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Iranians Outwit Censors With Falun Gong Software
Hugh Pickens writes "The NY Times reports that since last year more than 400,000 Iranians began surfing the uncensored Web using software created for the Falun Gong, a spiritual movement that has been suppressed by the Chinese government since 1999. More than 20 countries now use increasingly sophisticated blocking and filtering systems for Internet content, according to Reporters Without Borders, including Iran, China, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Syria. The creators of the software seized upon by Iranians are members of the Global Internet Freedom Consortium, based largely in the United States and closely affiliated with Falun Gong. Interestingly enough, the United States government and the Voice of America have financed some of the circumvention technology efforts, and a coalition is organizing to push for more Congressional financing of anti-filtering efforts, bringing together dissidents of Vietnam, Iran, the Uighur minority of China, Tibet, Myanmar, Cuba, Cambodia, Laos, as well as the Falun Gong, to lobby Congress for the financing. 'What is our leverage toward a country like Iran? Very little,' said Michael Horowitz, a fellow at the Hudson Institute. 'Suppose we have the capacity to make it possible for the president of the United States at will to communicate with hundreds of thousands of Iranians at no risk or limited risk? It just changes the world.'"
Hopefully the citizens of Britain and Australia and Germany can get a hold of this software so that they can use the Internet without government censorship impeding them.
"The internet interprets censorship as damage, and routes around it". People can do so too.
Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others.
... of a world without frontiers or lines, united through their common love of pirated games and porn download torrents.
Since the fall of the Shah and the rise of the Ayatollahs, Iran has politically regressed to a very dangerous stage. However, culturally the country is still very close to America. Despite the religiosity demanded by the mullahs, many consolations have been made to keep the populace from rioting.
From simple things like not requiring a full hijab to really bizarre things like ultra-temporary marriages to allow single men the pleasures of prostitutes legally under Sharia. Iran is a country struggling to break back into the modern world.
The faster we can get a strong secular leader in power there, the better the odds of Iran returning to the peaceful international fold.
Look at the military industry for example. There is a large market for guns, shells and missiles on one side, and also large market for bulletproof vests, armour and missile defense on the other side.
This is a similar situation. Especially the makers of internet filtering software, such as Cisco, should take note of this emerging market opportunity.
So, we should really keep the markets do their own thing, and the economy will grow and prosper.
Falun Gong/Falun Dafa have been brutalized by the Chinese government for years for doing nothing more than practicing a mental and physical discipline.
They are experts in software like this because their leadership is almost certainly under constant surveillance.
Voice of America started as a radio network for broadcasting news that shows a different point of view from that by censors in the old Soviet Bloc.
This just seems a continuation of the same mission.
In the same way that an object does not "want" to fall when it is dropped, or a species does not "want" to evolve.
But it will, regardless, simply because that is its natural state.
Technoli
Interestingly enough, the United States government and the Voice of America have financed some of the circumvention technology efforts,
Would that count as a cyber attack on Iran or China?
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"'Suppose we have the capacity to make it possible for the president of the United States at will to communicate with hundreds of thousands of Iranians at no risk or limited risk? It just changes the world.'"
Right, because those dumb Iranians couldn't possibly know anything until POTUS tells 'em about it. Obama will just do a two minute webcast on how many great jobs are available in the American auto industry, bookended by lolcats, and the government will fall!
Sheesh.
First, I'll state that I support this, worldwide.
That said, I find it a bit whacked that on one hand we have part of our government demanding filtering and selective blocking of websites in public locations and schools. While at the same time a different part of our government is supporting and funding software to bypass filtering and blocking.
Maybe we should drop the Politically Correct filtering efforts and quit wasting everybody's money. After all, isn't that what our government seems to be saying to other countries? Or is it just our country and our allies that are allowed to filter? Come on USA, get your story straight.
Suppose we have the capacity to make it possible for the president of the United States at will to communicate with hundreds of thousands of Iranians at no risk or limited risk? It just changes the world. You're assuming those thousands of Iranians would actually want to download messages from Obama, rather than downloading porn. As a general rule, the more repressed people's public lives are, the more sleazy their secret, private lives become. Iran has a huge surplus of educated but unemployed young men. I suspect that "free porn" is pretty high on their list of motivations for defeating filters, while "hearing what Obama has to say" is pretty low. Especially given that Obama doesn't speak Farsi. Porn is universal, it needs no translation. When was the last time you saw a foreign language porn flick with subtitles? One doesn't really need to understand the language to follow the plot line in a porn flick. And their stage direction is mostly just:
In!
Out.
In!
Out.
In!
Out.
In!
Out.
Actor 1 moans...
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
No mention of the U.K., Germany, or Australia which are also implementing blocking technologies? Very western of us to ignore the other supposed free countries.
...in North Korea, where the Internet is simply prohibited altogether.
From google cache:
http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:d3NzsFRIiU4J:english.peopledaily.com.cn/200103/20/eng20010320_65533.html+falun+gong+suicides&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ca
IMHO Some things should be outlawed.
Yes "I'm sorry we didn't prevent the Islamic revolution in 1979".
-- Support a free market in the field of government
It's funny how certain kinds of people praise the defiance of authority like this but admonish those who defeat filters in school to access controversial information. They force their public schools and libraries to install buggy censorware which has been demonstrated time and time again to block legitimate but incorrectly categorized information.
Heck, the Australian and German governments filter their entire countries, for ostentatious "think of the children" reasons, but all it takes is a flip of a switch for it to go political. Neither country historically has much of a problem with certain kinds of political censorship.
How long ago was it that we had Republicans telling us to watch what we say?
We need a pan-national dedication to transparency and the free flow of information. The people who scream about Iranian and Chinese injustice the loudest are also some of the worst censors at home. The free world won't be until we hold our own people accountable.
I seriously doubt the Iranians censor much in the way of non-pornographic English material.
Yes, even people who didn't vote for Bush are responsible for his actions.
Oh, that makes sense. I suppose you should be charged for murder, because I'm sure one happened.. and you're responsible for your government NOT protecting its citizens.
"I'm sorry we didn't prevent the Islamic revolution in 1979... ... by not overthrowing your democratic government in 1953."
I agree, that would be a nice place to start.
The enemies of Democracy are
Collective blame is a substitute for thinking.
Breaking their firewall is really nothing to brag about, it took me about 5 minutes to ssh into my server in the US and apt-get tinyproxy. As far as I could tell they make no effort to block proxies at all.