The Internet Helps Iran Silence Activists

Hugh Pickens writes "Over the last couple of weeks, those who believe in the transformative power of technology to battle an oppressive state have pointed to Iran as a test case. However, as Farhad Manjoo writes on Slate, the real conclusion about news now coming out of Iran is that for regimes bent on survival, electronic dissent is easier to suppress than organizing methods of the past. Using a system installed last year, built in part by Nokia and Siemens, the government routes all digital traffic in the country through a single choke point, using the capabilities of deep packet inspection to monitor every e-mail, tweet, blog post, and possibly even every phone call placed in Iran. 'Compare that with East Germany, in which the Stasi managed to tap, at most, about 100,000 phone lines — a gargantuan task that required 2,000 full-time technicians to monitor the calls,' writes Manjoo. The effects of this control have been seen over the past couple days, with only a few harrowing pictures and videos getting through Iran's closed net. For most citizens, posting videos and even tweeting eyewitness accounts remains fraught with peril, and the same tools that activists use can be used by the government to spread disinformation. The government is also using crowdsourcing by posting pictures of protesters and asking citizens for help in identifying the activists. 'If you think about it, that's no surprise,' writes Manjoo. 'Who said that only the good guys get to use the power of the Web to their advantage?'"

Comments

It's not yet the time for a new revolution in Iran

[Anonymous Coward]

This just proofs it, Iran is not ready for a big change yet. If Iran wants a proper change, these protests won't just do it alone. What they need is more time. Until the majority of the people are actually believing in change, it won't happen. What they are against is a goverment having a tight grip on all the infrastructure, police and military forces. Until these goverment bodies have openminded and educated people working as "spies", the people of Iran has no change to have a fight they can win.

You can help.

[morgan_greywolf]

You can help. Get involved by going over to the NedaNet Resources Page and setting up a squid proxy or, better yet, a Tor proxy, to help the Iranian dissidents. This is a real, live underground network, being run by Eric Raymond and some other folks who are remaining anonymous.

Re:You can help.

[morgan_greywolf]

Also, see this blog entry and especially the comments for up-to-the-minute information.

Re:You can help.

[morgan_greywolf]

And the United States government is going to extradite U.S. citizens aiding dissidents to Iran because .... we have good diplomatic relations with Iran? *blink*

C'mon. Same goes for the U.K. and several other European nations.

Re:You can help.

[discogravy]

unless the proxy you setup is inside the iranian infrastructure (ie, on the iran side of the choke-point), it's going to be relatively worthless, since the chokepoint will show the traffic from iran going to your proxy. realistically you've got few options:
- install on the inside, so when the chokepoint logs say "it's $PROXY_IP doing it", your lack of logs protects those that connected to your proxy
- route around the chokepoint, for which you'll need access to infrastructure that will be difficult to secure (assuming iran's network security dudes aren't total fucking morons).
- links that do not rely on iranian infrastructure (an encrypted link to a satellite for e.g.)

A squid or tor proxy on the outside's going to exactly nothing to protect anyone in Iran -- their packets still have to leave the country to get to your proxy!

Re:You can help.

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

If the article is accurate - and all traffic goes through a single chokepoint - wouldn't that mean that even connections to anonymizing proxies are also going through that chokepoint, and thus leading back to their users before those users are safely proxied?

Re:You can help.

[CarpetShark]

This is a real, live underground network, being run by Eric Raymond and some other folks who are remaining anonymous.

Raymond should have remained anonymous too. I would have liked it more if his name wasn't associated with it.

Re:another way to look at it

[Dionysus]

_corporations_ help silence activists in Iran

So it's the corporations that are identifying the activists?

Steganography

[sowth]

This may be true, but if encryption and steganography were the norm, the story would be different.

What if everyone used, say Freenet for publishing instead of http? The government would have much more trouble finding or censoring them.

Re:Steganography

[westlake]

What if everyone used, say Freenet for publishing instead of http? The government would have much more trouble finding or censoring them.

Freenet demands significant space on your drive and significant inbound and outbound traffic.

Freenet needs as many active nodes and supernodes as it can get to remain efficient and secure.

I have often wondered precisely how many.

TrueCrypt can hide a file or folder. It can't conceal traffic moving in and out your home.

That marks the limit of "plausible deniability."

The secret police doesn't think geek. It has its own definition of what is "Plausible," its own definition of what is "Proof" - and its own definition of what is "Pain."

Re:Steganography

[AnyoneEB]

The problems you describe cover the specific current implementation of Freenet. I do not know much about it, but it sounds like they consider the performance issues important and have improved the performance.

Of course, Freenet is an extreme example. With privacy on the internet, often increasing privacy requires some decrease in speed/efficiency.

Opportunistic encryption is essentially free and protects against passive eavesdropping. Once DNSSEC is in place, even active attacks against simple opportunistic encryption with DNS for key exchange. (This is not purely theoretical. Openswan implements such a protocol.)

For common communications, people can use self-signed HTTPS, e-mail encryption, and IM encryption -- but that requires extra work on the part of the user. None of those have particularly friendly or easy-to-use interfaces. Asking people to deal with keys/authentication is unreasonable for most people -- and I have yet to see a user-friendly solution for key exchange.

For plausible deniability, there's Tor, but it still reveals that you are doing something, it is relatively slow, and it is not encrypted at the other end (except for internal sites which are sorta like Freenet sites). Currently using Tor, as you say, will probably get the secret police to assume you have something to hide. A system that encrypted everything -- like opportunistic encryption -- would be much better for that reason.

The technology is there, but it is missing polish, network effects, and actually giving people a reason to use it. Security/privacy is not visible. Most people are not aware of it or just don't care until something happens (see: NSA wiretapping). I use IM encryption (OTR) with some of my friends, but most people are not going to be bothered to install it if it is not default, and I have been given the reason that people may care if people they know can read their IMs/e-mails(/Facebook messages), but the theoretical attacker in the cloud [almost certainly] doesn't know them so it doesn't matter to them if that person learns personal trivia about them.

Re:Steganography

[sowth]

Significant space, inbound/outbound traffic? I haven't checked lately, but I thought you could set how much it used. Are you saying they set the default to multiple GBs now or something?

WTF does truecrypt have to do with this? Sure if they somehow figure out you are the one who published an inflammatory paper, they could prove it with your computer, but the design of Freenet was made to make it difficult to impossible for them to figure out who wrote the paper in the first place. If they already know who you are, there is no point using freenet in the first place.

If they know who you are, most goon squads don't care about proof, they just "accidentally" shoot you while they execute a search warrant. Unless they are more cowardly, then they just follow you around and try to ticket / arrest you for any excuse they can find until you can't function. Assuming they are police, anyway. Corporations, "religious" organizations, organized crime or private citizens have other ways. (False police reports, lawsuits, slander, harassing you at work to get you fired, etc)

Of course.

[James_Duncan8181]

The problem with most net communication is that it is built with the assumption that the governments that it passes through are fundamentally friendly to the citizenry. Once DPI exists it is perfectly possible to just ban encrypted traffic to anything but a white list of banking sites etc, and then one has created a system where every letter can be read. It can be the perfect police state, and probably will be.

Stenography is probably the only answer to this, but the traffic patterns are still recorded so once the government concerned becomes aware that the receiver is hostile to them they can follow that social network back. It's not just Google who can work out probable friends of yours automatically. The other issue is that once you introduce higher technical barriers, the ability of the public to use the communication falls rapidly. Joe Protester probably can't set up stenography in the first place; most of the Iranian videos were emailed or went up via Youtube.

This is leaving aside how locked down Palladium computers could affect this issues in the future. The West of the internet is no longer very wild.

Re:Of course.

[mikael]

so once the government concerned becomes aware that the receiver is hostile to them they can follow that social network back. It's not just Google who can work out probable friends of yours automatically.

In which case, all communication must be done using chain letters or multi-casting, so that the intended recepient is never unique.

Re:Of course.

[James_Duncan8181]

Or twitter proxies, in fact. But you still have to find a way to tell the sender who to send to - any reciever (whether final destination or mere relay) has to advertise themselves to the sender, and thus also to the intelligence services. Also, to get information out of the country any eventual sender must send traffic through the choke point (saving satcomms, but that doesn't scale). And at that point I can DPI for key words.

Re:Of course.

[kdemetter]

Once DPI exists it is perfectly possible to just ban encrypted traffic to anything but a white list of banking sites etc, and then one has created a system where every letter can be read.

And exactly how are you going to ban 'encrypted traffic' . There is no way to define what encrypt traffic looks like , that's one off the advantages of encryption.
The test 'In Russia , mails read the government' , could be a slashdot meme , but it could also mean something entirely different , as you could replace the words with completely different data.

Re:Of course.

[betterunixthanunix]

" There is no way to define what encrypt traffic looks like "

Sure there is: it looks like white noise. If you are scanning through packets, and you suddenly come across something that looks like noise, you can just drop it. We are not talking about secret codes that kids use when they are in kindergarden, we are talking about AES and similar ciphers, which are designed to have output that is as close to random noise as possible.

That is the weak point of cryptography: it is still very obvious that you are communicating, and worse, it is very obvious that you are using encryption (which is actually an information leak, depending on context: unless you encrypt everything, using crypto is like putting a giant sign on your forehead that says, "I HAVE SOMETHING TO HIDE").

Re:Of course.

[eddy]

I don't know where you got the idea that you can't block encrypted traffic. It's not like you really even need a distinguishing attack, just block all high-entropy content. Sure, some merely compressed content will get caught aswell, but so what? Even if you allow it though if there's some known signature (PK, RAR, JFIF, etc), you have a system which only a few hundred people in the country will have the capability to penetrate, and when they do, they're effectively excluded from the 'mass market' (your twitter, facebook, youtube, etc).

1. Block ports used for encrypted traffic (ports 22,443), or only allow whitelisted ports.

2. Block protocols when they expose encryption negotiation (STARTTLS, DHKE in instant messaging, etc), or all protocols that aren't whitelisted

3. Block HTTP/SMTP with encryption signatures (PGP/GPG blocks)

4. Block non-whitelisted high entropy connections.

What you're left with is steganography, and that's astrology to cryptologys astronomy.

Re:Of course.

[kdemetter]

That's only if you use conventional encryption , and don't think about it further.
You could easily modify encryption to spout out words instead of pure binary data . It will just make the mail longer.

You can even change do it in a way where it looks like it's a common sentence , but in reality , contains encrypted data.

Re:Of course.

[kdemetter]

I don't know where you got the idea that you can't block encrypted traffic. It's not like you really even need a distinguishing attack, just block all high-entropy content. Sure, some merely compressed content will get caught aswell, but so what? Even if you allow it though if there's some known signature (PK, RAR, JFIF, etc), you have a system which only a few hundred people in the country will have the capability to penetrate, and when they do, they're effectively excluded from the 'mass market' (your twitter, facebook, youtube, etc).

1. Block ports used for encrypted traffic (ports 22,443), or only allow whitelisted ports.

2. Block protocols when they expose encryption negotiation (STARTTLS, DHKE in instant messaging, etc), or all protocols that aren't whitelisted

3. Block HTTP/SMTP with encryption signatures (PGP/GPG blocks)

4. Block non-whitelisted high entropy connections.

What you're left with is steganography, and that's astrology to cryptologys astronomy.

You are under the false impression that clear text protocols can't be used to send encrypted messages over.
Encryption has nothing to do with the protocols used to transfer it from one place to another.

I can put some encrypted message right into a mail, without there being any signature in it.

As for high-entropy content , it's just a matter of making the content look less random. Just put some fake structure in it , which makes it look like normal content.

Re:Of course.

[Opportunist]

Then you'd have to white list a fair lot, or a lot of standard services we all love to use on the internet will cease to exist. MMOs encrypt their traffic to make it harder to write bots and other automatons. Skype uses a fairly nonstandard protocol, similar rules apply to other VoIP tools. And let's not even talk about various DRMified video streams.

You'll notice that they all are "somehow" encrypted, mangled, modified and nonstandard. Want to whitelist them all? Or block them?

Re:Of course.

[Mr. Slippery]

And exactly how are you going to ban 'encrypted traffic' . There is no way to define what encrypt traffic looks like , that's one off the advantages of encryption.

Of course you can define what encrypt traffic looks like, if you don't mind false positives. You do statistical analysis, and anything that doesn't look like plain English -- or in this case, Farsi -- text, is banned. If you want to allow images, you can perform similar analysis, and have a group of your minions spot-check the intercepted traffic for anything that looks suspicious, and then go beat the living shit out of the sender.

Yes, this doesn't prevent coded messages or steganography, but it sure cuts down the communications bandwidth available to your opponents. If you have to distribute a code book to communicate, you're at a big handicap.

The best digital communications available to a resistance movement would be dial-up, point-to-point, like the old FidoNet BBS systems. Maybe with pre-paid cell phones instead of dial-up lines...

Re:Of course.

[MightyMartian]

That's only some forms of encryption. Other forms are more complex, and attempt to bury the encrypted message inside what appears to be legitimate data. Maybe the time is coming to start working harder on producing cryptographic systems that use these methodologies for normal consumer-grade hardware. If all your choke point is seeing is what look like perfectly normal sentences, with the actual meaningful data buried in it, it isn't white noise, and would require far more sophisticated means to even identify that an encrypted message is being sent.

Re:Of course.

[betterunixthanunix]

That is more steganography than cryptography, and it brings up all sorts of other issues. Steganography that hides messages in text is particularly problematic, because it is very easy to erase the hidden message without destroying the innocent message; just hiding white noise in the innocent message could cause a collision with the hidden message and kill the communication. Better techniques hide the message in something like an image, since there is more room for robustness: there are techniques that can survive being printed and scanned back, multiple times.

Of course, the overall problem with steganography is the warden problem: someone much more powerful than you is aware that you are using steganography, and aware of what your technique is, and will do everything in their power to stop you from using it. Even highly robust steganography systems have been broken; see the SDMI challenge for more information (the steganography was used for watermarking, and it had to be robust enough to survive transcoding between various formats, and all of the robust watermarks were broken and removed in a fairly short time, though not in the time specified by the challenge).

Of course, in this case, the steganography only needs to remain unbroken for the duration of these protests, so even a system that is eventually broken would still be useful.

Re:another way to look at it

[memnock]

i said they help. they're credited with writing the software.

"only a few...pictures and videos getting through"

[sznupi]

For now. I suspect large proportions of recorded materials will find their way out sooner or later.

Might not help this revolution, perhaps the next one...

What they need

[copponex]

What they need is to have the US and it's pawns to stop threatening to invade, and stop sending hundreds of millions of dollars to the CIA for undercover operations fomenting another coup in that country. As long as they are being verbally and covertly threatened by the hyperpower that has just invaded the country next door -- the same country that invited Saddam to invade them in the 80s -- the hardliners will continue to rule Iran.

One simple rule that imperial powers tend to forget is that people are nearly always divided against their own government but nearly always united against a foreign invader.

Re:What they need

[copponex]

"Nearly always" is your way of acknowledging that a lot of people, including Obama, have a whole lot of egg on their face about Iraq, and that you know damned well there's a big difference between "invader" and "aggressor."

Do you think we're going to abandon our permanent military bases in Iraq? Do you think we're going to allow Iraq to take back control of their own oil resources? You do know that we own them now, don't you?

If we're invaders and not aggressors, we'd just leave the military bases and oil fields to Iraqis, and we would have left after their first election. But we're not going to leave, so stop pretending.

Re:What they need

[copponex]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=249JaIaubVw

That's pretty much the way the western world works. History only goes as far back as is convenient for the excuses of the next colonial venture.

Re:What they need

[DavidTC]

As long as they are being verbally and covertly threatened by the hyperpower that has just invaded the country next door.

Two countries next door, damnit. Two. We are still in Afghanistan, not matter how much we want to forget.

Technically, as we've bombed inside the border of Pakistan, it might be three.

Re:What they need

[Quothz]

We are still in Afghanistan, not matter how much we want to forget.

But we didn't invade Afghanistan. We're there with the permission and support of the nation's government.

Re:What they need

[copponex]

The Taliban was a client of ours until the September 11th attacks. Then we demanded that they hand bin Laden over or we'd bomb them. They demanded evidence. We sent the troops in. The Taliban never invited us, but after we finally ran them out of town, too late to stop their support of Al Qeada, the government we installed invited us to stay. Then we sent ten times as many troops to Iraq, which had nothing to do with terrorism until we split open their borders.

But here's a far more interesting tidbit. I couldn't confirm the date on the LA Times website of this article (May 2001), but it's a pretty enlightening view on how moral relativism in foreign policy is self-destructive.

http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v01/n922/a09.html

Enslave your girls and women, harbor anti-U.S. terrorists, destroy every vestige of civilization in your homeland, and the Bush administration will embrace you. All that matters is that you line up as an ally in the drug war, the only international cause that this nation still takes seriously.

That's the message sent with the recent gift of $43 million to the Taliban rulers of Afghanistan, the most virulent anti-American violators of human rights in the world today. The gift, announced last Thursday by Secretary of State Colin Powell, in addition to other recent aid, makes the U.S. the main sponsor of the Taliban and rewards that "rogue regime" for declaring that opium growing is against the will of God. So, too, by the Taliban's estimation, are most human activities, but it's the ban on drugs that catches this administration's attention.

Never mind that Osama bin Laden still operates the leading anti-American terror operation from his base in Afghanistan, from which, among other crimes, he launched two bloody attacks on American embassies in Africa in 1998.

Sadly, the Bush administration is cozying up to the Taliban regime at a time when the United Nations, at U.S. insistence, imposes sanctions on Afghanistan because the Kabul government will not turn over Bin Laden.

Re:What they need

[DavidTC]

I have no idea what you're talking about. We're there with the current government's support, just like Iraq's. (Well, mostly.)

That doesn't change the fact we invaded them.

Re:What they need

[DavidTC]

That doesn't really have anything to do with moral relativism.

As long as we've decided that, objectively, killing US citizens is less evil than trafficking in drugs.

And, I look around at swat home invasions and the death of innocent people in the US, and, think, hey, we actually have decided that.

It's not 'moral relativism' at all. It's the exact opposite of it. It is 'Drugs are more immoral than causing the deaths of people. In all circumstances'.

Granted, it's totally fucked up objective morality, but it is objective morality. Killing people==somewhat evil. Drug trafficking==very evil.

Re:What they need

[causality]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=249JaIaubVw

That's pretty much the way the western world works. History only goes as far back as is convenient for the excuses of the next colonial venture.

Thank you for sharing that. What a refreshing contrast to the pissing contests, excessive showmanship, shallow thinking, deliberate polarization, and overall mental garbage exhibited by shows like Sean Hannity or the O'Reilly Factor. With those two shows in particular, even when they are right they are wrong because edification is the very last of their goals if it is even on the list.

There is unfortunately a shortage of men who will stand up for what they believe to be true and challenge the party line as the gentleman in that video has done. None of that has anything to do at all with whether I personally agree with him.

Re:What they need

[MightyMartian]

That doesn't make much sense. France sent the Continental Congress and the Continental Army money and other support during the American Revolution, all as part of France's scheme to undermine the British Empire. Apparently foreign aid does work in some revolutions.

Re:What they need

[MightyMartian]

This is not so clear cut. The Northern Alliance was recognized as the government of Afghanistan, but by any definition of government, it did not govern Afghanistan. The Taliban were the defacto government of the country, period. The Northern Alliance controlled less than 10% of the territory, and looked as if even there it would ultimately falter.

So no, the reality in international law is that the defacto government of Afghanistan did not invite NATO in. It was a useful fiction for the US to recognize the Northern Alliance, much as it was a useful fiction for the US to recognize Nationalist Taiwan as the government of China for nearly a quarter of a century, when, in fact, there could be no doubt that the PRC was running all but a few small slivers of territorial China.

Re:What they need

[justwill]

The globalsecurity article you link has no information later than 2005. In the intervening 4 years - the US Government has:

1. Signed an agreement reaffirming the sovereignty of Iraq
2. Asserted Iraqi ownership over *every* military installation in use by US forces
3. Handed control of many of the US Operated facilities over to the Iraqis for control (here, here, and here, for example)
4. Handed security of the "Green Zone" over to Iraqi control
5. Removed the vast majority of all combat forces outside of the limits of all major cities

Additionally, your assertion that "we own" the oil fields now points to an article explaining how the Iraqi Ministry of Oil is negotiating contracts from companies that lost to nationalization when Saddam was in power. I'm not sure how that means "we own" anything. The Iraqi government is contracting with corporations to extract the oil resources. Sounds like Iraq exercising its own sovereignty to me.

Re:What they need

[copponex]

Did France try to force rob resources from America? Did they send in covert agents to try and influence an election?

No one's arguing that foreign influences do not foment revolutions. I'm making the point that it's wrong, and often ends up backfiring.

Re:What they need

[Quothz]

The Taliban was a client of ours until the September 11th attacks.

Uh, the US didn't recognize the Taliban as the leader of Afghanistan. Neither did any country except Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, nor did the UN, and Saudi Arabia withdrew their recognition prior to the war. When I refer to the government of Afghanistan, I mean the real one, not the Taliban pretending he's in charge.

Add in the fact that our attacks are, and have always been, assisted by the Afghani Army, and I'd say we were not invading. You might as well claim that the US has been an occupied country for over a century. After all, Congress was dissolved by Emperor Norton, and the standing Army they've formed is therefore clearly a rebel force.

To put it more succinctly, we're not required to acknowledge every insane person with a couple of guns that claims leadership of a nation.

Re:What they need

[copponex]

Signed an agreement reaffirming the sovereignty of Iraq

Have we abandoned our permanent military bases in Iraq?

Asserted Iraqi ownership over *every* military installation in use by US forces

That's absolute horseshit.

At withdrawal, the U.S. will return all the installations and the agreed upon areas allocated for the use of the U.S. combat forces according to two lists (of inventory) to the Iraqi government.

Translation: we keep our permanent military bases.

Handed control of many of the US Operated facilities over to the Iraqis for control (here, here, and here, for example)

Have we abandoned our permanent military bases in Iraq?

Handed security of the "Green Zone" over to Iraqi control

Have we abandoned our permanent military bases in Iraq?

Removed the vast majority of all combat forces outside of the limits of all major cities

Another lie.

In addition, there are no plans to close the Americans' Camp Victory base complex, which houses more than 20,000 soldiers, many of them combat troops, even though Camp Victory is only a 15-minute drive from the center of Baghdad and sprawls over both sides of the city's boundary. Iraqi officials, who are nervous about maintaining security as the Americans depart, have agreed to consider Camp Victory as outside the city.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/09/world/middleeast/09military.html

Additionally, your assertion that "we own" the oil fields now points to an article explaining how the Iraqi Ministry of Oil is negotiating contracts from companies that lost to nationalization when Saddam was in power. I'm not sure how that means "we own" anything. The Iraqi government is contracting with corporations to extract the oil resources. Sounds like Iraq exercising its own sovereignty to me.

Why were they no bid contracts to American oil companies in 2008? And furthermore, if we have no colonial interest in their resources, why haven't we abandoned our permanent military bases in Iraq? This is the central question. Everything else is political theater.

Re:What they need

[MightyMartian]

Wrong by what standard? Revolutions, at least in the last 250 years, have often taken place within the context of wider disputes. France helped the American Revolutionaries because it would hamstring their chief competitor on the world stage? Certainly the Revolutionary leaders knew this, but they needed the help.

Can it backfire? Well yes, and even in the case of France, the expenditures only compounded severe fiscal problems, and within a few years, poor ol' Louis was lighter the weight of his head.

But there's this notion of "right" and "wrong" that puzzles me. Wouldn't it have been something if the Great Powers could have gone to the rescue of Czar Nicholas II, or at least rescued the first Russian republic before the Bolsheviks seized absolute power? Maybe it would have backfired, but it couldn't have been much worse than what happened.

Re:What they need

[copponex]

Uh, the US didn't recognize the Taliban as the leader of Afghanistan.

Then why did we give them 40 million dollars? Did we make an announcement saying, hey, we support the Taliban... no. But giving them 40 million dollars makes them a client of ours.

When I refer to the government of Afghanistan, I mean the real one, not the Taliban pretending he's in charge.

You cannot change the definition of real out of convenience. If you give 40 million dollars to a group of people who claim to run a country in exchange for their help in the drug war, who are you recognizing as the ruler of that country?

Add in the fact that our attacks are, and have always been, assisted by the Afghani Army, and I'd say we were not invading.

That's par for the course in colonial methods, and even matches the methods of straight-up aggression. Ever heard of the Vichy government?

You might as well claim that the US has been an occupied country for over a century. After all, Congress was dissolved by Emperor Norton, and the standing Army they've formed is therefore clearly a rebel force.

Well, at least you don't take yourself seriously. Heaven knows I don't.

To put it more succinctly, we're not required to acknowledge every insane person with a couple of guns that claims leadership of a nation.

Again, we gave 40 million dollars to people who claimed they ruled Afghanistan, who did in fact control the capital city and at least 80% of it's population, and had for years. That's in a country where they make $800 a year per person on average. You can stick your thumbs in your ears and try to tune this fact out with some historical mind experiment, but it doesn't change the facts.

Re:What they need

[copponex]

If you don't consider terrorism a problem, and have no actual respect for democracy and the right of a people to their own self-determination, then yes, it's safe to ignore arguments against ignoring another country's sovereignty.

Re:What they need

[MightyMartian]

I don't think anything is that black and white. Should we encourage every democratic uprising? You bet. Should we get involved in every democratic uprising? Nope. But I think towards the revolutions in many Eastern Bloc countries after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The West offered support, and, for the most part, it's worked out very well, though Russia clearly doesn't think so.

The reason not to interfere in Iran is because there is a very deep strain of anti-Westernism in the country, even among many who would topple the Ayatollahs. Going in there and trying to topple it by force would only serve to solidify the message that has been pushed since the 1979 revolution.

Re:What they need

[Quothz]

Then why did we give them 40 million dollars? Did we make an announcement saying, hey, we support the Taliban... no. But giving them 40 million dollars makes them a client of ours.

Actually, we did announce our support for the Taliban, but didn't recognize it as a national government. So what? We give money to the West Africa AIDS Foundation to do work we support but don't recognize them as a national government. If they organized an attack on the US, we'd ask Ghana to let us bring 'em to justice or destroy them. Doing so with Ghana's permission would not be an invasion.

Re:What they need

[Moridineas]

So how do you feel about the military bases we still maintain today in Germany and Japan (amongst others?)

How do you feel about Incirlik? Guantanamo?

Why were they no bid contracts to American oil companies in 2008?

I just keep learning new facts...and to think I thought BP was British. Silly me.

Beyond that, you're being oddly pedantic. We haven't withdrawn from Iraq. We still have troops helping to maintain order and perform anti-insurgency operations. Why on earth would we withdraw from our bases while we've still got troops on the ground? Am I missing something in your logic here?

Re:What they need

[Moridineas]

Don't forget that during the campaign Obama said he would be willing to invade Pakistan if there was any "actionable" intelligence. Little different from just bombing.

I personally feel that over the next several years, Pakistan's government will degrade. Hope it doesn't come to more than that.

Re:What they need

[Moridineas]

The Taliban was a client of ours until the September 11th attacks

What does that mean, and how do you justify your statement?

Re:What they need

[justwill]

Well - we're off into tangential territory to the article, so this will all probable get modded offtopic. That's ok - the US presence in Iraq is relevant to the US ability to affect any change in Iran, so it's not too far offtopic. :)

First off, I generally support the idea you're getting at - the appearance and perception of imperialism doesn't help the US in the slightest. Furthermore, the entire war premise was on dubious grounds to begin with (and "dubious" is a generous description of it.)

That being said - accuracy is important. Forming opinions about what's going on based on an understanding of the facts is much more useful than forming opinions based on kneejerk reactions to the crappy media reporting we get.

Have we abandoned our permanent military bases in Iraq?

Repeating this question over and over again doesn't really hep anything. You claim that the text of the agreement leaves room to interpret what we still "own" places or have made permanent structures. This is incorrect:

From the agreement: (Article Two - Definition of Terms)

"The installations and areas agreed upon" refers to the Iraqi areas used by the U.S. Forces while this agreement is valid."

and later (Article 5 - Ownership of Property)

Iraq owns all the buildings and installations, the nontransferable structures on the ground that are located in the areas and installations agreed upon, including those the U.S. utilizes, constructs, changes or improves.

and even later (Article 24 - Withdrawal of American Forces from Iraq

All U.S. forces are to withdraw from all Iraqi territory, water and airspace no later than the 31st of December of 2011.

All U.S. combat forces are to withdraw from Iraqi cities, villages, and towns ... on a date no later than the 30 June 2009. The withdrawing U.S. forces... are to gather in the installations and areas agreed upon that are located outside of cities, villages and towns

The United States admits to the sovereign right of the Iraqi government to demand the departure of the U.S. forces from Iraq at anytime. The Iraqi government admits to the sovereign right of the United States to withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq at anytime.

So you claim that the bases are permanent, but the agreement clearly states that they are owned by Iraq, not the US. You claim that we aren't withdrawing combat forces, pointing to the Victory Base Complex as your sole example. You claim we aren't leaving when the agreement clearly states a specific end date when all forces will be gone.

As far as as the Victory Base Complex goes - where do you suggest soldiers go as they depart the country? Maybe to the airfield where they will fly out? Might it make sense to stage all the units at the large base next to the airfield? Also - it's way off on the western edge of the city, which has urban sprawl that's now reached it. One side of VBC is against the city, while the other side faces the open desert. The Iraqi Government has specifically said that while it's status as "outside the city" is uncertain for the purposes of this agreement it will be defined as such. You seem to imply that such a position is tantamount to keeping combat soldiers in every city in the country. Your position is hyperbole at best and downright false at worst.

Where is your source of information? Who is telling you that we aren't abiding by the terms of the agreement? I'll tell you. I'm in Baghdad right now, I can see with my own eyes the how the pullout is going. I read the orders that define where we can and can't go, I see how tightly restricted our operations are. The "drawdown" has had an extremely marked effect. I know that from your perspective I'm merely some internet asshat, but I'm here, on the ground, in Baghdad and I

Re:What they need

[copponex]

So how do you feel about the military bases we still maintain today in Germany and Japan (amongst others?

Besides further evidence of US imperialism? They should be dismantled and our troops sent home. We cannot afford the empire any more.

I just keep learning new facts...and to think I thought BP was British. Silly me.

Were any companies not from America or Britain given no bid contracts?

Beyond that, you're being oddly pedantic. We haven't withdrawn from Iraq. We still have troops helping to maintain order and perform anti-insurgency operations. Why on earth would we withdraw from our bases while we've still got troops on the ground? Am I missing something in your logic here?

Anyone who thinks that we will abandon the billion dollar bases in Iraq is just fooling themselves. They will remain not to protect Iraq's democracy, but to protect our access and control over the oil.

Re:What they need

[copponex]

Let me try to calm myself a bit. I can accurately be accused of trolling in a sense, which is to say I'm sensationalistic to get people to at least read something besides the same rhetoric passed to us from major news sites that, in my honest opinion, are completely dishonest.

Of course I can't read that agreement in the ten minutes I took to respond. Let's say the language was clear and even well intentioned. What happens if Iraq wants to again nationalize their oil fields? Do you think the US would just stand by and let them do it? We didn't allow it to happen in Iran. We tried to stop it in Venezuela, but the coup failed.

Then there's the problem of word play - something the US Armed Forces are extremely good at. I hear all the time that every last one of our combat forces are withdrawing, but all you have to do it read to the end of the same article to find out that "training forces" will remain, to the tune of 50,000. I'm sorry, but I'm just not that gullible to believe that these "training forces" won't be making regular missions in Iraq if they "think" it will threaten the security of US forces. Furthermore, all US soldiers and related citizens are to be handed over to US forces if they are detained by Iraqi forces. That's not sovereignty.

And as far as the oil companies go, Shell is headquartered in the Netherlands but registered in London. It's largest subsidiary is based in Houston. Multinational corporations are tough to assign to a distinct nationality, but I don't think you'd dispute the fact that nobody besides the "majors" of the oil industry, based primarily out of England and the United States, are the ones who have been given huge no bid contracts and a huge head start in developing oil infrastructure in Iraq. Again, I'm not gullible enough to believe that is just a coincidence. Nobody disputed the history of Britain protecting it's empire for the sake of it's commercial sector. No one disputes the facts surrounding the coup in Iran in 1953, and why people think we're not capable of the same type of behavior is really astonishing.

And as far as your apologist notions, they are a little sickening. We are not debating the lives of characters in some game. Tens and probably hundreds of thousands of people are dead. Millions of Iraqis now live in sewage and desperate poverty or have fled the country. Iraqi women can no longer hold jobs or walk without a chaperone. America has spent over a trillion dollars on the war, not counting interest. All of this was built on CIA forgeries, empty rhetoric about democracy, and a small group of people in the Bush Administration obsessed with invading Iraq at any cost.

Meanwhile, oil companies and private military contractors are making out like bandits. I don't know about you, but I'm quite tired of the same cycle of events.

Since you're there, though, what's the status on the electrical grid? Does even Baghdad have 24 hour service yet, and water and sewer infrastructure in full working order? Where the hell did all of the money go?

Re:What they need

[copponex]

So your argument is we did support the Taliban, but since we technically did not recognize them as the government of Afghanistan, we had the right to invade that country? That's a nearly preposterous argument.

So if Israel is ever invaded by a country that doesn't recognize them as a nation -- let's just say Iran -- is that justifiable? They could just as easily claim that the population of the entire Israel/Palestine territory is being oppressed by the Israeli population, and they are freeing it from that oppression, while preemptively striking Israel since Israel has been threatening to invade Iran for many years now. All of their attacks on Israel would obviously be aided by the local Palestinian population. Under your conditions, that would also be a just war, wouldn't it?

If not, what magically changed your mind?

Re:What they need

[copponex]

And if you are a service member, I am not trying to insinuate that you don't care or that you're some kind of monster. I had uncles that were in Vietnam, who both went crazy, and one of them eventually killed himself (not entirely due to Vietnam, but I don't think it helped). I have compassion and respect for everyone in the armed forces. I know you are doing the job you trained to do, and in today's world, we probably need a standing army, and one that obeys orders.

I just think the people who have the power to order you around should be brought to justice when they abuse that power.

However, if you're a consultant or private contractor, I hope you understand why you're there, and how much blood is in the ink on your paychecks.

Re:What they need

[shutdown -p now]

When I refer to the government of Afghanistan, I mean the real one, not the Taliban pretending he's in charge.

"Pretending to be in charge"? Taliban had de facto full control over 90% of the country territory. And it wasn't just military - they were also the administrators, law enforcers, etc. I don't see how this can be "pretending".

I also find it very ironic that "the real government" you refer to - which is whatever puppet the every-quarreling warlords of the Northern Alliance agreed on - derives all its legitimacy from being, at least on paper, a legitimate successor of the original, UN-recognized government of Mohammad Najibullah, who was executed by Taliban when they took Kabul - the Soviet government of the communist Democratic Republic of Afghanistan...

Add in the fact that our attacks are, and have always been, assisted by the Afghani Army

There was no such thing as an "Afghani Army" at the time of invasion. There were various armed groups, mostly along tribal lines, and unstable alliances between them - and Taliban, who alone had larger forces than all its opponents combined.

You might as well claim that the US has been an occupied country for over a century. After all, Congress was dissolved by Emperor Norton, and the standing Army they've formed is therefore clearly a rebel force.

A better analogy would be if Britain had invaded U.S., claiming that the U.S. government is illegitimate (by virtue of being installed via an armed coup), and U.S. armed forces are a bunch of "insane people with a couple of guns" - and calling a few British loyalists "assistance of the local army".

Re:What they need

[Quothz]

So your argument is we did support the Taliban, but since we technically did not recognize them as the government of Afghanistan, we had the right to invade that country?

I have to say that's an interesting thing to take away from the phrase "we didn't invade Afghanistan". If you want to talk to the voices in your head, fine, but don't pretend you're replying to me.

So if Israel is ever invaded by a country that doesn't recognize them as a nation -- let's just say Iran -- is that justifiable?

Well, I'm'a ignore the general case and stick with the specific hypothetical. No, because (a) Iran explicitly recognized Israel for years before changing its mind, (b) didn't recognize Palestine until long after the establishment of Israel, (c) Israel is generally recognized, and is a member of the United Nations, and (d) Iran implicitly recognizes Israel by dint of UN membership. (The UN charter requires member nations to recognize one another.)

If not, what magically changed your mind?

It's the magic I call "understanding that different things are not the same".

The case in Afghanistan, unlike Iraq or the things you imagine in your head, is not a matter of cowboy diplomacy. It's a case of (nearly) universally-recognized governments cooperating on the sovereign soil of one to suppress a threat to them both. America's presence in Afghanistan is not an invading force.

Re:What they need

[Stickerboy]

>Let me try to calm myself a bit. I can accurately be accused of trolling in a sense, which is to say I'm sensationalistic to get people to at least read something besides the same rhetoric passed to us from major news sites that, in my honest opinion, are completely dishonest.

And yet you, yourself are being intellectually dishonest by trumpeting your opinions as facts and your tinfoil conspiracy theories as truth. And that makes you different from a supermarket tabloid writer because...?

You are trolling. Period. Not in "a sense". So grow up. You started another post about al Qaeda having a grand opportunity with all these "militant Shiites", even though al Qaeda has traditionally terrible relations with Shiites, being a fundamentalist Sunni organization that has killed many innocent Shiites for terror and intimidation purposes. And yet when a poster called you on your ignorance, you immediately retreated to a "I'm really stupid, please enlighten my ignorance on Sunni-Shiite relations" position which you should have taken in the first place, since it was so God-awful clear from your first post.

>Of course I can't read that agreement in the ten minutes I took to respond. Let's say the language was clear and even well intentioned. What happens if Iraq wants to again nationalize their oil fields?

Why the fuck would the Iraqis want to nationalize the oil fields? The Iraqi government is rolling in cash right now due to the petroleum deals(so much so that the US Congress is complaining of how much free money the Iraqis have and how much reconstruction the US is paying for). Contrast this to Venezuela, whose oil rigs are falling into disrepair and whose production will plummet due to the lack of technical expertise available to the Venezuelan government bureaucrats after kicking out the Western energy companies and the reduction of reinvestment in new exploration. Nationalization is sexy and all to the global leftists, but it runs up against the hard reality of actually maintaining resource production (see: Zimbabwe after kicking out all the white farmers). Appointing paper pushers to do the job based on their political loyalty is a great way to send your country on a short road to North Koreaville.

> Do you think the US would just stand by and let them do it?

Yes. Do you know why? Because since oil is Iraq's lifeline, they will still sell it. And it's not control of petroleum that the US is after as a strategic priority, it's the continuing free flow of petroleum to the world market. We don't care who owns the oil. We care that any one person or country isn't threatening to monopolize a large majority of the world's proven reserves, thus allowing them to destabilize the US and world economy, which is highly dependent on energy for transportation.

> We didn't allow it to happen in Iran. We tried to stop it in Venezuela, but the coup failed.

Isn't it ironic? The Iranians have a populist revolution to only set up their own oppressive theocracy. 30 years later, the newest generation wants to have a populist revolution, only to have it squashed under the thumbs of the Ayatollah and the Revolutionary Guard, who at this point are starting to look worse than the Shah in terms of mismanaging their own country and citizens. The CIA had no involvement in the attempted Venezuelan coup, other than to indicate that the US government would rather have a military coup by halfway reasonable generals rather than another crackpot demagogue who is only interested in plundering his country's wealth for his own image and legacy. Which was perfectly fucking reasonable. Unless you happen to l

Re:What they need

[DavidTC]

When I refer to the government of Afghanistan, I mean the real one, not the Taliban pretending he's in charge.

So you think Iran's shouldn't be worried because you apparently think we 'technically' didn't invade Afghanistan? So you think they are total morons?

Um, no. The fact is that we sent troops into and wrestled control away from the de facto government of a neighboring nation. Iran's not going to say 'Oh, that doesn't count, because you were able to get a tiny government-in-exile to legitimize it.'.

Incidentally, you're wrong. Failing to recognize the government of a country and going to war with them on behalf of another government that claims it's the legitimate one, is, in fact, an 'invasion' under any international law. Quite a lot of countries that invade each other do not recognize the other as legitimate...failing to recognize the other government as legit is, in fact, halfway to war.

But international law has no concept of 'recognized' countries. Anyone in control of an area of land, as long as they can hold that land and, in general, exercise the functions of government, and calling themselves a government, is a government, period. Of course, if they stole that land from an existing country, that country is automatically already at war with them and should feel free to take it back in self defense. (Now, to get into the UN you have to recognized by enough countries, but that's not the same thing as actually being a country.)

But where you are confused, I think, is that you believe a country getting involved in a 'civil war' and taking over the entire country is not an invasion. It really really is. Our military was not operating under the command of the Northern Alliance, we were not assisting them, we were invading the country, nominally for them, although you'll notice we did not, in fact, turn the country over to them at the end. We, instead, set up an 'occupation force', as defined under the Geneva convention, and ran their government for them until they could take control.

Which doesn't matter, as the invasion of Afghanistan was legal under various legal theories and the UN supported it. But it was, nevertheless, an invasion. If it had not been an invasion, if we had just be 'helping out' against a rebellion, our troops would have been under the control of the NA, and at the end, the NA would have been in charge.

Re:What they need

[DavidTC]

America's presence in Afghanistan is not an invading force.

If we did not invade, but instead provided troubles to help the legitimate government of Afghanistan fight off some rebels....surely, at the end, we would have been given medals by the legit government of Afghanistan, who would have walked back into their offices and started running the country. Right?

Oh, wait, you say for a while, we ourselves were the government under the 'occupied nation' rules of the Geneva Convention? We were required to provide public services and whatnot to the population of the country we, apparently, were occupying, like governments have to?

And then, as dictated under those rules, we then set up a government to run the place and turned it over to the locals? Where they then had constitutional voting and elections of their government?

Where was the 'legitimate government' of Afghanistan, aka, the Northern Alliance, during this? Didn't they have anything to say about the fact that, after we'd kicked out the illegitimate pretenders, we'd then ignored the actual government and occupied the country, setting up our own government and replacing them?

You can sit there and pretend that the Northern Alliance was the legitimate government of Afghanistan all you want, but the Northern Alliance is not the current government there, or even the heir to the current government there...we are.

Hence we invaded and overthrew the government of Afghanistan even if the Northern Alliance was the legit government. Heh. We just invaded and overthrew them while they were weak from fighting the Taliban, and also apparently lied and said we were on their side in their civil war, when in reality we going to take the country from them and the Taliban.

You fail logic forever.

Re:What they need

[copponex]

(a) Iran explicitly recognized Israel for years before changing its mind (b) didn't recognize Palestine until long after the establishment of Israel

When our dictator, the Shah of Iran was in power, sure. Those ties were cut in 1979 as soon as Iranians regained control of their country. That's when they "changed their mind" - when they actually had power to say what they wanted.

(c) Israel is generally recognized, and is a member of the United Nations

Here's a pretty map that shows you the states with no diplomatic ties with Israel. It shows pretty clearly that almost 0 arab states recognize Israel or have diplomatic ties to it. Maybe you can understand pictures.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Foreign_relations_of_Israel_Map.png

(d) Iran implicitly recognizes Israel by dint of UN membership. (The UN charter requires member nations to recognize one another.)

Afghanistan was a member of the UN during the years the Taliban was being ruled. Does that mean the United States recognized the Taliban as legitimate? If not, what security council resolutions can you point to before 9/11 that states the Taliban is not recognized as the government of Afghanistan?

It's the magic I call "understanding that different things are not the same"

You're playing word games to avoid the real issue.

The case in Afghanistan, unlike Iraq or the things you imagine in your head, is not a matter of cowboy diplomacy. It's a case of (nearly) universally-recognized governments cooperating on the sovereign soil of one to suppress a threat to them both. America's presence in Afghanistan is not an invading force.

Alright. We can actually put your theory to the test. When the recognized Afghan government requested Soviet help to crush the islamic fundamentalism movement in Afghanistan in 1979, did Russia invade, according to your definition? Why or why not?

Re:What they need

[copponex]

And yet you, yourself are being intellectually dishonest by trumpeting your opinions as facts and your tinfoil conspiracy theories as truth.

Which one?

you immediately retreated to a "I'm really stupid, please enlighten my ignorance on Sunni-Shiite relations" position which you should have taken in the first place, since it was so God-awful clear from your first post.

And somehow I know more than the entire GOP ticket from the last election. I don't mind saying I was wrong - I misunderstood the relationship between Al Qaeda in Iraq and the militant Shia movements. I admitted it after I reread some things. Life goes on.

The Iraqi government is rolling in cash right now due to the petroleum deals(so much so that the US Congress is complaining of how much free money the Iraqis have and how much reconstruction the US is paying for).

They don't have 24 hour electrical service or sewage in much of Iraq. Much of their infrastructure is completely destroyed, and now their literacy rate is dropping like a rock. It's going to cost some money to build it back, and just as Iran did in 53, there will be a movement to stop the theft of oil profits from western countries.

Contrast this to Venezuela, whose oil rigs are falling into disrepair and whose production will plummet due to the lack of technical expertise available to the Venezuelan government bureaucrats after kicking out the Western energy companies and the reduction of reinvestment in new exploration. Nationalization is sexy and all to the global leftists, but it runs up against the hard reality of actually maintaining resource production (see: Zimbabwe after kicking out all the white farmers). Appointing paper pushers to do the job based on their political loyalty is a great way to send your country on a short road to North Koreaville.

Read the fine print. Oil companies are allowed to take 60 to 70 percent until their costs are recouped. Anywhere else in the world it's 40%. Once complete, American and British companies, who did not have to bid for access to Iraqi oil, keep 20% of the profits, which is double the normal rate of 10%. So, Venezuela is still doing better than Iraq. Their output has suffered under Chavez, but not as much as Iraqi output has suffered under the US.

Oil prices have gone down about $100 per barrel as well. That's an important fact to remember.

Also, a quicker way to dictatorship is to try and nationalize any of your industries and harm US and British investors. The CIA and MI6 will be up your ass in a heartbeat.

Do you think the US would just stand by and let them do it?

Yes. Do you know why? Because since oil is Iraq's lifeline, they will still sell it.

That's a logical fallacy. Iraqis, given the choice between extermination and dictatorship, will probably choose dictatorship, even if it's installed by the United States.

And it's not control of petroleum that the US is after as a strategic priority, it's the continuing free flow of petroleum to the world market. We don't care who owns the oil. We care that any one person or country isn't threatening to monopolize a large majority of the world's proven reserves, thus allowing them to destabilize the US and world economy, which is highly dependent on energy for transportation.

False. We want to make sure that we maintain control over the worlds proven reserves, in case someone thinks about threatening our empire. Then we have the power to cut them off and throw their society into ch

The alternative is no technology

[msgmonkey]

you see the regime would love there to be no communications but they have to since young Iranians demand it. From what I can tell Iranians put up with the controls on public appearence/behavior because atleast in private they have outlets such as the Internet to express themselves, now with this under control too if I was an Iranian I would feel even more frustrated that it is creeping into their private lives. Maybe the youth have been placated with Internet and mobile phones but I'm hoping that whatever the outcome people will realise that the small luxuries that they are allowed to have can and will be used against them which in the longer term can only cause more angst and dissent.

Re:The alternative is no technology

[CarpetShark]

you see the regime would love there to be no communications

I highly doubt that. Chances are the Ayatollah would gladly welcome communication if it met his definition of virtuous Islamic speech (which admittedly probably doesn't meet with most people's definition of the same). Still, my point is that leaders are rarely if ever entirely evil, and demonising them will not help anyone. Perhaps understanding their motivations is a better place to start from.

Ins't this obvious?

[emeitner]

On with the tinfoil hats...and the cynical socks...

The power of technology from a government's perspective is to have the subjects of your suspicion(citizenry) freely and enthusiastically enter all their beliefs( micro/macro blogging), the topology of their personal relations(social networking sites), and their personal communications(gmail) into the databases of private corporations for the easy mining of the data by the keepers of all the keys(NSA, MI5, and others). Then is is a simple matter to assemble an n-dimentional database of relationships into a large net. Then they need only to pull a single knot(a person) of this net and see all others strings and knots which are pulled also. With this tool the government can intercept and neutralize any waxing movement, meme, or influential person.

...off with the tinfoil hat and back to my coffee.

Yet another way to look at it

[CarpetShark]

ARPA's Internet project grows out of control, works against sister agency's insurrection attempt.

Re:Yet another way to look at it

[causality]

ARPA's Internet project grows out of control, works against sister agency's insurrection attempt.

I don't look at it this way. My view on it is simple.

There are some things that technology does not change. There is simply no substitute for a large mob of armed (with melee weapons if necessary) and very pissed off people surrounding a capital and demanding either the resignation, or the head, of a tyrant. Information and argumentation and documentation, which is what the Internet is good for, are useful for making sure things don't get to that point. For the Iranians, it's a bit too late for that.

Re:Yet another way to look at it

[TheRaven64]

Yes indeed. It worked very well, for example, on June the fourth, 1989.

Re:Yet another way to look at it

[causality]

I was speaking strictly about how the people themselves may use technology to be more difficult to oppress. Your reply about how that technology may be used by the government to oppress the people is the other side of the coin.

Actually technology changes the number of people it takes to oppress an entire country. The current Iranian government is opposed by certainly at least a majority of Iranians, if not outright by 80-90% of the country. Yet those 10% manage to oppress the other parts quite effectively. Technology has enormously lowered the amount of people it takes to oppress a country completely.

That's worded as though you were telling me something new, which is a bit confusing. Really, this only reinforces my point that when things get that bad in Iran, there is no substitute for people willing to physically stand up for themselves. That's easier to do when only 10% are engaging in tyranny and would be much more difficult if it were the majority who were engaging in tyranny.

Because without guns, nothing changes. The world is based on reality. And the reality is simple : the person with the most and biggest guns makes the rules.

That's only because too many people are cowards, and a coward fears death more than he fears slavery. No tyrant wants to rule a ghost town.

You know what would break any government, no matter how powerful or oppressive it is? If the people stopped supporting it, stopped paying their taxes, and stopped serving in its military. When a small but courageous minority does this, they can be singled out and an example can be made of them. When the vast majority finds this kind of courage, it would quickly be shown what sort of weak nothing-human-beings these dictators really are without their authority structures.

Re:another way to look at it

[neomunk]

Posting to undo accidental redundant mod...

A first post that expresses an opinion other than letting us know the temperature of some urine, and I go and hit redundant of all things. Sorry.

Re:Pile'o'poop article

[BadAnalogyGuy]

'Compare that with East Germany, in which the Stasi managed to tap, at most, about 100,000 phone lines -- a gargantuan task that required 2,000 full-time technicians to monitor the calls,'

Comparisons with Nazi Germany be damned.

American much?

Would you like a map and such as?

Re:Encryption VS Deep Packet Inspection

[CarpetShark]

I want to see a program cracking my nicely encrypted email

Be careful what you wish for. I don't think any of the common encryption methods are very reliable any more (anyone know what REALLY is?) Either way, chances are your encryption has been undermined by some random (IT or non-IT) thing you got careless about ten years ago when you were drunk and had some woman (or stress or depression or just about anything else) on your mind. Also, it's questionable whether even the best encryption isn't within governments' cracking abilities, and you just invited them to give it a shot.

US citizens' have their hands tied

[betterunixthanunix]

It remains illegal to export or reexport strong cryptography to Iran. Despite Phil Zimmerman's testimony before Congress, and despite his presentation of letters from people around the world who used PGP to save lives, there are still restrictions on who we may export this sort of software to. I have no doubt that the protestors in Iran would benefit immensely if they were using PGP or some similarly strong crypto, but here in the US, you could be imprisoned for sending it to them.

Re:US citizens' have their hands tied

[QuantumG]

Oh please, you don't actually think aiding dissidents in a foreign country is legal do ya? The only thing stopping Iran from demanding the extradition of these people is that they are anonymous.. except for Eric S. Raymond, and who wants him in their country?

Re:US citizens' have their hands tied

[rrossman2]

which is dumb... someone who lives outside the united state could very well download the strong crypto program or library legally (well legal for the person in the US hosting it), and maybe their country doesn't have the same export laws for crypto, and hosts it for a country that's a no-no from a US point of view

Re:US citizens' have their hands tied

[Hurricane78]

You are really believing this shit, are you?

I can't count the levels on which this is just wrong.

First of all, I thought in the US (and many other countries), it were the rule, that if you murdered foreign people, and did other bad things to them, you would in the first place be a "hero", as long as they are officially the "evil ones". (Example: The "soldiers".)

Then, do you really think, Iran can demand *anything* from the USA? lol. You must be out of your mind!

Or are you just trolling?

Re:US citizens' have their hands tied

[Opportunist]

Legal? Illegal? Remove yourself from such dated concepts.

Whether something is legal does not matter. What matters is what is the possible punishment, what is the chance to get caught, what is the gain.

And here the possible punishment is, essentially, nonexistant. Do you honestly think the US administration (or any administration in the self proclaimed 'free world') would extradit one of their citizens to Iran, for whatever reasons whatsoever? Obama already got some heat from the right wing for being "soft" on terror, if anything it would be a great chance to show he won't bow to the request of the armpit of evil.

Re:US citizens' have their hands tied

[Repossessed]

Correction: It is illegal to export computer software or hardware of any kind to Iran, not just strong crypto.

Re:US citizens' have their hands tied

[Opportunist]

People following the law blindly is what makes dictatorships possible.

Re:US citizens' have their hands tied

[sowth]

Who said anything about sending Freenet to Iran? The summary just talked about it as a test case, at least how I read it. I was talking about using it in the US. Even if you don't think things are oppressive now[1], don't you believe it would be wise to have a free speech system in place for when things do get bad? [1] I don't want to talk about stupid relativism. I know it is oppressive in North Korea and other places. It doesn't mean there are not problems here, nor can you account for every single local jurisdiction.

No way with regards to Invasion

[msgmonkey]

If there has been on country that has benefited from the US "adventures" in Afganistan and Iraq it has been Iran, the US can't do anything to Iran at the moment it is too stretched out both financially and militeraly hence Obama recently changed tack from the previous threating stance. The Iranian leadership know this and that is why the continue with their nuclear program.

I also don't think there is any chance of another coup, there could be a counter-revolution but if this happens it will be because of the youth. Would the US like a counter-revolution, of course they would and the ayatollah is using this argument however the people are n't stupid and we should give them that much credit.

Re:No way with regards to Invasion

[justwill]

I agree with you in principle - that the last 6 years have made it easy for extremists to find recruits, but you're fundamentally wrong about the demographics. Al Quaeda is Sunni, Saudi Arabia is Sunni, the vast majority of the Islamic world is Sunni. The Shia are the majority in Iran, and the population is pretty mixed in Iraq. They spend more time and effort fighting each other than they do fighting the US. This Sunni/Shia tension was held in check in Iraq by Saddam, whose propaganda machine was able to successfully frame the conflict as "Persian vs. Arab" so the ethnic Arabs who were Shia tended to side w/ the other Arabs even though they were Sunni rather than the Persians (Iran). Lately, however, that hasn't been the case. Both sides are anxiously awaiting the US withdrawal so that they can a) claim credit for it; and b) commence the wholesale slaughter of each other. Anyway - enough of a tangent. If people really want to understand the region, they're going to have to understand the Sunni/Shia tensions first. Mislabeling the Saudis as "Shia" goes against those efforts.

Re:No way with regards to Invasion

[castorvx]

Did he discontinue the threatening nature of the previous administrations because we can't currently kick their ass, or did he change it because he believes diplomacy is often times more effective than being a international bully?

Re:No way with regards to Invasion

[copponex]

I didn't say the majority of Saudis were Shia. I should have clarified that I was speaking about the Saudis who live in the oil rich north of the country on the border with Iraq.

According to every source I've seen, a majority of Iraq is Shia, in a 60/40 split. I guess a number of them could be dead or outside the country. Iran is a majority Shia. Al Qaeda may be made up of Sunni arabs, but aren't they trying to overthrow the Sunni leaders of Saudi Arabia and other secular Muslim nations? I imagine they are trying to exploit Shia muslims to complete this objective.

Council of Foreign Relations, 2003:

Saudi-born Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden has long called for the overthrow of the Saudi royal family to punish it for allowing U.S. military bases in the kingdom. He broke with the monarchy in 1990 over the Gulf War, when the kingdom invited U.S.-led coalition troops onto Saudi soil to its defend oil fields and to prepare to attack Iraq. After the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime in the second Iraq war, U.S. troops pulled out of Saudi Arabia.

Why is al-Qaeda still targeting the kingdom?

For several reasons, experts say. The royal family maintains a close relationship with the United States, which al-Qaeda views as the home of "infidels." Many Saudis see the powerful princes who run the country as corrupt and dissolute. In this view, the royals are leaders of a strict Islamic state who disregard Islam's dictums by drinking alcohol or "frequenting the casinos of Monte Carlo," says Matthew Levitt, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and former FBI counterterrorism analyst. Al Qaeda regards the regime as "insufficiently Islamic and an unacceptable candidate to be the guardian of Mecca and Medina," Islam's holiest sites, Levitt says. And, some experts say, the government is breaking its social contract with Saudi citizens, which gives the royal family control over politics in exchange for lifetime benefits financed by Saudi oil. A growing population and shrinking economy make it more difficult for the government to hold up its end of the deal.

Re:No way with regards to Invasion

[Moridineas]

I'm not sure if you're confused on the facts or not--it's unclear from your speculations, but just for the record al-Qa'ida is not a Shia organization. While al-Qa'ida in *IRAQ* (see below) might specifically target Shiites, Bin Ladin has in the past made attempts to gain connections with Shia groups (though he has denounced at times as well!).

Also, FWIW, whiel you got the terminology correct, when people talk about the "Shia crescent" however it's usually said to start in Lebanon. It's not exactly a new thing either!

In fact think of al-Qa'ida as a brand, or an overarching corporate entity. Then you have terrorist franchises -- almost all of which ALREADY existed -- that affiliate with al-Qa'ida for name and fame. Thus you have what we call AQI -- Al-Qa'ida in Iraq and they call al-Qa'ida in the land of the two rivers or variants thereof, you have AQIM -- Al-Qa'ida in the Islamic Maghreb (North Africa), etc. How closely are these various groups linked to Bin Ladin? Many not very closely at all. Bin Ladin and AQ are basically lessons in branding, and a brand that globally is LOSING mindshare right now. I would completely DISAGREE with your assertions about al-Qa'ida in Iraq, and point to the awakenning councils as just part of the evidence as to how al-Qa'ida has managed to estrange its base! Unfortunately with the terrible job ALL (and I mean ALL) American news media does covering terrorist organizations, the Iraq war, etc, this is poorly understood and poorly reported on. Thus you get every armchair analyst in the western thinking they understand the complex interrelationships between Sunni and Shia, al-Qa'ida and the Iraq war, etc. The correct answer? "It's complicated." ;)

If Al Qeada continues to enjoy the recruiting bonanza of US forces in this area, there's a good chance bin Laden will get the war he was looking for between the west and the muslim world. All he has to do is pull of another terrorist attack inside the US.

You're wrong (IMO of course) about any "recruiting bonanza" that translates into anything greater than jihad in Iraq, etc. America has avoided many of the Russian mistakes in Chechnya and Afghanistan that made this an issue. Furthermore, popularity numbers for al-Qa'ida as a whole due in large parts to the actions of al-Qa'ida in Iraq are down.

Lastly, if you're even REMOTELY right about any of your facts, what is taking so long for al-Qa'ida and Usama to plan an attack in the US? There are any number of extremely devastating attacks that could be pulled off easily, cheaply, and with only a few people -- so what's the hold up?

Re:No way with regards to Invasion

[stoicfaux]

If there has been on country that has benefited from the US "adventures" in Afganistan and Iraq it has been Iran, the US can't do anything to Iran at the moment it is too stretched out

The US has already won the war with Iran. Why fight a war that's already been won?

The Iran-Iraq war killed a lot of Iranians, which is why the country's population is now so young. Iran has young people and very old people. There's no generation in the middle to help ensure smooth relations between the two. The old people with their old ideas are desperately trying to enforce their ideas on young people with new ideas, and the election showed just how well that's working.

Now if I were the kind of person who believed in world-wide cabals that are toying with human history over centuries of time, you would think that the US's support of Saddam's Iraq during the early 80s to foil Iran is paying off in spades. By directly and indirectly supporting Iraq, Saddam's war with Iran bled Iran dry and reduced its geo-political clout. Since the war killed off a large percentage of Iran's population, it's enabled the youngest generation of Iranians to grow up in ways that the Iranian old guard couldn't predict or understand and thus not control, resulting in a serious clash of ideas. It doesn't matter if the Iranian government defeats the protesters now. The protesters just have to wait a decade for the old guard to die of old age.

The West has already won the "war" with Iran. There is no need for the US to invade Iran since Iran's younger, more liberal generation will take over in a decade effectively removing Iran as a major anti-west headache.

No, there is no cabal, no grand puppet master. I doubt any organization, with or without black helicopters, can plan, predict, or control global politics that far in advance. Personally, I blame the internet for making it too easy for kids to get new, stupid ideas. They don't even have to go to university anymore to fill their heads full of silly ideas on how the world should work and otherwise ignore their elder's hard won conservative wisdom.

Re:No way with regards to Invasion

[copponex]

I hold no illusions about my stupidity on the subject of inter-muslim relations. I sort of fish for intriguing posts. Most of what I get is recycled talking points.

I know the initial split between Sunni and Shia seems tiny to me as an outsider, and at least among Christian sects, they can overcome doctrinal minutiae when the chips are down, so to speak. I hate to make this analogy, but I will anyway, and that is the Shia seem sort of Catholic to me while the Sunnis seem Protestant.

Maybe you can answer some questions for me: are the mainstream Shia usually more fundamentalist than the mainstream Sunni? This was why I got the impression that more fundamentalist Sunnis would be joining forces with Shias.

What sort of news sources would you recommend? I can't read Farsi or Arabic, so I guess the best I can do is Al Jazeera.

The WTC was attacked in 93 and in 01, and eight years later, I still see from various sources that Al Qaeda is the most dangerous terrorist organization for the US. Do you disagree or agree?

Re:No way with regards to Invasion

[justwill]

Ah - ok. I see what you're getting at. One of the goals of organizations like Al Queada is to overthrow the more secular of the Sunni governments in favor of a more religious one. And they are happy to exploit whomever they can in that endeavor. Continuing violence between Sunnis and Shias is a common way to discredit the capabilities of the governments. It seems disingenuous to me--to pick a fight and then claim that the government is ineffective because it couldn't stop you--but it does seem to yield recruits.

Really, many of the mideast problems date back to (like so many other issues) then 1919 Treaty of Versailles - where the western powers made boundaries based on their own objectives rather than boundaries that reflected the tribal and religious concentrations of the populations. (See the apocryphal story of Winston's Hiccup for a good example.)

Iraq happens to be where the Shia and Sunni worlds collide. They do have a larger Shia popuation, which means that the Iranian influence there is huge. I'm actually quite curious to see how the Iranian unrest plays out in Iraq, since most of the Shia Militia groups are directly or indirectly supported by Iranian elements.

Re:No way with regards to Invasion

[Moridineas]

I hold no illusions about my stupidity on the subject of inter-muslim relations. I sort of fish for intriguing posts. Most of what I get is recycled talking points.

Heh, that's pretty much the Internet for you :-P

I know the initial split between Sunni and Shia seems tiny to me as an outsider, and at least among Christian sects, they can overcome doctrinal minutiae when the chips are down, so to speak. I hate to make this analogy, but I will anyway, and that is the Shia seem sort of Catholic to me while the Sunnis seem Protestant.

Well, the way the difference is typically described is in terms of "orthodox" and "heterodox." In those terms, the Sunnis are basically the "original" Muslims, and the Shia split off over a fairly long period of time. So looking at it that way, the Roman Catholic church (that claims to be the original Christian church and dates its history directly back to Peter, etc) would be Sunni, and the protestants and Shia would have some similiarities as splinter "heterodox" organizations.

Maybe you can answer some questions for me: are the mainstream Shia usually more fundamentalist than the mainstream Sunni? This was why I got the impression that more fundamentalist Sunnis would be joining forces with Shias.

I don't think you can really say that one group is more fundamentalist than the other. I mean, on the one hand you have the Iranian government -- fundamentalist Shia. On the other hand you have the Wahhabis and people like Bin Ladin --fundamentalist Sunnis.

There are many mainstream and non-fundamentalist Sunni Muslims. There are also mainstream and non-fundamentalist Shia out there. Within Shia Islam there are many subgroups -- for instance the Nizari Ismailis (sometimes derogatively called Aga Khanis) -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nizari_Ismaili. This group centuries ago was known for using campaigns of propaganda and high profile assassinations to accomplish its political goals (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashshashin). Today on the otherhand, many Nizari Ismailis are mainstream, secular, modern, what have you.

What sort of news sources would you recommend? I can't read Farsi or Arabic, so I guess the best I can do is Al Jazeera.

Al Jazeera is often very good for alternative perspectives (interesting takes on US news as well). I don't know that I can really recommend any news sources in particular... I mean personally I like BBC reporting as well as any, but you pretty much have to take everything with a grain of salt. My language is no longer up to par, but a lot of Middle Eastern newspapers etc are very into conspiracy theories.

I also guess I would agree that al-Qa'ida is the most dangerous terrorist organization for the US today.

Re:another way to look at it

[sco08y]

So help was your weasel word to pretend to be saying something without having to defend it.

It's more defensible than you think, though.

The fact is that Twitter is designed to be a fun thing for people to use in a relatively non-oppressive society. As such, it's designed under the assumption that they don't *want* criminals or terrorists on their network. So their design works in a free country but can be used against a populace or simply suppressed in an oppressive country.

The problem here, really, is that overthrowing a government is not a trivial exercise and the populace of Iran needs the proper tools. Seriously, is anyone surprised that something called "Twitter" isn't exactly military grade?

Re:First in the USA

[CarpetShark]

What are you imagining has spread in such a fashion? Love of Elvis?

Re:Encryption VS Deep Packet Inspection

[kdemetter]

If they really are going to try to crack every email , it would be fun to send a highly encrypted email , containg only large amounts of gibberish , to a friend everyday.

Then they would spend hours or days decrypting it , only to see a message , which they think might be a sort of encryption as well.
They might try to construct a real message from it.

Could be fun

Re:US citizens' have their hands tied - SO WHAT?

[fnj]

The past called and says you shouldn't be living there any more. The days when anybody cared about the U.S. trying to keep the genie in a bottle are long gone. Uh, the rest of the world understands technology too and is fully capable of working with it. GnuPG is mirrored around the world.

The internet never forgets

[petes_PoV]

The classic mistake made by newbies (and slow learners) is to assume that stuff you put on the internet years ago somehow gets lost or forgotten.

It doesn't

Sadly some people in Iran, will learn this the hard way. When their security forces finally get around to processing all the blogs, tweets, SMS, emails, usenet posts, youtube videos, facebook entries and other permanent electronic records of comments they may have thought were innocent - or got caught up in the enthusiasm of the moment.

While it may only cost people in "free" countries a job offer or a place at university - these guys could end up paying with their lives.

In this case, the internet may have done more harm than good.

Re:The internet never forgets

[jo42]

This must be the most insightful comment I've read in a long time...

Re:The internet never forgets

[ducomputergeek]

And it may not only be the people inside Iran. I'm not sure what Iran's capabilities are for external intelligence operations, but I wouldn't be surprised if we don't hear about a few of these people outside Iran that were leading the charge to set up proxies have unfortunate accidents.

Re:The internet never forgets

[MadCow42]

Unless they are successful in a regime change. That is the whole point, no?

Re:The internet never forgets

[DavidTC]

And it works in the past, too.

How many people in Iran in the past posted comments and sent messages that were well within acceptable norms five years ago, and they have forgotten all about. No one ever even said anything to them about them.

But the security forces have had, since then, them on a list of 'troublemakers', and the very first thing they did now was set up surveillance on them.

Re:The internet never forgets

[Nidi62]

Except intelligence agencies never do that kind of thing(except for the KGB back in the day, anyway). When intelligence agencies start killing people in other countries, it draws suspicion to their main task, which is the procurement of information. Killing a national in another country alerts that country's investigative and counter-intel apparatus, making it that much harder for your operatives to work. Now, if I were a ranking officer in Iran's intelligence community, I would infiltrate those expat groups in other countries(likely they already have), and learn their contacts inside Iran, and their methods of communication. Then it's just a simple task to call over to the Interior Ministry and have them rounded up. You kill an expat in another country, people tend to get pissed off, and you lose some of your own people. You round up and kill some of your own citizens inside your own borders, other countries can complain, but that's about it.

Re:The internet never forgets

[bill_mcgonigle]

Unless they are successful in a regime change. That is the whole point, no?

Right, and this may steel their convictions even further.

Stalin used to tell his troops that there was an uncertain fate if they marched on, and certain death if they retreated.

There is more to it

[betterunixthanunix]

For now, AES remains impossible to directly crack. "Directly" being the operative word -- cryptography systems involving AES can be cracked through various other means. You start sending encrypted mail, and the first thing I will do is see if I can get a keystroke logger on your computer, perhaps a hardware unit that I install in your keyboard. If I cannot do that, I'll see if I can perform a side channel attack -- perhaps I can install a microphone near your computer to measure the vibrations caused by power fluctuations, or maybe I can find a way to hide an antenna and measure the EM emissions.

Don't get me wrong, cryptography would help the Iranians a lot, but it is not a silver bullet. High profile targets would need to be wary of side channel attacks and other attempts to break their crypto, but even low level targets would be risking their lives. The very use of cryptography could be enough to get an Iranian thrown in prison, especially if it becomes known that cryptography is being used to evade government filters to send news of the protests to foreigners.

Re:There is more to it

[shutdown -p now]

cryptography systems involving AES can be cracked through various other means

Yeah. Like, say, knife, pliers, and a blowtorch.

Re:Encryption VS Deep Packet Inspection

[Znork]

Attach a bunch of encrypted truly random data to every mail you send. It would be unbreakable, yet almost impossible to prove it's not simply very good encryption. They're then faced with the problem of either white listing everything you send, or getting a pile of unbreakable crap stacking up with no way to easily sort out which, if any, of the mails contain anything they're even remotely interested in.

I'ts only illegal in the US

[brunes69]

If you think PGP and other steg. tools are not available everywhere in the world you have rocks in your head. The US does not have a monopoly on smart mathematicians or encryption methods.

The only effect of the US bans on cryptography export is to handcuff the US software industry, and make some congress-critters feel nice.

Re:I'ts only illegal in the US

[betterunixthanunix]

I did not say it was not available, nor did I say that the only crypto experts in the world lived in the US; I said we could not export or reexport crypto systems. The reexport clause is where the real problem lies -- it could be illegal to direct an Iranian to a mirror of NSS or OpenSSL even if the mirror were not in the US, since that is technically reexporting the software.

So if I wanted to help the Iranian protestors by telling them how to set up cryptography, I would have to start by assuming that they already had the software or knew where to get it -- neither case is likely if they are not already using crypto.

Re:Encryption VS Deep Packet Inspection

[Calydor]

That might work here in our peaceful countries, where you can argue that most encrypted traffic is (probably) legal.

In Iran, they'd simply set the filter to auto-block anything that looks encrypted, and log originating IP. Encryption would be self-incrimination in those circumstances.

Re:US citizens' have their hands tied - SO WHAT?

[betterunixthanunix]

Actually, there are still plenty of people who care. The company I work for ships software that uses OpenSSL, and the policy on Iran (and other countries on the "black list") is simple: if I receive an email from someone in Iran, I must immediately forward it to the corporate communications department, I must not reply, and I must not in any way communicate to them how they can obtain our software. This is despite the fact that OpenSSL could easily be obtained in Iran. The same policy applies to anyone who indicates that they intend to reexport the software.

Believe it or not, the laws of the United States do have important consequences for people who live and work here.

effectiveness

[Tom]

The effects of this control have been seen over the past couple days, with only a few harrowing pictures and videos getting through Iran's closed net.

To properly judge the effects, you would have to know how many do not get through. If you're seing 100, but only 200 were sent, the effectiveness of the filter is 50%. But if 1000 were sent, it is 90%. You can't judge without knowing the second data point.

So maybe the filter effectively, or maybe the unrest isn't as large as the west makes it. Don't forget that the USA already staged a coup in Iran within the life time of many of us here. Who says the reporting about unrest and revolution is entirely true? It only takes ten people or so to fake a few hundred twitter accounts, youtube videos, etc.

Movie hint: "Wag The Dog"

Re:Encryption VS Deep Packet Inspection

[fedcb22]

How exactly do you define something that looks encrypted? As mentioned before good encryption should be indistinguishable from random data, so are they going to block all data that looks random? Heck, how do you define 'looks random'?

not much different

[Tom]

It just struck me how little difference there is between the rulers of Iran and our own.

Here in Germany, they just passed a law to censor the Internet wrt "child porn". A party leader held a speech yesterday essentially telling the citizens that they suck and should participate more in politics (and yet when they do, as with the record signatures petition against the child porn censorship law, they get ignored). Essentially, reminding me of Brecht who once said "If the people aren't to the liking of parliament, why doesn't parliament simply dissolve the people and elect a new one?"

Seems that people in power around the world share the same priorities. Most importantly: Staying in power and having control comes first. Everything else is secondary to that.

Maybe in a thousand years we'll look back at the early 21st century and shake our heads at how those ancient, primitive people could still have believed in government, states and the whole power structures. At least I hope that future generations will find better ways to govern themselves.

Re:not much different

[Cross-Threaded]

Yup, it's really easy to get caught up in the sensationalism, and be convinced that a leader, or group of leaders, are MONSTERS.

Granted, there have been quite a few people that have achieved power that we would all agree truly belong in that category.

There have also been quite a few that we would be willing to classify as HEROES.

However, the vast majority fit the basic mold of those who want power, and to be in control, and they will find subtle ways to increase their power. Human nature.

At the end of the day, regardless of the particular political view, it is about grabbing, and retaining power, no matter what your nationality, or political views.

Other than that, we all put our pants, dresses, robes, etc., just the same.

Re:not much different

[Anonymous Coward]

Seems that people in power around the world share the same priorities. Most importantly: Staying in power and having control comes first. Everything else is secondary to that.

Well this is a bit of a catch 22. If they can't stay in power, then all of their other objectives are moot anyways, so they have to try to stay in power.

Re:not much different

[Tom]

Hakim Bey called it "the spectacle". I think this is exactly what he meant.

Re:not much different

[Tom]

They could try staying in power by being good at what they do, you know?

But politicians are like top managers. It doesn't really matter if they're good at anything, and they do not suffer consequences for even the worst decisions.

Re:another way to look at it

[chipwich]

I think the GP meant that the __corporations__ of *Siemens* and *Nokia* are facilitating (aka "help"ing) to silence activists in Iran by providing deep-packet inspection tools to Government controlled telecom.

To that extent, a centralized government controlled data infrastructure can always be used for nefarious purposes, even if that wasn't the intent on installation. As for-profit companies, Nokia and Siemens probably approached the proposal by looking at the bottom line profit, not the moral implications. Its just business.

But regardless of the intent why the DPI machines were put in place, the possibility for good and evil are both increased in lock-step. Within the US our centralization and inspection of domestic data in the name of fighting terrorism takes us down a slippery slope, even though the possible (and likely) misuses of this data are swept under the rug.

There are those of us who believe that the only way to ensure free speech (and all the good and bad that accompany it) is to ensure societies ability to develop decentralized communications exchange,

Hack Iran

[catmistake]

These 'bottlenecks' are in the DMZ, so why not just infiltrate them... and open them wide??? Could Iran's cybersecurity be all that great?

Can Iranian Regime MITM all of Iran?

[StCredZero]

Since they have a single choke-point, can the Iranian regime do a Man In The Middle attack on the entire country? They'd have to do something about the certificates that get pre-installed on new computers. (China's powerful enough for that, but not Iran.) I'm not sure they can manage this. However, they can insure that the real certs won't work, and could then distribute "patches" for that. They could also cook up their own "cache" for 3rd party browsers like Firefox and Opera with the bogus certs.

This would let them snoop on all public-key based cryptosystems, like SSL. However, they would need enough processing power to quickly do all of the key negotiation for the entire country in real-time. (I suspect that China can afford resources like that for this purpose, but not Iran.)

Re:Can Iranian Regime MITM all of Iran?

[IamTheRealMike]

Eh? The GFW has been known to run out of capacity at peak times and stop reliably blocking things. They don't even have the resources to do stream re-assembly, splitting the stopwords across packet boundaries is enough to defeat it. I don't think they'll be decrypting traffic in realtime anytime soon.

Re:Can Iranian Regime MITM all of Iran?

[rosvall]

While it certainly is a thought-provoking scenario you are describing, there are other programs for communication than browsers that comes with certificates, and many of those programs are downloaded from all sorts of obscure sites. To somehow intercept and tamper with ALL downloaded programs containing a certificate is just not possible.
Except, of course, in some hypothetical country where internet filtering is based on white-listing.

Re:Can Iranian Regime MITM all of Iran?

[william_lorenz]

Let's not kid ourselves ...

Sure, other governments "[route] all digital traffic in the country through a single choke point, using the capabilities of deep packet inspection" and so do we, in the US. I couldn't think of a better place to put fiber splicers than the "AT&T office in San Francisco." Facebook, and of course other social networking and technology companies, must be a gold mine for them. All they need to do is connect the social networking dots, as they currently do with American's phone calls -- there's no concern for domestic wiretapping laws involved -- it's simply call delivery data for them, and a bit of connecting the social network dots. Hence the reason Verizon Wireless sent out a snail-mail privacy notice to their customers regarding their use of call delivery records in light of the possible broad-surveillance lawsuits, a few years ago. One doesn't need the full conversation if it's possible to ascertain and forward onto other agencies the usual suspects. Separately, Larry Wall, the creator of Perl, once said that he doesn't "tell people the NSA uses Perl. [He merely tells] people the NSA thinks everyone uses Perl. They should know, after all."

Those are smart scientists and engineers over there, to be sure. I'd love to work for them, too. :-)

Embassy Wi-fi?

[sparkydevil]

Is it really that difficult for foreign embassies to create huge unfiltered Wi-fi spots that cover the city?

Re:Embassy Wi-fi?

[petes_PoV]

A very easy way to get your embassy closed down and all your staff thrown out of a country ios to go messing with that country's sovereignty. While you might think they're wrong and you're right - that does not give you (or any other government) the right to interfere in their internal affairs. How would you like it if the Iranian embassy in your country decided you weren't "islamic" enough and started broadcasting religious programmes all over your radio and TV channels? What you're suggesting is the exact same thing, in principle.

Re:Embassy Wi-fi?

[DavidTC]

Which would get them kicked out of the country.

Embassies may be involute foreign soil, but but that doesn't mean the host country has to let you keep operating them. They can say 'You have 24 hours until this embassy stops being an embassy. We will expect you gone by then.'

Although in reality they'd just jam the signal.

Re:Embassy Wi-fi?

[petes_PoV]

I presume you are also the kind of person who would stand idly by while your neighbor beats their child. Thankfully others do not suffer from the same moral cowardice

Riiiight. And you're "in-country" at the moment are you? Stirring up revolutionary fervour?

Or are you sitting comfortably in front of a computer thousands of miles away telling everyone else what you, in your safety and ignorance of the actual situation the citizens face, with all your experience of foreign affairs and dealing at inter-governmental level, think they should do?

Re:Embassy Wi-fi?

[sparkydevil]

And you're sitting comfortably doing nothing?

You don't have to be in the country to offer support or to help. Just ask the many bloggers here and around the world who are helping distribute images and video from inside Iran.

Re:another way to look at it

[Opportunist]

Corporation will _always_ help whoever has money and is willing to part with it. They don't care for good or evil, or a human concept of "morals". They won't refuse a good deal just because it's "evil", neither will they go out of their way to do "evil" if there's no profit to be made. It just happens that most profit is in immoral acts.

Or criminal acts, in which case penalties and the chance to get caught are factored in as cost position. Morals and consciousness have no place in corporate decisions, mostly because the people involved can easily shift their moral concerns aside.

Re:Encryption VS Deep Packet Inspection

[dotancohen]

If they really are going to try to crack every email , it would be fun to send a highly encrypted email , containg only large amounts of gibberish , to a friend everyday.

Sounds like a great way to get them to harass and investigate your friend. Your goal to drain their resources will just give them legitimacy to switch to more invasive tactics.

If they cannot break your code, they just might break the legs of someone who can.

Re:another way to look at it

[d'fim]

"...your weasel word to pretend to be saying something..."

The body of memnock's post was exactly six words long, and you couldn't be bothered to read _all_ of them? So the rest of us are to judge memnock's meaning based on your interpretation, not on what memnock actually wrote? I don't think that memnock pretended to say anything that memnock did not actually say. You, on the other hand, are pretending to know what memnock "really" said . . .

Re:another way to look at it

[IamTheRealMike]

I think a spokesman from Nokia claimed that installation of such systems is legally required to build a cellphone network in the western world, so it's not like they'd have had a strong moral standing to deny the sale.

Your right, unfortunately.

[microbox]

The current regime are using the bad deeds of our fathers as leverage to commit evil deeds. The US /does/ need to stop going to war every few years, that's true. However, even if the USA was a saint, I really don't think it'd make a difference; the Iranian regime is acting like a paranoid psychotic.

Re:US citizens' have their hands tied - SO WHAT?

[ae1294]

The company I work for ships software that uses OpenSSL, and the policy on Iran (and other countries on the "black list") is simple: if I receive an email from someone in Iran, I must immediately forward it to the corporate communications department

Hummm but I wonder what the chaps in the CC dept do?
 
.. CITATION REQUESTED ..

troll subject

[smoker2]

So "only a few harrowing accounts" have got through the blocks. If there were such a block in place it can't be very good then can it. Maybe the reason there are only a few, is because there are only a few anyway. I see more violence in the city centre on a friday night.

Re:another way to look at it

[Quothz]

Corporation will _always_ help whoever has money and is willing to part with it. They don't care for good or evil, or a human concept of "morals".

That isn't a foregone conclusion, although it's true for virtually every corporation today. There's nothing, aside from greed, that prevents corporations from having ethics built into them. Look at Ben & Jerry's, for example; while I don't agree with every stance they take, the corporation honestly tries to be good guys.

Re:Encryption VS Deep Packet Inspection

[oiron]

And if everyone did it, it'd DDOS the system...

Mod parent up

[copponex]

I stand corrected.

Re:Encryption VS Deep Packet Inspection

[chill]

gzip (among others) is your friend. If it doesn't compress, it is random.

Besides, who sends random data around? If it isn't a picture, text, music, movie or program, it is suspect. Statistical analysis will identify these in a heartbeat.

So, yes. They just block all data that looks random.

Re:another way to look at it

[mi]

_corporations_ help silence activists in Iran

Whereas _cooperatives_ and _communes_ are all working hard to help them...

Re:Encryption VS Deep Packet Inspection

[DavidTC]

You define the randomness of data by how compressible it is, duh. That's how everyone does it.

But, anyway, the Iranians would just block all ports but HTTP and SMTP, and put proxies on them so you can only use plaintext connections.

This wouldn't stop all encrypted stuff, you could still connect somewhere and POST encrypted uuencoded content via HTTP, but it would make it a good deal harder.

Javascript can actually do that encryption, so it's possible to make an utterly transparent-to-the-end-user forum that generates a per-session public key, and then sends and receives all data on that website encrypted to that key.

Of course, it's very susceptible to man-in-the-middle attacks. Although there are ways to make that more difficult...it could vary the encryption per-page, thus making the attacker actually run the Javascript on their machine, instead of writing a program to automatically decode.

Then, once the attacker is running the javascript themselves, the encryption key can start including things like the browser user agent and the IP of the browser, meaning the attacker would have to either rewrite the javascript before they could run it (Hard to do in anything near real time.), or they would have to get their own hacked javascript interpreter.

Either one of those feats is probably past Iran's technical abilities at this moment.

Consumer power

[el_jake]

I bought my last Nokia . I am never going to use that brand anymore.

Greenwave

[Penguinoflight]

Since nobody else has posted this: there is an effort to take down the government "activist reporting" tool inside iran. Currently this is being organized largely by 888chan at http://888chan.org/iran/ - note this site does contain nsfw content on some pages.

I'm not sure that I'm really for Ahmadinejad's competition, but there's not a whole lot of chance to make the situation worse by replacing a corrupt leader. If anything we can use the practice for countering government terrorism at home. I don't think anyone is happy with the direction of most governments, here in the states or in Europe the norm is edging to a nanny state.

Re:Pile'o'poop article

[Cross-Threaded]

Well placed operatives (e.g. Backhoe Operators), would disagree, I think.

That most of us here are technology aficionados tends to blind us to reality sometimes.

It's too easy to just cut the cable at convergence points, and kill the communication.

Sometimes there is no substitute for live, in-person, communication.

Re:another way to look at it

[westlake]

Look at Ben & Jerry's, for example; while I don't agree with every stance they take, the corporation honestly tries to be good guys.

Ben & Jerry's makes ice cream.

Being a good guy here means that your product hasn't been allowed to melt and refreeze in transit, arrives in the stores properly labeled and uncontaminated by toxic chemicals or salmonella.

Like any other dairy product.

Beyond that, there isn't a heck of a lot of mischief they can do.

Re:Encryption VS Deep Packet Inspection

[ceoyoyo]

Obligatory xkcd.

Is anyone surprised that you can't have a revolution by Twitter? There's a song about starting a revolution from your bed. And something else about revolutions not being televised.

Re:Pile'o'poop article

[ceoyoyo]

A perfect example of why the semantic web is a dumb idea. Never trust user generated tags.

Come on, he only called you "American." That's not so bad. Why not take it with grace? His post was actually pretty funny.

Re:another way to look at it

[afxgrin]

Exactly - what the fuck is with people submitting stories to this site that need to attack Nokia-Siemens in the summary?

No one would get a contract to put a cell phone network in Iran unless it included a monitoring system - just like every Western country.

If there's any one to blame on this censorship/monitoring technology - blame Western governments - they're the ones that have put these requirements in place years ago. Engineers could have made these networks with sufficient privacy controls at the implementation phase, but no government will accept complete privacy - they always want a way to monitor activity.

If we truly believed in concepts of freedom of speech and expression, we would have voted in political members that would restrict monitoring technology. But our selection in politicians are rather limited, and they seem to lack the creativity to accomplish goals of national security without using highly invasive methods.

Re:another way to look at it

[OrangeTide]

And if they run Linux then Linus helped silenced activists too?

Re:Encryption VS Deep Packet Inspection

[afxgrin]

Yo dawg, we heard you like highly encrypted email, so we put a highly encrypted email in your highly encrypted email.

heh mix cipher types for added fun.

How soon the geek forgets

[westlake]

Is it really that difficult for foreign embassies to create huge unfiltered Wi-fi spots that cover the city?

Iran Hostage Crisis

Technicians willing to maintain a repeater outside the safety of the embassy compound, please raise your hands.

We offer a nice recruitment bonus, excellent death benefits, a bullet proof vest, an armored vehicle with a hair-triggered paramilitary escort.

If you are caught or killed the Secretary will, as always, disavow any knowledge of your actions.

Re:another way to look at it

[causality]

Or criminal acts, in which case penalties and the chance to get caught are factored in as cost position.

That's exactly why revocation of the corporate charter should be the primary legal remedy for any provably intentional law-breaking on the part of any corporation. Upon revocation of the corporate charter, let all property of the corporation be sold at public auction and the proceeds divided among its shareholders. This would be a proper counterbalance to the "liability shield" nature of a corporation. Let the fines be reserved for unintentional negligence.

There are many such problems that we could put to rest, if only we really wanted to do it.

Re:another way to look at it

[interval1066]

Look, the bottom line is this: a gun can help the oppressors and the oppressed alike. The gun is really an equalizer. Same thing the internet. And as for the Twitter argument I saw below; I wouldn't think of Twitter as a toy in the oppression game. Its more like another tool in the fight. Twitter has been amazingly effective in doing what's its been designed to do for the protesters.

All Very Sad

[tuxgeek]

As much as Americans like to villanize the Iranians for political reasons, this is all very tragic to see the will of the Iranian people crushed by a few corrupt individuals and a couple of religious zealots in top authoritative positions.

I thought America was bad after the past 10 years of political dictatorship by our own collection of criminals, including their gestapo arrest tactics, wiretapping of all internal communications, and general spying of all citizens. At least here in the US we can succeed at voting the assholes out. That took 8 years, but the task got done finally.

It was a positive development to see the Iranian people, through political process, want change and friendship with the west and we are all better off for it. Our hearts go out to you all and hope you can make the changes to your system that will give you the freedom you deserve. Perhaps the Iranian dictatorship should read up about the demise of General Custer and a few other selected figures from history. They may all find themselves one day swinging from the end of a rope, or worse.

Re:All Very Sad

[MightyMartian]

You know, 'm getting rather tired of the United States being compared to autocratic regimes. It's apples and oranges. Was their abuse of power? You bet. Was the government stepping into areas that ought not be touched in a liberal democracy? You bet. But come on, even at his worst, Bush never had the sheer power the Ayatollahs do. Congress went along with him for a while, but that ultimately was only a few years, and the last two or three years of Bush's presidency was an absolute disaster for him and the Republicans. The political process worked, there was a peaceful transition of power, the public will was acknowledged and obeyed. The armed forces remained firmly out of the political picture, there was no question that the Marines were suddenly going to start patrolling the streets.

All nations, even the most free, suffer periods where liberties are attacked, where politicians and bureaucrats will sing the "for your own good" tune. The Founding Fathers knew this, and thus set up checks and balances, so that no branch could so thoroughly overwhelm any other as to actually see any kind of dictatorial regime take hold. In a way, in fact, the US Constitution is the polar opposite of the Iranian Constitution. The Iranian Constitution, in fact, sets up a center of political gravity that essentially wields absolute power at its whim.

For Bush to have truly resembled Khamenei, we would have had to see mass voter fraud in the 2006 mid-terms (which were critical to the GOP's being able to maintain a hold on Congress). More than that, there would had to have been some instrument of government that could actually deny candidates the right to run for office. No such entity exists, anyone can run for Congress, providing the meet the pretty minimalistic Constitutional requirements. Even the requirements for President only essentially rule out immigrant citizens. Maybe you won't have a chance to run for Congress or the Presidency, but you have the right.

The systems are utterly dissimilar, and even during the height of Bush's abuses, you could protest without fear, you could write on blogs or in newspapers without disappearing into the unknown, and maybe you're family gets a body back with a moronic and clearly false explanation, and maybe they don't.

Re:Encryption VS Deep Packet Inspection

[Fweeky]

You define the randomness of data by how compressible it is, duh

<?xml version="1.1" encoding="utf-8"?>
<random-data source="/dev/random">
  <quad>&#228;&#224;&#219;&#247;</quad>
  <quad>o&#8224;*&#8240;</quad>
  <quad>G&#8226;&#376;&#243;</quad>
  <quad>&#208;&#230;&#246;&#8230;</quad>
  <quad>&#179;&#191;&#217;G</quad>
  <quad>&#141;!s&#225;</quad>
</random-data>

For 4k of data:

-rw-r--r-- 1 freaky freaky 4096 2009-06-27 18:04 rand.dat
-rw-r--r-- 1 freaky freaky 30093 2009-06-27 18:04 rand.xml
-rw-r--r-- 1 freaky freaky 5618 2009-06-27 18:04 rand.xml.bz2
-rw-r--r-- 1 freaky freaky 7519 2009-06-27 18:04 rand.xml.gz

Re:US citizens' have their hands tied - SO WHAT?

[fnj]

As you say, they can easily obtain OpenSSL in Iran or anywhere else in the world. The point is, if you can't send it to them, SO WHAT -- from their viewpoint. They can get it. So if what you ship is open source, just mark OpenSSL as a "requires." If it's not open source ... my sympathies for having an unenlightened employer.

What about higher end connections?

[kheldan]

Is their "choke point" technology able to break through SSH and VPN encrypted connections too? Or are they just blocking those connection completely?

BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU

[Jetrel]

We have always been at war of Eurasia!!

With a staff of 2,000 full-time technicians to monitor the calls, this reminds me of 1984. Or should I say, "Thoughtcrime does not entail death. Thoughtcrime IS death."

Re:BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU

[Punctuated_Equilibri]

Yes, seems like the autocrats have found the winning recipe.
1. Shut down internet and mobile phones
2. Use thugs to kill demonstrators
3. Imprison freely
4. Suppress independent journalism, use state-controlled media to promulgate the party line
5. Blame foreigners
Result: 1000 years of tyranny??? Has been working in Burma and N Korea. Looks like it will work in Iran too.

Re:The Grotesquely Ugly Truth

[number11]

The Iranians bear 100% of the blame for the existence of a tyrannical government in Iran. We should condemn Iranian culture and its people.

You mean, as opposed to the democracy they had in the early 1950s, before the US (and UK) overthrew it to install a dictator who could be trusted to do what the US/UK wanted? The dictator who the US was still trying to prop up in 1979 when the current crop of religious nuts (is "religious nuts" redundant? probably.) took power? Should we not condemn the American and British culture and people for the interference that led to this state?

number11 (posting AC because I've moderated)

Re:another way to look at it

[CarpetShark]

Corporation will _always_ help whoever has money and is willing to part with it. They don't care for good or evil, or a human concept of "morals".

Since it's pretty commonly acknowledged that the best (in the sense of most virtuous) things in life are free, I think you'll find that corporations are very much biased towards the "evil" (for want of a better word) side of the spectrum.

Please don't feed him.

[Grendel Drago]

Eric "I now expect to remain continuously armed for the duration of the Iranian crisis" Raymond is already paranoid enough, thanks.

It will be interesting ...

[Alain Williams]

to see our own governments & leaders criticising the Iranian government over this -- just as they are strengthening the very same systems that they have put in place to monitor us. Of course our governments say that they have put these systems in for the best of reasons: stop terrorists; but how long before we are told that people who disagree with the government are against us and thus terrorists ?

Double-think is alive and well in the UK and USA.

Re:another way to look at it

[memnock]

to me, saying the Internet helps to pursue or arrest is the same as saying the "air waves" help Iran's govt. do the same thing. however, the applications used on the Internet or air waves, Nokia's and Siemes' products in this case, actually seem to be what Iran is using to go after the activists.

just like someone else pointed out technology is double-edged. i'm not sure, but the Iranian govt probably bought the apps and/or equipment by a contract with aforementioned companies. that means the sales team or technicians or programmers knew they dealing with an oppressive regime. i'm not sure again, but it seems like they're cool with that.

if Linux was applied, being openly available, Iran's govt could have implemented Linux without Linus' prior knowledge or refusal, so i don't think i'd consider him as accountable.

Re:another way to look at it

[Peaceful_Patriot]

I have noticed that problem with the new moderation widget. If you accidently select the wrong choice from the drop-down menu (easy to do on a trackpad), there is no way to confirm before the mod gets posted. Theres no way to undo it without a voiding moderation on the whole thread.

There should be a confirmation or at least an opportunity to change the selection before the moderation is counted.

Free Speech or Stone Age

[kozubik]

I began writing this short piece a year or two ago, titled "Free Speech or Stone Age": http://blog.kozubik.com/john_kozubik/2009/06/free-speech-or-stone-age.html The current events in Iran are a perfect illustration of two competing memes: the (mistaken) notion that a state can completely suppress anonymous free speech while maintaining a modern economy, and the (surprising to some) notion that that is impossible. Many Iranians (and even many Americans) may not realize it, but arbitrary, anonymous free speech on any subject is currently available in Iran, as well as China, etc. This is a fact. Only by freezing all international travel, confiscating all general purpose computing devices, and outlawing/jamming all standardized wireless network protocols could Iran possibly hope to curtail this speech.

Lawful Intercept

[funkboy]

This BBC article is very good:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8112550.stm

The BBC's article points out that a monitored system is better than no system, and that the Islamic Republic would certainly not have allowed mobile phones & internet to exist without such a system.

Listen:

Most large mobile phone networks (and internet networks) in western countries have a feature known as lawful intercept designed to allow law enforcement officials to monitor subscriber conversations. No vendor in their right mind would design gear without this feature as many nations' laws mandate its presence in public telecom networks.

In western nations, it's use requires a search warrant by law. Obviously, the hardware has no clue whether the operator has a warrant or not.

The only difference is that Khamenei doesn't give two shits about the warrant. But then, George Bush ordered the use of this exact same feature on AT&T and PacBell's networks without warrants as well, so what's the difference?

Re:The Grotesquely Ugly Truth

[Quietti]

We in the West are morally justified in destroying the nuclear-weapons facilities.

No, you are NOT justified any more than the East would in destroying YOUR nuclear weapons facility. As unbelievable as it might sound to American imperialistic cretins, everyone is allowed to own marbles. You DON'T get to decide who can have the toys and who cannot.

Gee. With so MANY countries in the world. . .

[Fantastic Lad]

Why is it that Iran is in the news ALL the time? --And always with a negative spin?

Hmmmmmmmm?

Are we going to fall for this again?

How stupid are we?

I'm betting that the answer is: "Stupid Enough."

So get your flak jackets on; we're going to war! (--And we've not even finished fighting the first. . , ugh! --I can't even remember how many idiotic and morally bankrupt engagements we're still neck-deep in.)

So ask yourself. . . How stupid are you feeling today?

-FL

Re:another way to look at it

[MindlessAutomata]

And who purchases from corporations? Either regular people, or governments. Think about that a little bit.

Re:The Grotesquely Ugly Truth

[willydotcom]

Yes we do, and yes we will because when other countries get in trouble they call us. That is the way it is because we are the most powerful country in the world, like it or not.

Re:The Grotesquely Ugly Truth

[ScottForbes]

In the absence of an external interfering force (e. g., the army of the Soviet Union), the fate of a nation is determined by its people. Period.

Um, no. This is a neocon fallacy - the belief that stable democracies are the default form of government, and that if we just go in and remove Saddam / the Taliban / the Red Army's influence, a representative government will spontaneously form. This led to disaster when the true believers charged into Iraq without even a plan for post-war administration and reconstruction -- the neocons truly believed we'd topple Saddam, grateful Iraqis would form a democracy, and the troops would be home in six months.

History says otherwise, though. The successful formation of a representative government is highly dependent on the starting conditions; trying to build a democracy without first laying the foundation of property rights, the rule of law, a government monopoly on the use of force, and other preconditions, usually leads to disappointing results.

The good news is that Iran comes closer than many countries to meeting these preconditions, and has the stabilizing factor of an educated middle class - if the reformers in Iran can excise the theocratic elements of their society, without extinguishing the rule of law or otherwise damaging the foundations, they can probably establish a democratic form of government much more easily than the people of, say, Iraq or Afghanistan or Saudi Arabia.

The Iranians bear 100% of the blame for the existence of a tyrannical government in Iran.

...and history began in 1953. The U.S. and U.K. helpfully converted Iran into a dictatorship back in '53, because the democratically elected prime minister had decided the people of Iran should share in the oil wealth; that didn't go over well with the Western oil companies and their lucrative one-sided contracts, so we installed the Shah and negotiated a deal with him instead.

Needless to say, anti-American and anti-Western sentiments were well represented in the coalition that ousted the Shah in '79 -- and Islamic theocracy was the banner they united behind, because Iran's earlier democracy had been too fragile to stand up to Western business interests.

Re:Encryption VS Deep Packet Inspection

[DavidTC]

I didn't say that randomness was a good way to detect encryption. Someone else said that. It is trivially easy to pad encryption with non-random stuff. (It is trivially easy to make anything easily compressible by padding it with junk.)

I said that lack of compressibility was a good way to detect, is in fact the definition, of randomness. Your XML file is not very random at all.

Re:another way to look at it

[grcumb]

I think a spokesman from Nokia claimed that installation of such systems is legally required to build a cellphone network in the western world, so it's not like they'd have had a strong moral standing to deny the sale.

That's correct, but doesn't do anything to excuse Nokia or Siemens.

What it does do is implicate the rest of us in the problem.

For the last couple of weeks, I've been writing about the implications of this issue. In a nutshell, there's an unresolved conflict between logical and physical network design. The Internet was meant to be robust and distributed precisely because we didn't want it to be susceptible to the kind of degradation we're seeing in Iran

.

We have abdicated responsibility for management of the physical networks themselves, relying on old-school, centralised telco models in both carrier-grade and consumer technology.

Our communications systems are symptomatic of our ability to make democracy work. We've been remiss these last 10 years, and have let significant weaknesses creep into our communications, with direct implications on our exercise of democracy.

This is one example where geeks especially should be putting our money where our mouth is. We should be investing significant time and effort into finding ways to mitigate the worst aspects of centralised networks. This means, among other things, making encryption workable, building mesh network applications into consumer devices, and - hardest of all - never, ever letting people forget that what we need is free and open access to the Internet. Not the Web, not just Facebook or Twitter.

We're not paying to subscribe to someone else's data service; we're paying for access to the network itself. We should never have let anyone forget that.

Re:Encryption VS Deep Packet Inspection

[Stanislav_J]

Sure, lots of fun. Keep reminding yourself how much fun you're having as the Feds get their investigation against you cranking. This is like when the warrantless spying revelations led some to suggest that we append a slew of "hot" keywords and phrases (terrorism, bomb, islam, allah, death to america, etc.) to every e-mail in order to flood the governments' efforts with a lot of extra, useless work. These blithely proposed schemes would never work because "normal" people have no interest in such games.

See, as much as we lambaste the notion in principle, in a way the authorities really ARE justified in believing you have something sinister to hide if you do things like use Tor or TrueCrypt, or routinely securely wipe your deleted files and sensitive info, or engage in or advocate "sabotage" such as the above scheme. They are justified in that belief because the only folks who do these things are mostly either technogeeks, "privacy nuts," or actual bad guys. And all those groups put together still only account for a very minuscule percentage of the population. Unless anti-snooping technologies and code are by default built-in to every piece of software and operating system out there, operating under the radar without the active participation of the user, any attempt to use these methods to thwart the eavesdroppers just puts up a BIG RED FLAG to the snoopers.

The average Joe honestly believes he has nothing to hide, yet I frequently drum up the famous quote of Cardinal Richelieu "Give me six lines written by the most honorable of men, and I will find an excuse in them to hang him." Something he said or did in innocence, in the passion and self-discovery of youth, as a joke, or merely playing "devil's advocate" can come back to haunt him, big-time. It may not rise to the level of something that will get him sent to Guantanamo, but could lead to unwanted scrutiny that can one day deny him a plum job, or at the very least embarrass him in the eyes of his family, friends, or peers. But you will never convince him (nor the tens of millions like him) that he has any reason to worry about privacy, or to encrypt, conceal, or obfuscate his communications to the Nth degree. And that is why those few that DO take such measures, whether due to principle, paranoia, or actual perfidy, will always be putting up a huge flashing neon sign that says "let's check this guy out."

"What they need is more time."

[maillemaker]

Would more time have helped the Americans against the British in their revolution?

No, what these people need are guns and the will to use them.

Re:The Grotesquely Ugly Truth

[gtall]

So what's your point? That the Iranian regime is okay because of some nefarious activities by others in the past?

Re:The Grotesquely Ugly Truth

[number11]

So what's your point? That the Iranian regime is okay because of some nefarious activities by others in the past?

Of course not. The (AC) OP was not condemning the regime, but "Iranian culture and its people". First of all, those are the words of a bigot. Secondly, for Americans to do that is like the Mafia condemning the business practices of the Gulf Cartel. Their objections may be correct, but who's going to take them seriously?

Re:The Grotesquely Ugly Truth

[Dr. Impossible]

First of all, those are the words of a bigot.

What the fuck does this mean? Liberals keep calling everyone and everything "bigoted" without ever explaining what it means or why "this guy is bigoted" should be accepted as an actual argument.

Re:another way to look at it

[mkarcher]

If selling rubes the pap they crave is wrong, then I don't want to be right.

Illiteracy is a terrible thing

[alexo]

(c) Israel is generally recognized, and is a member of the United Nations

Here's a pretty map that shows you the states with no diplomatic ties with Israel. It shows pretty clearly that almost 0 arab states recognize Israel or have diplomatic ties to it. Maybe you can understand pictures.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Foreign_relations_of_Israel_Map.png

Quoting from the same page that you linked to:
Description: A map of the world, showing the states which have diplomatic relations with Israel. Note that the lack of diplomatic relations does not mean non-recognition, and does not mean lack of commercial relations or other type of international relations.

Isn't it?

[copponex]

Only Egypt and Jordan have recognized Israel, as far as I can tell, and they are the only ones mentioned in this article from the NY Times.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/01/world/middleeast/01arab.html

Those are the only Arab states in blue on the map.

From Wikipedia:

Israel has no diplomatic relations with 36 countries, 20 of them members of the 22-member Arab League. Some of the countries, with which Israel has no diplomatic relations, accept Israeli passports and acknowledge other Israeli marks of sovereignty; however, most of these countries refuse to recognize the State of Israel at all.

Not even Iraq has established diplomatic relations with Israel. The parent was trying to claim that Israel is generally recognized by their neighbors, including Iran, which are demonstrably not true statements. Most of the Arab League is still boycotting Israel, doesn't recognize their passports, and some even prevent entry into their country if it's obvious you have been to Israel (like a border entry stamp from Taba, Egypt.)

Is there anything else you'd like to say to make yourself look slightly stupid and absolutely petty?

It sure is

[alexo]

From Wikipedia:

Israel has no diplomatic relations with 36 countries, 20 of them members of the 22-member Arab League. Some of the countries, with which Israel has no diplomatic relations, accept Israeli passports and acknowledge other Israeli marks of sovereignty; however, most of these countries refuse to recognize the State of Israel at all.

From the same page:

The United Arab Emirates and Comoros partially recognizes Israel,which only have trade mutual relations with Israel.

In October 2000, Israeli diplomatic missions in Bahrain, Morocco and Oman were closed as these countries suspended relations with Israel, although trade and economic ties continue. Morocco and Tunisia usually allow Israeli citizens to enter their territories with Israeli passports as tourists.

The Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic of Western Sahara partially recognizes Israel.

North Korea allowed Israeli citizens to visit its territory with Israeli passports despite not having diplomatic relations with Israel.

No diplomatic relations != no recognition.

The parent was trying to claim that Israel is generally recognized by their neighbors, including Iran, which are demonstrably not true statements.

Please substantiate your claim, as I don't see the parent ever saying that.

What he did say was:

(a) Iran explicitly recognized Israel for years before changing its mind,
Well documented fact (note the past tense).

(c) Israel is generally recognized, and is a member of the United Nations,
Both well documented facts (note that nothing is said about Israel's neighbours).
Since you are fond of Wikipedia quotes, here's one for you: "State of Israel [...] Widely recognized member of the UN".

and (d) Iran implicitly recognizes Israel by dint of UN membership. (The UN charter requires member nations to recognize one another.)
This may or may not be true (I am not an expert on international law but I take Article 2, point 1 of the charter to implicitly mean that). However, in my opinion, it is a moot and irrelevant point since Iran de facto does not recognize Israel.

Is there anything else you'd like to say to make yourself look slightly stupid and absolutely petty?

I am quite content to let the readers of this thread form their opinions regarding the respective intelligence of the participants.

Re:It sure is

[copponex]

Let me recap for you:

Quothz claims we didn't invade Afghanistan. I tell him that's bogus, because the Taliban were a client state of ours since we gave them 40 million dollars. Obviously we recognized they were in control of Afghanistan, until it suited us to say that they weren't "really" the government of Afghanistan. This is a matter of historical record, but let me back that up with something from the CATO Institute.

Yet the Bush administration did more than praise the Taliban's proclaimed ban of opium cultivation. In mid-May, 2001, Secretary of State Colin Powell announced a $43 million grant to Afghanistan in addition to the humanitarian aid the United States had long been providing to agencies assisting Afghan refugees. Given Callahan's comment, there was little doubt that the new stipend was a reward for Kabul's anti-drug efforts. That $43 million grant needs to be placed in context. Afghanistan's estimated gross domestic product was a mere $2 billion. The equivalent financial impact on the U.S. economy would have required an infusion of $215 billion. In other words, $43 million was very serious money to Afghanistan's theocratic masters.

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=3556

I see he's been modded insightful for perpetuating the lie that we were "invited" to Afghanistan, but that's hardly surprising. He back pedals, and insists that giving a government that claims they run a country a huge sum of money doesn't mean we recognize they run the country. I pressed him on this point, saying that if a country doesn't recognize another, does that give them the right to invade? Iran versus Israel is an obvious example.

Now, making the claim that the practices of an installed dictatorship under US and British control in the 1970s are somehow are applicable to my argument that Iran in 2009, under the example of the United States, couldn't use an excuse like "the PLO invited us into Palestine" when the Northern Alliance invited the United States into Afghanistan, is just ridiculous. You might as well assert parallels between Poland in 1970 and Poland in 2000. In 2000, the Taliban controlled 95% of Afghanistan. It was lobbying for UN Membership. In 2001, we gave them 40 million dollars while they were at war with the Northern Alliance. I have to say that the political posturing done at the UN compares very little with our tacit monetary support of the Taliban during the same time period.

The bottom line is that he is defending colonial American activities, ignoring the history because that's a requirement for his statement that America didn't invade Afghanistan, and then claiming that my hypothetical invasion of Israel from Iran doesn't count because our colonial regime in 1979 at one point did recognize Israel. So, I showed him the map, which makes it pretty clear that 95% of the area doesn't have diplomatic relations with Israel, and the vast majority of those do not officially recognize Israel. So, you can have your little asterisk, but it's a meaningless technicality, just as it was that there were members of the Northern Alliance representing Afghanistan at the UN, despite the fact that they controlled 5% of the country, and lost the capital years ago.

His argument only works if you have amnesia.

And, I'm sorry to say, no one is reading this thread besides you and I, and you're late to the argument with bad information.

Re:It sure is

[alexo]

Quothz claims we didn't invade Afghanistan. I tell him that's bogus, because the Taliban were a client state of ours since we gave them 40 million dollars. Obviously we recognized they were in control of Afghanistan, until it suited us to say that they weren't "really" the government of Afghanistan.

This is one way to look at it but I tend to disagree. I find the US national and international politics and power plays to be more complicated than that. The $43M were given to the Taliban as a part of the US "was on drugs" to destroy opium poppy production, not as tacit recognition of them as the legitimate government of Afghanistan. If my memory does not betray me, the US has a long history of financing and supplying "revolutionary" groups -- Iran, Nicaragua, Afghanistan being some of the more famous examples. So, yes, the US recognized that the Taliban wielded power in Afghanistan at the time and decided to use it to it's advantage -- while it was convenient to do so.

So, I agree with Quothz when he said: "Actually, we did announce our support for the Taliban, but didn't recognize it as a national government". However, after all the coups, revolutions and civil wars the country went through, it is hard to say who was the "legitimate" government at that time.

On the other hand, I do agree with you that "invasion" is a proper term for the operation in Afghanistan, but technically it was a NATO invasion, not a US one.

Re:It sure is

[Quothz]

I'm sorry to say, no one is reading this thread besides you [alexo] and I, and you're late to the argument with bad information.

Not entirely true; I occasionally poke around old threads to look at followups. In this case, I got a little busy, then abandoned what was an unproductive argument over semantics that largely consisted of simple contradiction. Since we were sitting on the verge of flames, I decided it was best to let it go.

I'd originally intended to highlight that Iraq and Afghanistan are not identical when one evaluates the ethics of our actions there. Obviously, I failed to make that point.

Here it is

[copponex]

I was looking for this article:

Although the Taliban government is not recognized by United Nations members who will again consider what do with the Afghanistan next month, it is treated as the de facto government by United Nations agencies, which run programs there. Afghanistan is also under Security Council sanctions for refusing to turn over Osama bin Laden, the Saudi-born militant, to American courts.

On human rights, Mr. Zahid, who is meeting United Nations officials and other diplomats, said Taliban officials now let women work in health services, the Interior Ministry, at airports and for certain United Nations agencies like the World Food Program. But he said demands for a representative government and elections were unrealistic in a country destroyed by two decades of war, a drought and almost no foreign aid.

''How do they expect us to be in a position to hold elections?'' he asked. ''In all of Afghan history, there has never been an election. After 20 years of war, when we are only beginning to create institutions, when we are the first Afghan government to try to stop opium production, how can they expect us to do this now? They are demanding of us what they never before expected of this country.''

http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/21/world/taliban-open-a-campaign-to-gain-status-at-the-un.html