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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
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?
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
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,
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.
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.