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Iran Moves To End "Facebook Revolution"
We've had a few readers send in updates on the chaotic post-election situation in Iran. Twitter is providing better coverage than CNN at the moment. There are both tech and humanitarian angles to the story, as the two samples below illustrate. First, Hugh Pickens writes with a report from The Times (UK) that "the Iranian government is mounting a campaign to disrupt independent media organizations and Web sites that air doubts about the validity of the re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the nation's president. Reports from Tehran say that social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter were taken down after Mr Ahmadinejad claimed victory. SMS text messaging, a preferred medium of communication for young Iranians, has also been disabled. 'The blocking of access to foreign news media has been stepped up, according to Reporters Without Borders. 'The Internet is now very slow, like the mobile phone network. YouTube and Facebook are hard to access and pro-reform sites... are completely inaccessible.'" And reader momen abdullah sends in one of the more disturbing Ask Slashdots you are likely to see. "People, we need your urgent help in Iran. We are under attack by the government. They stole the election. And now are arresting everybody. They also filtered every sensitive Web page. But our problem is that they also block the SMS network and are scrambling satellite TVs. Please, can you help us to set up some sort of network using our home wireless access points? Can anybody show us a link on how to install small TV/radio stations? Any suggestion for setting up a network? Please tell us what to do or we are going to die in the a nuclear war between Iran and US." Update: 06/14 18:32 GMT by KD : Jim Cowie contributes a blog post from Renesys taking a closer look at the state of Iranian Internet transit, as seen in the aggregated global routing tables, and concluding that the story may not be as clear-cut as has been reported.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amateur_radio HAM Radio.
Some are looking for proof of fraud. But unless anyone is expecting Ahmadinejad to admit that he cheated, no solid official evidence is going to show up.
On the other hand, they:
Here's a clip from Corriere Della Sera on police attacking protesters.
Funny doesn't give karma, Some use insightful as a way to say, " Your funny and you deserve karma for that comment."
Note to mods! Untrue, read up!
In 1951 Dr. Mohammed Mossadegh was elected prime minister. As prime minister, Mossadegh became enormously popular in Iran after he nationalized Iran's oil reserves. In response, Britain embargoed Iranian oil and, amidst Cold War fears, invited the United States to join in a plot to depose Mossadegh, and in 1953 President Dwight D. Eisenhower authorized Operation Ajax. The operation was successful, and Mossadegh was arrested on 19 August 1953. After Operation Ajax, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi's rule became increasingly autocratic. With American support, the Shah was able to rapidly modernize Iranian infrastructure, but he simultaneously crushed all forms of political opposition with his intelligence agency, SAVAK. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini became an active critic of the Shah's White Revolution and publicly denounced the government.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran#Recent_history_.281921.E2.80.93present.29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimized_Link_State_Routing_Protocol
http://www.olsr.org/
Some ways to subvert the censorship.
1) anonymous web proxies that only accept inbound connections from Iran IP space.
2) TOR servers.
3) Ad-Hoc WiFi networks could be used to create a Mesh networks.
4) Multicast information, documents, video over the Mesh.
The Chaos Computer Club made a "FreedomStick" for journalists traveling to China to cover the Olympics. It includes software that automatically uses firefox+tor etc.. More Info Here: http://chinesewall.ccc.de/index-en.html
Unfortunately, setting up large-scale adhoc networks with 802.11b/g hardware is kind of difficult. What you'll want to look at is what's called "wireless mesh networking". Mesh networking is basically the peer-to-peer of networks. The difficulty with using 802.11b/g for mesh networking is that 802.11 standard doesn't really include any concept of a mesh. There are two types of devices: access points and clients. Access points cannot communicate with other access points. It is however, possible for clients to communicate with other clients by switching to ad hoc networking mode. So your options are thus:
1) get a lot of people with 802.11g-capable computers to switch into ad hoc networking mode. This will allow them to connect to each other if the density is high enough (that is if there are enough people close enough). Unfortunately, the range is on the small side, so, unfortunately, this may not work that well. Part of the problem is that clients often have a lower broadcast strength than access points.
2) set up a specifically designed mesh network. To do mesh networking in infrastructure mode, there are going to be four different types of nodes which can be used. 1) AP nodes 2) Client-Client nodes 3) AP-Client nodes 4) Client nodes
AP nodes:
An ordinary wireless access point can act as a hub node.
Client-Client nodes:
There have to be two radios for each client-client node. Both will act as clients to other networks. You'll either need one computer with two wireless cards or two computers which are connected together using some other means (or, if you happen to have an access point which can be switched to client mode (which very few can) then you could use that as a client). You can connect the two computers using an ethernet hub, ethernet cross-over cable, null modem cable, or possibly firewire (although I've never done that). The computers should each by set to bridging mode. Basically, each client will connect to a different access point and they'll then serve to connect the two access points to each-other, bridging the networks. Generally these should be on different frequencies. Although there may be some circumstances where the same frequency can be used.
AP-Client nodes:
There have to be two radios for each AP-client node. One will work as a client to another access point and one will act as an access point for other nodes. Generally, this will mean one computer and one access point connected together by ethernet, but there are a few other ways to do it. The computer should be set into some form of bridging mode which differs some based on operating system. The two radios will always use different frequencies unless there's a long cable-run between them (opposite sides of a building or some such).
Now, you need to figure out how to put this together. You need at least an initial group of people to help build the network. And then you'll lay out a basic topology. You'll plot out the nodes you have available on a graph and then try to connect them together. Client-Client nodes can connect to two nodes, either AP nodes or AP-Client nodes using infrastructure mode or to other Client-Client nodes in ad hoc mode. AP nodes can have multiple Client-Client or AP-Client nodes connected to them. AP nodes cannot connect to other AP nodes unless both AP nodes have wireless bridging modes (very rare) and you can get them to work (even rarer). AP-Client nodes can connect to one AP node (infrastructure) or one Client-Client node (ad hoc) and can have multiple AP-Client or Client-Client nodes connected to them The Client nodes can be used only as stepping stones in an ad hoc connection. I.e. if two client-client nodes want to connect, but are two far from each other, you can put a Client node in between in ad hoc mode and it'll help them connect. This can be done with a string of client nodes.
You'll want to draw all this out on a map, and possibly rearrange equipment as needed to fill in the gaps. You'll also need to decide frequencies so
It turns out there ARE implementations of ad-hoc wireless networking for routers.
1. Wikipedia article that describes the protocol.
2. B.A.T.M.A.N. - implementation (incl. binaries for various routers)
3. Nightwing - another implementation of the same protocol.
4. ROBIN - implements both OLSR and B.A.T.M.A.N.
Looks like all of them are built on top of OpenWRT (or can be plugged into it) and run on a variety of commodity wireless routers (probably also on PC).
This thread contains lots of great perspectives on Ahmandinejad, election fraud, and the Iranian presidency. Unfortunately most of the world is missing the point.
I'd like to point that Ali Khamenei has been the supreme leader (dictator) of Iran for 20 years. During an EconTalk podcast on August 11 2008, expert Bruce Bueno de Mesquita comments that after interviewing over a dozen Iranian political specialists, his research concludes that Ahmandinejad is the 18th most powerful person in Iran.
The Iranian president is an important and powerful person in absolute terms. In relative terms it's a public relations office. So yes, election fraud was committed. Yes, their disinterest in concealing the fraud conveys the extent to which they believe it makes a difference.
However, everyone just take a deep breath, and understand that the electoral system and eligibility of candidates is up to the complete discretion of Ali Khamenei.
When you kill all of the secularists, you're left with two types of people - the religious, and the religious zealots.