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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."
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.
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.
When will I end this grieving ? When will my future begin ?
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.
Sigs are out of style, so I'm not going to use one...oh wait..
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?
There are two kinds of egotists: 1) Those who admit it 2) The rest of us
Now.
Aren't you running a Freenet node yet?
Big Brother Bush is doubleplus ungood.
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.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
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.
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.
When will I end this grieving ? When will my future begin ?
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.
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.
- 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?It's nothing but crumpled porno and Ayn Rand.
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.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
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.
This is my sig. There are many like it, but this one is mine...
"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.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
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...)