SWRadioGram #165

Welcome to program 165 of Shortwave Radiogram.

I'm Kim Andrew Elliott in Arlington, Virginia USA.

Here is the lineup for today's program, in MFSK modes as noted:

1:42 MFSK32: Program preview (now)
2:47 Excerpt of Belarusian report from RFE/RL* **
7:12 MFSK64: Telegram circumvents Belarus's blocked internet
12:32 This week's images*
28:25 MFSK32: Closing announcements

* with image(s)

** Use UTF-8 character set (default in Fldigi) for the Cyrillic
text

Please send reception reports to radiogram@verizon.net

And visit http://swradiogram.net

Twitter: @SWRadiogram

We begin with an excerpt of a report in Belarusian from the
RFE/RL Belarus Service:

RSID: <<2020-08-13T23:37Z MFSK-64 @ 9265000+1500>>

This is Shortwave Radiogram in MFSK64

Please send your reception report to radiogram@verizon.net

From Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty:

How Telegram Users Found A Way Through Belarus's Internet
Lockdown

Robert Coalson
12 August 2020

A dynamic graphic posted to Twitter by the Internet-freedom
advocacy group NetBlocks.org paints a grim picture. It shows
Internet traffic in Belarus on the morning of August 9, the date
of the country's bitterly disputed presidential election.

At approximately 8 a.m. local time, the bright lights indicating
lively online traffic suddenly go dark.

"Exactly how the Internet was blocked in Belarus remains
unknown," said Mikhail Klimaryev, executive director of the
Russian Internet Defense Society, an advocacy group. "But we know
that about 8 a.m. on Sunday, the connectivity of the Belarusian
Internet…fell to approximately one-fifth, from 100 percent to 20
percent. And this was caused by the disconnection of one of the
main provider links between Belarus and foreign operators --
Beltelekom."

Internet access remained severely restricted throughout the
country at least until early on August 12, three nights and days
during which the country was gripped by mass demonstrations
against alleged falsification of the election whose official
results handed authoritarian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka a
landslide win and a sixth term.

Despite this chokehold on the flow of information, the
cloud-based instant-messaging service Telegram, which was
developed in Russia and is now based in Dubai, has largely
continued to function and has become an invaluable tool for an
amorphous opposition and angry citizens seeking information and
coordination.

"To a considerable extent, [Telegram] channels are coordinating
the actions of the people who are taking to the streets and
public squares because they are the means by which information
and action plans are distributed," Andrey Bastunets, deputy head
of the Belarusian Association of Journalists, told Current Time,
a Russian-language network led by RFE/RL in cooperation with VOA.
"In this sense, it is playing a coordinating role."

"To be honest, [Telegram channels] have seized the initiative
from the united opposition headquarters in terms of organizing
protest actions," he added.

Journalists, observers, officials and others trying to follow the
fast-paced and often harrowing events from outside Belarus,
meanwhile, have turned to Telegram channels as a source of
information -- often in the form of raw footage of the large,
widespread protests and the violent crackdown by security forces.
The government, too, has used Telegram channels to get its
messages out at times.

Among the most prominent amid the protests has been the
Warsaw-based NEXTA group of Telegram channels, which has seen its
subscriber base balloon to more than 1.5 million since the
postelection unrest began.

Planned Shutdown?

Although Lukashenka and other officials claimed the Internet
outage was caused by "distributed denial-of-service" (DDoS)
attacks from foreign sources, experts at NetBlocks and elsewhere
are certain it was the result of a long-planned effort by the
authorities.

In 2018, the Belarusian government announced a $2.5 million
tender to purchase equipment capable of carrying out "deep packet
inspection," a way of blocking unwanted Internet traffic that is
used, for instance, in China and Iran. It is capable of
identifying and rerouting or blocking specific packets of
information. It has been described as being akin to "opening an
envelope and reading its contents."

The system may have been tested during the summer. On June 19,
Belarusian users reported difficulty using several Internet
services, including Telegram and Viber. On July 15-16, they were
temporarily unable to access VPN servers. At the time, the
government blamed the problems on technical difficulties in
Russia and Poland.

Klimaryev said that by 10 a.m. on August 9, it was clear that
virtually all Belarus's Internet traffic was being passed through
the National Traffic-Exchange Center (NTsOT), which was the
organization that issued the 2018 tender.

"That was a serious sum of money for such equipment," he told
RFE/RL. "We are talking about a fairly small country and I think
the government decided to send all traffic through this equipment
in order to control it."

France-based Internet consultant Pavel Lunin told RFE/RL that the
Belarusian government was forced to block virtually all secure or
encrypted Internet traffic, "biting off entire pieces of the
Internet" in order to shut down sites such as YouTube.

"The problem is that it is not possible to partially block
encrypted traffic and you have to block it in its entirety," he
said.

The analysts at NetBlocks, however, believe that Minsk cast a
wide net in its censorship intentionally, in order to make the
action look more like an external attack. NetBlocks Director Alp
Toker told Vice the Belarusian government is using a list of more
than 10,000 keywords to block traffic from sites ranging from
Facebook to Walmart.

"They're using deep packet inspection to block any Internet
domain that contains one of thousands of popular brand names," he
was quoted as saying. "This would give the impression of a
malfunction."

"The only reason you would do this is to simulate a technical
failure, [but] it would have taken serious planning," he added.

'Very Important'

Telegram, however, has been largely successful in adopting its
protocols to maintain its service during the Belarusian political
crisis.

On August 10, Telegram co-creator and co-owner Pavel Durov posted
on Twitter that "we enabled our anti-censorship tool in Belarus
so that Telegram remained available to most users there." He
noted, though, that the "connection is still very unstable."

RFE/RL's Belarus Service, which is a surrogate information source
that is financed by a grant from the U.S. Congress, is one of the
local media outlets that has been affected by the shutdown.

"Telegram is practically the only means of communication in
Belarus," said service Deputy Director Bohdan Andrusyshyn. "We
have been placing news items on our Telegram channel as quickly
as we produced them."

Telegram channels "are definitely a very important source of
information," Bastunets said. "Not always verified, but important
nonetheless. It is much easier to get access to Telegram channels
than to information provided by Belarusian or foreign websites."

Written by RFE/RL senior correspondent Robert Coalson with
reporting by RFE/RL Russian Service correspondent Mark Krutov and
Current Time correspondent Irina Romaliiskaya. RFE/RL's Belarus
Service also contributed to this report.

https://www.rferl.org/a/how-telegram-users-found-a-way-through-belarus-s-internet-lockdown/30780136.html

This is Shortwave Radiogram in MFSK64

Please send your reception report to radiogram@verizon.net

We start with a black-and-white design. From
https://bit.ly/33UTVxj ...

Sending Pic:294x297;

Portrait of a flower by Maï Toyama. From https://bit.ly/2DPzDdZ
...

Sending Pic:138x204C;

Detail from "The Colorful Doors," a finalist from the 2020 Urban
Photo Awards. From https://bit.ly/33WCgFy ..

Sending Pic:74x252C;

A fruit and vegetable market in Bucharest. From
https://bit.ly/3iA9COH ...

Sending Pic:197x186C;

A lifeguard tower designed by architect William Lane on South
Beach, Miami. From https://bit.ly/3ativH6 ...

Sending Pic:202x129C;

A friendly donkey at Portnhaven, Islay, Scotland. From
https://bbc.in/2XXodfe ...

Sending Pic:200x186C;

Butterfly and flower at Meadowlark Botanical Gardens in Vienna,
Virginia, 8 August. From https://wapo.st/3amDJ9B ...

Sending Pic:195x177C;

Batteries for electric vehicles manufactured at a factory in
Dongguan, China. From https://reut.rs/3kIui8T ...

Sending Pic:301x198;

Our painting of the week is "The Seine at Argenteuil; Boats at
Anchor," by Gustave Caillebotte. From https://bit.ly/31LbNbv ...

Sending Pic:203x167C;

RSID: <<2020-08-13T23:58Z MFSK-32 @ 9265000+1500>>

This is Shortwave Radiogram in MFSK32 ...

Shortwave Radiogram is transmitted by:

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and

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Please send reception reports to radiogram@verizon.net

And visit http://swradiogram.net

Twitter: @SWRadiogram or twitter.com/swradiogram

I'm Kim Elliott. Please join us for the next Shortwave
Radiogram.

This Is A Music Show #077
12 Aug 2020

2100-2200UTC Wednesday on 7780 kHz
0200-0300UTC Thursday on 5850 kHz

via WRMI, Okeechobee USA

Rebroadcast on Unique Radio, Australia
1000-1100UTC Friday on 5045 or 3210 kHz USB
Check https://www.uniqueradio.biz/ for schedule!

***ALSO***

TIAExpressMS w/ Radio Northern Europe International
via Channel 292 in Germany, on 6070 kHz.

Broadcast various dates/times. Check the schedule here:

https://www.channel292.de/schedule-6070-khz/
https://rnei.org/

----------------------------------------

PLAYLIST

From nowhere Moths keep flying from the unknown world At the border of the light with a bright flash A spark is burning (a spark is burning) uuu ... From nowhere The flight of a shooting star lasts one twinkling (One flash flight lasts) It burns brightly for one brief moment Fading out on the edge of the light and dark of night (And they burn like that every night) Down again New stars are still burning (stars) Moment night The golden night shines with a glow Staring at the sun In the middle of the night they shine with sunshine They come out of nowhere, noiselessly Until they fade away, they will return to their world From nowhere On the other hand of light, nothing exists, I know Only in silence invisible circles Light wings (light wings) uuu ... Out of nowhere (out of nowhere) Where the extinguished stars fall silently into space (Silence falls into space) To never return, never with a golden glow For just one moment, the sun shines brighter (And they burn like that every night) Down again New stars are still burning (stars) Moment night The golden night shines with a glow Staring at the sun In the middle of the night they shine with sunshine They come out of nowhere, noiselessly Until they fade away, they will return to their world From nowhere I walked to your world like blind moths (Like blind moths) Staring at golden gleams, magic lights They burn brightly in the fire and go out, fading away (And they burn like that every night and they go out like that every night) (x3)

Tekst pochodzi z https://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=1&hl=de&prev=search&rurl=translate.google.com&sl=pl&sp=nmt4&tl=en&u=https://www.tekstowo.pl/piosenka,halina_frackowiak,znikad.html&usg=ALkJrhhtQCiJE2K3lvODiw3I4-Wgk2ZXJA

QTH:	D-06193 Petersberg (Germany/Germania)
Ant.:	Dipol for 40m-Band & Boomerang Antenna 11m-Band
RX for RF:	FRG-100B + IF-mixer & ICOM IC-R75 + IF-mixer
Software IF:	con STUDIO1 - Software italiano per SDR [S-AM-USB/LSB] + beta 11 Version 2.80 (August 21, 2018) - for scheduled IF-recording
Software AF:	Fldigi-4.0.18 + flmsg-4.0.7 images-fldigifiles on homedrive.lnk
OS:	German XP-SP3 with support for asian languages	German W7 32bit + 64bit
PC:	MEDION Titanium 8008 (since 2003) [ P4 - 2,6 GHz]	MSI-CR70-2MP345W7 (since2014) [i5 -P3560 ( 2 x 2,6GHz) ]