. Scott and I for example live in a Spanish-speaking country, so no, it's not 100% by race, but there are certainly a lot of Chinese people in China for example...
I guess it's discriminatory and has no real value.
Did you somehow miss the list I posted of so many more likely reasons a country is blocked?
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No, I read it, but there was nothing to really support it. I mean all of those are things, but I guess they are posted as facts and I am trying to figure out how they would really apply... Remember we are just talking about blocking access to a website.
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@CCWTech said in Is it racist? I think it is.:
No, I read it, but there was nothing to really support it. I mean all of those are things, but I guess they are posted as facts and I am trying to figure out how they would really apply... Remember we are just talking about blocking access to a website.
What's your evidence to support the site blocking is racially motivated, and not, lets say, regulatory or otherwise motivated?
I don't know which site you are referring to, so I can't really dive in. If it was a KKK website blocking your country's access, then sure. But that's likely not the site you're trying to go to.
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@Obsolesce said in Is it racist? I think it is.:
@CCWTech said in Is it racist? I think it is.:
No, I read it, but there was nothing to really support it. I mean all of those are things, but I guess they are posted as facts and I am trying to figure out how they would really apply... Remember we are just talking about blocking access to a website.
What's your evidence to support the site blocking is racially motivated, and not, lets say, regulatory or otherwise motivated?
I don't know which site you are referring to, so I can't really dive in. If it was a KKK website blocking your country's access, then sure. But that's likely not the site you're trying to go to.
I am asking if it is racist... It's my suspicion it is. It says blocking by country and countries are often divided by race. But yes, for all I know they put a list of countries in a hat and drew out names of countries they would block. It's just doubtful that's the case.
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@CCWTech said in Is it racist? I think it is.:
The Amazon CloudFront distribution is configured to block access from your country. We can't connect to the server for this app or website at this time. There might be too much traffic or a configuration error.
I haven't used Amazon CloudFront, but have you confirmed that configuration is correct? Do you have any way to verify if there was any kind of burst of traffic that may have triggered some kind of policy that would cause traffic to be dropped?
On the question of racism, I would follow the technical issue to a potential policy issue. Then see if the policy was created to somehow allow and drop traffic based off of assuming the immutable physical characteristic (race) of the sender. My thought process wouldn't start with "traffic has been configured to be dropped because of a racist policy."
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@EddieJennings said in Is it racist? I think it is.:
@CCWTech said in Is it racist? I think it is.:
The Amazon CloudFront distribution is configured to block access from your country. We can't connect to the server for this app or website at this time. There might be too much traffic or a configuration error.
I haven't used Amazon CloudFront, but have you confirmed that configuration is correct? Do you have any way to verify if there was any kind of burst of traffic that may have triggered some kind of policy that would cause traffic to be dropped?
On the question of racism, I would follow the technical issue to a potential policy issue. Then see if the policy was created to somehow allow and drop traffic based off of assuming the immutable physical characteristic (race) of the sender. My thought process wouldn't start with "traffic has been configured to be dropped because of a racist policy."
The company is looking into it so I am waiting to hear back. But living outside of the USA you encounter it often.
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@EddieJennings said in Is it racist? I think it is.:
I haven't used Amazon CloudFront, but have you confirmed that configuration is correct? Do you have any way to verify if there was any kind of burst of traffic that may have triggered some kind of policy that would cause traffic to be dropped?
Amazon CloudFront isn't blocked in Nicaragua, or any country for that matter. It's a service a website is using to service traffic. The Amazon CloudFront customer is using CloudFront to block access to their site geographically.
We don't know which website CCWTech is trying to go to. He never mentioned that. So this continues to be meaningless discussion because nobody can really go anywhere with it, except to point out that 99.9999999999% of the time, geographic blocks are not racially motivated.
Which "race" is being blocked by restricting access to Nicaragua? Mestizo? Mixed indigenous and European (primarily Spanish) ancestry? Is spain blocked as well? Is France? Is costa rica? Is the entire central america blocked? Is Mexico? South America? Kinda short-sighted to think it's racially motivated when there are so many other, more likely, reasons for geographic blocks.
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@Obsolesce said in Is it racist? I think it is.:
@CCWTech said in Is it racist? I think it is.:
Living outside the USA has shown me how many supposed 'IT Security Policies' are in my opinion, racist.
I got this today:
403 ERROR
The request could not be satisfied.
The Amazon CloudFront distribution is configured to block access from your country. We can't connect to the server for this app or website at this time. There might be too much traffic or a configuration error. Try again later, or contact the app or website owner.
If you provide content to customers through CloudFront, you can find steps to troubleshoot and help prevent this error by reviewing the CloudFront documentation.
Generated by cloudfront (CloudFront)
Request ID: zomv8JAx_0HrRCvqqrBVKdUVY0WYlrp6F0BhpVut-NLG060J2fKC-w==- I happen to be in Nicaragua right now, and I think it would be hard to argue that there are a lot of Nicaraguan hackers (In other words we aren't talking originating from China or Russia here).
- Do IT staff really think that the hackers they should worry about aren't familiar with VPN's or other ways of spoofing their IP or location?
This happens from time to time and today it I guess annoyed me more than it normally does.
Thoughts?
Not sure what race has to do with geographic restrictions. I'd say it more-so has to do with laws, regulatory, and other such things:
- legal and regulatory compliance
- export controls
- licensing
- infrastructure / performance concerns
- economic considerations
- fraud/security concerns
- content sensitivities
- strategic business decisions
- taxation and financial regulations
- local partnerships or agreements
- network abuse (sure there's one single aspect of your hacking point)
- language and support concerns
- etc.
Well, when you block by large racial regions, and all of those other things don't apply, it's pretty strongly definitely about race.
None of those other things can be used in conjunction with geo-ip blocking. I'd say the opposite... I don't understand how you can mention those other things given that it doesn't work for that. Other than race and/or nationality (which are deeply tied) there's no other effective reason for geo blocking.
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@Obsolesce said in Is it racist? I think it is.:
What's your evidence to support the site blocking is racially motivated, and not, lets say, regulatory or otherwise motivated?
Because no regulation anywhere, ever is supported by geo blocking. That never qualifies for any regulation.
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@Obsolesce said in Is it racist? I think it is.:
Did you somehow miss the list I posted of so many more likely reasons a country is blocked?
None of those are even plausible. Let alone LIKELY.
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@Obsolesce said in Is it racist? I think it is.:
geographic blocks are not racially motivated.
This is obviously backwards. As you've not, not has anyone in years of me talking about this, supplied any plausible or factual benefit to blocking, but the negatives, including loss of business, loss of reputation, etc. don't just make it anti-business, but generally illegal (fiduciary responsibility in larger companies.)
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@Obsolesce said in Is it racist? I think it is.:
Which "race" is being blocked by restricting access to Nicaragua? Mestizo? Mixed indigenous and European (primarily Spanish) ancestry? Is spain blocked as well? Is France? Is costa rica? Is the entire central america blocked? Is Mexico? South America? Kinda short-sighted to think it's racially motivated when there are so many other, more likely, reasons for geographic blocks.
That you are trying to make an argument that "Latinos" don't exist so you can't block people by nature of being in a broader hispanic or, say, African group, I think makes the point.
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@EddieJennings said in Is it racist? I think it is.:
@CCWTech said in Is it racist? I think it is.:
The Amazon CloudFront distribution is configured to block access from your country. We can't connect to the server for this app or website at this time. There might be too much traffic or a configuration error.
I haven't used Amazon CloudFront, but have you confirmed that configuration is correct? Do you have any way to verify if there was any kind of burst of traffic that may have triggered some kind of policy that would cause traffic to be dropped?
On the question of racism, I would follow the technical issue to a potential policy issue. Then see if the policy was created to somehow allow and drop traffic based off of assuming the immutable physical characteristic (race) of the sender. My thought process wouldn't start with "traffic has been configured to be dropped because of a racist policy."
Yes, its trivial to confirm and it is a persistent issue living in a hispanic country. We have teams throughout Latin America with computers in the US and it's absolutely no effort to determine when the only factor that makes you blocked is "hispanic nation" and nothing else.
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I think it needs to be said, blatant and obvious racism should never be defended. I understand the goals in trying to find some loophole to excuse horrible, detestable Americans doing what so many do. But that's not really ethical. Racism is always wrong, it's not appropriate to attempt to hide it or excuse it. I realize that racism is often pointed to in cases where it clearly doesn't exist. But this is a well known, inexcusable bit of racism (it happens to Europeans too, btw, it's not only about skin colour but also national identify, language, culture...) for which there is no viable, ethical (or in many cases legal) reason. Blocking real customers makes no business sense. Geo IP blocks provide no security, but do lose business. There are no regulations, security or business cases that I've ever had presented that would allow or excuse any level of geo blocking let alone broad blocking.
This is racism. That's black and white. THe question is only... why is it so okay to allow it?
I'll call out one company that lost a bit of business to it. xByte did this and flat out said they had no interest in customers that would ever travel outside the US and didn't care if it tarnished their reputation to appear to have failed as a technology company to anyone who did. They back peddled after losing customers and, more importantly, vendors, but we pointed out to them that it was STATED by their vendors that they were fired over blatant racism and while they claimed it not to be true, they offered no motivation to the contrary (and since none could exist, that makes sense.)
