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Man Attacked In Ohio For Providing Iran Proxies
David Hume writes "electronicmaji is reporting on the Daily Kos that the individual known as ProtesterHelp (also to be found on twitter) was attacked in Ohio for providing network security for Twitterers in Iran, setting up private networks to provide secure proxies, calling for media networks to remove the Iranians Twitterers' information from their broadcast, and providing counter-intelligence services (including Basiji and Army Locations) within the Twitter community. ProtesterHelp was allegedly attacked by a group of men while walking to class in Ohio. The men, who appeared to ProtesterHelp to be either Iranian or Lebanese, drove up beside him and threw rocks at him while shouting, 'Mousavi Fraud.' ProtesterHelp further reported that his personal information has been leaked, and is currently being spread both online and inside of Iran amongst the government." Relatedly, Wired is also reporting that Google and Facebook have rushed out support for Persian. This move has allowed many pro-democracy groups to connect and translate their message to a broader audience.
Islam hardliners see current Iran's regime as only force who can stand against 'Western corruption'. They are desperate as they influence around the world shrinks after more moderate US goverment came into power. So it propably wasn't ordered attack, just people who sees current democratical movement with Mousavi as leader as real threat for the regime.
So this fight will echo around the world. If you support those guys in Iran, be ready to take some hits. Let's hope there won't be killings or something, but it will be ugly nevertheless.
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
Actually I was going to go with Obama saying it was Rush Limbaugh's fault and Rush Limbaugh saying it was Obama's fault all the while David Letterman was making a wisecrack about one of Palin's daughters as we learn that Jon and Kate are getting a divorce.
Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.
Well, not that I mean to be insensitive, but when you're messing with that kind of stuff, you want to be as anonymous as humanly possible.
Like, purchasing hosting somewhere else in the world, with a one-time VISA/MasterCard cash card that you bought at a corner store with cash. You know? Uploading everything from your laptop while you're chilling at a coffee shop well distanced from your home.
Maybe I'm just paranoid, but man, I would not be dealing with this kinda scenario where people are getting killed in the night and shit, unless I was doing it ultra un-traceable style. Because I would absolutely anticipate this kind of harsh backlash from the same crazy fuckers that are doing the same thing in Iran.
I actually considered setting up an anonymous web-form -> twitter gateway, but it was just not worth the hassle to set that kind of thing up with the kind of anonymity I would require to be OK with doing that. :P
he's making a difference.
But then I realized the cable was blue, so I only gave it one star. I hate blue.
if only they allowed concealed carry on campuses, we'd have a few less rock throwers in this country.
Yeah, they should lift the ban on concealing rocks.
. . .provided the fact he has a gun, and knows how to use it of course
Oh. Never mind.
No. This stops now.
I don't have any money, but I am glad to provide a proxy or whatever if anyone is so crazed that they will attack people across international lines just to silence their speech. I don't have family and I'm not afraid of whatever they think they can do. Such people are scum and not worth fearing.
I need help. I don't know the specific systems, steps and processes necessary to support these people. What do I do or where do I go to find out what to do?
Anyone remember the nutjob who carved a backwards B into her face and blamed it on a black man?
I'm very skeptical of this without corroboration.
I'd be inclined to suspect, pending further information, that the guys who pulled this are your basic freelance nationalists, rather than actual agents. A few guys in a car, throwing rocks to no apparent effect, isn't exactly 007 stuff. A "car accident" (or heck, a standard homicide, those are common enough, just nick the guy's wallet so it looks apolitical) would have been much more professional.
I have been on IRC (where everybody is organizing) constantly for the last 3 days or so watching the chatter on this.
Dear god. Guys, some of the people doing this have got their head fully up their ass. People are going to get banned from their ISP or worse. You've got a bunch of idiots that cannot grok how to launch a DOS window running wide open proxies on their home cable connections.
There are people running dedicated servers right now to ferry information out of the country, but some of these people are seriously going to get themselves into trouble.
If you do not have a working knowledge of routing, pf/iptables, and squid, please do not run a proxy. You are going to get yourself into more trouble than having rocks thrown at you.
Or worse, your misconfiguration is going to get people in Iran killed.
For a start Irans shia form of islam means that it will never be seen as a force representing the majority of the muslim world and whilst to an outsider iranians may seem extremely religious they are n't, just look at the youth who are leading this thing.
Islam as the reason for the way things are in Iran is a red herring, the people at the top are basically filthy rich and use the argument of "Gods will" against anyone who they sea as a threat to them, hence the use of the word "devine" by the ayatolla to describe the result.
Is anyone else disturbed by the fact that, apparently, a foreign government identified an American Citizen and had operatives attack that individual? On US Soil? I wonder if there will be hit squads next, or teams of operatives attempting to sabotage servers where proxies are being hosted...
This is exactly why free speech is so critical - so that I can, for example, post a comment on Slashdot without worrying about thugs attacking me for it. Flames and trolls are one thing, angry guys throwing rocks at my car? Quite another.
Never underestimate the potential of Human stupidity. -Heinlein
They are desperate as they influence around the world shrinks after more moderate US goverment came into power.
So Democracy in Iraq, neighbors to Iran, had no influence at all on Iranians *also* wanting real elections?
I'm not saying having a more moderate U.S. president come into power. But let's not heap glory on only one side while forgetting (or trying to bury) the history that made this point possible.
And speaking of moderate administrations, if students here and abroad are willing to take hits, perhaps the President of the U.S. should be as well. And before you repeat the mistaken idea that Iran will crack down harder if the U.S. spoke in support of the protestors, jut what do you think is happening today? Just what do you think is going to happen tomorrow, as Iran ha already warned? Expressing support and best wishes for the protestors gives them a boost in spirit that they need if they are to succeed. Even the president of France has come out strongly in favor of the protestors...
I only want the best for Iranians as well, as one of my friends grew up in Iran. That is why I am so dissatisfied with the lack of upper level support to date.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Yes, Islam is a religion of peace, but that didn't stop some Muslims from flying planes into the WTC, nor does it stop them from strapping on bombs and blowing people up.
Christianity is a religion of peace, but that doesn't stop some from murdering abortion activists. Every group has its extremist nutjobs.
Free Martian Whores!
The department of homeland security should be all over that soon if they aren't too busy confiscating laptops at the airports......
If they tried to hide the reasons for doing it, it would completely defeat the purpose.
Attacks like this are never just, or even primarily, to silence the one guy hit. They're to scare all the rest of the people thinking about doing the same thing.
If the masses can keep you down, you're not the Ubermensch.
For all the hatred spewed at the direction of the USA, I've got to say there's quite an effort underway by normal citizens to help. There are people from all over the world trying to help, but I'd say a good number of them are from the USA.
I've been lurking around the IRC channels for a few days. Folks have been working on setting up proxies, and doing what they can to help. I question whether anything is actually being accomplished, but my hat is off to anyone who is at least trying to help facilitate communication. Personally, since I'm not a developer, I haven't found too much I can do. There are more than enough proxies out there at this point...
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Time for this guy to get a conceal carry permit, a handgun, and most importantly, the training to know when to use the above. Online we defend ourselves with munitions known as anonymity and encryption. In real life we use body armor and small arms.
---- Liquid was a patriot ----
Is no way to scare people into silence. A suspicious suicide or burglary would still work better.
Quack, quack.
It was clearly CIA agents trying to come up with a pretense for an invasion of Iran by equipping Iranian-looking people with WMDs (rocks HURT!) and having them attack a True Patriot (tm).
A few laps through the news cycle, and these guys will be reported as a band of agents financed by Osama bin Laden under orders from the Ayatollah to fire nuclear-tipped RPGs at a guy who was on his way to a fundraiser for orphaned babies of US troops killed in Iraq. A quick trip to the UN with a vial of uranium, and we're off to the races.
Really, this is such elementary stuff I'm amazed I have to explain it to you people.
cba to make account, but it's me, can e-mail on ph.on.twitter@gmail.com if you want to confirm
Just wanting to say:
1) I agree that this was not agency work, but nationalists.
2) I had no clue how serious this was when I started, and by the time I took measures of security, it was too late
3) I tried to have my personal info pulled from twitter, but they gave me form letter about deleting my account. Boo @twitter.
4) Want to say thank you to all of the private sector security people who offered to advise/help
5) go to http://iran.whyweprotest.net to see how you can help
6) There are other reports of odd things happening to other prominent Americans. Cars trailing, seen parked outside their homes. I can't confirm these, but just saying, if you are involved in any major way (beyond proxies/tor setup), please be careful.
If we were going to go the bush way, we'd have to respond by attacking Brazil.
Given that Iran is operating under an authoritarian government, I would have thought that just shutting everything down would be quite possible. Cut all internet connections from the country save for a few government agencies, done. I can understand the difficulties in providing selective access across the board but I would have thought it would be simple enough for them to pull the plug. The only reason why they aren't must be because they are more reliant on the internet across their entire economy than I previously suspected -- they can't afford to pull the plug.
That even an authoritarian government run by unpleasant people have trouble with this is encouraging; I would hope censorship in western democracies would be even less successful.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
I agree that the intention is intimidation; but plausible deniability doesn't necessarily interfere with that.
Had they whacked the guy, all his twitter buddies would have come up with a conspiracy theory on the subject before he had time to cool. And which is scarier: believing that you are subject to a danger that those around you recognize, or believing that you are subject to a danger that most of those around you would laugh at you for believing in?
A "car accident" (or heck, a standard homicide, those are common enough, just nick the guy's wallet so it looks apolitical) would have been much more professional.
Speaking of...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jun/17/iran-protests-day-five
There were unconfirmed reports that Mohammad Asgari, who was responsible for the security of the IT network in Iran's interior ministry, was killed yesterday in a suspicious car accident in Tehran. Asgari had reportedly leaked evidence that the elections were rigged to alter the votes from the provinces. Asgari was said to have leaked information that showed Mousavi had won almost 19m votes, and should therefore be president.
Assuming this story is true, I'd be concerned that this is an attempt to draw the US Government into a confrontation that will help the hard-liners in Iran. As for who would want such a thing.
Clearly the hard-liners would like to try, once again, to get people to rally behind them in the face of "the great satan." You'd also have to look at the US Neocons, many of whom would like to remove any sympathy for Iran or Iranians that gets in the way of their long-disgraced axis-of-evil BS. And then there is Israel. At least some in Israel are on the same page as the neocons, though I wouldn't want to suggest that their position is universally held.
Anyway, I'm suspicious of the motives of anyone who wants to use this as anything but a reason to get the cops and/or FBI on the case.
Meh. I'm gonna keep letting my buddy in Iran use my home server for an SSH proxy.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
Google et. al. can support pro-democracy movements... when they aren't in important emerging markets like China.
If by the "the US" you mean "the US government", I'll just ask one question: who is supposed to protect people on US soil from being attacked by agents of foreign governments?
I mean, last I looked, even those generally opposed to government doing anything else think that's the governments job.
So, yeah, anytime that happens, its a failure of the US government. Possibly a failure that couldn't be effectively avoided without greater harms (e.g., to freedom), so one that must be an accepted risk, but a failure nonetheless. And unless you acknowledge the failure, you'll never get to the point of considering whether its a failure of the type that must be accepted, or whether it reveals a problem that can and should be addressed.
(Even if they aren't agents of foreign governments, it is a government, if not necessarily a federal government, responsibility to effectively address violent crime.)
I bet all those people who blithely sat on their hands while Iran developed rock-throwing technology must be feeling pretty foolish.
how many pairs of boxer shorts should you own?
I would argue that a country is not a monolithic entity as you seem to imply. A country is made up of citizens, and the rights of the citizens to voice their opinions, I would argue, is a fundamental human right.
When we invade countries for no reason, I agree with you. But when we facilitate communication among disenfranchised citizenry, I'd say we're not meddling at all. We open the door for the individual humans in Iran trying to get to a representative democracy. They either walk through it, or don't.
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A: How did you figure out that the attackers were agents of a foreign government? It seems that hundreds of thousands of people in Iran are demontrating - sometimes violently - for BOTH sides. Do you suppose that all of them are agents of the Iranian government? DUHHH!
B: Even if the are agents of a foreign government, who stated that it's the US' fault? I see that nowhere ahead of your post.
C: My take on the matter is, silly twits who have no conception of personal security, let alone electronic security, shouldn't be involving themselves in international affairs. People have been stalked and killed for far more frivolous matters than international politics. The idiot is lucky he has nothing worse than a couple bruises from stones being thrown at him. He COULD have been the target of a more professional asassination squad. It never ceases to amaze me that people have the balls to "get involved", but not enough brains to think matters through before doing so.
And, to think that some slashdotters have accused ME of having a high testosterone level......
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
You're mixing American and Russian execution styles. An Islamic Iranian execution would be a public hanging or stoning to death.
"Weapons of Mass, Destructive"
Rights are not something that exist in nature. They exist only because a large number of people believe they should, and are willing to assert their belief strongly enough to ensure the continued existence of those rights.
In the USA and some other countries, rights are spelled out in a constitutional document, which makes many people believe that they are permanent and unenfringeable. But even in countries with the most democratic political systems, a strong body of people in power are able to erode those rights.
In countries that do not have democratic political systems or constitutional guarantees of equality, people do not have any rights other than what the government decides to give them. In many countries, for example, we support gender equality. In an Islamic theocracy like Iran, however, women are not given equal rights. We may believe they should have these rights, but they do not actually have them.
Whether we like it or not, might is right, whether that might comes from an authoritarian system with a small number of people deciding everything, or a democratic system that is influenced by a larger number of people.
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I tried to stone someone to death once, but I couldn't afford that much pot.
Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
altslashdot.org: The future of slashdot.
If you'd care to compare the number of Christian abortion activists to the number of Muslim car bombers I think you'll find a difference in the number of attacks.
While it's true that all groups have "extremist nutjobs" it's only a partial story. There ARE differences in scope and frequency. Large differences.
A man on Slashdot attacks Slashdot readers by implying they are all irrational US haters.
Slashdot response: "Give that man a +5 Insightful, he's got us pegged!"
Discuss.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I think that's a bit glib. At least a significant portion of the Blackwater people, at least the ones actually on the ground, are just former soldiers who traded up to an employer who would give them better body armor.
Now if you're explicitly talking about someone who is willing to fight for anyone who pays enough money, no questions asked, then of course they don't deserve any sympathy. But I don't think there are really that many people like that.
My only political goal is to see to it that no political party achieves its goals.
If you think of "authoritarian" and "not-authoritarian" as a binary switch between extremes, and if you assume that an authoritarian government not only is absolutely authoritarian in structure, but also of perfect in loyalty to the leadership and competence, that assumption would be natural.
Reality doesn't quite work that way, and particularly not in the present situation in Iraq. It probably doesn't help the authoritarians that the "opposition" includes people who are former high ranking government officials with lots of contacts in and through the government at all levels, and that some are, in fact, current senior leaders*. Even authoritarian regimes don't have governments that are from top to bottom composed of mindless drones with unquestioning loyalty to the leader.
Mousavi was the last Prime Minister of Iraq before the position was abolished in 1989; among others in the opposition, Mohammad Khatami is the most recent former President of Iran, and Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani is Khatami's predecessor as President and, perhaps more importantly, the current chair of the Assembly of Experts (a body whose official duties include supervising, electing, and dismissing the Supreme Leader), and there are others in positions of power that are either aligned with the opposition or, at the least, not committed to backing Khamenei and Ahmadinejad.
He's not alone (In the assault part he probably is). The concern is universal. A lot of us Tor Network admins who do not provide exit nodes have opened ports for twitter, IM, and IRC...
There's a lot of silent backing out here by us geeks. I normally do not open ports because of DCMA risks and the fact that my Tor routers run on boxes that do other things. But this is special.
If people want to help a little, throw up a Tor Network relay and open exit ports for IM and Twitter- they will get used. Even better, open up a bridge relay so those blocked in Iran can access the network. If you are not a fan of running Tor long term- no problem. Just bring it down when the crisis is over.
If you do not know networking, or cannot quickly absorb the Tor docs- take a pass on this.
Sorry for the anonymous coward status...
I advise caution in believing this story. ProtesterHelp, earlier today, was spreading false information that Mousavi had been arrested on Twitter. The combination makes me suspect attention whoring in lieu of truth.
Philip Sandifer's academic website
On the contrary, my argument says that you have to keep asserting your rights en masse or they'll gradually disappear.
Look at the constant Slashdot stories about warrantless searches, unlawful search & seizure, oppression of free speech, and other denials of rights that are codified, but not respected by those in power. If it weren't for citizens fighting to protect these rights, and bring such infringements to court, they would disappear.
The Constitution is not a magic wand. It won't ensure the perpetual existence of your rights if you don't defend them.
But in countries that don't have such documents, those rights simply don't exist, and they won't until the people are able to convince the government to grant them.
If a supreme ruler can ensure that those selected for the police, the courts, and the army share his beliefs, and maintain the right balance of fear and contentment among the people, it doesn't really matter what rights the powerless believe they have. If that balance is destabilized, however, as may currently be happening in Iran, that's when things change.
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Leaked it to where? Poor bastard.
I believe it's referring to these leaked election results, although I'm personally still waiting for some sort of validation:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iran/5540211/Iran-protest-cancelled-as-leaked-election-results-show-Mahmoud-Amadinejad-came-third.html
Mr Mousavi's wife and co-campaigner, Zahra Ranavard, was reported as warning that riot squads would be equipped with live ammunition, raising the prospect of serious bloodshed.
Iran's Interior Ministry said Mr Mousavi would be responsible for any consequences if he went ahead with the protest.
Mr Mousavi's cancellation of the protest came as sporadic disturbances continued around the Iranian capital, and reports circulated of leaked interior ministry statistics showing him as the clear victor in last Friday's polls.
The statistics, circulated on Iranian blogs and websites, claimed Mr Mousavi had won 19.1 million votes while Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had won only 5.7 million.
The two other candidates, reformist Mehdi Karoubi and hardliner Mohsen Rezai, won 13.4 million and 3.7 million respectively. The authenticity of the leaked figures could not be confirmed.
WMDs (rocks HURT!)
Weapons of Minor Denting?
fring is being used a lot in this too. the servers are in tel aviv.
"go figure"
I can easily understand plenty of Israelis supporting this effort. There's probably little that Israel wants more than a progressive government in Iran that will stop threatening to nuke them.
The Soviet Union had a beautifully crafted Constitution guaranteeing many rights, even more than the US Bill of rights and Constitution.
So yes you are correct, rights come from a peoples willingness to enforce them a piece of paper means nothing. Usually that enforcement is against their own Government, sometimes it's against other factions among them, other times it's against foreign powers.
Governments have little to do with rights, it's what the people around you think and the way they behave that matters.
I just can't stand blanket contempt for any group, self-selecting or not, without regard for the fact that not all people within that group have the same circumstances.
Yes I agree that the use of mercenaries systematically creates bad results. But I hate the idea of assuming that all people who sign into a bad system signed into it for bad reasons.
You could say that I hate misdirected hate. Any form of contempt should be focused as tight as a laser beam, both to avoid any damage to bystanders and to maximize its potential for incinerating the target.
My only political goal is to see to it that no political party achieves its goals.