<nettime> turkeyblocks.org > Dropbox, Google Drive and OneDrive blocked in Turkey

[nettime's_luftmensch <nettime@kein.org>]

< https://turkeyblocks.org/2016/10/08/google-drive-dropbox-blocked-in-turkey/ >


Dropbox, Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive cloud services
blocked in Turkey following leaks

Posted on October 8, 2016 by Editorial


TURKEY has blocked access to Dropbox, Microsoft OneDrive and
partially restricted Google Drive cloud file sharing services
popular on mobile phones as well as in education, business,
legal and press industries, following the leak of a set of
private emails allegedly belonging to Minister of Energy and
Natural Resources Berat Albayrak who is also the son-in-law
of President of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan by hacktivist
group Redhack.

At the time of writing, Saturday 8 October, both Google Drive
and Dropbox services were issuing SSL errors, indicating
intercepted traffic at the national or ISP level.

Microsoft OneDrive was also subsequently blocked off
throughout Turkey:

The BTK authority subsequently released an official block
notice for Google Drive, although no such notice was posted
for Dropbox:

	"After technical analysis and legal consideration based on
	the Law Nr. 5651, ADMINISTRATION MEASURE has been taken for
	this website (drive.google.com) according to Decision
	Nr.490.05.01.2016.-156393 dated 08/10/2016 implemented by
	Information and Communication Technologies Authority."

Affected ISPs include TTNet, UyduNet and Turkcell. Foreign
visitors in Turkey using roaming mobile data are still able
to access the services because their data is tunnelled to the
country of origin.


Knock-on effects expected

Dropbox Inc, a privately held company whose board of
directors includes former United States Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice, has not yet commented on the block. Google
Drive is a Google service that also integrates with other
platforms -- the loss of access may therefore have a knock-on
impact on third-party products.

Another site, the GitHub Open Source developer portal, relied
on by many technology systems and startups, was blocked the
following morning:

The blocks are expected to heavily impact Google users and
Dropbox Inc. customers who use the respective mobile
applications, which runs on Android, iPhone as well as
desktop computers, to archive their photos, share business
documents and sign contracts.

The move to block the world's most popular cloud services
comes amidst growing calls in Turkey to build local versions
of popular social media services -- in July, far-right Turks
called for the creation of a nationalised Turkish Twitter
alternative to replace the US-based company's services.


Limited transparency

Turkey had not issued a formal restriction order on the site
as of evening Saturday 8 October 2016:

	{IMAGE}

While Dropbox is entirely blocked, Google Drive is still
accessible to existing users -- possibly because Google shares
its business cloud hosting infrastructure and servers between
Drive and it's primary services including search.

	{IMAGE}

Official government blocking measure for Microsoft OneDrive
TurkeyBlocks is working to collect forensic data captures of
the incident. Most, but not all service providers were
affected at the time of writing -- the services appear to
still accessible to a small number of users in the country
not using the main providers.

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