Samizdat, A Decentralized, Browser-Based Solution to Internet Censorship
Runaway1956 writes:
rysiek on Mastodon has announced an anticensorship project - https://mastodon.social/@rysiek hosted at https://git.occrp.org/libre/samizdat:
Samizdat[*]
A browser-based solution to Web censorship, implemented as a JavaScript library to be deployed easily on any website. Uses Service Workers and a suite of non-standard in-browser delivery mechanisms, with string[sic] focus on decentralized tools like Gun and IPFS.
Ideally, users should not need to install any special software nor change any settings to continue being able to access a blocked Samizdat-enabled site as soon as they are able to access it once.
Rationale
While a number of censorship circumvention technologies exist, these typically require those who want to access the blocked content (readers) to install specific tools (applications, browser extensions, VPN software, etc.), or change their settings (DNS servers, HTTP proxies, etc.). This approach does not scale.
At the same time, large-scale Internet censorship solutions are deployed in places like Azerbaijan or Tajikistan, effectively blocking whole nations from accessing information deemed non grata by the relevant governments. And with ever growing centralization of the Web, censorship has never been easier.
This project explores the possibility of solving this in a way that would not require the reader to install any special software or change any settings; the only thing that's needed is a modern web browser, and being able to visit a website that deployed this tool once, caching the JavaScript library.
Architecture
A ServiceWorker is used as a way to persist the censorship circumvention library after the initial visit to the participating website.
After the ServiceWorker is downloaded and activated, it handles all fetch() events by first trying to use the regular HTTPS request to the original website. If that fails (for whatever reason, be it timeout, or a 4xx/5xx error), the plugins kick-in, attempting to fetch the content via any means [that] are available.
Click through his test page, https://cdn.test.occrp.org/projects/samizdat/ to find out more.
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Progressive_web_apps
[*] The name of the project, samizdat, is presumably based on its historical use as described on Wikipedia:
Samizdat (Russian: DDD1/4DDDDIN, lit. "self-publishing") was a form of dissident activity across the Eastern Bloc in which individuals reproduced censored and underground publications by hand and passed the documents from reader to reader. This grassroots practice to evade official Soviet censorship was fraught with danger, as harsh punishments were meted out to people caught possessing or copying censored materials. Vladimir Bukovsky summarized it as follows: "Samizdat: I write it myself, edit it myself, censor it myself, publish it myself, distribute it myself, and spend jail time for it myself."[1]
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