Internet censorship in Latvia
A while ago while browsing the Internet I came accross a news article with a list of websites that are apparently blocked in Latvia. When I tried to open some of these websites from my laptop, I was very disappointed. Everything was working. My Internet connection is provided by one of the largest local ISP’s and I am not using VPN’s or other similar solutions.
It made me curious so I decided to investigate a little bit. It appears that the way the supervisory authority (NEPLP) has implemented this website blocking is very basic. I am able to access the “blocked websites” because I am not using my ISP’s DNS servers. This “website blocking” is achieved by making the ISP’s change the DNS entries for these websites.
I am using different DNS servers over the ones provided by my ISP for reasons of speed and privacy. Currently I am using Cloudflare’s DNS services which I highly recommend.
Debian GNU/Linux with Gnome:
Windows:
MacOS:
Android (varies for different OEM’s):
A little bit of politics
Most of the “blocked” websites are a part of the Russian propaganda machine and they have been blocked for reasons of national security. Security in obscurity is Latvia’s strategy. Because simply educating the population and politically working towards a more cohesive society is not in the spirit of political centrism. Latvian politics have been dominated by centric political powers ever since the restoration of independance in 1990. Political centrism – is it all about balance and moderation or rather indecisiveness and mediocrity?
Fun fact
On 18th of March 2014 the future chairman of the Latvian media supervisory authority (NEPLP) – Mr.Ivars Āboliņš, posted a tweet where he praised the speech of Vladimir Putin and used derogatory language to describe Western leaders. It should be noted that the annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation took place from 20th of February 2014 till 26th of March 2014.
