Iran to Filter 'Immoral' Mobile Messages

jb.cancer noted an article running on eweek about plans in Iran to censor phone messages sent within the country. At least it's not quite that bad here yet. But give it a few years!

Comments

F***T P**T

[LiquidCoooled]

This First F***T P**T was sent using an Iranian proxy!

Question:

[el_munkie]

What, exactly, would make the poster think that it would be possible that text messages in the US would be filtered for content? Has the US censored IMs, phone conversations, e-mail, or any other means of communication, or is this just the nebulous political FUD we've had to endure for so long?

Re:Question:

[Zeinfeld]

The reason for the Iranian concern here is that the revolution was originally spread through compact cassette tapes. This has nothing to do with morality, it is all about political control.

The regime is becoming very unstable, the only shill the mullahs could find to front for them was Ahmendinejad. And many of them have been visibly regretting it since. He is doing the crazy act a little bit too well.

The problem is similar to Cuba, it is pretty easy to keep a regime going for a very long time if there is a widespread perception of an iminent external threat. If a country is attacked the people are going to side with their government regardless of what it is like. The Russians sided with Stalin, the Cubans side with Castro, the Iranians will side with the mullahs.

Sanctions don't work unless the country targeted by the sanctions respects the party applying them. Sanctions worked in South Africa because the South African whites considered their country to be a part of the Western world. The rejection mattered to them. Cuba might respond to sanctions from Latin America, but sanctions from the country that backed the corrupt Batista despotism are not going to work.

Instant messaging is a way for opponents of the regime to organize. They can keep tabs on Ahmendinejad's gangs of armed thugs. They can arrange protests and demonstrations.

There is a blogosphere in Iran and it is spread by SMS messaging. That is cool.

"At Least???"

[purduephotog]

At least it's not quite that bad here yet. But give it a few years!

What country are YOU posting from? There is hardly ANYTHING censored in the US- and yes, I recognize that you are attempting sarcasm, but it's rather pathetic. There are several dozen things that I wish were censored, but aren't, and that's a good thing too.

And yes, you can be executed in Iran if you perform Immoral Activities. Shall we wait for that to come to a US City nearest you, too now?

"But give it a few years!"

[caldodge]

In a few years you'll still be spouting this sort of paranoid crap, with no censorship taking place.

That sort of loony paranoia doesn't boost your side's credibility, any more than my side was helped by predictions that Bill Clinton would use FEMA regs to declare a national emergency and establish a dictatorship, or the right-wing paranoids who referred to the Oklahoma City bombing as "Bill Clinton's Reichstag Fire".

Why don't you focus on REAL government abuses instead? For example, the "if you have lots of cash then you must be a drug dealer" lunacy known as "Civil Asset Forfeiture", or the suppression of free speech in the name of "Campaign Finance Reform"?

OMG

[ady1]

it's full of stars...

Re:Then they came for me

[UTPinky]

*sigh*
He made a spin off on a famous poem, "First they came...", written by Martin Niemöller about the Holocaust and Nazi rise to power. Please educate yourself and learn some culture.

First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me.

Um... No. Your tinfoil hat is on backwards.

[Etherwalk]

Censorship in the US works rather differently. Watch Good Night, and Good Luck or look for the interviews with ex-Fox reporters about Monsanto. The government here rarely censors directly, with the exception of things it claims fall under the rubrick of National Security. Instead, most censorship happens according to the interests of major corporations, and isn't government sponsored. A lot of things are also censored almost by default--third party candidates barred from presidential debates, for example. There's a tremendous amount of social, psychological, political, and financial inertia that--while not technically censorship--make it very difficult to spread information or viewpoints that don't conform to the norm. (And the norm, sadly, is generally addressed to the Lowest Common Denominator.)

The censorship in the US is subtle--and of a different kind, so that in a sense it's not really censorship at all. You can still stand on a street corner and talk to the stranger next to you and not worry much about being locked up. Even if the stranger's a cop, or a Fed, for that matter.

(We won't censor the messages, btw. We'll build an enormous super-secret database of them. Is that better or worse than explicit censorship?)

And how do you know he has the "truth"

[SmallFurryCreature]

Holland is known to be tolerant of gays, Amsterdam especially. Yet the word "homo" is a curse word and not a light one either. In english where you call someone a bastard, even a fucking one, in dutch the person is called gay, same for a stupid idiot or a mean person. Gay each and everyone of them.

A transvestite was recently beaten to death and two male newspapers reporters who pretended to be a gay couple found out just how gay people are viewed, especially by that other hated group, muslim immigrants.

And yet, I could take you on a tour and you would see none of this.

Not that it matters. The people of Iran do NOT matter, the goverment that rules them and that they support (through action or inaction does not matter) is what counts on the world stage.

Many americans claim to be against the iraq war, in fact some sources claim the majority. So how exactly was Bush RE-ELECTED, how the fuck did he get elected in the first place and why are there no efforts to stop the war or at least hamper it?

I would have find the article you linked to a great deal more convincing if the reporter had dressed up as a jew. Or if he had been a she and refused to wear a headscarf, notice how ALL the women in the photos wear one?

White male known to be a reporter from britain is shown a positive face of Iran. Wow, yeah, amazing.

Life isn't a bioware RPG you know. There is no physical representation of the "good" or "evil" of a people. I am reasonably postive that death camp guards on their day off do NOT sprout horns and lurk in dungoens and beat foreign reporters to death for fun.

In fact isn't it amazing racist or at least culterists to claim that "Iran's youth wants western fashion therefore they are not our enemy"? Some of the bloodiests wars in histories have between countries that outsiders could not tell apart.

Re:Everyone in Power Wants to Regulate Speech

[MightyYar]

Seriously - all of the politically correct crap that we've had to endure all of these years comes from the so-called "left". Everyone seems to want to control what we say, Democrat or Republican.

Stop the idiocy

[Spy Handler]

Yes I'm talking about YOU, Taco.

We all love to bash Bush and hate America, often with good reason... but please, at least give it *some* thought and make sure there's at least some shred of evidence before blindly and mindlessly criticizing everything USA.

Freedom of speech and lack of government censorship is one of the few things that America still has the best of, more so than anywhere else - even the wondrous paradise called Europe. Here you can express support for an unpopular political ideology or make fun of a crazy religion and still expect to keep your freedom. Not so in many parts of Europe; you can be arrested for doing just that.