Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Iran Moves To End "Facebook Revolution"

Posted by kdawson on from the stole-it-fair-and-square dept.

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.

8 of 838 comments (clear)

  1. HAM Radio by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amateur_radio HAM Radio.

  2. Re:What's really going on. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative
    This is what happened, Ahmadinejad and his pals:
    • Run the election
    • Collect and count the votes
    • Supervise the whole process
    • Investigate the complaints

    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:

    • Shut down SMS service, main mode of communication reformists used for monitoring voting stations and reporting fraud. Minister of Communications says he doesn't know how it happened, which is quite an interesting thing to say considering he is the one who runs the switches.
    • All 5 prominent reformist websites were also filtered night before the election, still blocked in Iran.
    • Historically, conservatives have always lost when turnout goes above a certain number; around 60% participation. This time participation was 80+ and they won, by a landslide. There's simply no logical explanation.
    • Pro-Ahmadinejad sources announced his victory, by a large margin, even included mostly accurate numbers hours before official results of initial count came out.
    • Youtube, other online video sources, BBCPersian TV, Mobile phones in Tehran are all down/inaccessible.
    • Prominent reformist figures have been detained (few of the top ones including former president Khatami's brother and his wife were freed this morning in fear of more tension, yes government is afraid)

    Here's a clip from Corriere Della Sera on police attacking protesters.

  3. Re:A suggestion to Mr. Abdullah by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    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

  4. To momen abdullah by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimized_Link_State_Routing_Protocol

    http://www.olsr.org/

  5. Ways to help by Martin+Spamer · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  6. Make a FreedomStick by nonsequitor · · Score: 5, Informative

    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

  7. Re:Technical discussion? by NightFears · · Score: 5, Informative

    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).

  8. Who's really in charge by noric · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.