Can Bitcoin traffic (mining or transaction) be blocked by providers?

[Etlase2]

Do you even understand why Tor exists?

I understand that china has very little problem making it useless a good portion of the time.

The hypothetical we're talking about is direct internet censorship, so I don't see why Tor would be mysteriously immune while its exit nodes are public and bridge nodes are easy enough to get.

[Vladimir]

It makes the protocol more complicated but it is possible to design p2p systems which use random ports and encrypt the payload.
Bittorrent does this and it has been futile to curb (Bittorrent now account for about 50% of internet bandwidth).

Even if they could somehow magically "block" all bittorent traffic on the net it would cause about half of all the jobs created by ISP's vanish overnight too. Better first print more money for food stamps etc... first.

Just wait 2-5 years until most of the houses in say Canada are heated by Bitcoin ASIC based heaters, then try to block Bitcoin. There are some viable legal and technical attacks available to stop Bitcoin now. But this window of opportunity is closing fast.

[Aseras]

University here blocks TOR and BitTorrent the simple solution is to get a private encrypted VPN. ~1BTc or $5 a month and you can do whatever you want without any traffic shaping at all. Full bandwidth. It's even better than when the ports were "open" because no one else is using it.

VPN is too important to be blocked my most ISP or schools.

[Vladimir]

many VPN's can work over port 443 (https), port 80 too (http), try blocking that.

[tvbcof]

many VPN's can work over port 443 (https), port 80 too (http), try blocking that.

I suggest that it would be at least plausible.  Here's how I would engineer the solution:

Either inflate or create a crisis involving the internet and encryption.  For best results, involve some kiddie-porn loving Muslim terrorists who run a white slave ring and are about to impose Sharia law in Alabama.

Next, for the protection of all civilized people, pass some legislation stating that only certified vendors are allowed to use encryption.  Of course they could sell you modified versions of your favorite software or plugins for said or whatever so with a little effort even Grandma could still do her banking or whatever.  Naturally 'certification' requires that a usable key is available to our protectors in the government.

Now have all providers at suitable points mandated to run gear which would simply block any encrypted traffic which was not accessible.  That is, not generated by software provided by certified vendors.  These details are so technical that almost nobody should care or need to bother understanding them.  Of course there will be various annoyances and teething problems and what-not, but since it is for the protection of all good freedom-loving people, that should be acceptable.

Anyone who has a problem with such a solution is probably doing something bad and is a threat to society.  They may just be some leftist hippie type who value privacy on some weird philosophical grounds, but they'll just need to suck it up and get in tune with the 2000's and learn what it means to deal with the terrorism which is all around us everywhere we look.

[yogi]

Now have all providers at suitable points mandated to run gear which would simply block any encrypted traffic

How are you going to tell the difference between encrypted traffic and binary data?

[tvbcof]

Now have all providers at suitable points mandated to run gear which would simply block any encrypted traffic

How are you going to tell the difference between encrypted traffic and binary data?

My two-second solution:

The user can buy some more software that encapsulates legitimate binary data in a wrapper which contains the necessary header information to understand the format and evaluate the contents.

Mostly just terrorists would be trying to send binary data, and my tax dollars can go into subsidizing software engineering to assist vendors of such things as security cams so they can get with the program (without causing to much of a nuisance to 99% of the user-base.)

And if data is questionable, it can just be blocked.  You cannot be to safe when so many lives are at stake you know.

[yogi]

Hmm, so when I'm developing an application that sends binary data I have to first publish the format with the authorities. Wait until their software has been updated and distributed before I can test it. And if I change the format, which often happens during testing, I have to go though the whole process again?

[tvbcof]

Hmm, so when I'm developing an application that sends binary data I have to first publish the format with the authorities. Wait until their software has been updated and distributed before I can test it. And if I change the format, which often happens during testing, I have to go though the whole process again?

Yes.  Would you risk everyone's well being for such a minor inconvenience...or do you have more nefarious reasons for being so obstinate?  Hmmm...  Do you want to voluntarily show up at Gitmo for some waterboard fun or would you like a drone strike on your ass?

[yogi]

Hmm, so when I'm developing an application that sends binary data I have to first publish the format with the authorities. Wait until their software has been updated and distributed before I can test it. And if I change the format, which often happens during testing, I have to go though the whole process again?

Yes.  Would you risk everyone's well being for such a minor inconvenience...or do you have more nefarious reasons for being so obstinate?  Hmmm...  Do you want to voluntarily show up at Gitmo for some waterboard fun or would you like a drone strike on your ass?

ok, lets put aside its extreme impracticality and suppose that I create a web service called yogi's random hash server. How are they going to know if the random hashes i'm sending are in fact encrypted data.

[Bitcoin Oz]

I wonder at what stage a politician will kill or injure the wrong person and someone will place a hit on them using bitcoins.

They should think about this.

[tvbcof]

Hmm, so when I'm developing an application that sends binary data I have to first publish the format with the authorities. Wait until their software has been updated and distributed before I can test it. And if I change the format, which often happens during testing, I have to go though the whole process again?

Yes.  Would you risk everyone's well being for such a minor inconvenience...or do you have more nefarious reasons for being so obstinate?  Hmmm...  Do you want to voluntarily show up at Gitmo for some waterboard fun or would you like a drone strike on your ass?

ok, lets put aside its extreme impracticality and suppose that I create a web service called yogi's random hash server. How are they going to know if the random hashes i'm sending are in fact encrypted data.

OK, I'll put aside the impracticality.  Who gives a god-damn if "yogi's random hash server" is blocked or not?  Yogi and a handful of friends who 99.999% of people couldn't give two shits about even if they could understand the inherent value.  Good luck trying to sway the general population about the importance of your random hashes...as if a consensus there mattered anyway.

[yogi]

Hmm, so when I'm developing an application that sends binary data I have to first publish the format with the authorities. Wait until their software has been updated and distributed before I can test it. And if I change the format, which often happens during testing, I have to go though the whole process again?

Yes.  Would you risk everyone's well being for such a minor inconvenience...or do you have more nefarious reasons for being so obstinate?  Hmmm...  Do you want to voluntarily show up at Gitmo for some waterboard fun or would you like a drone strike on your ass?

ok, lets put aside its extreme impracticality and suppose that I create a web service called yogi's random hash server. How are they going to know if the random hashes i'm sending are in fact encrypted data.

OK, I'll put aside the impracticality.  Who gives a god-damn if "yogi's random hash server" is blocked or not?  Yogi and a handful of friends who 99.999% of people couldn't give two shits about even if they could understand the inherent value.  Good luck trying to sway the general population about the importance of your random hashes...as if a consensus there mattered anyway.

yogi's random hash server was just an example, but I can think of lots of ways of embedding encrypted material into seemingly innocent data.

[tvbcof]

Hmm, so when I'm developing an application that sends binary data I have to first publish the format with the authorities. Wait until their software has been updated and distributed before I can test it. And if I change the format, which often happens during testing, I have to go though the whole process again?

Yes.  Would you risk everyone's well being for such a minor inconvenience...or do you have more nefarious reasons for being so obstinate?  Hmmm...  Do you want to voluntarily show up at Gitmo for some waterboard fun or would you like a drone strike on your ass?

ok, lets put aside its extreme impracticality and suppose that I create a web service called yogi's random hash server. How are they going to know if the random hashes i'm sending are in fact encrypted data.

OK, I'll put aside the impracticality.  Who gives a god-damn if "yogi's random hash server" is blocked or not?  Yogi and a handful of friends who 99.999% of people couldn't give two shits about even if they could understand the inherent value.  Good luck trying to sway the general population about the importance of your random hashes...as if a consensus there mattered anyway.

yogi's random hash server was just an example, but I can think of lots of ways of embedding encrypted material into seemingly innocent data.

I agree with that.  A small percentage of people would be able to play and win the cat/mouse game.  But that does not mean that such a project would not be worth attempting.  Even a partial success would be extremely useful in managing many aspects of how a general society operates and keeping control of them.  I suggest that Mubarak would be happily in power today had he better management of how people communicated and organized, and probably all he would have needed was actionable information on who communicated with who when with an 80% coverage.  I doubt that this lesson was wasted an many leaderships.  Or that they had not already anticipated/observed this principle.

[Timo Y]

In a local wireless mesh network, bitcoin will keep working as long as just one participant creates a link to the main chain (eg. via satellite internet).

I wonder if a wireless mesh protocol can be designed where bitcoin is used to pay for bandwidth.

Instead of signing up for an ISP, people could buy these wireless boxes that they simply slap on their roof and start earning bitcoins by routing traffic.

This would be especially useful in poorer countries and rural areas.

[Explodicle]

In a local wireless mesh network, bitcoin will keep working as long as just one participant creates a link to the main chain (eg. via satellite internet).

I wonder if a wireless mesh protocol can be designed where bitcoin is used to pay for bandwidth.

Instead of signing up for an ISP, people could buy these wireless boxes that they simply slap on their roof and start earning bitcoins by routing traffic.

This would be especially useful in poorer countries and rural areas.

Yep, this has come up a couple times before and I think people are working on it.
Inevitable question: how do they first buy access if they need a connection to spend coins?
Most common answers: either the users run a chainless client while the router runs a server, or give them the first X minutes for free.

[doobadoo]

bitcoin uses very little bandwidth, therefore it can easily be disguised as harmless data (stenography). no need for encryption, which is vulnerable to man-in-the-middle attacks.

Wait, not encrypting is fine, but encrypting creates a MITM attack?  Dude, do you even know what you're saying.  Exactly what would you accomplish with a MITM attack?  Encrypted or not.  BTC network traffic is totally secure, because it requires no security, all security is done at the application layer (block chain).