An Israeli company, GreenTeam Internet, helped Turkish Twitter users evade their government’s much derided Twitter ban.
The Turkish users, said [GreenTeam Internet CEO David] Allouch, weren’t interested in the filtering service offered by GreenTeam, but rather in the fact that the service was offering a free, alternative DNS service that they could use that did not ban YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and the other social media sites they wanted to use. That the mass connection occurred Wednesday morning was also no accident; the day before, Turkish ISPs banned connections to an open DNS server run by Google.
With that outlet closed to them, Allouch said, word of GreenTeam’s alternative spread like wildfire within Turkey’s apparently very large base of users dissatisfied with the restrictions their government has imposed on them.
The domain name system or DNS is the protocol governing how computers exchange information over the internet. The Times of Israel explains that in order to enforce its Twitter ban, Turkey blocked access to Twitter and YouTube, but users could circumvent the block through public DNS servers such as one hosted by Google. After Turkey caught on and started blocking the traffic going through Google’s servers, Twitter users started going through GreenTeam Internet’s servers.
Allouch said that he suspected that Turkish authorities attempted to shut down his servers, but he is committed to helping citizens evade the government’s restrictions.
We are going to change the DNS IP address as often as necessary, and get the word out to the Turkish Internet community that we are here to help them. “If they are turning to us, we have an obligation to help them out.
Allouch started his tech career in his native France where he was a “black hat” hacker, breaking into business and government computers. When he arrived in Israel he used his skills to fight cyber-crime and found a few startups, including Applicure, a cybersecurity firm. GreenTeam Internet’s main business is website filtering and general protection against damaging software.
Turkey’s highest constitutional court found the Twitter ban to be unconstitutional today, and ordered the government to lift the ban. Though Twitter is now accessible in Turkey, the ban on YouTube remains in place pending legal challenges, shedding light on Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s increasingly authoritarian turn.
The premier’s opponents say the Twitter block and the tightening of Internet censorship is the latest in a series of increasingly aggressive measures to get the upper hand in a corruption scandal and to squelch dissent ahead of elections that were widely seen as a referendum on his decadelong rule. The moves have raised concerns about whether an increasingly powerful executive is undermining constitutional checks intended to safeguard the rule of law.
In addition to shutting down Twitter and YouTube, last year Turkey arrested dozens of people for insulting the government on Twitter. Earlier this year, Turkey deported a journalist for tweeting insulting comments about Erdogan.
[Photo: CNN / YouTube ]