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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?'"
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.
My blog
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.
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...
One that hath name thou can not otter
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.
On with the tinfoil hats...and the cynical socks...
...off with the tinfoil hat and back to my coffee.
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.
Guru Meditation #6d416769.21610a21
ARPA's Internet project grows out of control, works against sister agency's insurrection attempt.
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.
'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?
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.
Palm trees and 8
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.
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?
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
Slipping shoelaces ?
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.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
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.
Palm trees and 8
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.
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.
Palm trees and 8
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.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
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,
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.)
Is it really that difficult for foreign embassies to create huge unfiltered Wi-fi spots that cover the city?
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.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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.
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
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.
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.
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.
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.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
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.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
The globalsecurity article you link has no information later than 2005. In the intervening 4 years - the US Government has:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
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.
"Suppose you were an idiot...and suppose you were a member of Congress...but I repeat myself." Mark Twain
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."
If it isn't broke, tinker with it till it is!
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.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
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
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