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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."
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.
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.
"I can not bring myself to believe that if knowledge presents danger, the solution is ignorance" - Isaac Asimov
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.
everything in moderation
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.
Let's not stir that bag of worms...
RTFA.
You tell me how "whilst" differs from "while," and I'll stop calling you a pretentious jackass.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
// TODO: Insert Cool Sig
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?
No matter where you go, there you are; even before you arrive.
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.
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.
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.
"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.
War is necrophilia.