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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."
IAALS.
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.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
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
War is necrophilia.
Some interesting observances about Iran:
/. post, probably very little... Just wanted to throw in my two cents 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
100% Insightful
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.
All about me
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.