U.S. Funds Anonymizer for Iranians

SiliconEntity writes "British online rag The Register is reporting that the U.S. Government is funding anonymizer.com to provide anonymous browsing services to Iranians. Using U.S. funding, the company created a special version of its anonymizing proxy which has instructions in Farsi and only accepts connections from Iranian IP addresses. The service defaults to the Voice of America web site, but users can input any address and browse free of (Iranian) government censorship."

Comments

It's understandable

[mao che minh]

I would imagine that there will be a widespread knee-jerk reaction across America to this news. Afterall, our government is using tax dollars to deliver privacy and freedom to a member nation of the "Axis of Evil". I, however, do not mind one bit: You have to capture the hearts and minds of the people that your enemies hold sway over. You know full well that a government such as the one in Iran is doing everything possible to spread lies about the West. If the people remain closed we could end up with a populace similar to North Korea. Those feelings will be passed along to successive generations, and perhaps some day in the distant future, could lead to war - or worse.

Propaganda both prevents and wins wars. Propaganda can serve as a tool of persuasion in trying political struggles between two or more nations. In the case of Iran, it is imperative that we win a large portion of mindshare to use as security in the future. For it would seem that the possibility of armed conflict with Iran is a reality, and we should do what we can to avoid it, considering the implications of such a thing.

Re:It's understandable

[cayenne8]

I don't mind it at all...

I do fine it ironic and irritating, though, that our own country (US) doesn't seem to like for us to do the same...trying to pass laws where anonymity, or falsifying online id in order to hide ones identity...

If its good enough for US to pay for them to do it...should be open and good enough for us to use it in all our communications.

Re:It's understandable

[yroJJory]

Afterall, our government is using tax dollars to deliver privacy and freedom to a member nation of the "Axis of Evil".

Why would anyone in this country worry about that? After all, we gave $95 mil to N. Korea for their nuclear programs after naming them as part of the "Axis of Evil".

No one seems to be worried about that, now are that?

Re:It's understandable

[IM6100]

The Nobel Committee even gave Jimmah Carter sort of a 'Neville Chamberlain' award for his work in North Korean appeasement.

Re:It's understandable

[recursiv]

We should be delivering privacy and freedom *everywhere* we can. In fact, isn't the whole idea (paraphrasing) "to deliver the Axis of Evil to freedom" or some crap?

The people in the country aren't what put it on the "Axis of Evil", anyway. It's the actions of the government and political leaders. But people are just people. The everyday citizens of any country deserve the same thing no matter what country they live.

Re:It's understandable

[(54)T-Dub]

You have to capture the hearts and minds of the people that your enemies hold sway over.

I wouldn't say the Iranian government holds sway over it's people. My best friend is Iranian and he tells me that people are sick of the current regime and love america.

Re:It's understandable

[HeghmoH]

I don't understand. Are you saying that a large, democratic government that consists of hundreds of different people with different opinions, different worldviews, and different agendas might not always agree with itself or be self-consistent?! Say it ain't so!

Re:It's understandable

[garcia]

eh.

First of all, they want us here in the US to abide by their bullshit (DMCA and the two sons of Satan (Patriot I and II)) yet we are in another country blasting radio stations and FUNDING (at an undisclosed amount) a free proxy to *circumvent* another countries security. We should put the government in jail for violating the DMCA.

Second, we shouldn't be funding shit (not Iraq, not free proxies for Iran, nothing), we should be funding the fucking Americans without jobs (I don't know if /. has heard about the ever increasing length of the food lines in more rural areas of Ohio, etc).

Third, I wasn't aware that we were back in the 1950s and 1960s where we feel the need to stop the possibility of the spread of communism, I mean the threat of terrorism. I get those ism's confused.

Let's fucking work on freeing our own country first TYVM. I would PREFER that our own people are fed, clothed, covered, and paid, rather than worrying about 10s of billions of dollars being sent overseas to countries that (for the most part) don't want us there.

Remember who is funding this funding.

Re:It's understandable

[ncc74656]

I would imagine that there will be a widespread knee-jerk reaction across America to this news. Afterall, our government is using tax dollars to deliver privacy and freedom to a member nation of the "Axis of Evil". I, however, do not mind one bit...

I think it demonstrates that we have no quarrel with the people of Iran. It's the regime whose jackboot they're under with which we take issue. With access to outside news/information sources, maybe a few of them will learn that (1) we're not the Great Satan the ayatollahs told them about and (2) maybe they'll give the ayatollahs the heave-ho and make available to themselves the choice to live in the 21st century instead of the 13th.

Re:It's understandable

[Anonymous Coward]

love america

What, a middle eastern country loves the US ? Whose been screwing with our foregin policy ?

Re:It's understandable

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's fucking work on freeing our own country first

Nothing like comparing the two in order to point out your obviously tenuous grasp of the issues. Freedom doesn't imply free as in beer, you leech.

Re:It's understandable

[Sphere1952]

I've been watching Iran long enough to know that the parent is correct. the 65%+ of the population who are under 30 have no use for their government at all. The joke at the beginning of the Iraq war was "Good, we're next."

Re:It's understandable

[Vlad_the_Inhaler]

It should be quite easy to avoid war with Iran - simply don't invade.

Saddam Hussein is a homicidal maniac, but he was bending over backwards to avoid war - doing all he could to comply with UN demands. The trouble was, the US and Britain were not prepared to consider any outcome other than war. A war which killed tens of thousands while doing damage which Paul Bremer indicated a couple of days ago, was almost impossible to overestimate. Now countries which see themselves as threatened by the US know that behaving rationally will get them nowhere. The way to go is to accumulate nukes and point them at an ally of the US. At the time, I thought the N Koreans were insane. It took time to work out what they were up to.

To go back on-topic, it is rather ironical that the US is against anonymous browsing at home (or have I got that one wrong?) but supportive when it can cause other people trouble.

So what is the next stage? Given a proxy web-server in Iran (is there one there?), surfers in other countries can also make use of this service. Iran is a semi-open country nowadays, there won't be a similar service available in N Korea any time soon for obvious reasons.

Re:It's understandable

[Anonymous Coward]

So we're paying taxpayer money to pump Iran full of websites that promote anti-government and anti-religious content and secularism? BUT look at the article, we're blocking pornographic websites.

I guess our concept of free speech has a limit.

Re:It's understandable

[ReconRich]

I used to work with a several guys from Iran. I was talking with one of them about religion one day when he said, very softly, "Sometimes I think, Fuck the Prophet". I told him that this was America, he could say "Fuck the Prophet" as loudly as he wanted to. His response "No I can't, I may have to go back to Iran someday".
This guy, as well as the other Iranians that I worked with both hated and feared the government of Iran. But mostly feared.

--- Rich

Re:It's understandable

[Anonymous Coward]

doing all he could to comply with UN demands

What rock were you hiding under for the past 12 years ? Go check out all the problems the UN was having getting him to comply with anything.

Re :It's understandable

[Black Parrot]

> I don't mind it at all...

> I do fine it ironic and irritating, though, that our own country (US) doesn't seem to like for us to do the same...trying to pass laws where anonymity, or falsifying online id in order to hide ones identity...

> If its good enough for US to pay for them to do it...should be open and good enough for us to use it in all our communications.

As Jay Leno said about the US plan for Iraq (paraphrasing) -

We're going to fix them up with fair elections, good education, and sound healthcare.

And if it works for them we'll try it over here too.

Re:It's understandable

[mitheral]

Ya but what's the joke now that the war is over and the occu^H^H^H^H rebuilding is under way?

Re:It's understandable

[Anonymous Coward]

"You know full well that a government such as the one in Iran is doing everything possible to spread lies about the West."

No i don't, but i'v heard that on fox news often enough. Your entire "us" against "them" attitude and philosophy (which is exactly the same as whoever you end up fighting) is what makes armed conflict likley. If we want to avoid wars then we shouldn't elect presidents who insist on a fight out of their xenophobia.

Re:It's understandable

[Vlad_the_Inhaler]

Given what the Allies have found there over the last 4 months (nothing), it remains to be proved that they actually had anything.

There were those short-range missiles which were designed to be within the permitted specs, but were capable of flying beyond their nominal range (nothing unusual, remember when the Ukranians shot down an aircraft at around twice the distance they thought their missiles were good for) and the Iraqis had started destroying those when the Allies invaded.

Exotic claims are easy to make, the US, UK and Australian Governments all made hysterical claims over Iraq before the war.
They have had 4 months to provide proof. Are you still holding your breath?

Re:It's understandable

[GiMP]

So instead of fighting terrorism, you want to build socialism? I'm not a friend of recent politics.. I don't like this anti-terrorism and anti-freedom movement that you see being made by those in poewr. However, what you want is socialism.

Sure, it will work for you right now. The unemployed and farmers LOVE socialism. Unfortunately, the system doesn't work.

Re:It's understandable

[Guppy06]

"My best friend is Iranian and he tells me that people are sick of the current regime and love america."

I suspect either you or he meant "Americans" (people) and not necessarily "America" (government). It can probably be easily cleared up by asking what your friend thinks about US sanctions against Iran.

Me, I'm just waiting for the US (government) to get blamed for the recent car bombing in Najaf.

Re:It's understandable

[Anonymous Coward]

The entire UN security council assumed his posession of WMD as a given, only what to do about it is where the US, UK, Au, Spain, etc disagreed with Fr and De. And we have since turned up documents from Iraq showing that Fr, De, and Russia all violated the sanctions and that De was even providing chemicals for nerve agents.

Re:It's understandable

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh you want a history lesson? Why didn't you say so!

I'll keep it short.

The Korean War ended.
The North Koreans were, of course economically crippled.
As were the south Koreans who recived mountains of economic aid from the west.
The North Koreans had to rely on more or less equally poor communists. Lots of Kalashnikovs but beyond that there wasn't much they could get in the way of assistance.
So North Korea spiraled to economic oblivion. Where it rested.
But to stave off "social" oblivion the leadership needed to create a great story.
Every down troden but noble and ultimately victorious people need a) a champion, and b) a villain.
The elder Kim, fond of torturing, brutalizing, raping, and starving his people decided that he might like to try his hand an demagoguery and diefication. So he brutally murdered everyone who looked at him with anything by wonderous adulation, and some of them to, just in case.
For forigne policy, having litterally nothing to trade but famine, and tortue, commodities not only in surplus, but that no one want. He settled on brinksmanship.
But he couldn't just go all in. So he addopted a more annoying posture. Like a small dog, he'd just yap, make like he was going to mess on the carpet and so forth.
Anytime he got any attention for it, he'd just keep on yapping. And eventually the neighbors (world community) would call the cops (the US) who felt bad about putting the little north korean dog down.
So they'd talk about it, and just when they reached maximum annoyance the dog would do something cute and eventually they would decide to toss it a few scraps. Then the dog would be quite for a time.
This continued for fifty years.
In the early 90's North Korea was coming close to developing a nuclear weapon.
Obviously that wasn't a comforting thought.
The dumbass Kim the younger, with his crazy boufont hair do, and clearly questionable mental state having an atomic weapon was something less than ideal.
So more in the interests of regional economic stability than national security, but using the later as an excuse, the US executive brance secured a deal that broke the pattern of annoying blackmail that had essentially worked exactly as North Korea had hoped it would for HALF A CENTURY.
We give them a shit load of energy, and provide them with the resources to provide themselves with a shit load more, on our gold card and they shut the f up. And the Koreans did.
But due to a quirk of our government. The executive branch makes some international agreements, but congress pays for them all. We didn't hold up our end of the deal. That's right.
The REPUBLICAN Congress decided that to punish a man for taking "Free Willy" through the car wash and getting that shit blown dry, they would economically and politically destabilize asia*.

So after years of fighting over preventing what the republicans now say is a central national security concern a new president comes to town. Will he ease the congressional gridlock and provide the aid the North Koreans have actually been paitently waiting on? Nope. Having spent the last decade going against his fathers wisdom, trying for all he was worth to get off the USA's shitlist, and nearly appearing to achive that to the point where a presidential visit (an enourmous achivement for that much shuned country) seemed likely, he finds himself in the span of a few days not only on the shit list, but almost at the top! Sure the younger Kim demonizes the US, but that litterally what his country runs on, hate, they don't have no food.

And to see that flip in policy, so suddedly, over nothing in particular, while he was keeping his agreements! in spite of US not keeping ours! What the hell!?

He would have to have been a fool to do anything other that what he's done. There wasn't another choice left. He had to go back to the stratagies his father used to such effectiveness, or he'd risk a coup and his head on the end of a pike.

I'm all for killing the asshole,

Re:It's understandable

[aled]

Undermining Iran government in name of USA interests isn't the same as fighting terrorism, even when Iran may have helped (or helping) terrorists or Iran is a dictatorship.
Look at the situation in Irak, where this kind of politic lead to actually promoting terrorism.

Re:It's understandable

[Anonymous Coward]

You miss a little point. Even on countries with no censorship, take Brazil for example, 57% of the
population dont like americans nor 'the american way of life' and aproves some terrorist actions on then.

Re:It's understandable

[netruner]

I find it quite disturbing that Anonymizer and the gubmint are in bed. Don't think that dubyah and co. aren't keeping tabs on what the Iranians are looking at, if for no other reason than to figure out where their "hearts and minds" are.

Re:It's understandable

[marx]

I told him that this was America, he could say "Fuck the Prophet" as loudly as he wanted to.

In America, it's illegal to say "Fuck the Prophet" on broadcast TV or radio.

See this Wired article for example.

Re:It's understandable

[Valdrax]

[W]e should be funding the fucking Americans without jobs ...

Now, now. The current administration's new "Fucking Americans Without Jobs" initiative has been doing quite well for itself.

Re:It's understandable

[Noah Adler]

I have an Iraqi friend who said the same thing with respect to Iraq. It's since become clear that not everyone in Iraq shares her view.

Maybe the people your friend surrounded himself with hate the Iranian goverment and love America, but,as crazy as it may seem, that doesn't necessarily mean it's the universal opinion in Iran.

Of course, it may be entirely different in Iran, but just remember, it's probably not as simple as it seems...

Re:It's understandable

[psykocrime]

You miss a little point. Even on countries with no censorship, take Brazil for example, 57% of the
population dont like americans nor 'the american way of life' and aproves some terrorist actions on then.

WTF? I call bullshit. I have several friends from Brazil, and a bunch of friends who have travelled to Brazil on multiple occassions, and I have never heard anything about any kind of widespread Anti-American sentiment in Brazil.

If anything, I hear a lot of talk from my friends, about wanting to move here and become U.S. citizens.

Re:It's understandable

[Vlad_the_Inhaler]

That was a call do 'do something', where the 'something' was rather ill-defined. I don't see anything there that I'd define as socialism.
FDR took over with the country in a far worse mess than this and turned things around to the extent that the US could take on two of the largest military powers on the planet and emerge as bigger than either. I have heard that described as socialism (which is probably crap) but it set the US up economically for decades.
Would that sort of solution work now?
No idea. Globalism has changed the rules.

Re:It's understandable

[GiMP]

I was referring to comment #3 where user garcia critiqued the anti-communism/anti-terrorism wars of the USA.

His post was pro-socialism. His pro-freedom and pro-socialism approach doesn't match.

He is either a troll, or an idiot.

Re:It's understandable

[HeghmoH]

Saddam Hussein is a homicidal maniac, but he was bending over backwards to avoid war - doing all he could to comply with UN demands.

Playing shell games with inspectors and flagrantly violating UN resolutions for ten years is "bending over backwards"?

The trouble was, the US and Britain were not prepared to consider any outcome other than war. A war which killed tens of thousands while doing damage which Paul Bremer indicated a couple of days ago, was almost impossible to overestimate.

I'll overestimate it for you: the world was destroyed, and everyone died. There that wasn't so hard, you see?

Re:It's understandable

[mentin]

Why would anyone in this country worry about that? After all, we gave $95 mil to N. Korea for their nuclear programs after naming them as part of the "Axis of Evil".

I think the deal was that US payed North Korea for not developing their nuclear programs. It was a significant source of income for N. Korea. So after U.S. stopped this program and exited the treaty, the obvious choice for N. Korea was to resume their nuclear program - looks like they use it mostly to force the treaty back.

Re:It's understandable

[HiThere]

The DMCA isn't a question of free as in beer. It's about free as in Liberty. Similarly for the UCITA. and with both of those freedom took a big loss.

I haven't yet mentioned the vileness that is Ashcroft, or what he perpetrated. But everyone sees that, so I don't need to.

Re:It's understandable

[Anonymous Coward]

It's very ironic how you start your post with "privacy and freedom" and end it with "propaganda".

Only in your last paragraph do you touch the heart of the subject. The US gives a rats ass about the privacy and freedom of people in countries it possibly is going to attack. Every Iranian who gets cought using this anonimizer service wil be in trouble deep, and will most certainly not remain free for very long. That's how much the US government cares about them.

What it does care about though, is spreading propaganda about the west and the US in particular. Since 9/11, there has been a whole lot of flag waving going on in US media; one could very easily consider this propaganda on the home front.

Ofcourse, clever propaganda doesn't demote the enemy flat out but depicts the homeland as morally superior, perhaps without ever directly mentioning the enemy. That's what Iran does, and that is what the US does also. Except the US now wants to export its version to Iran.

Is this going to start a revolution in Iran? No way, the internet is not a commodity in Iran. The intellectual elite that does have internet acces knows every bit on the wire is being scrutinized, so they're not going to take any chances. The only thing this is going to accomplish, is getting a lot of naive Iranian students in jail.

Re:It's understandable

[mentin]

Yeah, I remember a similar popular joke in [Soviet] Russia in the end of 80's:
- what is the solution for all our problems?
1. declare a war with U.S.
2. surrender next day

Re:It's understandable

[HiThere]

He certainly hid his weapons of mass destruction carefully. The inspectors haven't found them yet.

Re:It's understandable

[Anonymous Coward]

"I do fine it ironic and irritating, though, that our own country (US) doesn't seem to like for us to do the same...trying to pass laws where anonymity, or falsifying online id in order to hide ones identity..."

What bills are you referring to? Most laws that piss people off here involve trying to crack encryption, not use encryption (DMCA).

Re:It's understandable

[shigelojoe]

IN SOVIET RUSSIA... wait, it *was* in Soviet Russia?

Oh crap, never mind.

Re:It's understandable

[geekee]

"First of all, they want us here in the US to abide by their bullshit (DMCA and the two sons of Satan (Patriot I and II)) yet we are in another country blasting radio stations and FUNDING (at an undisclosed amount) a free proxy to *circumvent* another countries security. We should put the government in jail for violating the DMCA."

The US doesn't believe a government has the right to limit people's information if the information owner is willing to provide it. This is fundamentally different from allowing a company to protect its copyrighted material. Aththough the DMCA is not the right answer, the intent it correct.

"Second, we shouldn't be funding shit (not Iraq, not free proxies for Iran, nothing), we should be funding the fucking Americans without jobs (I don't know if /. has heard about the ever increasing length of the food lines in more rural areas of Ohio, etc)."

The US is not a socialist country (yet). It isn't the job of taxpayers to support those unable or unwilling to find jobs. Supporting freedom in Iran is in our national interest, however, and it's worth the miniscule amount this costs for this particular project, relative to supporting a significant percentage of our own population. By your arguement, we should cut funding for NASA too. Why should we be exploring space, when people are out of work."

"Third, I wasn't aware that we were back in the 1950s and 1960s where we feel the need to stop the possibility of the spread of communism, I mean the threat of terrorism. I get those ism's confused."

Communism is fundamentally flawed in the way it destroys individual freedom, and we have not stopped fighting it (N. Korea, Cuba, etc.), nor should we. It's no cooincidence the worst killers of the 20th century were Stalin and Mao, 2 communist leaders (Hitler is number 3).

Re:It's understandable

[Anonymous Coward]

It should be quite easy to avoid war with Iran - simply don't invade.

Saddam Hussein is a homicidal maniac, but he was bending over backwards to avoid war - doing all he could to comply with UN demands.

^ ahaahahaahahahaahh ok im done laughing

Re:It's understandable

[hardcnxn]

You have to capture the hearts and minds of the people that your enemies hold sway over.
Yes, give them a connection the RIAA can't subpoena.

Re:It's understandable

[glgraca]

Try saying 'Fuck Jesus' in Alabama or
'Fidel is beatiful' in Miami to test
how free and wonderful America is...

It's a good thing that America is big
and you can move around, though ;-)

Re:It's understandable

[HeghmoH]

If you'd be so kind as to point out exactly where I said he had WMDs, and therefore show me how your post is relevant to my post, I would be obliged.

Re:It's understandable

[Natestradamus]

Perfectly normal espionage activity, isn't it? You want to know what people are thinking, so you can better guess how they'll react to scenario X. Any government that doesn't do so is seriously remiss, IMHO.

Re:It's understandable

[0xA]

Playing shell games with inspectors and flagrantly violating UN resolutions for ten years is "bending over backwards"?

By saying "inspectors" you seemed to be implying "weapons inspectors". The primary objective of those inspectors was to find WMDs or WMD programs and shut them down.

So you meant fruit inspectors or something?

Re:It's understandable

[Natestradamus]

That would be because in scenario A you're saying something nasty about someone nice, and the reverse in scenario B, and we have this thing called morality here. Piss enough people off and see what it gets you...

Re:It's understandable

[DCheesi]

I don't understand. Are you saying that a large, democratic government that consists of hundreds of different people with different opinions, different worldviews, and different agendas might not always agree with itself or be self-consistent?! Say it ain't so!

You know, this is a great hypothetical argument; if our gub'ment was actually democratic, you'd have a great point... :)

(Just kidding, Emperor Dubya!)

Re:It's understandable

[Malcontent]

From your link.

"After the Dean campaign was presented with clear cut evidence as to the nature of emailresponse.net, they investigated promptly and terminated their relationship with the company that same day.."

How does this make him the "spam king"? Maybe accidental spammer, maybe one-time spammer, maybe apologetic spammer but spam king? What gives? Don't you have any sense of proportion or decency?

I think you just want to slander him by calling him the spam king because you disagree with his politics.

Re:Re :It's understandable

[Nodatadj]

"We're going to fix them up with fair elections, good education, and sound healthcare."

Pity that plan was too hard, so they went for the much simpler "Blow shit up and play it by ear" plan B

Re:It's understandable

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, we Democrats are all still waiting for the massive failure to kick in, so we can say "told ya!" And then... do something... provide free something for... some people... or something.

Re:It's understandable

[Malcontent]

"Playing shell games with inspectors and flagrantly violating UN resolutions for ten years is "bending over backwards"?"

Israel violates UN resolutions how come we don't invade them. The US violates UN resolutions or just ignores them and invades other countries.

"I'll overestimate it for you: the world was destroyed, and everyone died. There that wasn't so hard, you see?"

This is a very handy thing to fling out when you can't dispute somebodies facts or arguments in a rational way.

Re:It's understandable

[Alsee]

we have this thing called morality here. Piss enough people off and see what it gets you...

What it gets you is "moral" fucknuts commiting a crime. Fuck Jesus, and double-fuck any supposedly morally superior idiot who would commit a crime just because I said "Fuck Jesus".

-

Re:It's understandable

[Alsee]

Yes, he meant weapons inspectors. And Saddam did in fact play games and obstruct them. Just look at any of the cheif inspector's reports. (Hanz Blick I think?) The reports repeadedly complained about compliance failures and various forms of obstruction. He often reported "improvements" in compliance, but ALWAYS states a failure of reaching full compliance and always points out that improvements ONLY come in response to credible threats of military action.

So even if there were zero "WMD's" he certainly did NOT "bend over backwards" to comply. His non-compliance was as total as he felt he could get away with. And if he had no prohibited weapons/weapons-materials then his obstructing the inspectors was rather irrational.

-

Re:It's understandable

[Anonymous Coward]

It is not illegal, it's just a violation of FCC guidelines. Big difference.

Re:It's understandable

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course everyone in Iraq doesn't share her view, but the important part is the vast majority of Iraqis do.

Re:It's understandable

[Anonymous Coward]

we should be funding the fucking Americans without jobs

Here! Here! I say free webcams for them all.

Re:It's understandable

[marx]

From the article:

Federal law says anyone who "utters any obscene, indecent or profane language by means of radio communication shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both."

So I think you're wrong.

Besides, I don't see the difference. You sound like an ostrich to me, i.e. instead of admitting there is a problem and doing something about it, you delude yourself there is no problem.

Re:It's understandable

[sexninja]

Afterall, our government is using tax dollars to deliver privacy and freedom to a member nation of the "Axis of Evil" its not the people thats evil, its just the government.

Re:It's understandable

[marx]

I would like some proof of this, i.e. a reasonable poll. From what I've seen, most Iraqis want the US to get the hell out of Iraq.

Re:It's understandable

[frovingslosh]

This goes right along with the submission I made last weekend that was rejected about the news stories of the US Setting up an uncensored Internet cafe in Sadam's old home town. My point being that we are making a big deal of doing it over there with tax money taken from American citizens, but at the same time we are forcing our libraries here to install filtering software and worse. My local library used to even have a number of freely accessable Internet terminals, now you can't even use one without having a library card scanned as an ID when you do (any guesses if they store all visted URL's with that and even track web based e-mail you might send or receive?).

It might be OK to spend Amreican tax payers' money on free (as in speech) Internet access for the second most oil rich country in the world, although others might disagree. But it's certainly not OK to spend those tax dollars to give them more freedoms than we have here.

Re:It's understandable

[Curunir_wolf]

Man... dude! Look, it's not fashionable "ism"-thing that's the impetus for all this, it's them desperate freaks that spent years in some barefoot delusion to accomplish the killing of thousdands of Americans, using the country's own billion-dollar transportation infrastructure to do it.

Drastic steps must be taken to keep this globally significant shift from spiralling out of control.

Food lines in Ohio? Sheesh! We do what's reasonable everywhere to feed the hungry... but we don't cut out other important stuff to do it.

Re:It's understandable

[Anonymous Coward]

Most of the people I think that wants the US out of Iraq are the people that lost thier power and the people that want that power.

Re:It's understandable

[Spunk]

Seriously. Is this what the Information Minister is up to these days? :)

Re:It's understandable

[Anonymous Coward]

Your talking about FCC communication laws, that's different from everyday speak.

Re:It's understandable

[IM6100]

The fact that you had to 'interpret' so much history to make your case kinda sorta lost the arguement for you.

Re:It's understandable

[Anonymous Coward]

There are millions of pepole like you that say "Fuck Jesus" every day and nothing happens to them. Secondly the backlash you receive probably won't be physical, say for instance if Wall*Mart said "Fuck Jesus" guess what people would stop shopping there. That's their choice weather you like it or not.

Re:It's understandable

[HeghmoH]

Are you deliberately trying to be obtuse?

Various UN resolutions were passed regarding Iraq, and weapons inspectors were sent there.

Iraq continually violated those resolutions and was as uncooperative with the inspectors as it felt it could get away with without provoking another war.

Iraq at the present moment does not appear to posess WMDs.

Those three statements can logically exist together in the same universe without any self-contradictions.

It seems to me that you're like most anti-Bush fanatics out there, trying to paint anyone who disagrees with you as a pro-Bush fanatic. That's wrong; I can disagree with you and him at the same time. The fact that Bush was wrong about WMDs and lied in his case for war does not change the fact that Iraq was extremely uncooperative in every way with the UN and with the weapons inspectors. Are you capable of understanding this?

If you respond to this post, please try arguing with the points and opinions I have actually expressed, rather than the points and opinions you imagine I should hold.

Re:It's understandable

[Ender Ryan]

This is a very handy thing to fling out when you can't dispute somebodies facts or arguments in a rational way.

No. His point was that what he was responding to was nothing more than silly rhetoric, ie. he was responding in kind to something that wasn't "facts or arguments."

Re: Israel - the U.S. is currently working with both sides to resolve the situation, and whenever progress is made, militant Palistinians do everything in their power to prevent it. I'm not saying I always agree with U.S. policy regarding Israel... My point is just that you're comparing apples and oranges.

Re:It's understandable

[Anonymous Coward]

You're an idiot. Any country with a few dozen earth movers can bury shit so deep it can't be detected. In a couple of days. That's right, a couple of days. I know you haven't watched earth movers work in a team by your comment. Guess what, they own them and they used them. Get off your liberal horse and join the rest of us. The biggest war has yet to be begin. It's coming faster than you think.

Re:It's understandable

[aled]

a little trolling but he's not pro socialism, read it again. It's like aislacionism.

Re:It's understandable

[Anonymous Coward]

You are right we are still holding our breath. Even though they have uncovered lots of documents about Iraq's weapon programs the mass media has surpressed those stories. Also I hate using this argument but Iraq did have 6 months before the war to hide evidence. So the people that are saying there were no WMD's just might get a bit in the ass.

Re:It's understandable

[Alsee]

backlash you receive probably won't be physical

I think the earlier poster clearly implied those situations where the reaction was physical.

-

Re:It's understandable

[bishop32x]

Most of the people I think that wants the US out of Iraq are the people that lost thier power and the people that want that power.

Power in both senses of the word. While it mybe elements of the former regime fighting the US( we dont really knowwho it is), large portions of the rest of the population would like to run their own country.

Re:It's understandable

[bishop32x]

Unfortunately, the system doesn't work.

Socialism failed? communism failed(well exept for cuba, sort of). Socialism is doing just fine in Europe.

Re:It's understandable

[zangdesign]

Actually, I don't give two shits about the Iranians. It's up to them to settle their own problems. When the social pressure to remove those in power becomes great enough, the people will do so.

If they want our help and friendship after that, fine. If not, fine. We should stay out of it altogether.

Re:It's understandable

[G-funk]

Hahahaha! Yeah sure they're anonymizing internet access for iranians with US funds.... I bet.

And we'll see how long after the next terrorist bombing it is before every ali sixpack who's "anonymously" downloaded the jolly roger gets shipped to cuba.

Re:It's understandable

[Wah]

The only poll I've seen shows a slightly different opinion. It is limited to baghdad, and was taken previous to the latest round of bombings.

I'm curious to see a more timely one.

Re:It's understandable

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm. See, I recently saw a bunch of Shias calling for the U.S. to hunt down bombers.

And I heard a lot of Kurds praising America.

And I drew a map and noticed that the only place soldiers are being shot at is the Sunni Triangle, the place where Saddam Hussein is from.

And after looking at all this, I realized something. The only Iraqis that want us out are the Baathist fascists. The rest like us there.

But, you see, I actually paid attention.

Re:It's understandable

[Malcontent]

"No. His point was that what he was responding to was nothing more than silly rhetoric ie. he was responding in kind to something that wasn't "facts or arguments.""

Bullshit. Here is the post he was responding to

The trouble was, the US and Britain were not prepared to consider any outcome other than war. A war which killed tens of thousands while doing damage which Paul Bremer indicated a couple of days ago, was almost impossible to overestimate.

Should I help you out pick out a fact or an argument? Here are some.

1) US and Briton were not prepared to consider any argument other then war
2) US and Briton killed tens of thousands of people.
3) US and Briton caused enourmous damage to which the interim king of Iraq (Paul Bremer) recent made a reference to.

"Re: Israel - the U.S. is currently working with both sides to resolve the situation, and whenever progress is made, militant Palistinians do everything in their power to prevent it. I'm not saying I always agree with U.S. policy regarding Israel... My point is just that you're comparing apples and oranges."

Bullshit.

US is clearly pro israeli. It has always been that way, it will always be that way.

I suppose it's easy for you to blame the whole thing on palestenians but that too is pure and utter bullshit.

Try living under occupation by a foreign military for 35 years and they maybe you can make some sort of a judgement. You think living under Israeli occupation is all fun and games? You think widespread poverty, curfews, restrictions of travel, mass arrests, torture, and an occational missile flying into your cities is fun?

For every israeli killed by a palestenian three palestenians are killed.

Re:It's understandable

[SEE]

A theory that would make sense, except the North Koreans never ended their nuclear program, they just took the money. Clinton continued to pay them even though the CIA reported the programs were continuing. All NK did after they were cut off by Bush was admit they had continued their program in violation of the agreeement.

Re:It's understandable

[Anonymous Coward]

Iraq was extremely uncooperative in every way with the UN and with the weapons inspectors.

Are you talking about these cloak-and-dagger UN weapons inspectors?

Re:It's understandable

[Anonymous Coward]

According to Hans Blix, the leader of the UN weapons inspection team, Iraq changed its attitude dramatically in March 2003. Just listen to the Charlie Rose Show recording.

Re:It's understandable

[Anonymous Coward]

Bush's Problem is with the Iranian Government, not the Iranian people. I'm pretty suprised (pleasantly) that here this is almost taken as a positive for Bush.

Re:It's understandable

[dvdeug]

maybe a few of them will learn that (1) we're not the Great Satan the ayatollahs told them about

Their parents told them that they had a nice democratic government before the US overthrew it and put in a government with a secret police the equal of almost any dictatorship's, in 1953. This action will confirm that. Great Satan, maybe not, but historically speaking not the friend of Iran's people.

Re:It's understandable

[Anonymous Coward]

Propaganda both prevents and wins wars. Propaganda can serve as a tool of persuasion in trying political struggles between two or more nations. In the case of Iran, it is imperative that we win a large portion of mindshare to use as security in the future.

Or to get the people used to what is expected of them if they come under US occupation.

Propaganda both prevents and wins wars. Propaganda can serve as a tool of persuasion in trying political struggles between two or more nations. In the case of Iran, it is imperative that we win a large portion of mindshare to use as security in the future.

Iran isn't threatening anyone with armed conflict. It is, however, being threatend by the US and Israel. On the other hand Iran might be more capable of defending itself than either Afghanistan or Iraq.

Re:It's understandable

[Anonymous Coward]

The fact that Bush was wrong about WMDs and lied in his case for war does not change the fact that Iraq was extremely uncooperative in every way with the UN and with the weapons inspectors. Are you capable of understanding this?

If you respond to this post, please try arguing with the points and opinions I have actually expressed, rather than the points and opinions you imagine I should hold.

The fact is that Iraq was not uncooperative to the point that war was the only solution... In reality, it did cooperate, but US deliberatly did not want to give credit to this (hence not lifting the embargo and the like), logically setting back Iraq's efforts. The US-Iraq war will stay in history as a war provocated by the US because the US did not want Saddam to stay in power.

From this:

"Baghdad's tough line was predictable. The Iraqi leaders had run into a dead end. UN sanctions had already lasted almost seven and a half years and they could see no way of getting them lifted in the foreseeable future. UNSCOM had carried out almost seven hundred inspections, only half a dozen of which had given rise to incidents. But despite the endless checks, and countless operations involving the destruction, neutralisation and dismantling of Iraqi facilities, the Security Council had still not lifted the sanctions. UNSCOM reports had stated repeatedly that Iraq's potential to manufacture weapons of mass destruction had been demolished and that the possibilities of concealment were very limited. But on each occasion, the reports were deemed to justify extension of the UNSCOM mandate and the continuation of sanctions. The previous chairman of the commission, Rolf Ekeus, had even been known to alter the content of a report after intervention by the State Department.

The Iraqi leaders no longer had any reason to believe that implementation of the UN resolutions would provide a way out of the impasse. Indeed, most observers of American policy in the region are convinced that Washington's real aim is to keep Iraq permanently weakened, both physically and politically. Baghdad concluded that its only option, even at the cost of a major crisis, was to focus attention directly on America's exclusive use of UNSCOM for its own foreign policy purposes. "

Oh yes, and it was in december 1997.

Re:It's understandable

[Anonymous Coward]

You know full well that a government such as the one in Iran is doing everything possible to spread lies about the West.

After all, what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander...

Re:It's understandable

[AdEbh]

Not saying your friend is a lier. My flatmate's friends say the same thing, only they're from Iraq.

- ebh

Re:It's understandable

[Anonymous Coward]

Because the bullshit Israel lobby holds more sway in the USA than the America lobby.

Fucking zionist fucks.

Re:It's understandable

[mpe]

I've been watching Iran long enough to know that the parent is correct. the 65%+ of the population who are under 30 have no use for their government at all. The joke at the beginning of the Iraq war was "Good, we're next."

Those over 30 can probably remember what it's like to live under a US backed tyrany. Whatever they may think of the current Iranian government they might not want to put the clock back to the 1960's & 1970's either.

Re:It's understandable

[Anonymous Coward]

What, a middle eastern country loves the US ?

Israel likes the US a lot. Or they may just like all that American taxpayers money or having the US veto UN resolutions.

Whose been screwing with our foregin policy ?

Same people who have been doing so for the last half of the 20th century.

Re:It's understandable

[Anonymous Coward]

Since your friend is not a nine year old girl like Aisha was when she married Him, he probably isn't His type.

Re:It's understandable

[Sphere1952]

From what I understand, the people who started the revolution and who were then booted out by the allytollas are looking back rather fondly upon the 60s and 70s. Basically, the Shah was an ass, but not nearly as much of an ass.

Re:It's understandable

[Peaker]

US is clearly pro israeli. It has always been that way, it will always be that way.

Has it always?

Prior to the amazing achievements of the small Israeli military in 1967, the US was not really supportive of Israel (Other than the UN declaration of 1947). The US even imposed sanctions on Israel in the war of 1956, for violations of agreements.

Only after the world witnessed that Israel is probably here to stay in the 6-day war, did the US become as supportive as it is today.

Try living under occupation by a foreign military for 35 years and they maybe you can make some sort of a judgement. You think living under Israeli occupation is all fun and games? You think widespread poverty, curfews, restrictions of travel, mass arrests, torture, and an occational missile flying into your cities is fun?

As Sharon put it, "its not easy being a Palestinian". Israel has indeed done a terrible thing, when it placed a military regime in the conquered territories between 1967 and 1987. But you must remmember that this was always a response to terrorist attacks that could not otherwise be prevented.

Then, in 1987, the Intifada broke out. About 6 years later, Israel signed the Oslo peace agreements, even while buses full of men, women and children were exploding. Then, during a tense point in the peace talks - another intifada broke out. This was not justified, and is the main reason why the Palestinians are mostly to blame in this recent conflict.

Re:It's understandable

[mpe]

Saddam Hussein is a homicidal maniac, but he was bending over backwards to avoid war - doing all he could to comply with UN demands. The trouble was, the US and Britain were not prepared to consider any outcome other than war.

Hussein always was such a person. Just that the US didn't care much about it up until the point Iraq invaded Kuwait. Indeed they were happy cheering him on when Iraq invaded Iraq.

Now countries which see themselves as threatened by the US know that behaving rationally will get them nowhere.

Disarming yourself in the face of an ememy is hardly rational...

The way to go is to accumulate nukes and point them at an ally of the US.

Actual weapons, you can't shoot very well with research products. As well as the ability to disable invading troops en-mass. Combined with being able to shoot down warplanes and sink warships.

At the time, I thought the N Koreans were insane. It took time to work out what they were up to.

Even though the policy is known as MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) it is perfectly sane and based on historical precedent.

Re:It's understandable

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Israel - the U.S. is currently working with both sides to resolve the situation,

The US would look a lot more like an honest broker were they to stop showering Israel with money and arms

and whenever progress is made, militant Palistinians do everything in their power to prevent it.

You mean like declaring a ceasefire even though Israel continued to attack them...

Re:It's understandable

[Anonymous Coward]

I suppose it's easy for you to blame the whole thing on palestenians but that too is pure and utter bullshit.

Especially considering all the Palestinians did "wrong" was happen to live in a part of the world some other people wanted as theirs.

Try living under occupation by a foreign military for 35 years and they maybe you can make some sort of a judgement. You think living under Israeli occupation is all fun and games? You think widespread poverty, curfews, restrictions of travel, mass arrests, torture, and an occational missile flying into your cities is fun?

A lot longer than 35 years. Zionists started making trouble in Palestine in the 1920s. But things started getting really bad after the second world war. With "ethnic cleansing" including the use of biological weapons. Very fortunatly, for Zionism, many European Rabbis who had previously dismissed Zionism as nonsense died in WWII. Hence the myth that Judeism and Zionism are the same thing was able to gain a foothold. Together with a rewriting of history to attempt to apply the Exodus myth to the Caucasian Ashknazi. Notwithstanding that the Arabs the Israeli state persecutes are far more likely to include descendants of people who escaped slavery in Ancient Egypt than people from somwhere else in the first place.

Re:It's understandable

[mpe]

He certainly hid his weapons of mass destruction carefully. The inspectors haven't found them yet.

Hidden so well they were no use at all in defending against an invasion. Even given several months warning.

Re:It's understandable

[mpe]

You're an idiot. Any country with a few dozen earth movers can bury shit so deep it can't be detected. In a couple of days. That's right, a couple of days.

They can, of course, dig them up in the same timescale. The only things Iraq appears to have burried were some aircraft. Which were found looking like they had come from a junkyard.
An unusable weapon is of no military value at all.

Re:It's understandable

[Malcontent]

"As Sharon put it, "its not easy being a Palestinian". Israel has indeed done a terrible thing, when it placed a military regime in the conquered territories between 1967 and 1987. But you must remmember that this was always a response to terrorist attacks that could not otherwise be prevented."

The answer is simple.

Make the palestenians Israeli citizens. This is what civilized nations do when they invade and occupy some land. We did ti with the Indians, The russians did it with all their republics, the chinese did it with tibet. It's the humane and civilized way to treat human beings under your control

Give the palestenians citizenship with full rights and a vote and they will have no reason to bomb anybody.

Re:It's understandable

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know what Brasilians you've been mixing with... maybe it is a class issue.

All the Brasilians I have come across have been utterly xenophobic to the point of rediculasness. They've been like a pack of nazis with their "gingos" they're ready to "chuta" at any oportunity.

Re:It's understandable

[ncc74656]

maybe a few of them will learn that (1) we're not the Great Satan the ayatollahs told them about

Their parents told them that they had a nice democratic government before the US overthrew it...

You failed to mention that Iran was in danger of being taken over by communists...maybe things weren't so good for a while (though you wouldn't know it from hearing current Iranian exiles speak), but at least it kept the Russians out.

Re:It's understandable

[dvdeug]

You failed to mention that Iran was in danger of being taken over by communists

A leader trying to take a oil industry, which had 80% of the profits going to Britain, under the control of Iran, does not a communist overtaking make.

Furthermore, it was not our decision to make. Iran was an autonomous democratic government; we don't have the right to kill elected leaders that make choices we disagree with.

maybe things weren't so good for a while (though you wouldn't know it from hearing current Iranian exiles speak),

I read a book not too long ago by a Iranian exile where she described the terrors her father felt under the secret police, how the army turned machine guns on protesting students. If you wouldn't know it from hearing current Iranian exiles speak, it's either because it's old history and you aren't asking questions about it, or you aren't listening.

Happy citizens don't revolt. Spontaneous, citizen-led, revolutions, like those in Eastern Europe recently, or the French or American revolutions of the late 18th century, happen because there is a cruel and unjust government.

at least it kept the Russians out.

I guess we should have sided with the Nazis, then; that would have kept the Russians out, too. It's not only Americans who have rights, who have lives; you can't just say "they suffered under a cruel dictatorship, but it kept their democratic leaders from even considering anything we didn't want."

Re:It's understandable

[dvdeug]

You failed to mention that Iran was in danger of being taken over by communists...maybe things weren't so good for a while (though you wouldn't know it from hearing current Iranian exiles speak), but at least it kept the Russians out.

A few choice quotes from Foreign Policy in Focus: Foreign Policy in Focus: Iran and the Forgotten Anniversery :

[...]the U.S. had a positive image with many Iranians. After helping to convince occupying Soviet forces to leave the country, [...] the American government was generally well regarded.

The Anglo-Iranian Oil Company was owned by British interests and supported by the British government. In a grossly unequal colonial-style arrangement, the Iranians were not even allowed to examine the ledgers. As the dispute with the British intensified, the Iranians finally became determined to nationalize their country's oil industry. [...] Although the Truman government had been sympathetic to Iran, [indicative of a Russian controlled government, of course - dvdeug] in 1953 the new Eisenhower administration accepted the British view that the Iranian regime had to go.

American and Israeli intelligence agents organized SAVAK, the Shah's personal secret security force. Before long, Iran developed into a full-blown police state complete with thousands of informers, censorship, arbitrary arrest and imprisonment, and widespread torture and assassination. [...] Aiming to terrorize an entire population, SAVAK repression was both extreme and widespread.

Re:It's understandable

[Anonymous Coward]

> I do fine it ironic

I find it ironic that anyone thinks Anonymizer isn't a NSA stooge in the first place, and that everything sent through it isn't being logged. Wake up! With all this `should the government be allowed to tap emails/monitor web access` don't you think they've realised that by owning servers they can read everything that is sent across the net anyway? I mean, given than i'd wager that 99% of the people who say `everyone should encrypt all the data leaving their PCs` don't?

Re:It's understandable

[Xel'Naga]

Un has two main councils: The security council and the general council (or something like this).
The security council is meant to reflect the actual balance of power, while the general council gives each country one vote.

The resolutions Iraq has been violating were those of the Security council. The resolutions Israel is violating are those of the general council. These are vastly different things.

The general council has passed a huge amount of odd resolutions, including making Libya head of the Human rights part of UN and agreeing that racism equals zionism.

Unstable countries more often split into two countries than stable. This means that unstable areas of the world gets too many votes in the general council.

Re:It's understandable

[replicant108]

"Iraq continually violated those resolutions and was as uncooperative with the inspectors as it felt it could get away with without provoking another war."

Here are a few sources that contradict that claim:

Annan Calls Iraqi Cooperation 'Good'

Head of Atomic Energy Agency Will Tell Security Council
Saddam Has Done `Quite Satisfactory' Job in Cooperating

Iraq's cooperation active: Blix

I'm afraid that it is clear in retrospect that there was nothing that Iraq could have done that would have prevented the US from invading. I hope that you will understand that this is not an anti-american statement, but merely an observation of fact.

Re:It's understandable

[HeghmoH]

Are we just totally misunderstanding each other, am I not being clear, or are you just being totally obtuse? It's behavior like this that makes me wash my hands of the whole anti-war thing, no matter how much I am tempted to agree.

All three articles you quoted are talking about the latest inspections, right before the war started.

I am talking about all inspections since the end of the war in 1991.

Do you see how we have a problem with this?

In fact, those articles do not contradict anything I said. I said that Iraq was as uncooperative as it could get away with with the inspectors without causing a war. They were so cooperative right at the end because they knew that Bush wouldn't take any shit from them and they'd have to be as nice as possible to keep him from coming in. And even that wasn't enough, in fact. If you can come up with some references showing that Iraq was nice and happy and cooperative before then there is an issue, but until then you aren't showing me anything relevant at all. But I shouldn't be surprised; the vocal anti-war crowd seems to revel in presenting irrelevant material as "evidence".

Re:It's understandable

[Erasmus Darwin]

"There were those short-range missiles which were designed to be within the permitted specs, but were capable of flying beyond their nominal range"

If I'm not mistaken, there were a few other minor missile violations beyond the range. I believe it was something along the lines that the diameter of some of the missiles was significantly over one of the limits set by the UN. Of course that's still not the smoking gun that nukes would be, and I'm not saying it justified war, but it's at least something of a more delibrate violation than missiles that would occasional exceed the range-limit set by the UN.

Re:It's understandable

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure look at France, if there were ever a more foobar'd institution I'd hate to see it.

Re:It's understandable

[Anonymous Coward]

privacy and freedom often don't go hand in hand. Lots of freedoms are violated in "privacy".

Re:It's understandable

[Anonymous Coward]

Thats because an everyday speaker does not have the right to broadcast his/her speech on the FCC-controlled spectrum. Its not that people _choose_ not to broadcast their everyday speak.

Re:It's understandable

[Anonymous Coward]

And why is that ? France and Germany form the backbone of the EU. And the EU is not sinking for sure.

Re:It's understandable

[recursiv]

such as?

Re:It's understandable

[Peaker]

That would flood Israeli elections with arab votes and terminate the Israeli Democracy, to become another arab state.

What should be done is leaving the territories for the Palestinians to have their own state.

As you can see, this is a very difficult process and continuously thwarted by terrorists.

Re:It's understandable

[replicant108]

Personally, I think that the fact that the US invaded at a point when Iraq was being cooperative *is* relevant.

Particularly in a reply to someone who has raised the issue of non-cooperation.

Please don't take it personally.

freedom as tool

[gokubi]

Why does our government work for the freedom of others, while chipping away at ours daily? Has freedom been reduced to a tool to pry open restrictive regimes to the point where our system can rush in and clamp things down in the "correctly" restrictive ways?

sigh.

-sarcasm-

And now that our tax dollars are being used to allow members of a radical Islamic regime (one that harbors terrorists and has WMDs) to anonymously look at all the bomb plans burried in steganographied images on eBay, aren't we opening ourselves up for more terror?

-/sarcasm-

Makes you wonder if anyone believes that Axis of Evil crap.

Re:freedom as tool

[phliar]

Why does our government work for the freedom of others, while chipping away at ours daily?

Well, where do you think that freedom we export comes from? It doesn't just grow on trees you know!

Re:freedom as tool

[donutello]

And now that our tax dollars are being used to allow members of a radical Islamic regime (one that harbors terrorists and has WMDs) to anonymously look at all the bomb plans burried in steganographied images on eBay, aren't we opening ourselves up for more terror?


The members of the regime already have the ability to do this anyway. What the US is funding here is the ability for the people being oopressed by that regime to do so. There's a big difference. You show your ignorance by not recognizing the difference.

Makes you wonder if anyone believes that Axis of Evil crap.

It's the Iranian government that has been branded dangerous, not the Iranian people. It's hard to expect you to believe something if you're too ignorant to understand what is being talked about.

Re:freedom as tool

[dracocat]

Nobody believes Iranians are evil. There may be many that believe the government is. If you can't tell the difference, then you better learn. By the tone of your post it sounds like you don't agree with a lot of things your government has done, and as such I doubt you would want people of other countries judging you as a person for the actions of your President.

Secondly, your is not the only negative post so far, and I don't understand it at all. Maybe it is easier to think negatively on short notice and try and get posted first, I don't know. Still, how can you put such a negative spin on this! There is no censorshop going on, the website is allowing them to see anything they want, it is not just propaganda, it is full and complete information.

Maybe I am biased, because I have such a strong believe that freedom of information is the most powerfull weapon against oppressive governments. Be it a democracy or a 'radical Islamic regime', an informed public can be much more powerfull than bombs.

So while you are feel to compain about your government currently restricting your freedom, this story is completely unrelated. Take it for what it is--a good thing, and then make your complaints in another breath.

Re:freedom as tool

[helix400]

Only on Slashdot would someone immediately denounce a plan to give more freedom to oppressed Iranian citizens.

Re:freedom as tool

[Anonymous Coward]

And now that our tax dollars are being used to allow members of a radical Islamic regime (one that harbors terrorists and has WMDs) to anonymously look at all the bomb plans burried in steganographied images on eBay, aren't we opening ourselves up for more terror?

steganographied?

dude, if they can train dinosaurs to draw I think we're screwed anyway

Re:freedom as tool

[iocat]

Why does our government work for the freedom of others, while chipping away at ours daily? Has freedom been reduced to a tool to pry open restrictive regimes to the point where our system can rush in and clamp things down in the "correctly" restrictive ways?

Maybe this is evidence that our government isn't as evil as you assume? Anyway, the government hasn't been chipping away at your freedom, just your *privacy*.

Plus, the problem in Iran isn't the people on the street, who have been demonstrating daily for more freedom and democracy, the problem is the fanatical religious "leaders" who have a stranglehold on the judiciary of the country, and prevent real reforms.

Vis-a-vis our governemnt taking away our freedoms, the Patriot Act has been blown way out of proportion by hysterical people. Such as, the ACLU saying "Now the government can spy on you if they don't like the books you read!" when in fact, what the PA actually does is enable the Feds to ask for records (such as library records), if they are doing an investigation on you already. This is a power the government has *always* had in investigating criminal cases, such as Mafia cases; the Patriot Act just extended it to terrorist investigations.

Privacy-wise, though, get over it. Have a credit card? You don't have any privacy. Amex knows more about you from your spending habits than you will ever know about yourself.

Re:freedom as tool

[Anonymous Coward]

What I find ironic is that with this action the Iranian people have more rights than Americans themselves.

Why is the US government pushing for anonymity in a foreign "axis of evil" country when their own citizens can only dream about it? so when the government is overthrown they can push the same anty-privacy laws on them?

The US is the most hypocrite and manipulating government in mankind history ... even Hitler (being as evil as he was) let everyone know his objectives and methods.

The US Government is to the World as SCO is to the IT world. Think about all the FUD both spread and how they try to manipulate the public opinion to accept the monstruosities they are commiting. Just today, the US Government declared it did not intended to catalog the Guantanamo Bay War Prisioners as War Prisioners but "Terrorists", but the same officer declaring (I think was Ashcroft) kept using the word War to describe the situation in which the War Prisioners were captured.

Re:freedom as tool

[Wingnut64]

You show your ignorance by not recognizing the difference.
And you show your ignorance by not noticing the SARCASM tags around the quote.

Re:freedom as tool

[Anonymous Coward]

Has freedom been reduced to a tool to pry open0 restrictive regimes to the point where our system can rush in and clamp things down in the "correctly" restrictive ways?

Oooh...I get it. So America's conceived a fiendish plan using freedom of speech to remove oppression in Iran only to replace it...with...oppresion.

I think your overactive imagination got the best of you again.

Re:freedom as tool

[gokubi]

The members of the regime already have the ability to do this anyway. What the US is funding here is the ability for the people being oopressed by that regime to do so. There's a big difference. You show your ignorance by not recognizing the difference.

I put my statement inside -sarcam- tags for a reason. Or government doesn't believe all the WMD and nuclear capability stuff any more than I do.

Iran is a potential threat much in the way that France is or the soviet union was--they present alternatives to our system of running things. The soviet union had to be destroyed because it was a competing system, not because it was evil. The US is much like MSFT in this way. Who cares if other options are better, worse, or indiferent--if they are an option other than ours, they must be destroyed.

Re:freedom as tool

[Anonymous Coward]

you're insanely ignorant, please get help.

Re:freedom as tool

[Metaldsa]

"Only on Slashdot would someone immediately denounce a plan to give more freedom to oppressed Iranian citizens. "

And then a mod gives you a Flamebait.

LOL. This whole article should be "Great, my tax dollars are helping people under a horrible government to have freedom of information on the Internet." We are helping spread freedom in a tiny way.

Instead people post comments like "We have no freedom in the US" or "We need those tax dollars for the jobless."

Responses like "Such a small amount of money does not change a 10 trillion business cycle" or "You have no idea what living without freedom of speech or press is like." But I believe those responses would be wasted on people who think like that.

Re:freedom as tool

[comicus]

>Why does our government work for the freedom of others

It doesn't. Our government works for those that bring it to power, i.e. first the corporations, second the special interest, and lastly the people.

All this Axis of Evil nonsense and labeling of Iran as a rogue state are for show to impress the average American. Most Americans don't know, for example, that the US and Britain have never stopped buying oil from Iran. Yes, the same country that they place embargos on preventing from purchasing goods for the people. Why? Because it makes economic sense to pay kickbacks to the corrupt Mullahs in exchange for cheap oil. Most Americans also don't know that Rafsanjani is a very active real estate investor here in the US. He owns many examples of prime real estate throughout the US including the 5 star St. Regis hotel in Laguna Beach, CA. All with the knowledge of the Walker Bush Administration. Next time you stay there, know that your dollars are supporting a terrorist and oppressive regime.

And now that our tax dollars are being used to allow members of a radical Islamic regime (one that harbors terrorists and has WMDs) to anonymously look at all the bomb plans

Sarcasm well taken, but you'd have to be a fool to think that the terrorist government and their thugs need something like the anonymizer to obtain info on building weapons. They're more interested in keeping the Iranian people insulated from contact and information exchange with the rest of the world. Anonymous access to the Internet would greatly benefit the Iranian people.

I believe this move by the US to promote anonymizer is meant as a very tiny jesture to win the support the Iranian communities in the US.

Re:freedom as tool

[The Old Burke]

Exactly my point. There is a limited amount of freedom avilable. If too many people get it in a short time things hang up.

Look for example how the history went after the second World War: We tried to export freedom to Iran in a gentle an genorous way, but they turned it down and choose a Evil tyranny instead.

Re:freedom as tool

[William Baric]

Anyway, the government hasn't been chipping away at your freedom, just your *privacy*

What is freedom? As most people, you sure heard and use this word a lot but I bet you never thought about what it really means. Pity.

Re:freedom as tool

[helix400]

Ya, I get a kick out of Slashdot's mainly left leaning users. The main parent in this thread rips on America, says this freedom of speech plan is horrible, and yet, gets an immediate +5 Insightful. I comment on the irony, and I get a -1 Flamebait.

I find responses from these kind of stories hilarious. Normally Slashdot is generally in agreement that everyone needs freedom of speech and privacy. But the moment politics get involved, people are split into left and right camps...all sorts of odd, hypocritical things happen.

Re:freedom as tool

[William Baric]

Why does our government work for the freedom of others, while chipping away at ours daily?

How to become a strong, powerful government :
1. Control your own population
2. Make sure other governments can't control their population

Re:freedom as tool

[Anonymous Coward]

Free markets feed. Socialism kills.

Get a clue.

Re:freedom as tool

[gokubi]

Ah, if only the US system believed in freedom of information! The reason so many of us are negative is that when you look at this development against the backdrop of lies and deceit, you have to be a polyanna to not be cynical. I'm all for freedom of information in Iran. I think it's great that they now can use anonymizer.com. But when I see that the US government has funded it I think about Iraq.

We went into Iraq to get rid of Husein and his WMDs. We knew they had WMDs because Bush told us. He had no proof, but he said trust me. The NY times published a number of front page stories on WMDs from an anonymous Iraqi source. That source turned out to be Ahmed Chalabi (Harpers, 9/03). We went in to Iraq holding the flag of Democracy. And then after we kicked out the thugs, we flew Chalabi in from Reston, VA, and then gave the country to Haliburton and Brown and Root.

We can all be overjoyed by the opening up of some ports for Iran, but you can't ignore the myriad other events that say we don't give a damn about freedom of information, or the Iranian people.

Re:freedom as tool

[Anonymous Coward]

Iran is a potential threat much in the way that France is or the soviet union was--they present alternatives to our system of running things. The soviet union had to be destroyed because it was a competing system, not because it was evil.

Thirty million dead Kulaks would disagree.

The Soviet system was not an alternative, it was a seventy-year meatgrinder of forced labor and occasional engineered famine. Comparing it to the basically benign but unsustainable socialism of France, or even the fundamentalist theocracy of Iran, is insulting.

Re:freedom as tool

[Anonymous Coward]

So the American Welfare system, farm subsidies, Medicare and the general social safety net are killers?

Thanks for clearing that up. Fucktard.

Re:freedom as tool

[Anonymous Coward]

What is wrong with comments like: 'why just there? why can't we have this as well'?

Re:freedom as tool

[Anonymous Coward]

" Why does our government work for the freedom of others, while chipping away at ours daily?"

Comparing the supposed loss of freedom that you are experiencing to the real lack of freedom in Iran shows you are completely out of touch with reality. Dumb ass.

Re:freedom as tool

[digitalunity]

The soviet union had to be destroyed because it was a competing system, not because it was evil.
I hate to break it to you, but we didn't destroy the Soviet Union. They suffered from a massive economical collapse. It suffered very much from poor leadership and political in-fighting.

government doesn't believe all the WMD and nuclear capability stuff any more than I do
The british parliament is looking into statements made by Tony Blair concerning WMD on the basis that they may have been greatly overstated. However, in reference to Iran, we aren't saying they have some secret weapons program(like we did with Iraq). They openly admit to having a functional nuclear weapons program, with ICBM's deployed and readied.

For Microsoft, it's all about the money.
For the US Government, it's all about control.

It's sad though. The more the US tries to control their surroundings with political measures, the more they are seen as manipulative. They very much are.

Re:freedom as tool

[the gnat]

Iran is a potential threat much in the way that France is or the soviet union was--they present alternatives to our system of running things. The soviet union had to be destroyed because it was a competing system, not because it was evil.

Horseshit. France is a representative democracy, just like the USA. The Soviet Union certainly was evil, because it was a totalitarian system led by theives and psycopaths, and butchered millions of its own people. Despite what your local campus Marxists would have you believe, the USSR was actually a far worse imperialist nation than the US has ever been. The right side won the Cold War- deal with it.

As for Iran: does your moral equivalency go as far as condoning the idea of instituting Biblical law in the US, and stoning homosexuals to death? Theocracy isn't an "alternative", it's evil. Iran's citizens deserve better.

Re:freedom as tool

[geekee]

"Secondly, your is not the only negative post so far, and I don't understand it at all."

The explanation is simple. It's popular on /. to bash the US govt. so there will be those who bash what the US govt. does, regardless of whether it's good or bad. You see the same behavior in ultra-liberals whenever there is a conservative in power, and visa-versa.

Re:freedom as tool

[Anonymous Coward]

Free markets feed like vampires feed.

Replace your clue, it's defective.

Re:freedom as tool

[Anonymous Coward]

If you think America promotes freedom at home or abroad you REALLY haven't been paying attention.

Do you know how many brutal dictators the USA has not just supported but actually INSTALLED in countries around the world?

It's not pretty.

I don't believe Axis of Evil nor do I believe Land of the Free or any of the other jingoistic propoganda slogans drilled into kids heads since birth.

Re:freedom as tool

[helix400]

And of course...someone has to mod my last post overrated. They could have modded it offtopic, but they wanted to avoid the Meta-Moderation, so they played it safe.

Hahaha, you ultra liberals crack me up. Your group always supports free speech, except when it's a conservative viewpoint. Then its either ripped apart (as in the anonymous Iranian internet plan), or a conservative comment (then it's modded down -1, without caring if the comment matches the flamebait or overrated description).

Re:freedom as tool

[Metaldsa]

"What is wrong with comments like: 'why just there? why can't we have this as well'? "

Its not so much "why just there" and "why can't we have this as well" but more of the "Iranians have freedoms we don't have."

Some ultra left people here are putting a spin on this and acting like Iranians are living it up with this one web site. The average middle aged male Iranian is getting orally raped everyday in terms of freedom and we throw them a breathmint. Lucky them.

Re:freedom as tool

[Anonymous Coward]

"Hahaha, you ultra liberals crack me up. Your group always supports free speech, except when it's a conservative viewpoint. Then its either ripped apart (as in the anonymous Iranian internet plan), or a conservative comment (then it's modded down -1, without caring if the comment matches the flamebait or overrated description)."

But in the end its all right because they have no real money, no positions of power, and no true ability to change the world. The left can bitch all they want about the US, the rich, and anything else that doesn't go their way. I like to watch their huge protests in the street on TV for 5min on the news. Its inspiring in a whining sort of way.

Re:freedom as tool

[Happy go Lucky]

Iran is a potential threat much in the way that France is or the soviet union was--they present alternatives to our system of running things. The soviet union had to be destroyed because it was a competing system, not because it was evil.

The USSR wasn't the enemy because they were socialists. They were the enemy because they were expansionist mass-murderers.

If we were really trying to suppress the socialists, I imagine the United Kingdom and Sweden would also have been added to the "axis of evil." However, Sweden is mainly a trading partner to us, and the UK is one of our few dependable allies.

Re:freedom as tool

[dvdeug]

Or government doesn't believe all the WMD and nuclear capability stuff any more than I do.

Iran, an oil and natural-gas rich country, is building a nuclear reactor, one step in building nuclear weapons. From another viewpoint, Pakistan, India, Israel and China, all close-by, have nukes; Chinese/Iran relations are shaky, US (the major nuclear power)/Iran relations have no formal relations and informally do a lot of stuff like this, and Israel/Iran relations are potentially explosive. In their shoes, I would be building nukes.

The soviet union had to be destroyed because it was a competing system, not because it was evil.

If the SU was not evil, why were East Germans so happy to be reunited with West Germany? Why did they have to put the Berlin wall up in the first place? If the SU was not evil, why did every government in Eastern Europe fall the instant they looked weak? They didn't come out to support their government; they came out in droves to topple it, in some of the greatest demostrations of mass democracy in history.

The US did a lot of things wrong in the Cold War, but there's no real question that the SU sacrified many innocent people and that the government was held in place by cruelty and power, not the will of the people.

Re:freedom as tool

[ScrewMaster]

Yes, and if anyone believes that the current U.S. Federal Government has actually set up a true anonymizing proxy server for a known totalitarian/terrorist political regime I have a bridge to sell you, cheap. Why would you assume that our government, which now has the power to bypass due process on a whim and spy on its own citizens with impunity, would cheerfully ignore monitoring the datastream from Iran? Any Iranian fool that uses that "anonymous" proxy should expect to have every word he types, every URL he accesses, recorded for posterity. Anonymous my ass. And if squealing on one of those users to the Iranian government would help our government achieve some political or military goal, do you really think they wouldn't do it?

Re:freedom as tool

[ScrewMaster]

Um ... I have news for you ... the Soviet Union was evil. That is, unless you consider unrestrained brutality and the oppression, torture and murder of millions of people who committed no crime other than being born as an acceptable method of governance. You might remember during the turmoil in Russia some years ago during the period when Yeltsin took over, elderly women were hanging signs from their balconies that read, "Eighty years of excrement is enough." Yes, the Soviet Union was, by pretty much every definition of the word, "Evil."

And I might add that France is not now and has never been a threat to the United States or our way of life, although they certainly were a pest at the United Nations recently. Furthermore, pretty much EVERY nation on this planet is an alternative to our way of running things! By your logic we should be invading them all by now.

Iran poses a threat to the extent that many Middle Eastern outfits do: they can, either directly or indirectly, cause interruption in the flow of crude oil into our economy. Otherwise we wouldn't bother with them and would let them go to their hell in their own way. Believe me, if what you were saying is true there are many far worse regimes out there than Iran's that we should be going after. Be we don't bother: they can't hurt us so we leave them alone.

Re:freedom as tool

[zymurgyboy]

I've been following a few of the more response-laden threads in this discussion and couldn't agree more. Wish I was moderating currently. Flamebait this is not. (How long before I get modded OT?) I hope I get a chance to fix this in metamoderation.

In fact, most of the positively moderated posts have been moderated with some heavy anti-Bush bent rather than from the perspective of what moderation is actually meant to be on Slashdot (i.e. moderate things up that contribute positively (informative, interesting, etc.) to the discussion, regardless of weather or not you agree with them). Bravo, moderators. Perhaps you should review the Moderator Guidelines.

iran can just block the service...

[joeldg]

if they just block the service that will take care of the issue right then and there..

Re:iran can just block the service...

[Geopoliticus]

Read the article... "Cottrell and Berman agree that it's only a matter of time before the Iranonymity service winds on the official blacklist. But Berman hints that the U.S. is ready for a prolonged electronic shell game with Tehran. "In China we're continually monitoring the state of the proxy, and when we see the traffic drop off, we change the proxy's address, usually within 24 hours," says Berman. "In Iran, we're prepared to change the proxy address every day if necessary."

I admit, this is kind of a silly game to be playing, but at least they recognize what they need to do to ensure this service is available.

Re:iran can just block the service...

[KjetilK]

In fact, Anonymizer.com is/has been on their blacklist for some time.

Also, when I renewed my EFF membership, the first thing I did was to drop anonymizer.com a note asking if it was anything they could do to undo the damage of the block.

I haven't had a lot good to say about the current US administration, but funding anonymizer for Iranians is a very good move, in fact, I think it is the best thing the US administration has done for Iran and iranians for a very long time.

Re:iran can just block the service...

[joeldg]

I read it..
but the deal is.. blocking can be dynamic..
i.e. your /etc/hosts.deny file does not have to be an IP.. you can add
ALL: *.anonymizer.com
or add in a whole class B if you wanted..
unless anonymizer has a huge number of IP's in various blocks then this would be pretty easy to block..

unless they are doing something totally wacky.. but I am sure they won't release details on exactly how they plan to keep the proxy alive..

blocking works.. just watch what happens when SPEWS gets ahold of a larger domain..

Re:iran can just block the service...

[turg]

I read it..
but the deal is.. blocking can be dynamic..
i.e. your /etc/hosts.deny file does not have to be an IP.. you can add
ALL: *.anonymizer.com

The following quote from the article seems to indicates that they are using a wide variety of hostnames and domain names, registered to many different organizations.

The deliberately generic-sounding URLs for the service are publicized over Radio Farda broadcasts and through bulk e-mails that Anonymizer sends to addresses in the country. The addresses are provided by human rights groups and other sources, says Anonymizer president Lance Cottrell.

Re:iran can just block the service...

[Anonymous Coward]

what does renewing your EFF membership have to do with dropping anonymizer.com a note?

Or did you just want to tell us you are an EFF member?

There's not much else in your post, and apparently no response to your "note."

Re:iran can just block the service...

[Geopoliticus]

True, blocking can be dynamic. I would assume that they have taken this into consideration... Then again, this is the US Government we're talking about here! ;-)

All in all, this seams like a stupid game to be playing... Iranian users should just use some sort of distributed network like freenet...

Re:iran can just block the service...

[Anonymous Coward]

in fact, I think it is the best thing the US administration has done for Iran and iranians for a very long time.

Good thing Iranians got to vote him in as president. Wait a second, isn't he our president?

Re:iran can just block the service...

[KjetilK]

You get a trial membership to Anonymizer.com if you donate more than $25 to EFF. No, that wasn't my primary point.

this is great....

[fusion94]

now they can surf anonymously and determine the best way to build improvised explosive devices or whatnot.

they also will get the benefit of goatse.cx

Re:this is great....

[nitehawk214]

now they can surf anonymously and determine the best way to build improvised explosive devices or whatnot.

I'm sure this was meant to be a joke, but last I checked the average joe Iranian is not building bombs or trying to destroy the capalitist west.

Re:this is great....

[Anonymous Coward]

Make goatse.cx the default page for the anonymizer service.

Re:this is great....

[fusion94]

actually it was typed tongue in cheek......but otoh...how does anyone other than the "average joe iranian" know what the "average joe iranian" is up to. :)

Re:this is great....

[Anonymous Coward]

That's the liberals job

Re:this is great....

[nitehawk214]

Actually my comment would have been better if I knew an average Iranian name.

Re:this is great....

[xenolaeus]

In subsequent news, intercepted logs from the Iranian Censorship Department show that goatse.cx was never censored in the first place. Kinky.

Re:this is great....

[randyest]

now they can surf anonymously and determine the best way to build improvised explosive devices or whatnot.

No, I'm pretty sure the Iranian government wasn't blocking sites with bomb-making tips since those are so useful for the, er, "cause". In fact, the fine article says:

[Iranian] government ministers issued a blacklist of 15,000 forbidden "immoral" websites that ISPs in the country must block -- reportedly a mix of adult sites and political news and information outlets

So, they were blocking porn and news, but no mention of bomb-making-R-us.com.

they also will get the benefit of goatse.cx

Hmm, wrong again:

Like the Iranian filters, the U.S. service blocks porn sites -- "There's a limit to what taxpayers should pay for," says Berman.

Perhaps most interesting is this little tidbit, which seems to be saying anonymizer.com, and by extension, the US gubmint, is spamming Iran to get the word out:

The deliberately generic-sounding URLs for the service are publicized over Radio Farda broadcasts and through bulk e-mails that Anonymizer sends to addresses in the country. The addresses are provided by human rights groups and other sources, says Anonymizer president Lance Cottrell.

Awesome!

[Lane.exe]

So potential Iranian terrorists can now go snooping around the net anonymously while the average American citizen is liable to be scrutinized by John Ashcroft... all courtesy of the American government! I'm so glad I live in a world that makes sense!

Re:Awesome!

[Anonymous Coward]

we have no more freedom of speach!! just the other day, i was cramming my hyper-liberal views down someones throat, and they dared to question my ideals!! how repressivly close minded is america!!

Re:Awesome!

[Maditude]

Sure, it's anonymous to the Iranian government, but the outfit running the anonymizer has some highly detailed logs to use for intelligence purposes...

Re:Awesome!

[DorkHead]

You don't really think that this will be anonymous to the US Government?
Ofcourse they will have access to the logs from anonymizer(They did, after all, fun it). What they ,in reality, have here, is a nice little proxy server that can log every action from any person coming from the "correct" IP's.
And as a sidenote. Now that they are in bed with Anonymizer, how anonymous is their service for the rest of the world now?

Re:Awesome!

[Anonymous Coward]

You all don't really think that this anon service doesn't already have backdoors built in for our feds to watch what they surf....

I'm sure it's already bugged.

Re:Awesome!

[Anonymous Coward]

If you think you're important enough to be personally scrutinized by John Ashcroft, perhaps a dose of reality needs to be infused.

Re:Awesome!

[Kjella]

Anonymous from iranian censoring. I'm sure it'll record more than enough data for foreign intelligence... No need to deal with any pesky search and seizure amendments and such, though from what I understand they've pretty done away with those in the US too if you whisper "suspected terrorist"...

Kjella

Re:Awesome!

[agrippa_cash]

They are anonymous to their government, probably not to ours.

Re:Awesome!

[randyest]

potential Iranian terrorists can now go snooping around the net anonymously

Eh? Why are they potential terrorists? You do it and it's "surfing" or "browsing", they do it and they're "snooping"? What, is it now your personal private internet or something?

the average American citizen is liable to be scrutinized by John Ashcroft

Total FUD. The average American is most certanly not "liable to be scrutinized by John Ashcroft". That's so far from reality that it doesn't even warrant this response, but I used my last mod point in the last thread, so I have no choice but to post to point out how stupid your post was. Sigh.

Re:Awesome!

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently you don't understand.

Re:Awesome!

[Anonymous Coward]

You need to take that thought a step farther. If the US Goverment is funding this then I doubt they are only buying Anonymous surfing for Iranians. They (US Govt) probably has the true source addresses of the users and the content viewed logged for later analysis.

Re:Awesome!

[isorox]

The average american isnt, however the average american certainly can, and wont know about it.

Of course, the Iranians can see traffic routed to anonymiser.com via their border routers, as well as block it. The only true anonymizer would be

1) Distributed, bit torrent style, with different requests bounced through 3 or 4 anonymisers in a random order
2) Secure and encrypted

Therefore, even if you run an anonymizer, you dont know the true source and half the time you dont know the true destination, and you cant sniff the packets either.

Re:Awesome!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but that guy that works for Ashcroft that you cut off on the highway yesterday got your plates, used that to get more info, and found some very "interesting" surfing habits.

Re:Awesome!

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope you mean that as a joke ;) Cause, weren't you doing the same? :P

Re:Awesome!

[ComputerSlicer23]

Well, geez, if the US gov't didn't want us to see it, they'd just get the site shut down. Iran can't pull that off, so instead they just block all access.

Oh, and I'm not sure that the US gov't doesn't get access to the anonymozier logs. I think Anonymizer is supposedly pretty miltant about logs. I know there are several others out there that are pretty up front with the facts that they don't keep logs, and if you don't have a court order don't even ask to bother asking if you can look for the logs that don't exist.

Kirby

When will Americans need it for copyright?

[Thinkit3]

If a country decides to abolish copyright, we'll be forced to block all traffic, right? So we'll be the ones needing anti-censorship proxies then.

Re:When will Americans need it for copyright?

[Sphere1952]

Now.

Aren't you running a Freenet node yet?

tinfoil hat warning

[selderrr]

hmm.. if the gov starts 'sponsoring' (I read that as 'directing') privacy organisation, I can not imagine anonymizer being allowed to ditch logfiles. Imho this is yeat-another-echelon-app.
Also, the fact that 'the company' agreed probably means they agree to a whole bunch of other terms to, which might include log-access to non-iranian surfers.

Fight the system.

[Anonymous Coward]

Could some Iranian please set up a proxy so that we can bounce back and use anonymizer for free. Thanks :-)

Re:Fight the system.

[The Cydonian]

Heheh, my thoughts exactly!

On a more serious note folks, this proxy thing has real uses. You see, many people out here have now started to search for free, open proxy servers, after getting rapped in the knees by the RIAA/MPAA-equivalent organisations (as I mentioned earlier). Which, of course, is a very logical thing to do; after all, if they're tracing your IP address, you want to obfuscate as much as possible, just to ensure the entertainment supply lines stay intact.

Just this:- as my friend in Shanghai tells me, this is exactly what they do to avoid government censors there. Which, again, is not quite surprising; I do believe that /. itself ran a story on proxy servers for China. But you never thought we would have to follow their footsteps, did you?

P2P Version?

[tony1c]

So where's the p2p version of this software? Seriously...

Re:P2P Version?

[zeroclip]

A P2P proxy? hey thats actually a great idea! just add RSA encryption!

Re:P2P Version?

[EvilNTUser]

" So where's the p2p version of this software? Seriously..."

Sourceforge

Yes, yes, I know it's not *exactly* the same...

Banking?

[Pinkoir]

Yikes...I read the title and thought that the US was helping Iranians launder money...that would represent quite the policy shift eh?

-Pinkoir

So now I just need to ...

[burgburgburg]

spoof an Iranian I.P. address and convince babelfish to translate Farsi and I'm so there! Who'd imagine that GWB would pay to keep me safe from Ashcroft?

Muwahahahahahahahaha

Re:So now I just need to ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, anyone in the US attempting to connect to a server in iran probably gets flagged for suspicious activity in a log somewhere.

Dupe

[Anonymous Coward]

http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/08/27/19 36257

Topsy Turvy.

[Malcontent]

The US is going to institute a national health care program for Iraq, a nationalized educational system for iraq, govt controlled water and power monopolies for Iraq, anonymous surfing for the Iranians.

How come these things are not good enough for US

Re:Topsy Turvy.

[selderrr]

The US is going to institute a national health care program for Iraq, a nationalized educational system for iraq, govt controlled water and power monopolies for Iraq, anonymous surfing for the Iranians.

Em... that's what they promise. Wake up and smell the cofee, dude. If iraq is ever gonna get such stuff, they'll have to stamp it out themselves. And if the US is ever gonna build it, it will be for the powers that be (i.e. the US oil buddies), not for the ordinary people. ALL aid-oranisations agree on the fact that for your above criteria iraq is worse off under US control than under Saddams control.

Re:Topsy Turvy.

[EMH_Mark3]

Maybe they want to test those ideas in a country noone cares about first?

Re:Topsy Turvy.

[JustAnotherReader]

The US is going to institute a national health care program for Iraq, a nationalized educational system for iraq, govt controlled water and power monopolies for Iraq,

Well, you already pay close to 50% of your income in taxes (add it up. Federal income tax, State tax, Property tax, Sales tax, Gasoline tax, Usage tax and on and on). So yeah, why don't we just give all our money to the government so they can dish out services back to the people.

Just in case you're a democrat and think this is a good idea I should explain that this is sarcasm.

Re:Topsy Turvy.

[Nept]

because ... the US is paying for those things for Iraq. It's not coming out of the Iraqi income tax. We don't have those in the US, because most of us don't want a government that big, with all the associated increases in taxes and headaches that come along with it.

Re:Topsy Turvy.

[fatray]

I am an American who lives in a country that has all those things. The US system is far better. There are waiting lists here for all medical procedures--people with conditions that would get immediate surgury in the US are told to go home and we'll call you in a month or two. Of course if that chest pain gets a lot worse, we can move you up the list.

I've told my friends: If I'm really sick, don't take me to the hospital, take me to the airport.

Re:Topsy Turvy.

[Shelrem]

And here in the US if you've got the cash, you're golden, but if you don't, when that chest pain gets worse, well, we'll give you the cheapest heart operation that's legal.

Both types of healthcare have problems. It's my belief that a national healthcare system is less fundementally broken, but neither is perfect.

To me, the only way i can justify fully privatized healthcare is if i accept that a human is worth her current funds plus her future earning potential. I have yet to make that jump.

b.c

Re:Topsy Turvy.

[KenSeymour]

I don't pay 50% of my income in taxes. I don't mind paying about 8 bucks a year (the portion that goes to USDA) to have food inspected so I don't
get sick eating meat I buy in the store.
I don't mind paying taxes to have the government take care of national parks so that they are there for this and future generations.
I don't mind paying property tax (and yes I do) to pay for police and fire that risk their lives to protect us and teachers to educate those around me in public schools and universities.
I think it is a great investment.

I do, however, find it ironic that the party in power at the federal level thinks that
government (ours) should pay to improve the Iraqi national infrastructure (including electrical power generation)
but thinks that the domestic infrastructure should be privatized and de-regulated.

Just in case you are a Replican and exagerrate our tax burden and discount the benefits.

Re:Topsy Turvy.

[arkane1234]

Add it up... that is, if you spend your money. It may be less if you horde it into a mutual fund or some other tax deferment.

Let's take a nice round number likd 50K a year. That's around 4000 a month before taxes.
Take 30% off of that for state/federal/FICA/Medicare/Social Security. (it depends on how many dependants you have and so forth, so just stay with me) Let's round it down to 25% just for safe numbers.

$1,200 skimmed from the top of your check a month, that's alot.
Now, for the real sticker shock. Everything you buy is then taxed. Let's take Pennsylvania sales tax: I think it's 6% now? (nice national average too) Say you buy $200-$300 of stuff at the store, which isn't alot for a month. Another $12-$18 bucks in taxes. You go to buy gas, and that is an extaordinary amount of tax attached to it that is completely hidden in the cost. Normal fill-up: 12 gallons average. For every gallon of fuel pumped there is at least a .12 tax already on it. At the very least. So that's another 1.44 in taxes for a tank of gas. Most average about a tank a week, going back and forth to work, so that's 4 tanks of gas, $5.76 total. Then, you have the tax on your car, which is some wierd abstraction of numbers that is never quite the same. Most newer cars are in the HUNDREDS of dollars per year just to own them. A rather cheap car my wife owns, a 98 Mercury Tracer with a market value of $4,500 had a tax of around $300 this past year. My 91 Mercury Capri ($2000 market value), $75 bucks. That's yearly, just for owning it. If I purchased the car through a legal company, I would have been charged $170 just in taxes alone for driving it away. Heaven forbid you should fall upon hard times, because the money that is "given" to you by the government which they call Unemployment Insurance Compensation is also taxed. If your feeling up on your luck, 40% (or more) of any gambling earnings (lotto also) goes to the government. Heaven fobid someone dies, and there is stuff left over. Inheritance tax is very harsh, also.... 40-60%. Everything you do is taxed!

How can you exagerrate it, I can't even speak loud enough about it.
I know other countries have it worse, but I for one don't look at a fire and feel lucky I'm only being branded.

Just in case your an idio and don't realize.

Re:Topsy Turvy.

[Malcontent]

Why should I have to pay more. You'd think health care was more important then shiny new bombers and invading foreign countries.

Re:Topsy Turvy.

[Malcontent]

In the US the hospitals don't turn you back if you don't have insurance. However if you ever get sick and don't have insurance you will have to declare bankrupcy afterwards.

You get healed buy you are broke and have no credit afterwards.

Re:Topsy Turvy.

[Anonymous Coward]

Our medical care where I live in the US always denies I need the proceedure. If it's not going to kill me tomorrow, I have to kick and fight for months and sometimes years to get anyone to help. It took me three years of heavy coughing before I found a doctor who said I have asthma. Now the coughing is mostly going, but I'm paying a fortune for drugs. Waiting lists and the truth is something I could handle.

Re:Topsy Turvy.

[fatray]

We're getting way off topic here, but:

Under the system here everybody gets the cheapest possible bypass, unless they have cash to go to a private hospital or overseas. My company has employee health insurance, but it is nearly worthless (though plenty expensive to the company) and the government taxes that benefit at 69% to discourage private insurance and push people into the government system. I'm no expert on health care, but my observation is that indigents in the US get better health care than the 95% of the people here that use the government system.

I take naproxin for a chronic inflamation. I can buy a bottle of 220 mg tabs at Costco for about US$0.04/tab. Here, they are about US$0.50/tab for a lower mg tab and they will only sell me 30 at a time. The government claims they are subsidizing this drug and they might be, because it is locally produced by in a small plant that has no economies of scale and even less QA. I, of course, but a year's supply when I visit the US. Other drugs are similarly costly, even taking into account the government subsidy.

The US private system looks bad when compared to an idealized, imaginary government system, but looks great when compared to any real government system.

Re:Topsy Turvy.

[geekee]

" The US is going to institute a national health care program for Iraq, a nationalized educational system for iraq, govt controlled water and power monopolies for Iraq, anonymous surfing for the Iranians."

The want Iraqi oil to pay for these luxuries. That said, US public schools are essentially nationalzed all the way through University. US utilities are already essentially nationalized since it's a govt. regulated monopoly. Nationalized health care would be a big mistake for either country. Aside from that, the US system and the plan for Iraq are not all that different. The only difference is where the money comes from to pay for it.

Re:Topsy Turvy.

[KenSeymour]

I forgot to mention. I went to public schools. I went to a public college.
I got federal grants and state grants to go to college.

So now that my degree and experience allows me to have a high income, I don't mind paying state and federal taxes so other people
can have the same opportunity.
I figure while they are studying hard and later getting their high income,
they won't be stealing my hubcaps.
Maybe they will write a book or a play someday that I will enjoy, or invent some really cool technology.

Perhaps it doesn't depend so much on what party you belong to.
Maybe it depends on whether you are always noticing what others take from you rather than what others give to you.

>
> Just in case your an idio and don't realize.
>

Oh, and one other thing. I learned to touch type in a public school.

Re:Topsy Turvy.

[Malcontent]

Huh?

You don't mind paying for health care for iraqis but don't want to pay for health care for your own countrymen?

Re:Topsy Turvy.

[Malcontent]

There are lots of people who get no health care. Who simply die on the street and are swept up by the cities. It's tragic but true.

Also many people are forced to commit bankrupcy as a result of a hospital visit. They lose their credit and any ability to live a normal life.

BTW what country do you live in. A lot of US citizens travel to Mexico and Canada to buy cheaper drugs.

Re:Topsy Turvy.

[Loundry]

There are lots of people who get no health care. Who simply die on the street and are swept up by the cities. It's tragic but true.

Likewise, I can claim that baby-eating vultures swoop out of the sky snatching infants from their mothers' arms and then add, "It's tragic but true." It's the evidence, not my easy-to-fabricate claims which make something believable. Care to pony up some evidence for your claim? I want to see news reports of someone who died in the street due to a failure in the U.S. health system and then was subsequently swept up by the city.

Also many people are forced to commit bankrupcy as a result of a hospital visit. They lose their credit and any ability to live a normal life.

Likewise, many illegal aliens and deadbeats abuse the law which states that no ER can turn anyone away. They have medical care and then choose not to pay. The hospital has no other choice but to raise the bills of their customers who can pay. This causes insurance premiums to rise. I'd bet that for every sob story there are ten deadbeats and losers who are ready and willing to abuse the system at the expense of those who earn money.

A lot of US citizens travel to Mexico and Canada to buy cheaper drugs.

Perhaps you'd be interested in knowing why drugs are cheaper in other countries. It's because other countries have laws that regulate how much profit a (foreign) drug manufacturer can make on drugs. This limits the mount of money that U.S. drug manufacturers can charge in foreign countries while, in the U.S., they can charge whatever they want to due to absense of such laws. The Americans end up bearng the burden of the drug companies R&D, as their R&D is directly related to their profits. The Canadians (and Americans who buy drugs in Canada) get a free ride in that regard.

Re:Topsy Turvy.

[Malcontent]

"are to pony up some evidence for your claim? I want to see news reports of someone who died in the street due to a failure in the U.S. health system and then was subsequently swept up by the city."

Every year in every large city in a cold place (detroit, chicago, New York) lots of people die from the cold. They take shelter in the subways and such when they can but inevitably some die and the city comes by and picks up their bodies. It happens all the time.

"They have medical care and then choose not to pay."

If you get hit by a car and end up in the emergency room your medical bill will be in the tens of thousands of dollars. If you need rehab then it could be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Normal people can't pay those kinds of bills so the hospital asks them to declare bankrupcy so they can hit up the state for the bill.

It's broken health care system.

"Perhaps you'd be interested in knowing why drugs are cheaper in other countries. "

No I would not be interested. I was simply pointing out that your point about drugs being more expensive outside the US was false. If the other countries have found a way to burden the US citizens with the cost their drugs more power to them.

Re:Topsy Turvy.

[Nept]

uh...no. I don't want to pay for either.

Re:Topsy Turvy.

[arkane1234]

Perhaps it doesn't depend so much on what party you belong to.
Maybe it depends on whether you are always noticing what others take from you rather than what others give to you.

I believe you are right. Or maybe it's just realizing the whole scope of the environment.


> Just in case your an idio and don't realize.
>

Oh, and one other thing. I learned to touch type in a public school.

Yeah, what a coincidence, so did I. It was on those old IBM typewriters, didn't you love them? :) Graduating to Apple IIe keyboards felt so good after that.
Missing a key does not make a person a nontypist.

Re:Topsy Turvy.

[Loundry]

Every year in every large city in a cold place (detroit, chicago, New York) lots of people die from the cold. They take shelter in the subways and such when they can but inevitably some die and the city comes by and picks up their bodies. It happens all the time.

I didn't ask you to repeat your anecdote. I asked you for evidence.

Normal people can't pay those kinds of bills so the hospital asks them to declare bankrupcy so they can hit up the state for the bill.

I need to clear up a problem first. My statement you are responding to is, "They have medical care and choose not to pay", and the "they" that I am referring to are people who use the ER as a free health care system knowing that the ER, under law, cannot refuse treatment. I should have written, "They receive medical care with no intention of paying and then proceed to make good on their intention", as it is a better explanation of my point.

Now that I got that out of the way, I'll point out that you didn't respond to it. I am talking about deadbeats who abuse that law and cause insurance premiums to rise for those who can pay. Care to comment?

It's broken health care system.

I think I would call the US health system "imperfect", as it can be improved upon. (For instance, I do not think that government should mandate that insurance pay for pregnancy-related and delivery-related medical costs.) I think you prefer the word "broken" because you think that health care should be turned over to the government which is currently doing such a stellar job with the War on Some Drugs, Social Security, the Postal Service, and childhood education.

No I would not be interested. I was simply pointing out that your point about drugs being more expensive outside the US was false.

The post you replied to was my first entry into this thread. I never argued that drugs are more expensive outside the US. You have me confused with someone else.

If the other countries have found a way to burden the US citizens with the cost their drugs more power to them.

Are you arguing that it is good that US citizens should be burdened with the cost of drug research while non-US citizens should get a free ride? If so, the I would like to understand your logic behind this claim.

Might be a good reason

[RealisticWeb.com]

I know everyone will jump to conclusions about this, but before everyone shouts foul and hypocricy, consider that there might actually be a good reason for this!

My guess is that U.S. Millitary special ops who are undercover need to be able to safely communicate back home with out fear of being discovered by the local government. This could also be a big benifit to anyone who is trying to escape to freedom to coordinate things with relitives back home.

Re:Might be a good reason

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh you rode the short bus

How does this help?

[Jason1729]

The spies in the Iranian government can still see who is connecting to the anonymizing service, so they'll be able to treat them as harshly as if they accessed the "worst" possible sites.

Jason
ProfQuotes

Holy crap...

[elwoodblues16]

Holy crap, an arguably good and appropriate use of tax dollars. What is this administration coming to?

Ever-changing IP

[JMZero]

Apparently, the thing is set up to monitor when traffic dips (likely due to blocking), and they will change to a different IP - daily if necessary.

It'll still be possible to block, but it will be a continuous arms race.

Re:Ever-changing IP

[damiam]

If if Iran doesn't know aht to block, how would people know how to get to the service?

Re:Ever-changing IP

[BoneFlower]

So Iran blocks the domain name.

If the IP is constantly changing, and the domain is blocked, how do the people that are supposed to use it find it?

privacy for US users?

[cpeterso]

We now need someone to create a system that lets US users tunnel INTO Iran so we can use Iran's privacy protection (funded by the US gub'mint) to protect US users from the US gub'mints warrantless TIA Big Brother spy programs.

Why only Iran

[geekmetal]

This month Anonymizer began providing Iranians with free access to a Web proxy service designed to circumvent their government's online censorship efforts. In May, government ministers issued a blacklist of 15,000 forbidden "immoral" websites that ISPs in the country must block -- reportedly a mix of adult sites and political news and information outlets. An estimated two million Iranians have Internet access.

Why doesn't the US do the same for the Chinese people? Last I heard their government had bolcked off google! (correct me if that is wrong). Is it because the US wants to trade with China but doesn't care for the business Iran can provide? Where is the true spirit of freedom?

Re:Why only Iran

[masouds]

RTFA: they are doing it for china too, their IP changes at most 24 hours after a drop in traffic, and they want to do the same thing in Iran.

Re:Why only Iran

[Anonymous Coward]

Because Iran is on the brink of another revolution there. The youth comming of age their don't give a crap about the Theocrates that run the country and those same officials are scared. Keep up on the news. There are VERY exciting things there. I might add that this is bascially the internet version of Radio Free Europe.

Re:Why only Iran

[HeghmoH]

I just got back from China two weeks ago and I never found a site that was blocked. Maybe they just monitor and pay you a visit if you visit too many subversive sites? But I had no trouble getting to google, slashdot, CNN, what have you. Perhaps there are more obscure sites that are blocked, I don't know.

I'm conflicted

[BiggerIsBetter]

Yay for giving Iranians open internet access. Boo for the USA undermining Yet Another Government's authority.

Re:I'm conflicted

[GypC]

Is there some moral dilemma in your mind with undermining the authority of a totalitarian regime that is hated by its own people?

Re:I'm conflicted

[Anonymous Coward]

Hurray for undermining the enemies of the United States.

Re:I'm conflicted

[BiggerIsBetter]

Heh, I love the way it's called a "regime" when it's Bad and a government or similar when it's Good. Looks like some of the Iraq propaganda stuck...

That aside, yes, there is a moral dilemma in that. If the Chinese government was subversivly trying to manipulate the toughts and actions of the Dutch, in an effort to make them see that communismn is the right way to live and to inspire them to overthrow their leaders, would that be ok? No, it wouldn't. But if communism was the "right" way to live, maybe you'd be all for that course of action? I sure wouldn't because it's messing with another soverign nation's domestic business.

You point about it being totalitarian is fair, hated by it's own people may be too extreme, but that's where the conflict arises from: Free thinking Iranians is good - Foreign power fucking with Iran's internal situation is bad.

Re:I'm conflicted

[GypC]

Western capitalists respect the concept of the Individual and his right to be free of an arbitrary State taking his hard earned Money. People come to America to be rich capitalists because it's better than being poor communists.

The 20th century clearly demonstrated that communism, and it's totalitarian cousins fascism and priest-ridden-oligarchy, lead to starvation and genocide, while free markets keep the western democracies well-fed and productive.

Re:I'm conflicted

[BiggerIsBetter]

I think you read too much into my mention of communism, but oh well...

I'm sure things are much better in the United States of America, but the Government of my Western capitalist country (NZ) takes over half of my earnings through taxation of varies sorts. Employee PAYE takes about 33%, then pretty much everything I buy has 12.5% GST on it. Lots of products like petrol and alcohol have additional taxes built into their base price too. Governments still take your money, they're just a bit smarter about how they do it - try not paying the IRS, you'll have your possesions taken, be bankrupted, or be thrown in pound-me-in-the-ass prison faster than you can imagine.

Free markets are only as free as the Governments that control them let them be. The US free market is a classic example - it's actually remarkably un-free if you're trying to sell into the country, while pressuring foreign states to allow ready US access to their markets. Don't be naive - free markets aren't that cut-and-dried.

And of course, totalitarianism generally doesn't work either, at least not above a certain size. Cuba gets along not too bad for example, but that's really an exception. Mugabes little game is a nice example of one man's ability to screw a country, and at the other extreme of the scale China has some particularly bad scenes going on there (a lot of good too of course). China is at least trying to fix things, but seems held back by it's need to save face and generally try to deny it's bad side. I'd say they need many years to get there...

Either extreme doesn't work - free-ish markets with moderate controls seems to be the currently successful approach.

Go to Anonymizer = Death for an iranian

[j_dot_bomb]

Iran isnt as bad as it used to be from what I have read, but surely ISP's there could have a record of this and the Anonymizer site could be one of them. It is reasonable to assume they will execute a few just for using connecting there at all.

Dancing with the devil

[lildogie]

It amuses me that, while anonymizers would likely be condemned as a tool of terrorism by the National Security State in the US, the same spooks use anonymizers as a weapon against their counterparts of old Iraq.

On second thought, it depresses me.

Re:Dancing with the devil

[evilviper]

It's not amusing or depressing... It's not coincidental, or ironic.

US citizens having tanks would be considered a tool of terrorism, but the US uses them all the time. Same goes for M-16s, body armor, and a million other examples.

It's a fact of life that any dangerous weapon belonging to US citizens is considered a weapon of extremeists that want to overthrow the government, while that weapon is quite useful to the government itself. That's just how things work. Look at cryptography as well... Plenty of bad uses, as well as good.

Re:Dancing with the devil

[turg]

No, it makes perfect sense -- in both cases they believe that the anonymizer is a tool for those who want to overthrow their own government.

Hey - this is cool!

[jabbadabbadoo]

"Hey, /. is very cool

Best regards, Iranian under fatwa, Surfing anonymously"

Great software!

[Anonymous Coward]

http://humorix.org/articles/mar99/prevention-kit.s html

proxy tool for US propaganda?

[Anonymous Coward]

why dont they sponsor anonymous access for their own citizens?? its extremely ironic that they are saying iranians should get "anonymous" access but at the same time there is proposed legislation trying to limit americans' anonymous access and invade the privacy of americans...

will this be used for propaganda? will the US censor their access? and if they did, wouldn't they be hypocrites to say only american citizens should have freedom of speech and freedom of press etc?

pr0n is still filtered...

[joggle]

As the article states "There's a limit to what taxpayers should pay for."

Internet and freedom of speech in Iran.

[masouds]

Internet caught publicity in Iran after a reformist-papers crackdown in April 2000 caused pretty much all of groups go online and start their own sites and fill them with behind-the-scenes-news/gossip as it couldn't be censored. After that, people started to have blogs on free blog hosting sites: (blogspot.com and others). Blogging made conservatives more unhappy about whole internet thing as they saw it a means which west uses to import Pornographic material into Iranian society; They forced ISP's to install filters and get lists of banned IP's from Ministry of communicatios and started to bring all points of contact to internet under government control. As far as I know, they simply redirect all requests to 'evil' IP numbers to a non-existent device (and they use CISCO equipment. thank you cisco!), which simply makes all other shared virtual hosts inaccessible.
Kudos to them for making this service publicly available. Although most of youngsters would start visiting porn sites with this service, there exist a few good men that would use this site to do good.
Oh, BTW I've heard that they are in middle of a deal to import equipment-most likely cisco routers and stuff which would inspect each packets' content. I hope people can use strong cryptography over there too.
Oh, it is a duplicate post! duh!

Mod parent up

[j_dot_bomb]

perfect comment on this.

And it's **STILL** censored!

[morcheeba]

Mostly unfettered. Like the Iranian filters, the U.S. service blocks porn sites -- "There's a limit to what taxpayers should pay for," says Berman.

So, the object is to provide Iranians with access to political sites that the Iranian government wants blocked. As a taxpayer, I want to know what filter is being used, and what political sites are still being blocked.

Re:And it's **STILL** censored!

[Anonymous Coward]

Tough shit, it's a matter of national security.

What's next for the communist United States Corp?

[Anonymous Coward]

WTF!

United States Corporation, spending tax dollars on what the tax dollars weren't supposed to be spent upon. I suppose, they only OVER-TAX people so they can spend the money elsewhere. That is against Taxation without Representation. If the Iranians wanted a U.S.-sponsored Iranian Proxy, then they should give to Caezar what is Caezar's (Pay taxes to receive services from U.S. Corporation). But then again, since when did the fucking United States Corporation start competing with the private sector?

What is next?

Free micro-condomns to prevent grasshoppers from overpopulating swarming like they did in Egypt by leet haxin crax0r Moses?

Ahh

[Anonymous Coward]

Ahh the benifits of living under a totalitarian regime :D

Perhaps

[mao che minh]

Appeasing a country that exists on the brink of failure with nearly $100,000,000 might not sound very intriguing or intelligent at first glance. When you take the time to factor in what it might mean if you allow them to continue making nuclear weapons, and how catasrophic a war with them would be (which is no doubt what it would eventually escalate too) in order to prevent them from using them, well than $95,000,000 doesn't sound so bad anymore. In fact, $95,000,000 sound a lot cheaper then the lives of 8,000-10,0000 US service men.

Politics go beyond embargos and wars. With North Korea, it's going to be a game of chess, not checkers.

Re:Perhaps

[saden1]

With North Korea, it's going to be a game of chess, not checkers.

Hay, don't knock checkers! It is a thinking man's game too.

Re:Perhaps

[Vlad_the_Inhaler]

The problem with the Appeasement in the 1930's (which had no financial payments to Hitler, just reparation relief) was that it simply did not work. Hitler saw it as weakness and made new plans.
If $95,000,000 stops a war and allows a new situation to develop where the N Koreans are not developing Nukes, then it is money well spent. If it is not going to stop them, then it is worse than just money down the drain.

Previous administrations understood this and made their messages to the N Korean leadership very clear and unambiguous. I personally do not trust this one to even recognise it's own best interests, let alone convey them to PyongYang or even Tehran. The Axis of Evil speech and the subsequent invasion of Iraq mean that the N Koreans can assume that they are next. That is not the way to get them to cooperate. Money is a side-issue, it is trust that is missing.

Re:Perhaps

[SEE]

Clear and unambiguous? Yep:

In 1994 we paid North Korea to stop nuclear development.

In 1996 the CIA reported that North Korea had resumed nuclear development.

For the next four years, we continued sending the North Koreans money.

Yes, the message from Clinton was clear and unambiguous. "If you don't make a political problem for me, I'll keep paying you."

Re:Perhaps

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually we never paid them. We delivered some oil, but we didn't keep our part of the bargian. The republicans thought blow jobs were more important than the political and economic stability of asia. So they refused to appropriate the money for the un-weaponizable reactors.

In short, north korea promised to break with their 50 year tradition of brinksmanship, provided we supplied economic and technical assistance. The republicans decided not to hornor that agreement, and then added North Korea to the top of the shit list, and now wonder why they went back to doing what's worked for 50 years.

I don't even have a Phd in international relations, and could see this one comming. And then on top of it, they launched a war, making the situation that much more favorable for North Korea's particular brand of diplomacy. Idiots.

Re:Perhaps

[TheCrazyFinn]

Actually they did end up providing the cash for the reactors. After years of congress putting it off (And the administration not even trying to push the issue), the cash was allocated in 2000, and the prelude to construction started. Of course, these reactors would do no good, as N.K. doesn't have the grid to actually distibute the power from the reactors.

It was more than a little oil, more like a half million barrels a year.

Frankly both parties dropped the ball during the 90's (Clinton for trying the buyoff on a country which has never respected treaties, and the Republicans for blocking a program that might possibly have helped and couldn't have hurt).

Bush's program seems to be 'Make the Chinese deal with it', which, with the Chinese left as the only group still propping up Kim, and the country with the most to lose from both the status quo and a N.K. Collapse, and who've continually tried to get the US to deal with the issue, is probably the best course.

Check out http://denbeste.nu for some very good essays on the issue, and what's at stake.

Active bloggers

[KjetilK]

Funny, I just started using Anonymizer.com today, after renewing my EFF membership.

For those who haven't discovered, Iran has a very vibrant community of bloggers, for those interested, start at Hoder's blog.

I haven't had a lot good to say about the current US administration, but funding anonymizers is an excellent move, that may help a lot of people.

However, it may become a rat-race between the anonymizing services and the Iranian authorities, who will try to block it.

Any suggestions how the anonymizers will win that?

Anarchist's Cookbook?

[siskbc]

So potential Iranian terrorists can now go snooping around the net anonymously

Sounds like a good way to get rid of them. Hell, I say we have VoA directly link to the anarchist's cookbook. Get rid of 20 terrorists an hour that way.

What about China?

[Stargoat]

The real question is, when are they going to create such a thing for China? China has their Great Firewall.

Or is China just too large of a trading partner, even if they have the world's largest oppressed population and a navy designed to defeat the United States.

Re:What about China?

[Shenkerian]

This comment isn't interesting; it's ignorant. From the article:

The service is similar to one Anonymizer provided to Chinese citizens under a previous government contract that ran-out ended earlier this year.

Cottrell and Berman agree that it's only a matter of time before the Iranonymity service winds on the official blacklist. But Berman hints that the U.S. is ready for a prolonged electronic shell game with Tehran. "In China we're continually monitoring the state of the proxy, and when we see the traffic drop off, we change the proxy's address, usually within 24 hours," says Berman.

RTFA.

Re:What about China?

[ptudor]

RTFA. Quote: " The service is similar to one Anonymizer provided to Chinese citizens under a previous government contract that ran-out ended earlier this year."

Re:What about China?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, it is already being done in China, on a much larger scale and with a lot more money behind it.
See this CNET article

Re:What about China?

[Guppy06]

"Or is China just too large of a trading partner,"

The main problem isn't PNTR, it's Beijing pegging the yuan to the US dollar. It's kind of hard to undercut somebody's prices when their price is "50% of whatever he's charging."

Re:What about China?

[NavySpy]

No kidding. Talk about a place that needs more freedom.

One step at a time, I suppose.

Now the U.S. is able to

[krahd]

start bombing an(other) uncensored country!

hooray!

Lance in bed with the enemy?

[RobertB-DC]

I think the thing that worries me most is this: does accepting government money compromise Anonymizer's integrity?

A poster on the previous article on this subject (surely it's not just a dupe...) pointed out that Anonymizer is, in a way, a single-point-of-failure for the something-to-hide community. Without the Anonymizer, one out of a bazillion ISP's might have information about your surfing habits. With Anonymizer, all the "potentially hazardous" surfing is right there in one place.

I've never heard anything but good about Lance Cottrell, and I'd happily trust his service if I don't want my ISP to track me should I decide to visit autopr0n.com some lonely night. But even he must have limits -- would he shut down Anonymizer before allowing the FBI to put a sniffer on it? Would he even be able to do so if he wanted to?

One paranoid view (the one I put in the "gotcha" subject line) would be that Cottrell trades "protection" from the Feds for a direct line from Iran to the CIA. Like Lando Calrissian, Lance Cottrell could have found a way to take care of "imperial entanglements" once and for all.

Lando Calrissian: You said they'd be left at the city under my supervision.
Darth Vader: I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further.

Re:Lance in bed with the enemy?

[GypC]

There are dozens, if not hundreds, of anonymizing proxies.

Re:Lance in bed with the enemy?

[xleeko]

There are dozens, if not hundreds, of anonymizing proxies.

Yes, but how do you trust them? I always assume that an anonymizing proxy is sniffing everything that passes through.

The original point about anonymizer being a single point of failure is legitimate. After all, even if you don't go in with a court order and seize logs, you can still learn a fair bit from the traffic analysis, and the "something to hide" crowd have given you a nice convenient place to focus your efforts. And then you are always free to select some bits of the traffic for more intensive analysis.

I expect that the main overseas links are likewise subjected to such regular scruitiny. Now, I'm not wearing the tinfoil chapeau, but I would hope that the intelligence agencies would spend my tax money going after the most cost effective places first.

nothing good out of this

[Sivaram_Velauthapill]

This is nothing more than US govt attempts to overthrow the Iranian govt. That's the only reason USA would do it for Iran, and not many other countries which are even worse off (eg. African countries)...

Sivaram Velauthapillai

Iran...view from a Barskahye

[Shant3030]

Some interesting observances about Iran:

In the late 70's, students were protesting the overthrow of the Shah because he was corrupt, pro-West, etc.

Now, in Iran, the children of the students who were protesting in the 70's, are the same people who are protesting against the corrupt Ayatollah and his cronies. The students as well as the majority middle class is aching for Western reforms. They overthrew the shah because he was corrupt, but only a handful of the government owns the majority of the wealth in the country. Essentially, they have turned into a socialist nation and the people are fed up.

It is only a matter of time they will be a more moderate nation again, sharing with the world the beauty of the nation. The US's persistent feeding of western ideas is only fueling a fire of revolution that the Iranian people (sidenote: being of Persian-Armenian descent, we hate referring to ourselves as Iranians, sounds so 1980...) will take part in.

What does this have to do with the /. post, probably very little... Just wanted to throw in my two cents about Iran.

Re:Iran...view from a Barskahye

[GypC]

Thanks for your insight. I wish the Iranian people the best for the future of their country, and a bloodless revolution to bring it about. I just wish the US government would help more... I can only hope our actions in Iraq are helping the whole region.

Re:Iran...view from a Barskahye

[WildBeast]

The US will pull off the same thing that they did in 1953 and then again you'll have history repeat itself.

Re:Iran...view from a Barskahye

[Anonymous Coward]

Essentially, they have turned into a socialist nation and the people are fed up.

I'm sure the people would be overjoyed to have socialism rather than what they have got, which is an intolerant religious fundamentalism with a terrible record for human rights abuse, including arbitrary arrest, torture and execution.

Re:Iran...view from a Barskahye

[Sivaram_Velauthapill]

If you think modern day Iran is socialist you clearly have no idea what a theocracy is nor what socialism is...

You CANNOT practice theocracy with socialism because socialism is atheist. Socialists won't let any religious leaders come near power...

BTW, the US initiated overthrow is simply for one reason: oil. USA attempted something in Venezuela and it didn't work. Now they are trying Iran... Having said all this, I don't see USA invading Iran any time soon since they have their hands tied with Iraq...

Sivaram Velauthapillai

Re:Iran...view from a Barskahye

[Nodatadj]

> since they have their hands tied with Iraq...

Having their hands tied with afghanistan didn't stop them invading iraw...

Re:Iran...view from a Barskahye

[PetoskeyGuy]

Thank MTV that we have captured the minds of the youth of the world. Teenagers now seem very similar in almost any country with the technology to catch our our contagious culture.

Re:Iran...view from a Barskahye

[Shant3030]

in an economic sense, they are socialist.

Re:Iran...view from a Barskahye

[Sivaram_Velauthapill]

Actually their hands weren't tied in Afghanistan. There were hardly any US soldiers in Afghanistan. Most of the fighting was done by Northern Alliance. Besides, USA clearly indicated that it wasn't going to stay in Afghanistan. It pulled out pretty quickly and other countries probably have more troops than USA now...

Sivaram Velauthapillai

Re:Iran...view from a Barskahye

[Sivaram_Velauthapill]

First of all, socialism=politics+economics. You can't claim that a country is socialist just because one element is somewhat socialist.

Anyway, I don't see anything in Iran resembling socialism. Is some central authority planning stuff? Does the govt heavily control economics? Nope. As far as I can tell, it is very capitalistic and most of the economy is driven by private industry. You are probably saying it is socialist because it is authoratarian and your memory of authoratarianism is probably limited to Communism. So you think everything that is authoratarian is socialist.

Interestingly, Iraq was more socialist than Iran during most of the 70's and 80's.

Sivaram Velauthapillai

Re:Iran...view from a Barskahye

[Shant3030]

read this article in forbes... you might have a very different view...

http://www.forbes.com/global/2003/0721/024.html

Where is the true spirit of RTFA?

[JMZero]

They did have a program set up for China. That contract has apparently run out now, but (also from the article):

A bill that passed the U.S. House of Representatives last month would create an Office of Global Internet Freedom that would have up to a $50 million annual budget to help citizens of foreign repressive governments skirt Internet censorship.

Re:Where is the true spirit of RTFA?

[praedor]

They will no doubt permit access to Republican-backed political sites. Certainly they will block any sites mentioning birth control or abortion, sites critical of US govt policies on global warming and the environment, etc.

Blacklist

[timmyf2371]

From the article:

In May, government ministers issued a blacklist of 15,000 forbidden "immoral" websites that ISPs in the country must block -- reportedly a mix of adult sites and political news and information outlets.

So, when does Anonymizer become added to this blacklist?

Iranian monitoring

[McNeany]

I don't believe for one second that the web surfing behavior will be monitored. This 'annonymous proxy' is merely a way of getting what the USA wants (a log of as much iranian traffic as possible) while giving what they want (an un filtered connection) I don't see this as giving any freedom to anyone.

Re:Iranian monitoring

[McNeany]

I meant to say "I don't believe that the web surfing habits WON'T be monitored" sorry for the misunderstanding.
-Me again

Wouldn't it be nice...

[UncleGizmo]

...if the they would fund Anonymizer for its own citizens? That way we wouldn't need to worry about those who are sniffing our trails under the guise of 'total information awareness' and the like, to protect us from the latest threat of terroris...

[sigh] oh, never mind.

We are past this point with China

[mao che minh]

We have far lost the chance to gain any kind of advantage by spreading propaganda to the Chinese. We have already had a knock-down brawl with them in Korea, and played a game of Cold War chess with them in Vietnam. The Chinese mindset is not very receptible to outside interference to begin with.

Nevertheless, I have a sneaking suspicion that some propaganda arm of the US may still be assisting those that are using the old "Safe Web" technology to circumvent the Great Fire Wall.

Re:We are past this point with China

[leviramsey]

Bzzt. Wrong.

If anything the Chinese were pulling for us in Vietnam. Who was the next country to declare war on the Chinese after the US? That's right, it was the PRC.

People have this illusion that the various Marxist nations were lovey-dovey as part of the quest for International Socialism. The reality is that, while most were Soviet satellites, the Chinese were displeased with the USSR for a long time. There are dozens of recorded instances of territorial infractions, shots fired, and planes shot down between the PRC and the USSR. The Chinese basically took a neutral position on the issue of a NATO vs. Warsaw Pact war; their hope was that both sides would nuke each other into cinders.

Re:We are past this point with China

[Sphere1952]

Freenet has been translated into Chinese -- by Chinese. I don't know what it's being used for in China, but then, for the most part I don't know what it's being used for here.

Re:We are past this point with China

[Anonymous Coward]

Who was the next country to declare war on the Chinese after the US? That's right, it was the PRC.

That made no sense whatsoever.

Re:We are past this point with China

[mao che minh]

So, China's giving Vietnam oil, weapons, jets, and training, all while aggressively warning the US against striking targets in Hanoi (even moving your naval ships dangerously close to Vietnamese targets to dissuade US fighter pilots from seeking them as targets) - is pulling for us?

Interesting.

Re:We are past this point with China

[Anonymous Coward]

China has a odd relationship with the US. America in chinese is roughly translated as rose kingdom/nation, or more plainly as beautiful country. From the communist chinese reader I might add.

The Chinese have never forgotten what the US did for them against the Japanese. And they still venerate the Flying Tigers, as they should. But they also remember that they did not fight for their own country, they fought for their idea of what was right, and who was good and evil. So there is a pretty clear distinction between Americans, and America's Government. They've imported many of our values, and ideas of "bigger better bolder, and f the critics."

Much like they tend not to overly confuse Americans with American foriegn policy, perhaps you could do the same.

Re:We are past this point with China

[Anonymous Coward]

You are an idiot. If China was pulling for us in Vietnam, why were we trading shots with Chinese advisors? Why were we fighting Chinese troops in Vietnamese uniforms?

Re:We are past this point with China

[HiThere]

No. China wasn't rooting for the US during the Vietnam invasion. OTOH, it's certainly true that they weren't rooting for Vietnam, either. Their attitude was mainly ... "Gee. How *terrible* that those two nice people can't get along. I must do something to encourage ..."(whoever was currently loosing).

This sometimes meant that China aided Vietnam. And sometimes it didn't. But it was a "let's you and him fight" kind of attitude.

Quite reasonable, actually, from their point of view. As long as the US was bogged down in Vietnam, it's attention was distracted from China. And Vietnam certainly didn't want a war on two fronts. So the best benefit to China was to help prolong the occasion. Subtly.

Revenge?

[earthforce_1]

I wonder if the Iranians will seek revenge by creating an anonymized Warez site that only accepts IP addresses based in the US. That would certainly annoy the hell out of a lot of US interests.

Verb vs. Noun

[Anonymous Coward]

Did anyone else read that as "US Funds Anonymizer for Iranians" where Funds was a noun instead of a verb? I was thinking someone had stumbled on a website that would allow Iranian militants to deal/exchange vast amounts of US monies totally anonymously...

TIA?

[Mrs. Grundy]

Is Darpa behind this?

Is this called TIA = Total Iranian Anonymizer?

Seriously, what self respecting Irani is going to trust a US government sponsored privacy service when no US citizens would?

Foreign Repressive Governments

[lildogie]

A bill that passed the U.S. House of Representatives last month would create an Office of Global Internet Freedom that would have up to a $50 million annual budget to help citizens of foreign repressive governments skirt Internet censorship.

They say foreign repressive governments.

Interesting how they qualify that.

Re:Foreign Repressive Governments

[GypC]

Yes. Help. I'm being oppressed by "The Man". Will nobody fight for my right as an American to view porn and communist propaganda?

Be Careful of What You Wish For...

[Mad Man]

re: Topsy Turvy

The US is going to institute a national health care program for Iraq, a nationalized educational system for iraq, govt controlled water and power monopolies for Iraq, anonymous surfing for the Iranians.
How come these things are not good enough for US

I suppose you also want martial law?

Re:Be Careful of What You Wish For...

[praedor]

Why use martial law when they have the equivalent: conservative control of the news outlets, a cowed and pliable, knee-jerk populace, and Gitmo? Martial law will only be needed after the next convenient domestic terrorist attack (with ample warnings being conveniently ignored by Bush and Co aka 9/11) IF enough of the populace wakes up to realise that Shrub and Co are asleep at the wheel at best, or criminal proxies for big business (truly) at worst.

Re:Be Careful of What You Wish For...

[Anonymous Coward]

shut the fuck up already...you pot smoking commie sonofabitch...

Re:Be Careful of What You Wish For...

[Shelrem]

I thought we already passed the USA PATRIOT ACT.

b.c

Re:Be Careful of What You Wish For...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why use martial law when they have the equivalent: conservative control of the news outlets

so by your "logic" (not much there), when clinton (or any other number of libs) was in office a few years ago and the liberals controlled the media (which incidentally, they still pretty much do, we still have Creative News Network(tm) and the New York someTimes we tell the truth) we had anarchy. (liberals being the extreme opposite of conservatives and anarchy being the extreme opposite of martial law).

Re:freedom as tool (WMD's? hahaha)

[ADRA]

They all have Weapons of mass destruction. Is anyone old enough to remember the cold war? They got their weapons from either A. or B.

This is one reason you see So much Russian support for countries that are hated by the US. Syria Anyone?

ECHELON

[Anonymous Coward]

They for to mention that the proxy is hooked up to ECHELON just in case you think you actually have freedom

Just imagine...

[monopole]

If the Iranian Goverment funded Anonymizer for US dissidents.

That'll last all of two seconds

[bugnuts]

If the Iranian gov is censoring the web, do you think this would be an exception?

It'll last until the Iranian goverment puts blocks on their border routers and then it's case closed.

China has followed and blocked all such services from their country and in some cases has recorded what the people were doing through those sites first (IIRC).

Re:That'll last all of two seconds

[Anonymous Coward]

BZZZT! You didn't read the article! Ergo your post is WRONG! YOU FAIL IT!

Re:That'll last all of two seconds

[bugnuts]

I failed NOTHING, coward.

How hard is it to:

1) write a perl script to extract all the anonymizer addresses and filter based on that (checking to make sure it doesn't point back to sites you condone)

2) track down who's using the anonymizer and kick in their doors and confiscate their computers?

Re:That'll last all of two seconds

[Anonymous Coward]

BS. First of all, the Iranian Version still blocks porn.

Second of All, where in the First Ammendment does it say "The Government Shall Tax People. Those taxes shall go to pay for people able to access everything."

The Government is not censoring porn in the libraries. Censorship prevents publication and distribution. Would you be upset if you couldn't buy a playboy from a vending machine at a Court Room? You might. But, I mean, would that be censorship? The point is, the government, in securing your first Ammendment Rights is not required to offer you the direct means to exercise those rights. The Library is paid by taxes. Your using someone elses money (partly your own too) to download unmentionables.

wow talk about irony

[jtilak]

"We're providing a system whereby the people in the countries that are suffering Internet censorship can bypass the government filtering and access all the pages that are blocked," says Cottrell.

DECSS... hello????
pretty soon i will have to use a foreign system like this and i live in MICHIGAN!!

since i am not sure if its legal to link to this site i will just post the URL

http://raisethefist.com/index1.html

Hell yeah...

[FatSean]

Someday the people of Iran may have more individual rights than US citizens. Well, that might be going a bit too far...

Re:Hell yeah...

[mentin]

After U.S. goverment approved so-called "Patriot Act" which allows it to spy what you write in your e-mails, what you read in a library, ...
I'm waiting for Iranian goverment to fund Anonymiser for U.S. citisens so they can browse the Web anonymously without fear of being spied by U.S. goverment.

Re:Hell yeah...

[tomstdenis]

Talk to Phil Zimmerman than... apparently he has a program to sell ya :-)

So far as I know PGP [and GPG] are perfectly legal. If you're afraid of mr. govt spying on ya, encrypt/sign all your messages. :-)

Tom

Re:Hell yeah...

[oni]

fear of being spied by U.S. goverment.

Ok I'll bite. Please tell me that you understand the difference between being spied on (US) and being shot in the head for speaking out (Iran). Please tell me that you understand the difference between a bad law (US) that we can repeal just by getting enough people informed and an oppressive regime (Iran) that can jail you or kill you on a whim and there's not a damn thing you can do.

Re:Hell yeah...

[Anonymous Coward]

At least you know when you're being shot in the head and if your friends are around you as it happens they have the option of retaliating against the person that shot you.

You can't easily shoot someone in the head with full anonymity, from the other side of the world. Nor can you shoot 1000 people at once with approximately the same effort as you do the first...

Re:Hell yeah...

[millwood]

Ok I'll bite. Please tell me that you understand the difference between being spied on (US) and being shot in the head for speaking out (Iran). Please tell me that you understand the difference between a bad law (US) that we can repeal just by getting enough people informed and an oppressive regime (Iran) that can jail you or kill you on a whim and there's not a damn thing you can do.

Guantanamo Bay.

Re:Hell yeah...

[AdEbh]

Good call.

- EBH

Re:Hell yeah...

[oni]

Guantanamo Bay.

See, that's called rhetoric. You haven't yet made an argument and you haven't responded to my challenge that you reinforce the ascertain you made that the US and Iranian governments are equally oppressive.

So, if anyone is keeping score that's zero points for you so far. Care to try again?

No

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not understandable. The United States government has pressured every anonymizer open to the U.S. public to shut down. That is not understandable.

Hey, U.S. government, maybe think about the freedom of your own citizens! Okay!

Re:No

[randyest]

Huh? Citation? link? reference of any kind? Oh wait, you're an AC spewing FUD. Nevermind. IHBW, IHBT, I will now HAND.

Re:No

[randyest]

I'm supposed to prove a negative? Riight. Common knowledge my ass, if it's so common google would have something on it, and so far I find nothing. Cite something or STFU. Mod flamebat all you want, the original was flamebait, and needs to be backed up with something vaguely credible.

wont be anonymous

[jtilak]

i can pretty much guarantee this wont be anonymous access. america will be spying on them for sure. they will also be filtering any anti-american information. fucking hypocrites.

read the article...

[Thinkit3]

They know that, and they'll change the address regularly.

Propaganda

[Scrameustache]

This is simply a act of propaganda by the goverment of the United States of America aimed at the people of Iran.

Clearly, they are taking steps so that the next time they "liberate" a country, there will be a slightly higher chance that its people will "wellcome the troops with open arms" instead of march in the street in protest against the invaders.

And as far as military budget spending goes, this is exceptionally friendly. Might even be midly effective too...

Instead of funding Homeland Security ...

[burgburgburg]

or the Energy Star program or "No Child Left Behind Act", we're subsidizing web surfing by Iranian dissidents (in theory).

I feel so much better now.

Brilliant Move, Wally...

[Ralph Spoilsport]

That's really smart on the part of the pinheads at Register. Everyone knows that Iran's regime, while more liberal than it was, say, 20 years ago, is hardly a bastion of liberal values.

So, here we have the Register finding something out about the Merkin Gummint helping the poor bastards who have to live under that brutal theocracy with anonymised web access only available to Iranian IP addresses. And, because it's the fetid corrupt Bush Admin doing the deed, they feel compelled to publish it.

So, now that it's been broadcast by the Register all over the freakin planet, you know that the jackbooted thugs...errr...turbaned thugs who run the Iranian security apparatus are going to shut that down ASAP.

Leaving the poor bastards to swelter in from of their P2/266s with even less hope than before.

Good move Register! Ya hit one right out of the park with that one. Ya boneheads.

I'm not saying that they should NOT have published it. I just think they should have THOUGHT about it and THOUGHT about how they could report it without making the theiving rat bastards in Washington look like heroes, OR jeopardise this obviously useful and progressive idea.

As usual, they didn't and I don't give that anonymiser more than 3 weeks.

I hope the Register's happy now.

RS

Re:Brilliant Move, Wally...

[Sivaram_Velauthapill]

This isn't progress...

This is propaganda. Instead of them thinking of about, why don't YOU think about it for a sec? Why would a country like USA initiate a program to free an ISP in Iran of all places? There are many other countries where the help would be in greater need...

This has nothing to do with freedom or privacy or anything like that...

Oh, BTW, agents already know stuff like this before it hits the media. Often, informants (usually money-seeking neighbours and what not) will notify of the agents long before the media even knows what's going on.

Sivaram Velauthapillai

Misread

[Dirtside]

When I saw the phrase "U.S. Funds Anonymizer" the first thing I thought of was money laundering... after all, that's what a funds anonymizer would do. I gotta get me one of those.

So let me get this straight...

[lightspawn]

Thanks to the U.S. government, Iranians can now view material blocked in U.S. libraries after being categorized by a private company as violence/profanity, alcohol/tobacco/drug related, satanic, sexual, or otherwise containing information which may be considered harmful or offensive?

Why are Iranians entitled to view more of the web then Americans?

Re:So let me get this straight...

[Sphere1952]

Because we are special. Americans have used up all our freedom.

Re:So let me get this straight...

[noitalever]

Let me first say that this is completely offtopic, so be it.

*rant*

Iranians shouldn't be able to view that stuff either, if they are a 7 YEAR OLD. I completely agree with library "censorship" when it comes to pron, or any of the things covered by the highly controversial filters. If you want to surf pron that bad, get a frickin computer at home. Most of the gitngo's around my place have the decency to cover the fronts of the girly mags they sell. Is this infringing on my right to see them? Nope, just a common courtesy to prevent my 7 year old son from wondering why that girl is sucking that guy off or vice-versa.

The only people offended by library filters are people that are trying to look at stuff they should only view in the privacy of their homes, or an enclosed booth at the local smut shop.

Stand on your soap box all day and cry censorship, freedom, whatever. I don't care. This isn't about rights, no one can tell me that we'll EVER loose the right to view nekkid people as consenting adults. Too many people like it.

The simple fact is that That Stuff doesn't belong in a public place free for anyone of any age to access at anytime they want. Period.

(zips up nomex suit... )

*/rant*

Re:So let me get this straight...

[Daniel Dvorkin]

You are incredibly off base. I personally look at Net porn very rarely (it was kind of cool when the Web was new; now it's boring and expensive) and when I do it's on my home computer ... and yet I'm offended by library filters.

Why? Because the filters are made by private companies that refuse to release their block lists, even when their software is paid for by our tax dollars. Because many of these companies have a clear political agenda in which sites they choose to block (why is NOW on the verboten list, but FoTF isn't?) Because they are insanely overbroad in their blocking (want breast cancer info from your public library terminal? Good luck ...) And because, damn it -- you may have heard these words before -- "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press ..."

This is only peripherally about "the right to view nekkid people as consenting adults." If you don't understand that, you haven't been paying attention.

Re:So let me get this straight...

[IthnkImParanoid]

I can't remember one statement (aside from obvious trolls) on Slashdot when the whole library-filtering software debate was a big as SCO now that said filtering software is wrong because it prevents people from looking at porn. The debate centered, and still centers, around two issues:

• Is it really porn? Filtering programs are stupid, and will filter out info on breast cancer or Chuck Grassley's (R-IA) website. They can be unblocked manually, but you have to let the librarian know what you're looking at and wait for them. I wouldn't have been comfortable asking a crotchety old lady to unblock a site detailing human anatomy (with diagrams, not photos) I was using for my Human Development class when I was 13.
• Filtering programs come with blacklists that are encrypted. (DMCA prevents cracking them, though that's a seperate issue) These blacklists can be used to push the agenda of the companies/sponsors of the software. Don't forget that the earliest filtering program were created with the help of very conservative groups, and certain well known sites that gave a liberal view of gay/lesbian issues or abortion were blocked. An anti-filtering software site was blocked for "hate speech."

I find your post disturbing, given your slashdot ID is lower than mine. Did you take a break, or were you just not paying attention during that time?

Re:So let me get this straight...

[Darth_Burrito]

I completely agree with library "censorship" when it comes to pron, or any of the things covered by the highly controversial filters.

As an individual who was forced (I eventually quit for unrelated reasons) to maintain internet content filtering software (Surf Control), let me just say I hated the software with a passion. Mind you, I didn't think Surf Control was any worse than any of their competitors, but the truth was:

1) It didn't stop people from being able to access porn, view sports sites, or shop online even though these were all blacklisted categories. Instead it would block maybe 90% in each category. All people had to do was find those 1 in 10 porn sites and they did, trust me.

2) It regularly and significantly hindered myself and coworkers in our efforts to do our jobs. The collateral damage was horrendous.

3) It provided a mechanism for administrators and department heads to spy on all of the system users. Management took full advantage of this feature. Perhaps more to the point, my boss very much enjoyed having the ability to blacklist sites of his choosing. I imagine there are many librarians out there that might also enjoy being able to choose their own filters.

So let's review. Content filtering software does not block the content it is supposed to. It prevents people from accessing perfectly "legit" resources. And, often, it allows people to spy on each other. I can't think of anything I'd rather have deployed in libraries and educational institutions throughout America.

Re:So let me get this straight...

[PetoskeyGuy]

Because it's anonymous to the IRANIAN GOVERNMENT. Remember the US is still running the proxy, and no doubt logging everything and probably redirecting users from "sensitive" sites.

Re:So let me get this straight...

[Alsee]

with library "censorship" when it comes to pron

That is exactly where you missunderstand the issue. This is NOT about libraries who want to block stuff. Libraries are perfectly free to not have any internet access at all, or even to provide access only to selected sites, or anything else they want to do.

This is about the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT CENSORING LIBRARIES.

There are other issues as well, such as the the terribly flawed filter programs, but the key point is who is censoring what. The federal government is censoring libraries who CHOOSE to provide access with different restrictions or no restrictions at all.

If YOUR local library chooses not to carry Harry Potter and block access to Harry Potter websites then fine. But you have absolutely no right to forbid MY local library from providing access to Harry Potter or to any other material you find offensive. For all you know I live in a nudist colony and the filter you want to FORCE on us would block all local ordinary news and photos and websites.

It's an issue of mind your own business. You have no more right to forbid my library from carrying X then I have a right to force your library to carry Y.

If local voters and the local library board and the local librarians decide that it's OK for the library to have differently filtered or even completely unfiltered access then there's nothing wrong with that. Hell, the US library of congress carries Playboy magazine.

-

Re:So let me get this straight...

[Anonymous Coward]

Because it's anonymous to the IRANIAN GOVERNMENT.

Uhm, no it's not. It's only 'anonymous' to the website at the other end.

Re:It's understandable --- NOT REALLY...

[A Commentor]

With all the new powers congress gave to Bush's AG - Mr. John Asscroft... it's us Americans that need anonymizing services. I won't rehash what most of you know about the Patriot Act and the Patriot Act II (that was resurrected as the "Victory Act" after enormous backlash after an initial version of it leaked). If you want further info, try searching on google.com...

Re:

[bleaked]

Big Brother is so generous to the Iranians.

Don't you people see the real reason for this

[The Analog Kid]

It in a way might actually be saving your life. I'm sure in Iran the only websites they are able to look at are Anti-American. This tries to help stop that.

talk about poluted IP space

[m0an]

reminds me of a point made in an article the other day about the current state of ipv4 and the emergence of "Polluted IP Space".......

fuck it, why not just have the nameserver load balance out the ips so they would have to filter every 6 hours!

Does this really solve the problem?

[Sanity]

...or does it just shift the problem somewhere else? All the Iranian government has to do is sign up to whatever mailing lists are distributing the proxy addresses - and block them automatically, this could probably be done within minutes, making it even easier for them to block this service than it is to block the censored websites themselves.

Freenet addresses this problem in several ways:

• You only need to sign up to Freenet once, thereafter it handles the task of finding new Freenet nodes to talk to automatically
• Freenet is self-propogating, you can send a URL to your friend by email pointing to your computer, and they can download Freenet from you - no reliance on a centralized site
• Unlike this service, Freenet allows people within Iran to publish freely and anonymously without relying on an external website.

Of course, Freenet is still under development, but it is progressing rapidly - and is already being used by groups within China to get their message out.

Re:Does this really solve the problem?

[Sphere1952]

Freenet also has the advantage of being free from U.S. censorship.

US funds anonymizer?

[eak_the_freak]

I misread the title as it indeed made perfect sense to me that the US -not unlike Switzerland- would anonymize funds for Iranians.

hmm anonymizers are not so anonymous

[jilles]

Last week a Dutch guy was caught who bribed a producer of yoghurt products. He threatened to poison products that were placed in the super market and as a demonstration placed a few poisoned products in a supermarket.

He used a US based anonymiser service to cover up his contacts with the police. He was caught because the anonymizer sevice in question happily cooperated with the legal forces, after some pressure from the dutch police and their US counterparts.

I don't approve of this guy's actions. He actually poisoned someone (who survived) with his actions. Apparently he actually tried out the poison on his goat to make sure the stuff wouldn't kill anyone. However it's a clear demonstration that anonymizers are just as anonymous as the FBI/CIA wants them to be. Anyone using the anonymizer.com services can be sure someone is watching what they do.

Re:hmm anonymizers are not so anonymous

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

>Anyone using the anonymizer.com services

He was using a different anonymous proxy, one which as far as I know is quite unrelated to anonymizer.com. Some earlier reports of the incident got this wrong.

>just as anonymous as the FBI/CIA wants them to be.

Or as anonymous as the operators are willing to make them. In this case, the operator's cooperation may have been genuinely voluntary, since the extortionist was violating their terms of service. A good lawyer might even argue that they didn't deceive the extortionist.

Let's face it, though. Even if you're looking at people with a proven track record of holding up to pressure (they exist), how hard would it be for a determined government agency to infiltrate their staff and plant spyware? Assuming the servers aren't 0wned already?

Re:hmm anonymizers are not so anonymous

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently he actually tried out the poison on his goat to make sure the stuff wouldn't kill anyone.

That's so considerate... I sure hope he gets a reduced sentence for that.

But...

[ccarr.com]

... if Iranian government routers analyze and log HTTP GET requests, they'll see this:

GET /http://www.subversivesite.com/ HTTP/1.1

whenever an Iranian citizen visits http://anon.free.anonymizer.com/http://www.subvers ivesite.com/

Chinese sheep must be persuaded to be free

[Sanity]

You talk as if the Chinese sheep need to be educated about the value of democracy by those wonderous purveyors of freedom - the Americans! How stunningly arrogant, particularly these days. The Chinese, given the right tools, will be the ones to bring democracy to China, they don't need Americans to teach them why it is good to be free.

Re:Chinese sheep must be persuaded to be free

[mao che minh]

The Chinese never have, nor have they ever shown much aspiration towards being a democracy. What they have always displayed is an ardent mistrust of the outside world, and far more nationalistic arrogance then we Americans. I would argue that they deserve to be arrogant, given their long history and record of achievement. Regardless, they do need influence, and who better than us?

Japan was not transformed from a 1,000+ year old fuedal society into a bustling democracy on their own wants and wills. We served as an example for them for years. Their youth aspired to overtake the old establishment some day and make their nation like ours. World War II gave them that chance, and for better or worse, it was us that were there when the smoke cleared to help them.

Something similar might happen in China, but it won't magically occur without help and persuasion.

Re:Chinese sheep must be persuaded to be free

[Vlad_the_Inhaler]

Looking at mindsets, what applies to China also applies to Taiwan - Taiwan was taken over by the losers in the civil war just over 50 years ago.
Taiwan now has a real democracy, so does S Korea. Both of them went that way even in the face of powerful and inimical neighbours and without having it imposed on them like the Japanese.

Don't get me wrong, the Japanese are far better with what they have now than with the previous system which was half democracy and half military rule. Taiwan and S Korea both had some 'friendly' pressure from the US, and the result is looking healthier than that corrupt mess which is Japanese politics.

How effective can this be against a totalitarism

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would the iranian government block the proxys instead of monitoring them and catching their users. Also won't they find new proxies faster then their citezens?

"rag" ?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Rag" is a bit pejorative, isn't it? I trust The Register's stories more than I trust Slashdot's, for example.

Online Rag

[Anonymous Coward]

Pot calling the kettle black.

In other news...

[MacGod]

In other news today.... Iranian use of Kazaa has jumped dramatically. The RIAA has expressed their excitement at a whole new crop of people to sue...

Re:In other news...

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anyone else in this thread find it ironic that anonymously posted comments are modded down?

Triangle-boy

[IvyMike]

Here's a whitepaper on Triangle Boy, a solution to allow users to circumvent a censoring firewall (with the help of an external network of proxies, of course).

It's a little complex, so I advise you read the article to get the details, but here's my take: The general idea is the user behind the firewall doesn't connect to a single proxy; instead, it connects to any one of a network of ever-changing mini-proxies. These mini-proxies forward the request to the real proxy.

The mini-proxies can be blocked, but you just switch to a different mini-proxy. In order to reduce load on the mini-proxies, the real proxy returns data directly to the user, but with a spoofed ip address of the mini-proxy.

Pretty cool.

Anonymizer for Iranians... but Readable for CIA

[Anonymous Coward]

nt

whitelists..

[Anonymous Coward]

Iran government could switch from blacklists to whitelists.
Besides with a centralized firewall (like infamous great firewall of china) you could grep http-traffic for the inappropriate content and automagically update the blacklists.
Even if the requests are "generic URLs" the response would consist something like "voice of america" and *bang* the IP of the requested URL is on blacklist...
Content filtering sounds like spam filtering. I can imagine the Great Bayesian Content-Analysing Firewall/Proxy... :-)

Heaven forbid you read the article.

[JMZero]

The deliberately generic-sounding URLs for the service are publicized over Radio Farda broadcasts and through bulk e-mails that Anonymizer sends to addresses in the country

Re:Heaven forbid you read the article.

[damiam]

So why couldn't the government listen to the broadcasts or monitor the bulk emails? There's no way to get the information to citizens without also reaching the government.

U.S. Funds Anonymizer for Iranians

[johnthorensen]

Am I the only one that read this as the US starting a money-laundering organization for Iranians?

"Funds Anonymizer", heh...

-JT

Public Proxies

[GiMP]

Of course, if you're in America you probably want to skip the Great PatriotWall of America. Checkout http://www.publicproxyservers.com/ to by-pass the monitoring/filtering that the USA does to us.

More Iranian freedom less American Freedom

[ivanmarsh]

This announcement is pretty ironic considering:

http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/477 9109.htm

Land of the free?

[ChaoticCoyote]

Let me get this straight -- if I go to a public library, my browsing is censored by mandate of the U.S. government (unless the librarians are rebels, of course).

But an Iranian can browse the web free of government-imposed censorship?

Aarrrgggghhhhhh!

Actually, the dichotomy makes sense: the U.S. government wants to control its own populace while mucking about in the politics of other countries. The U.S. government doesn't care about the freedoms of the Iranian people; it just wants to undermine the Iranian government.

Well, I hope those Iranians enjoy their freedom now; as soon as the U.S. trumps up enough false data to "liberate" Iran, they'll be in the same boat we are in terms of censorship and spying.

"May you live in interesting times", indeed.

Re:Land of the free?

[Sphere1952]

Close, but not quite correct. It is the U.S. corporations who wish to quash the rights of U.S. citizens. The government is just their mercenaries.

Re:Land of the free?

[ChaoticCoyote]

Close, but not quite correct. It is the U.S. corporations who wish to quash the rights of U.S. citizens. The government is just their mercenaries.

Indeed.

Capitalistic governments are little more than agents for transnational corporations. There's nothing wrong with business, or profit -- the problem is greed and gluttony. A case in point: profiteering in Iraq by companies associated with Bush's cronies (Cheney and Haliburton, for example).

And don't get me started on corporate-controlled WTO policies in regard to generic medicines for "developing" nations...

Re:Land of the free?

[Sphere1952]

Business is the cellular structure of society. Big business is cancer.

Re:Land of the free?

[flacco]

Capitalistic governments are little more than agents for transnational corporations. There's nothing wrong with business, or profit -- the problem is greed and gluttony.

No, those are the very fuels that propel a capitalist economy. That's like saying "cars are great, it's that flammable gasoline that sucks." The car is useless without the gas.

The real problem comes when the public buys into the ultra-free-market propaganda put out by said corps:

"If you mandate gasoline tank safety standards for automobiles, you will DESTROY the automobile industry! Let the MARKET sort it all out - the people will VOTE with their DOLLARS!"

Fuck that. If you can't make it in the car business without making gas tanks that don't explode, you're in the wrong business. We don't need need the highways littered with the smoldering bodies of irrational consumers who decided to risk it and save a hundred bucks on their car.

Just like the gasoline in the car, it's up to civil society to establish fair, safe, and common-sensical rules by which capitalism competes . In that way, you maintain the humanity of your society while at the same time harnessing the greed and gluttony that make it all go, Go GO!

ps - I am accepting nominations for the Extended Metaphor of the Month award.

We already have Anonymizer

[mao che minh]

All you have to do is pay for the service. You have that right, you have this freedom. Use your freedoms, because a million people in Iran would love to possess your myriad of freedoms instead of a measily free Anonymizer.

Something I don't understand about this ...

[John Jorsett]

How come the Iranian government doesn't just monitor the traffic and kick in the door of anyone caught using this service (i.e. connecting to an anonymizer IP #)? That seems to be the approach the RIAA thinks is going to end file trading: make a few very public examples in order to intimidate everyone else.

Could get people killed

[capedgirardeau]

I can't get to the anonymizer.com site, but if they are not SSL to the anonymize proxy server, its worse than no security, as it's clear text for sniffing with the illusion of security and will surley get people killed if they falsely make use of it.

Otherwise it only makes you anonymous to the site your a visiting. Not the effect they are going for I'm sure.

Even the attempts to connect to the changing ip address as the article states could be tracked and used to identify people trying to use the service, expect a visit if you do this.

Remember the government controls all the wires in the country, it's trivial to sniff the traffic or track usage on the proxy server they use I'm sure.

I would think they would be better off funding GPG so the people could communicate with each other freely and organize. Also no worry about black lists or gambling, or reading slashdot.

It allows for no more abuse than SSL and authentication to a forum site on the web and is probably more accessable to users in Iran anyway.

And it seems more realistic than one point of failure/survelance like anonymizer.com.

Becareful if you use this, make sure you understand how it works and what protections it really provides.

Cheers

cool - maybe they'll do the same for us

[Sean Clifford]

Great, maybe they'll do the same for Americans so we can surf away from the prying eyes of *our* government.

Re:cool - maybe they'll do the same for us

[frovingslosh]

Who do you think they are trying to block when they set it up so it only accepts connections from Iranian IP addresses ? Hint: They wouldn't really care much if some Russian used it to get a little more political freedom, or if some Libian did the same.

If you haven't guessed it yet, then ask yourself where they are doing just the opposite.

What happens when Iran blocks Anonymizer.com?

[smz420]

So what happens when Iran puts anonymizer.com on their list of "immoral" sites and blocks access to it?

The article claims that "In Iran, we're prepared to change the proxy address every day if necessary."

Sure - but if Iran blocks the hostname "Anonymizer.com" - it doesn't matter what the IP address of the proxy server is. Is the US planning to spam every Iranian email address with info on what server IP to connect to?

Sounds like an expensive cat and mouse game that is futile at best.

Re:What happens when Iran blocks Anonymizer.com?

[tybalt44]

Is the US planning to spam every Iranian email address with info on what server IP to connect to?

Yes. RTFA. The info will also be given out via Voice of America.

Not Unrestricted Access

[isoga]

I find it interesting that the Proxy is designed to circumvent Iranian censorship and instead replaces it with US censorship.

Mostly unfettered. Like the Iranian filters, the U.S. service blocks porn sites

Not that I dont think this is a good idea

dave

Double standard

[Baki]

As much as I think Iranians deserve privacy and personal freedom, I think it is incredibly hypocrit that the USA is doing this, against the will of another government, while at the same time it is bullying around individuals denying them other freedoms and privacy.

When it comes to so called economic self interests, nothing goes too far, such as procesuting russians for violating absurd laws such as the DMCA, allowing industry lobby groups such as the RIAA to deny people the right to share files and make personal copies, removing the right to reverse engineer, removing the right to invent because of software patents (which it is trying to push through worldwide).

In short: the USA government also is restricting a lot of people (their own and elsewhere), not representing the people (as should be in a democracy) but instead representing those who have the money to bribe the politicians and to buy laws.

Re:Double standard

[Sphere1952]

Sure, but our congressmen get paid to do that. No Iranian company is going to pay a U.S. congressman to supress an Iranian's rights.

Re:Double standard

[wkitchen]

As much as I think Iranians deserve privacy and personal freedom, I think it is incredibly hypocrit that the USA is doing this, against the will of another government, while at the same time it is bullying around individuals denying them other freedoms and privacy.

It might be wrong, but there's nothing hypocritical about it. If a government's primary interest is furthering it's own power, then intellectual freedom is detrimental to its interests. So perhaps the present US government promotes intellectual freedom in Iran, but not here, for the same reason that it dropped bombs on Baghdad, but not here.

On the plus side, this means that they are probably sincere in claiming to be against the governments of those countries, and not the people. But by the same token, it also means that they are looking out for the interests of the US government, and not its people. It's a power struggle amongst the rulers. On both sides, the people are merely pawns.

None of which is meant to imply that I consider these governments equal. I still vastly prefer this one to the those in Iran, Iraq, and Afghanistan (and numerous others, I'm sure). But though the degree of oppression at home is miniscule compared to those, it is on the rise and it is a problem. Our government's primary interest should be our interests. We, the people. Not to increase its control over us, nor to further the power of the monopolists who feed it.

Re:Double standard

[bruthasj]

I hate to break it to all the arm-chair political analysts, as I am, but "America" is not this single entity moving in one direction -- as with every damned nation on earth and every damned human being. America is *more* than double standard ... at the very least, its quintiple standard. Same as Germany, France, Russia, UK, South Africa, Iran, Iraq, Palestine, Israel, North and South Korea, China, India, Uzbekistan, Serbia, Poland ... etc.

It's all about people. And these nations are large enough, there's more than a couple of people running the show. So, before we all spout off about how America sucks, let us sit down and relax ... breathe in the reality of what is our human existance. We're "under one Nation", but that doesn't mean we move mindless forward in the same direction like the Borg. If we wanted that, we'd all be Microsoft employees.

Anonymizers and freedom

[jmors]

I think it is great to attempt to allow people of any culture to FREELY use the internet. I wonder, now that the government is funding such a project for citizens of another country, are we now allowed to fund our own means to do the same and anonymously surf the web and use the resources of the internet free from prying eyes, the RIAA, major corporations and our own government?

Just a thought.

So, who trusts Anonymizer after this?

[raitiovaunu]

Anonymizer.com allegedly sells its services to US government. So, why should anyone expect the service to be completely anonymous anymore?

Their advertisements still claim total privacy and reasons why HACKERS, ADVERTISERS, SPAMMERS and your BOSS do not want you to use Anonymizer. They do not list the GOVERNMENT.

Fortunately I've got nothing to hide and don't care about anonymity, privacy, encryption...

Re:So, who trusts Anonymizer after this?

[Anonymous Coward]

they have received payoffs from us cia for over two years, totalling over 1 million dollars.

I hardly think a few 'official' contracts to funnel money mean anything.

its no different than the over 1 mill us nsa paid the pgp division of NAI when NAI had pgp in its arms!!! at least those deals were in the open.

Silly Question

[Guppy06]

" Why does our government work for the freedom of others, while chipping away at ours daily?"

Did you vote last year? Do you vote as consistently as, say, Iranian-Americans worried about their family back in Iran?

An anonymizer for America

[alexborges]

Dont americans want one of this? Arent you the least bit worried about the loss of your freedoms both online and offline.

I say Kudos for America, and lets try and make an anonimizer for american citizens.

"What about my security blah blah" GET GPG

[capedgirardeau]

For all the people saying what about my security and such and so forth ....

How many of you are using GPG, have a public key and are encryping your email communication?

"But it doesn't work with Outlook."

Your security and privacy were voluntarily given up long ago.

The rest of us ( I didn't put up my hand either ) should go download it now:

http://www.gnupg.org/(en)/index.html

Wow, I read that wrong....

[El Cubano]

Am I the only person that read the headline and thought this article was about a way that Iranians can launder their U.S. dollars?

I thought this was about an anonymization process *for* U.S. funds possessed by Iranians, instead of the U.S. government providing funding *for* Anonymizer (the company).

Great, but...do you trust Anoymizer now?

[coltrane679]

This is a GOOD thing for the people of Iran, no doubt.

But, how much confidence do YOU have in using Anonymizer.com now that it's gone into business with US spooks?

Me too.

& did u notice how the US is advertising the s

[Anonymous Coward]

The deliberately generic-sounding URLs for the service are publicized over Radio Farda broadcasts and through bulk e-mails that Anonymizer sends to addresses in the country. The addresses are provided by human rights groups and other sources, says Anonymizer president Lance Cottrell.

They're using SPAM! 8-O

riiiight

[ziriyab]

My guess is that U.S. Millitary special ops who are undercover need to be able to safely communicate back home with out fear of being discovered by the local government.

I am a member of special ops in Iran right now reading /. anonymously through this service. Also, when I have to communicate our dear leader, G.W. Bush, I just login to my yahoo mailbox and send a message to president@whitehouse.gov with my highly classified info (I accidentally sent a message to president@whitehouse.org once. Boy was my face red)

This anonymizer service is really the most secure way we special ops folks have to communicate. After many years and many billions of dollars spent on developing secure communications, who knew we could've just set up a proxy server? Once we found this out, all we had to do is ask another agency (all the different agencies in DC work in perfect harmony) to implement this.

On a related note, don't you just hate when Yahoo! puts those damn horoscope adverts at the bottom of your emails? It makes my dispatches to the national security council look so damn unprofesh! I mean, here I am writing to the leader of the free world and some of the brightest minds in the oil industry about some top secret Axis of Evil tupperware party (that's where they hide the weed. In the tupperware. Those ads about buying drugs supporting terrorism weren't jokes) and it says "Do yo yahoo!" on the bottom. Shit.

Hypocrisy much?

[lone_marauder]

I guess freedom doesn't begin at home.

Iranian Patriot Act

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmmmmm what happens to the poor hapless iranian caught by the iranian equivalent of the USA Patriot Act and TIA watching "free internet"?

From the article:

[a20vertigo]

A bill that passed the U.S. House of Representatives last month would create an Office of Global Internet Freedom that would have up to a $50 million annual budget to help citizens of foreign repressive governments skirt Internet censorship.

It's interesting... our government is working to help everyone else have "internet freedom" while other parts of it, and large corporations, are working frantically to repress "internet freedom" as much as possible at home. Does anyone think that they're definitely going to be expecting them to love us, cherish us, and buy stuff from our companies?

Young Iranians are rebels

[tarp]

I'm a half-Iranian American and I have a lot of Iranian friends, some of whom came from Iran just a few years ago. I've yet to meet a single person who supports the regime in Iran. People want their freedom. The women pull their scarves high and show a lot of hair, they wear makeup and jewelry. Protests are a constant occurence. People won't put up with the Islamic republic for much longer.

I wonder how effective the actual blocking within Iran is. I know that many Iranians can be found on Yahoo Chat. Iranians also download mp3's and porno. I doubt the filesharing services and chat would ever be effectively blocked by the Iranian government. Nevertheless, the anonymizer should help Iranians read western media and get a more accurate report of the world's news.

Imagine if most of the rich and educated Iranians had't fled to places like Los Angeles, Toronto, Dubai, Washington, D.C., Paris and London. The Islamic government would have been dead by now.

money

[chocolatetrumpet]

The people in power want to make more money. It's pretty simple. If it makes more money, it's good.

A question about anonymizer:

[anethema]

How anonymous is it? What if someone does something illegal. Do they have to turn over records? Do they even keep records?

Or is it just anonymous for people that dont want their browsing habbits known.. ?

Why amusing?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is this amusing? It's completely normal and expected, I think. In the same way that the US would give weapons and training to guerilla groups who want to overthrow their government. Governments acting in their own interest is mildly amusing at best.

Now we know where the spammers learn how to spam!!

[Pepebuho]

Now we know who pays who to learn how to spam.
Cry havoc and unleash the spammers!!!!

From the article:
"The deliberately generic-sounding URLs for the service are publicized over Radio Farda broadcasts and through bulk e-mails that Anonymizer sends to addresses in the country. The addresses are provided by human rights groups and other sources, says Anonymizer president Lance Cottrell."

why trust america?

[Darth_Burrito]

Is this so Iran can't spy on its citizens? Or is it so the US can spy on disgruntled Iranians? Or both? Or neither? As an Iranian, why would you trust a country with multiple uncertain motivations to protect your privacy?

IRANIAN ISP will deliver privacy?

[Frenchson]

Let me get it right... using American proxy with an IRANIAN ISP will deliver privacy? Cant the ISP mask these anonymizer.com IP's? :)

How about one for the US?

[Anonymous Coward]

Now all we need is an anonymizer for the US to stop religious thugs over here from jailing people for downloading legitimate pornography like lesbian turdchugging videos and mother/adult daughter consentual relationships and various bestiality-related goodness.

Why start at '79

[ziriyab]

Let's go back to 1953. Back then Iran was a moderate democracy (not the pretend-democracy it is now). They decided that the 16% of the oil profits they were getting from the Brits for extracting oil was a bit low. The brits balked. Iranians nationalized their oil. Brits and Americans overthrew the democracy and installed a dictator, the shah, who was corrupt, pro west, etc.

So the students rebelled thinking they were going to get a democracy, but instead got a dictatorship that was even worse than the previous one. One that saw as its mission the export of islamic fundamentalism and the funding of terrorist groups.

Skip many years. Fast forward through Iran-Iraq war and our role in helping both sides with intel so that neither side would wons, etc...

Now we're sponsoring freedom and democracy. About 50 years and hundreds of thousands of lives too late, but better late than never, right?

If all of this anonymizer shit means the people of Iran will get some help freeing themselves from a group of bloodthirsty fundamentalist fuckwads, great. But let's not delude ourselves about our real motivations. We use lofty language about democracy when it suits us, and just as easily discard it to support dictators.

By the way, there hasn't been a Persia for a long time. It's been "Iran" since 1935. If you want to make yourself sound like a rug or a cat, be my guest.

Re:Why start at '79

[Anonymous Coward]

I wanted to say that I was pleased to see an intelligent post such as yours.
Keep on and have a nice day.

Re:Why start at '79

[replicant108]

"Now we're sponsoring freedom and democracy."

Or destabilizing the government in advance of a pro-western revolution/invasion.

It is clear that the US government cannot and will not tolerate 'freedom & democracy' in the Middle East. There is a conflict here between strategic geo-political interests and the stated intentions of the government. You may assume that the stated intentions are more credible, but you must also understand that many others will not.

I miss safeweb

[Ryan_Singer]

Triangleboy made it so easy to bypass the restrictions of an oppresive regime, my public highschool.-Ryan

Contradiction?

[digitalgimpus]

It's kind of ironic.

The US is helping citizens of other countries break the laws of the country they are in.

Yet the US says that's illegal for any other country to do for US citizens.

Hmm....

Could this be for intelegence purposes

[digitalgimpus]

The US claims Iran is a key player in Terror groups.

Perhaps the goal is to get groups using US proxies so that US Intelegence can monitor Internet usage?

Get some kid to rig computers in an internet cafe to use the proxy... then some idiot visits the new Al-Queda site...

Hmm?

Iran blocking it?

[BoneFlower]

What measures will be taken to prevent the Iranian Government from just blocking the site? IP address blocking could be dealt with through proper use of DNS, but blocking both IP and domain would really kill it... as soon as the new IP is known, it would get blocked. I don't see this as a very useful thing to do..

GPG doesn't solve address blocking

[yerricde]

OpenPGP based products such as GNU Privacy Guard disguise only the content of the message. As far as I know, they don't help much when you can't send any message to the destination address. In addition, I've read things that imply that the OpenPGP "web of trust" is useful only for those who communicate primarily within a town or who often fly on airplanes.

Re:GPG doesn't solve address blocking

[Sivaram_Velauthapill]

I don't know anything about this "web of trust" you are referring to but GPG should be able to protect any communication. I don't see what a town or airplane has to do with any of this???

As far as not being able to send any messages to the destination address, if that is the case you can't do anything anyway. Regardless of whether you can anonymize or not, chances are the agents are watching the receiving end for everything that DOES get through.

Sivaram Velauthapillai

US GOVT=fascist, ecocentric,corporatists

[Anonymous Coward]

Once again King George and his fuking cronies are pushing their right wing WASP/Masonic ideologies on the rest of the world. While i do NOT agree with the views of many govt's around the world, WHO THE FUCK ARE WE TO SAY WHAT'S RIGHT?

The islamic community SHOULD BE OUTRAGED. I understand why our actions in the middle east would cause some fanatics to fly planes into the world trade center. Knowing a lot about our covert (NOW OVERT) actions around the world i'd have to say that WE DESERVED IT!

I mean come on why the fuk do we have to strong arm every other country into the capitalist/corporatist/fascist views of the "average" american (read what money and power will buy and be presented as our views).

I for one am sick and tired of this god damn country and the self righteousness of many of it's back ass/redneck mother fuking asshole citizens.

SECRET POLICE, IM SURE YOU ARE READING THIS. Go to fucking hell and shove your guns up your own assholes. I'd rather die than take the propaganda and rhetoric coming out of this administration.

George, you lying sack of shit! I hope you and all of your butt buddies get thrown out of office and thrown in jail for lying to the american people to support your own secret world domination agendas.

Isn't this just a little bit hypocritical?

[Fefe]

Am I the only one who finds it hypocritical to talk about anonymizing, freedom and free surfing and then filter porn away?

Or that they are planning to spam the citizen of Iran to get them to know the URL, when spam is outlawed in wide parts of the USA because people hate being spammed?

If the "freedom" we want them to have consists of being able to watch the Voice of America (which is operated openly as propaganda channel of the US government), it's not really real freedom, is it?

I'm not saying we need to use tax money to deliver porn to Iraq, but it is a vital part of our Western culture. We can't just pretend it's not there when we try to tell Iran how great our culture is (and that is exactly what Voice of America does).

Oh, come on

[garrulous]

Texas is large but it isn't a nation.

Did you forget to Preview?

[Anonymous Coward]

The sarcasm tag needs to be at the top of your comment.

I love Slashdot!

[JMZero]

An hour and a half before you asked this, I answered pretty much the same, identical question. It wouldn't have been hard to notice this, it was the only other response to my post.

Apparently, you not only can't be bothered to read the article but you're also above reading any of the comments.

But they're blocking porn?

[Anonymous Coward]

The revolution will not be won this way. No . . .

BTW, porn blockers also end up blocking sites with factual information on human sexuality, political sites for sexual minorities, and frank discussions of sexual ethics. Overzealous site blockers have also gone after satirical and academic sites. Porn blocking is a load of crap.

Correct usage of irony applicable?

[Anonymous Coward]

I mean, the US governement, striving to strip away all privy protection from it's own people, find value in giving anonymity to Iranians?

That or they're scamming and logging everyone.

Some Anonymizer Service

[tbond_trader]

I think what hasn't been addressed is the fact that an anonymizer service is working that closely with the US government, which totally defeats the purpose of an anonymizer service. I wouldn't be surprised if the government actually owns and runs the company and listens in freely using Echaleon from people that THINK they are browsing or emailing privately.

Notes from a months' travel in Iran...

[chathamhouse]

I spent a month travelling in Iran last December. I have a few observations that may surprise some:

1- Internet access is unfiltered, from what I could tell. From pr0n to sites advocating political dissent, people where happy to show me that things weren't blocked in Internet cafes. Since most people access the net from these cafes, they benefit from a layer of anonymity assuming that they can afford the $0.50-0.80us/hour rates.

2- The government is a complex machine. THE PEOPLE VOTE for their elected representative. Mr Khatami, the current president is a reformist. However, he cannot push reforms through too fast for a host of reasons, the first being that the country's spiritual leader, Ayatollah Khameini holds veto power over all decisions made by the elected government. Khameini also controls the military and the police. The conservatives, on their part, cannot block all reform, for the knowledge that reformists get violent if there's no progress. The end result is a country that's slowly moving towards reform. Conservatives think things are moving too fast, reformists think things are moving too slowly, but most people agree that the last thing the country needs is another war or revolution - far too many people die then. From my visit, I'm steadfast in my opinion that Iran will sort itself out on it's own, but it will take time. Sort of like Turkey, which has gone from an Islamic Monarchy in the 1910's to a democratic state today.

3- America's allies in the Middle East, such as the United Arab Emirates (spent 2 weeks there), do have filters, and nasty ones at that. There is only one ISP in the UAE, the governements, and it filters lots. I could frequently reach a blocked site when following links in slashdot stories, and there's nothing that you can do about getting those sites unblocked. The government of the UAE is a big-time monarchy, but is Open for Business. Will the proxy be available to the UAE? I don't think so.

4- Iran isn't as isolated as you would think, and a lot of this is due to the Internet and the availability of cheap international phone calls. For example, I was in the city of Qom, some 180km south of Tehran on the 17th of December. This is the conservative hub of the country. Ayatollah Khomeini was born and operated from there, and the city is home to the important Shiite shrine of Fatimeh's tomb. Through a long sequence of happenstance events, I found myself touring a school, and was amused when a teacher gave a copy of The Two Towers on vcd to the vice-principal who was showing me around. Information flows...

Iran does still leave a lot to be desired, but people seem generally happy, the standard of education is high, and there's universal medicare for citizens... but most medical drugs have to be purchased from smugglers because of some country's trade embargo. Certainly the lifting of the later wourld be a much better perceived sign of goodwill than an unnecessary proxy.

govt help + freedom software = complete monitoring

[Sivaram_Velauthapill]

I don't know anything about Anonymizer or any other software like it. But I do know one thing. Any time an organization lets a government, of any kind, near them, you might as well just avoid them like the plague. If an anonymizing service can be mainipulated by money that governments provide, they are not worth considering...

Sivaram Velauthapillai

Ok this went a different direction than I thought.

[Control-Z]

I thought the article was going to say the the goobermint set up the special anonymizer.com account so they could spy on the Iranians.

Well, maybe that's the OTHER reason...

Is this thing on ? hello testing ?

[Anonymous Coward]

you mess in other countries affairs so they fly planes into your buildings and you still continue to meddle ? /me pulls up a chair with popcorn

im glad i dont live in a major city, can you say the same ?

Re:Topsy Turvy. (Want Health Inurance?)

[Anonymous Coward]

Want health insurance? Move to Iraq.

Is This Secure?

[suwain_2]

The Anonymizer website has something where you can enter URLs and use it on their main page. (Slashdot is blocked, and recommends you upgrade?!) So I put in Google, and was taken to this URL:

http://anon.free.anonymizer.com/http://www.googl e. com/

I guess it gets around an explicit block on Google, but it's not really 'anonymous' -- you just have to look at the URL and you can see where I went?!

Also, what happens when the government just blocks anonymizer.com? I'd assume 'we' would be smart enough to have a wide pool of places they could connect, but really anything publically announced could be seen by the Iranian government and blocked? This sounds like it'll be a neverending 'arms race' between the US opening new anonymizers and the Iranians blocking the new anonymizers. (And what happens when they simply start, say, beheading anyone trying to use the anonymizers?)

Big Falacy

[dfay]

I hope the US Government is aware of exactly what Anonymizer.com does. Unfortunately I doubt they do.

The anonymizer.com service protects you from the sites that you are connecting to, not really from anyone else. Your web accesses go through the anonymizer site, then get stripped of any identifying information, and then are sent to the destination. This is useful when you don't want to be tracked by Doubleclick, or you want to view a site that you don't trust with your IP address, but it does nothing to prevent sniffers from seeing who you intend to connect to if they can see the traffic before it hits the anonymizer. (Which Iran is surely doing.)

This is actually worse than doing nothing at all, because some mistaken Iranians may believe that their actions are protected from snooping when in fact the Iranian government is probably paying more attention to this kind of traffic. It could get someone killed or imprisoned.

Luckily all those Iranians that want to protect their identity from Doubleclick will be safe, though.

It's really unbelievable how many bad security decisions are made every day by organizations that should know better. All you really have to do is think about a security problem for a second in a real-life context and it becomes obvious how stupid this answer is. Imagine sending a kid into a store to buy you something, but the person you really are trying to avoid is standing right next to you, listening to you tell the kid what to buy.

*sigh* I applaud the intentions, but I guess it's too much to expect that they think it through a little first.

Re:Big Falacy

[beatnitup]

Agreed...but wouldn't that be the purpose of the US setting up this service? Let me explain....US sets up a free anon service for the Iranian people, the "bad guys" come in and imprison/torture/kill the poor unknowing people who use this service?.and next week in headlines ?Iranian student killed in search of privacy?. What does this mean? Well it makes the US appear as the good guy in the eyes of the Iranian people?..all at the expense of more innocent lives?..then again we could lift the embargo which hurts the people of Iran more than it hurts the government. Do you really think an embargo is stopping the Mullahs from eating well and counting money? 2 wrongs don?t make a right.

Re:Big Falacy

[beatnitup]

I don't know why there were questions marks all over the place....lets try this again..

Agreed...but wouldn't that be the purpose of the US setting up this service?

Let me explain....US sets up a free anon service for the Iranian people, the "bad guys" come in and imprison/torture/kill the poor unknowing people who use this service, and next week in headlines "Iranian student killed in search of privacy".

What does this mean?

Well it makes the US appear as the good guy in the eyes of the Iranian people...all at the expense of more innocent lives...then again we could lift the embargo which hurts the people of Iran more than it hurts the government.
Do you really think an embargo is stopping the Mullahs from eating well and counting money?
2 wrongs don?t make a right.

what gives?

[IdleLay]

They monitor everything from their own citizen but anonymize everything from Iran.... ?

Obligatory Conspiracy Theory

[MotherSuperior]

Maybe they all got modded down, but I'm noticing a disturbing lack of conspiracy theories, for the slashdot crowd.

Personally, I see this as more of the same TIA/PATRIOT nonsense we've been enduring since 9/11. I find it far more likely that the GWB / Ashcroft crowd is using this as a tool for our own 'National Security'. Of the following 2 scenarios, which seems more likely given the practices we've seen from the current US administration?

A> Washington truly and deeply cares for the plight of the Iranian citizen, and the censorship they're subjected to by their oppressive government, despite showing no such concern for its own citizens.

B> Washington provides 'anonymous' internet access, in order to monitor the browsing activities of 'potential terrorists'. (Read: Everyone in Iran). All in the name of national security of course.

Considering the US's track record on things like this, I'm personally voting for B. Total Information Awareness really said it all for me. The United States Government has decided that privacy is the antithesis of freedom and security. I find it really hard to take this act at face value, considering the US's current stance on Internet Anonymity.

That's ambiguous...

[Angst Badger]

U.S. Funds Anonymizer for Iranians

At first reading, that sounded like a money laundering service.

"Don Corleone, we will need to pump the payment through the Funds Anonymizer to avoid attracting the attention of the police."

Time to offer normalized relations to Iran?

[Ungrounded Lightning]

"My best friend is Iranian and he tells me that people are sick of the current regime and love america."

I suspect either you or he meant "Americans" (people) and not necessarily "America" (government).

Don't be too sure.

Apparently a VERY large percentage of the Iranian people are in favor of normalizing relations with the US. (Up until recently that couldn't be determined very well, given that the regime was still run by people heavily invested in the immediately-post-Shah anti-American rhetoric. But shortly before the start of Gulf War II some Iranian clerics too well-respected to be suppressed were able to conduct a poll.)

Then Gulf War II resulted in the the liberation of the Iraqui Shiites from Sadam's oppression, resulting in still more support for the US among the Iranian population.

IMHO The US is missing a bet by not immediately making a public offer to normalize relations with Iran, and to assist them in cleaning out any pockets of Hammas/Bath/etc. that are causing them problems.

Such an offer should both give the Iranian government an excuse to drop their anti-American stand and give a big push to destabilizing them if they refuse to do so.

But the offer needs to be made soon. (It really should have been made right after the major fighting was over in Iraq.) The longer we wait, the more opportunity for circumstances (such as screwups between the occupying forces in Iraq and the Shiites there) to jepoardize the pro-American sentiment.

Re:Time to offer normalized relations to Iran?

[mpe]

Apparently a VERY large percentage of the Iranian people are in favor of normalizing relations with the US.

It wouldn't suprise me if a lot of people throughout the entire region of the "Middle East" would want normal diplomatic relations with the US. (Along with other countries, e.g. Cuba.) Problem is that the US's relationship with this part of the world hasn't been "normal" for a long time.

(Up until recently that couldn't be determined very well, given that the regime was still run by people heavily invested in the immediately-post-Shah anti-American rhetoric.

It can't be easy for the Iranians to forget, let alone forgive, that the Shah was a tyrant supported by the US. In order to install him the US (together with the UK) obliterated a democratic Iranian government.

Talk about large scale terrorist data collection!!

[brainchill]

Come on you people know what this is really for. Anyone in Iran that uses this proxy and goes to google to look up the phrase "Diesel tractor fertilizer sprayer" is going to have a cia/marine goon sqad tracking down their physical location and there will be a cruise missile headed for their house/cyber cafe as they must be a terrorist building bombs. -CIA, overthrowing governments and setting up friendly dictators for over 50 years.-

It's nothing new

[iamnotaclown]

America's reasons for giving the Iranian government the finger are hardly altruistic. Then again, America has a long history of interfering with Iran, usually to the extreme detriment of the Iranian people.

You are a bigot

[Sanity]

The Chinese never have, nor have they ever shown much aspiration towards being a democracy.

Ah, I suppose the Tiananmen Square massacre was actually all about free beer then? It sounds like you arguing that there is something genetic about the Chinese that makes them less "democratic"? Don't be such a bigot.

Re:You are a bigot

[Anonymous Coward]

What exactly makes his comment have anything to do with being a bigot? China has never been a republic or democracy and the communist party with its 60 million members cannot control a country of over a billion people unless a good number who are not party members support the CCP.

Re:You are a bigot

[mao che minh]

China is many times older than any other existing civilization. At no time during this long and illustrious period did their people opt for democracy. A handful of students protesting for an increase of free speech does not equate to full blown revolution by the people.

I fear that you have mistaken the meaning of the word "bigot", also.

Re:You are a bigot

[Anonymous Coward]

What is democracy ? Voting once in 4/5 years ? And that too the vote may not be counted (as in the US).

In other news...

[Anonymous Coward]

The IEEE will not publish papers from authors at Iranian universities, nor allow any funding for IEEE member organizations in Iran.

Anonymizer Funding

[Anonymous Coward]

I always assumed that the US Government was funding the whole thing, period. Call me paranoid.

ummm... your brains are spilling...

[Ender Ryan]

Please stop the insanity... people comparing the DMCA with Iranian policy...

Do you realize how absolutely INSANE that makes you appear to anyone who isn't a /. reader?

Yes, the DMCA is an attrocious law, and frankly I think many people deserve to spend the rest of their natural lives in jail for passing it, but come on, get some fucking priorities.

Two names.

[Anonymous Coward]

Uday and Qusay.

The US, UK and Australian governments may not have had any 'real reason' to invade Iraq and overthrow Hussein's regime.

They had something better. Moral and ethical reason. Of course, that never sits well with the American people. What do they care that some poor woman over in some third-world country is being forced to sit on a broken glass bottle, so that it shreds her rectum? Doesn't affect them at all, now, does it?

It's funny. The bulk of Slashdot will whine about bringing freedom to Iraq and now Iran's people, but I'm sure they'd have no problem if we invaded India to stop the influx of H1Bs. ;)

Re:Two names.

[Ender Ryan]

It's funny. The bulk of Slashdot will whine about bringing freedom to Iraq and now Iran's people, but I'm sure they'd have no problem if we invaded India to stop the influx of H1Bs. ;)

Sadly, there is some truth to that... People bitch and moan about every action the U.S. government takes, even if it's trying to use non-violent means to avoid conflict, because the U.S. is incapable of doing anything decent, and we shouldn't mess with the brown people, etc... But if an American employs a brown person, even giving them a wage that is decent for their locale, then they're up in arms about taking jobs away from Americans.

Of course there's the flip side. There are many corporations that use what basically amounts to slave labor... Nike, Coka Cola, etc.

Bleh, the whole world sucks, fuck it all :)

Reading comprehension

[Sean Clifford]

I was suggesting that perhaps the Iranians would do the same for us.

30 Million Dead Disagree

[Ender Ryan]

I'm sorry, but you're an asshat. The USSR didn't have an alternative to "our" system of doing things, they had forced labor, machine guns firing at their own soldiers, and 30 MILLION OF THEIR OWN COUNTRYMEN DEAD!

Do you have any idea what the USSR was planning after WWII. They were not a peaceful country, they were a country bent on conquest. Their government was not run by peace and sharing loving hippies. Russia was gunning for the world.

Next time, please pick another country to use as an example, preferably one that has qualms about murdering millions of people...

don't have to parrot same thing to stay on topic

[frovingslosh]

Yes, I got it. Yea, the original post was about Iran. I mentioned that I had tried to submit a post about Iraq that was very much along similar lines. (Obvoiusly we don't need to give Iraq a proxy server to protect them against the government, we are the government, but our government is doing things in both countries to give people the same freedom on the Internet that it is taking away from its own citizens.) It would be nice if either of these countries did something to help us.

This is a leap towards world peace

[Anonymous Coward]

When the Iranians see how free most of the world is, their attitudes towards the "West" will quickly change.

We should pray the Iranians using this service do not get caught!

Umm.. duh

[Anonymous Coward]

So like guys, seriously, do any of you americans ever read any of the declassified CIA documents that are available under a compulsory 30 year declassification law?

If you did, you'd realize that Voice of America is a CIA funded propaganda radio station, among many others scattered throughout other countries America doesn't like.

You'd also realize that stories involving or originating from these radio stations have precluded the overthrow of a democratically elected government on no less than 5 occasions (indonesia, british guinea, guatamala, el slavador, and syria to name a few).

This is no humanitarian mission, it is deliberate meddling into the internal affairs of Iran, which will be used to put pressure on the Iranian government to do what America wants (usually it involves opening local indurstries to American interests at the cost of the local people, dismissing any communist or socialist members of parliment, killing off any "undesirable" people, and allowing the American military to use the country as a staging point against another country).

But that's OK. you just sleep tight in your beds and woner why people the world over hate you.

Note: "special version"-what exactly does it mean?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not exactly sure what they mean by this, but it is likely that this special version could include features to let our govt. snoop on what exactly it is Iranians use the service for (as well as log the IP's of the people using the service - kind of see who's using it). Apart from possibly doing the previous, our govt. (err, partially non-elected regime) could be using the service to help see general trends in what Iranians look for when using an anonymizer.

Do they take 36 yr olds in the US Army?

[tjstork]

If I can't get a job programming because my job went to India, can I get a job soldiering because the Army went to the Middle East?

Government educated

[Loundry]

So now that my degree and experience allows me to have a high income, I don't mind paying state and federal taxes so other people can have the same opportunity.

And what about people who managed to earn their degree without taking plundered money from the government? Should they be forced to pay as well?

I figure while they are studying hard and later getting their high income, they won't be stealing my hubcaps.

This statement implies that anyone going to public school is not going to be a criminal. Unfortunately for your argument, people graduate from government schools without the ability to read. People also drop out of government schools. People who are stupid and make bad choices often turn to crime. In these cases, government school failed (and perhaps harmed) those people, so the taxpayers' money is wasted.

Maybe it depends on whether you are always noticing what others take from you rather than what others give to you.

The typical "You're selfish!" accusation that flows easily and frequently from the mouths of Christians and Leftists. I hate to break this to you, but there is no action that you will do or have ever done that did not contain a self-serving element.

I'm from Iran, and it's not understandable for me!

[shadowless]

Well, to you, it might sound like: "Yes, give those poor, ignorant bastards over there a chance to surf the net, since they got no clue about which mouse button is the left one."
But it's not like that. It's very naive of our government trying to censor internet, and of course it's not working. Even the masses have found ways to circumvent these measures and also not all ISPs block all these addresses.

It's by all means the US government's right to try whatever it sees fit to oppose what it calls "Axis of Evil," but don't expect us to appreciate that. It may not have occured to you, and I'm just trying to illuminate the situation here, that although the government is not exactly popular over here (I wonder if it is anywhere,) it's still our government and although we strive for reforms, we do not seek another revolution, or war.

Whether you believe it or not, there are people over here that check Slashdot every other hour, have kernel.org as their homepage and curse when they face EULAs.

You can score this : 5, Insideful(!)

[shadowless]

Unfortunately, you seem to be quite unaware of what's going on here (in Iran.)
I am one of those students which are children of the students who revolted in 1979, which now regard that as a bad move. The thing that is important for everybody to realize is that nobody (except probably a few radical percentage,) wants another revolution. And certainly nobody wants foreign interference (consider it this way : Would you tolerate another nation (or the UN, or anyone not American) to interfere when there were questions about the last presidency election over at the US? Well, we wouldn't either.)
Of course there are disagreements over here like anywhere else about the course of action that should be taken towards A Better Future and its pace, and for that matter, a lot of it, but trust me, we want to handle our own problems ourselves.

big deal

[l4X]

iranian government will have to ban anonymizer.com as well. dah.

FBI et al. can quickly trace them...

[Anonymous Coward]

well, anonymisers aren't really anonoymous anyway. It is a false sense of anonimity.

recently, someone in the Netherlands blackmailed a diary company with poisoning some dessert with rat poison. He used an anonymiser to post his message on the webpage of the diary-company. The police requested his IP from the FBI, and it was quickly traced amd he was caught.

I think it was a good thing he was caught, but I also hope people should be _very_ aware of the fact that an anonymiser is not really going to hide you.

(Ofcourse, it might be useful to get all those iranian terrorists to use a system where the US can easily trace you...)

You're deluded

[Anonymous Coward]

The USA government is not working for freedom of others at all and never has. Note that they are not even planning to hold "free and fair" elections any time soon in Iraq. They are not allowing the Iraqi people, fractious as they might be, control over their own future direction, or resources. The USA government wants those oil pipelines open ASAP, and they're not interested in putting the power back on or helping out the hospitals or schools or garbage collection or anything that could help a city to operate effectively.

I doubt they have any interest in the freedom of the Angolan people, Iranian people, Somalians, Palestinians (or even the Israelis), Burmese, Phillipinos or New Zealanders (freedom to refuse Nuclear ships is under pressure from YKW).

I suspect you need to be high up in Lockheed-Martin, Monsanto, Haliburton, GM, Ford, Boeing etc to have any claim on "freedom".

grow up

[Ender Ryan]

was almost impossible to overestimate.

This is the nonsense rhetoric I and him were referring to, and it is absolutely ridiculous. The damage caused by the war was quite mild as far as wars go, and the number of dead was remarkably very few civilians, and the fact is, the naysayers predicted a lot more death and destruction than actually happened. "Impossible to overestimate" is ridiculous.

Furthermore, the Iraqi regime is responsible for far more deaths than were caused by the war, so for all this anti-war talk, within a year or two the war will actually result in a net reduction in the number of lives lost. And THAT is a fact. Just look up the number of deaths in Iraq that were the result of the Iraqi regime, and consider the torture and fear caused by the Iraqi leaders.

Oh sure, you can blame the U.N. sanctions for the deaths related to poor drinking water quality, but the starvation and malnutrition is purely the result of the regime abusing the food for oil program and generally not caring about their own populace. But now that the country is no longer controlled by a dangerous regime, things can be restored, and lives can be saved.

I'm not even saying the U.S. had pure intentions, but this cry me a river nonsense is ridiculous. Boo-fucking-hoo, people died. People always die. The actions of the U.S. will eventually result in far fewer deaths, so what's the problem? You don't like the current U.S. regime? Fine, but you're working the wrong angle.

And if you point out that the Iraqi people don't have electricity and running water currently... Yes, that is pissing me off too, so save it. The U.S. needs to get its act together and show the Iraqi people that they're making a good faith effort to improve their conditions. I don't care how much it costs, get it done! Otherwise, it casts a shadow on everything they've done up to this point. If you want heads to roll, it should be for that!

<snip - of course it's not fun... *rolls eyes* />

For every israeli killed by a palestenian three palestenians are killed.

1. Most Israeli deaths are the result of suicide bombings, meaning at least one Palestinian dies in every attack.
2. The Palestinians are far weaker than the Israelis, therefore their attacks are far less effective.
3. The Palestinians have turned down every chance for peace, and the offers have been good compromises on the part of Israel, I've read them.

And I never said that I support the position of the U.S. w/regards to Israel, nor do I support the Israeli attacks on Palestinians, as they more often than not result in nothing but the deaths of innocent people. However, the Palestinians are FAR from blameless, and are in fact more to blame for the continuation of the violence than the Israelis are.

Now if you were to ask me who I feel the most compassion for in the whole mess, I'd say the innocent Palestinians, because there are many of them, and they're living in very poor conditions. But I feel it's their own leaders who are mostly to blame at this point.

Try looking at both sides of the issues, because there are two sides, and more often than not, the truth is somewhere in-between.

Cheers.

Re:grow up

[Vlad_the_Inhaler]

I was slightly misquoting (substitute 'exaggerate' for 'overestimate') Paul Bremer himself. Here is a quote from this article, it is from yesterday:
On Wednesday, President Bush acknowledged guiding Iraq toward democracy would "require a substantial commitment of time and resources." Just how substantial was revealed by Paul Bremer, U.S. occupation coordinator. He told Washington Post reporters the cost to cover all the expenses was "almost impossible to exaggerate."

Now quoting you: This is the nonsense rhetoric I and him were referring to, and it is absolutely ridiculous.
nuff said on that.

All information we get on Iraq tends to be coloured by the political viewpoint of the person reporting it. One source I check up a lot is someone in the country who has no special axe to grind and was very happy when Saddam was kicked out. You probably know the source (not to would be unforgiveable if you claim to know anything about that country). Here is his newest report. Some of the older stuff further down is also very interesting. What worries me there is that the old structures are starting to recover and regroup. Their new tactics are obviously not designed to win them any friends, but they were not expecting to anyway.

Re:grow up

[Anonymous Coward]

replying to my own post but as an AC:
There have been some arrests in Iraq after the latest bombing. If they have the right people, it was al-Qaida and not the Baathists and they are also responsible for the other two recent explosions.
This seems rather weird - an organisation which exists to carry out a jihad on behalf of Muslims is supposed to have killed over 100 worshippers coming out of a Mosque at one of the Muslim holy sites. Baathists are not expecting to make any new friends in Iraq because everyone there knows how they behaved the last 20+ years, but what the hell are al-Qaida trying to achieve here? It does not add up.
I can understand why al-Qaida could consider the UN to be a target, the Jordanian embassy seems a bit strange and the newest one totally insane.

Re:grow up

[Anonymous Coward]

All I can say is that Hitler was a visionaire...

Re:grow up

[Malcontent]

"This is the nonsense rhetoric I and him were referring to, and it is absolutely ridiculous. The damage caused by the war was quite mild as far as wars go, and the number of dead was remarkably very few civilians, and the fact is, the naysayers predicted a lot more death and destruction than actually happened. "Impossible to overestimate" is ridiculous."

Thousands of civillians were killed. On top of that tens of thousands of conscripts were killed. Those conscripts may have been technically soldiers but in reality were poor unfortunate slobs whose only crime was to be born a male in a country which the US wanted to invade.

"Furthermore, the Iraqi regime is responsible for far more deaths than were caused by the war"

Maybe maybe not. The estimates from the first gulf were around 200,000 killed. We don't know how many people were killed this time around. But let's put that away for now.

Saddam Killed people since the seventies. Where was your indignation when he was gassing the kurds? where was your indignation when he was gassing the iranians? Where was your indignation when he was brutally cracking down on the Shiites in his own country? My guess is that those things neve bothered you, maybe you were totally ignorant of them while they were happening or maybe it didn't bother you because he doint all that with chemicals bought from us, with intelligence provided by us and with funds from the US.

Bitching and moaning about how many people Saddam killed 20 years after the fact is bullshit, why weren't you backing up the human rights groups that were begging the US to stop funding for Iraq back then?

"Oh sure, you can blame the U.N. sanctions for the deaths related to poor drinking water quality,"

Go ahead and try to minimize it. I am sure it helps your conscience. Lack of food, medicine, water, and crucial infrastructure killed millions. Depleted Uranium caused countless birth defects and cancer.

". 1 Most Israeli deaths are the result of suicide bombings, meaning at least one Palestinian dies in every attack."

They are unarmed, poor, and under opressive occupation. This is the only weapon they have. If they had tanks they would use tanks, if they had helicopters they would use helicopters. If a palestenian has the option of attacking israel and living to tell about it they would but they don't have that choice. These people are using anything they can find be it rocks or home made bombs.

I for one admire them for it. If the US was invaded and occupied by a foreign military (especially one that had a different culture, language and religion) I would hope that all US citizens would take arms to beat them back. Our country if founded on an absolute love of liberty and freedom. "Give me freedom or give me death" and "Don't tread on me".

"2. The Palestinians are far weaker than the Israelis, therefore their attacks are far less effective."

There is no question about that.

"3. The Palestinians have turned down every chance for peace, and the offers have been good compromises on the part of Israel, I've read them."

This is a lie. The palestenians have agreed to everything put in front of them that even remotely sounded fair. From OSLO to the latest roadmap from Bush. The problem is that netierh the Israeli military nor Hamas want peace. They always sabotage it one way or another and the whole thing gfoes up in flames. Also the offers are ridiculus and incencere. Take a look at any offer by the israelis on a palestenians state, go look at a map it's ridiculus. There is not continuity (the 67 borders problem) it's not a country it's a series of neighborshoods divided by israeli land. The most generous offer the israelis put on the table called for 85% of the settlements to remain in place and the entire east jerusalem to remain under Israeli control.

That's not an offer for peace it's a terms for surrender and the palestenians are not ready to surrender yet.

If you ignore everything else I have said

Re:grow up

[Malcontent]

I thinks it's unlikely to be Al-Qaida. It's much more likely to be baathists who are secular socialists.

The problem is the US is unable to tell the truth if it's the Baathists because it makes them liars when they say Saddam is defeated. If saddams folloowers are causing mayhem then it's highly embarrassing the the US.

I have no doubt the US will blame this on Al Qaida.

Re:grow up

[Ender Ryan]

First of all, I was born in 79, and I am very much upset about any dictator who murders people.

Secondly... You're crazy. You say you admire the militant Palestinians...

If another country were to invade ours, and 35 years later you were firing at a schoolbus(which has been done a number of times!), even if I were on the same "side" as you, I'd kill you myself.

I truly hope those people who intentionally kill innocents aren't the ones you're supposedly admiring.

There IS a difference between terrorism and collatoral damage.

Re:grow up

[Vlad_the_Inhaler]

The US do not seem to be afraid to blame Saddam for any mayhem going on there, I have to disagree with you on that one, but agree substantially with the rest.

Taking a step back from the situation, there have been 3 recent bombings following a similar pattern.

• The Jordanian Embassy. This came on the heels of the Jordanian government offering a refuge to two of Saddam's daughters. Al Qaida should not care about this, Saddam should actually approve so I am unsure who would benefit.
• The UN bombing. The blame for this one weakens your contention that the US do not want to blame Saddam - they did. Al Qaida could also have been considered prime candidates.
• The Mosque bombing 2 days ago. To me as an outsider, it would have made little sense for Al Qaida to have carried this one out, even though the cleric involved was urging people to work together to build a 'new Iraq'. Baath 'resistance fighters' are much more obvious candidates.

This assumes that all three bombings were carried out by the same group, and it certainly looks like it.

Re:grow up

[Malcontent]

" The US do not seem to be afraid to blame Saddam for any mayhem going on there, I have to disagree with you on that one, but agree substantially with the rest."

The US is willing to blame the "now defeated" saddam hussein and it's acts "in the past". It would be politically ruinious now to admit that saddam was still operating, organizing and executing complicated attacks like this.

Re:grow up

[retards]

Boo-fucking-hoo, people died. People always die.

Boo-hoo about all those people in the Twin Towers, fuckit, people always die. Collateral damage. Sounds lovely, doesn't it?

Besides, Coalition forces have killed probably around 200-300 times more people in Iraq alone in the last 13 years than died in New York. So it was just payback... even though the hi-jackers were Saudis! But that's not important! We had to invade Iraq because *INSERT REASON OF THE WEEK*.

For the record, the Food For Oil program allowed sale of oil that filled around a few percent of the actual need for food in Iraq. Guess what nation always vetoed sales?

Re:who the hell is moderating now

[Anonymous Coward]

For fucks sake, if you don't understand a post don't fucking moderate it.

What retards gave this a +5?

For one thing the first statement is downright bollocks and can have no historical basis. The Chinese were certainly not pulling for the US during vietnam, speak to any US special forces who were in the area and ask them how many chinese they saw on the other side.

The PRC = Peoples Republic of China so how the fuck would they declare war on China.

Since this post has no basis in fact there is no way anyone could think it worthy of rating as "interesting" unless your definition of "interesting" is "uses long words and abbreviations.

&*$% the Prophet

[No Such Agency]

Heh, reminds me of my ex-roommate who I now refer to as "Meydi the bacon-eatin' Iranian". Despite retaining quite a bit of culturally-derived sexism, he loved the freedoms of Canada and yes, enjoyed eating bacon. Basically, like some other Iranians I met, he wasn't a particularly religious man, and resented being held to religious rules in his homeland. Also, apparently, the Iranian PhD student in my lab was widely believed by other Iranians in town to be a "spy" for the religious authorities. So he never got invited to their parties where *gasp* men and women, some even unmarried, would hang out together and even talk to one another. Innocent as all hell by our standards but they all would have been in big shiat if word of it got back home...

Nice article/link

[marx]

Interesting with a poll. I'm not much wiser after reading it though, the answers are very ambiguous. Maybe that's the way it is there though.

Beware Iranian retaliation...

[jesdynf]

... they may offer /us/ the same service.

I find it ironic... (And porn!)

[Flwyd]

That the US government will fund radio for citizens in the Middle East, but funding for radio for US citizens is constantly in danger of disappearing.

Also, if "we" are to fight radical Islamists, we need to challenge their social order. What better way to confront rules restricting women's dress than by letting Iranians see women without clothes? Yet the Farsical Anonymizer blocks porn sites.

Well...

[JMZero]

It isn't just one set of e-mails. It'll be e-mails from different addresses in different formats pointing to different, boring sounding URL's. If you think the job of filtering this is easy, you should be able to make a fortune in SPAM/porn filters.

There's no way to get the information to citizens without also reaching the government.

The government will certainly be able to block some, and likely most if it really tries. But, short of blocking the whole internet, this service will make it through to some.

Use your imagination a little.

Re:Well...

[damiam]

The problem is that eventually the government will find out every address that's ever been used (or 99% of them, anyway), even if it doesn't know all of the current ones. It can then just grep the logs for those people who used the proxy, and go hunt them down. They can do some major intimidation and scare everyone off of trying to use these proxies.

I agree that at least some people will be able to use these services, and that some is better than none. I just don't think they'll be particuarly effective.

Vlad shouldn't have inhaled

[GPS Pilot]

Saddam was bending over backwards to avoid war... Now countries which see themselves as threatened by the US know that behaving rationally will get them nowhere.

Sorry Vlad... Saddam would still be in power if he had simply produced a few shreds of evidence to support his contention that the anthrax he previously posessed had been destroyed. His failure to do that hardly constitues "bending over backwards."

The Clinton Administration agreed to send North Korea a considerable amount of petroleum in exchange for their refraining from nuclear weapons production. We honored our end of the bargain (did you know that much of the oil pumped in Alaska was shipped to North Korea?), but they didn't. If they had behaved rationally and honored their end of the bargain, tensions today would be greatly reduced, and Bush would not be saying "we remain hopeful that the situation can be resolved peacefully," because there would be no "situation."

I just don't understand the miswired brains of people who hold views like yours.

Re:Vlad shouldn't have inhaled

[Vlad_the_Inhaler]

• How do you prove that you have destroyed something like anthrax? Anthrax can be duplicated more or less infinitely so there is no way that proof can ever be delivered
• The Clinton Administration hammered out a deal with the N Koreans involving various transfers (money, oil, food, whatever). Part of that deal was stopped by Congress, I personally don't like the idea of paying a bunch of crooks like that Danegeld anyway - it teaches them that intimidation works.
  What I do find very very stupid was to place Iraq as public enemy Nr. 1 when it was obvious that N Korea had far more potential and was making use of it. The US demonstrated bad faith by invading Iraq the way it did, the carrot and stick approach was working but it was only applied to the wrong one of the 2 countries (forget Iran, they behave sensibly if you treat them right) and the carrot was thrown away.

You say you don't understand me and think that means my brain is 'miswired'. That you don't understand is obvious.
We are all creatures of our environments, and our news sources. You place too much trust in yours. I try and avoid that trap but you can never be completely sure.

Re:Vlad shouldn't have inhaled

[GPS Pilot]

How do you prove that you have destroyed something like anthrax?

Saddam's regime, like the Third Reich, kept meticulous records of everything it did. If Saddam had papers that documented the destruction of his anthrax, he could have showed them. He didn't. If the regime had employees that physically incinerated or otherwise disposed of the anthrax, they could have been brought forward to make statements to the UN inspectors, giving places and dates when anthrax was destroyed. No such statements were given. Ergo, Saddam made zero effort to back up his claim that all the anthrax had been destroyed.

The alternative

[GPS Pilot]

Let me get this straight -- if I go to a public library, my browsing is censored by mandate of the U.S. government

Let me get this straight -- you're in favor of putting copies of Penthouse and Hustler on the periodical shelves of our public libraries, whose clientele is composed of about 60% schoolkids? That would be effectively be the result of unfiltered surfing at libraries.

Double your think

[fm6]

Please, it's just a muddled rant. Slashdot hardly has a monopoly on those.

And if you sift out the actual opinions, you have to admit that Gokubi has a point, even if it is badly expressed. It should bother you that the U.S government is expending so much money and so many lives to promote individual freedom -- everywhere except the U.S. Somehow individual freedom in the U.S. promotes terrorism, but works against it everywhere else! Yeah, I know, Bush II isn't as bad as the Iranian theocrats. But if we continue to operate on a "trust him, he's the good guy" policy, that won't be true much longer.

It's also sort of funny that the free proxy has a few censorship rules of its own. "There's a limit to what taxpayers should pay for." So telling people what they can access is only bad when Evil Mullahs do it.

Intimidation is certainly a possibility...

[JMZero]

But this is Iran, not 5-years-ago-Iraq. While the government is certainly abusive, I think many people will brave the possible recriminations. Remember that Iran sees a lot of public student protest.

The other thing to remember is that much Internet access isn't from private homes, it's from publically accessible terminals (and access through them would be pretty much completely anonymous).

If nothing else, I applaud the thought and the effort.

The world would be a lot happier place..

[xtal]

If more people said "Fuck the prophet".. and were just a little bit nicer to each other instead. Unfortunately - religion and politics are tools towards the same ends, and neither is really about being nicer to each other.