Slashdot Mirror
The Technology Keeping Information Flowing in Iran
Death Metal writes "Iranians seeking to share videos and other eyewitness accounts of the demonstrations that have roiled their country since disputed elections two weeks ago are using an Internet encryption program originally developed by and for the US Navy. Designed a decade ago to secure Internet communications between US ships at sea, The Onion Router, or TOR, has become one of the most important proxies in Iran for gaining access to Web sites such as Twitter, YouTube and Facebook." A related story was submitted anonymously about the efforts of hactivists to keep the information flowing inside the data-locked nation.
Support them by becoming a Tor relay
That something they created could, in theory, be something that fuels their eventual downfall ...
Like nuclear weapons? Like a dependency on oil? Like a botched military campaign in a neighboring country? Like your own revolutionary spirit being turned against you after you become the abusive people in power? Sometimes I think it's hard to find a powerful tool that is not a double edged sword.
My work here is dung.
TOR doesn't ensure true anonymity. The only thing the Iran regime would need to do in order to sabotage it, would be to setup a lot of TOR nodes and analyze the traffic going through them as there is no encryption for the data. Right now this technology benefits from privacy due to obscurity. If the service becomes popular enough, they'll probably resort to the tactics detailed above.
right...
The U.S. government has long-since established some mechanisms that would accomplish exactly that.
What is to stop the Iranian government setting up a plethora of TOR nodes and inspecting and tracing everything back to the source? I understand there are alot of different levels to a TOR connection (hence the 'O'nion) - but could the 'bad guys' setting up thousands of TOR nodes around the world help them trace back to the originator?
After the Kremlin exited Eastern Europe, the peoples of each nation in Eastern Europe rapidly established a genuine democracy and a free market. Except for Romania (where its people killed their dictator), there was no violence.
In Iran (and many other failed states), no external force is imposing the current brutal government on the Iranians. The folks running the government are Iranian. The president is Iranian. The secret police are Iranian. The thugs who will torture and kill democracy advocates are Iranian.
If the democracy advocates attempt to establish a genuine democracy in Iran, violence will occur. Why? A large percentage of the population supports the brutal government and will kill the democracy advocates.
Let us not merely condemn the Iranian government. We must condemn Iranian culture. Its product is the authoritarian state.
We should not intervene in the current crisis in Iran. If the overwhelming majority of Iranians (like the overwhelming majority of Poles) truly support democracy, human rights, and peace with Israel, then a liberal Western democracy will arise -- without any violence. Right now, the overwhelming majority clearly oppose the creation of a liberal Western democracy. The Iranians love a brutal Islamic theocracy.
The Iranians created this horrible society. It is none of our business unless they attempt to develop nuclear weapons. We in the West are morally justified in destroying the nuclear-weapons facilities.
Note that, 40 years ago, Vietnam suffered a worse fate (than the Iranians) at the hands of the Americans. They doused large areas of Vietnam with agent orange, poisoning both the land and the people. Yet, the Vietnamese do not channel their energies into seeking revenge (by, e. g., building a nuclear bomb) against the West. Rather, the Vietnamese are diligently modernizing their society. They will reach 1st-world status long before the Iranians.
Cultures are different. Vietnamese culture and Iranian culture are different. The Iranians bear 100% of the blame for the existence of a tyrannical government in Iran. We should condemn Iranian culture and its people.
Why does it need to be a complete sentence? The headline makes perfect sense: The Technology (implied "that is") Keeping Information Flowing in Iran
You mean besides for the LA Times and every other major newspaper in the US? And Slate? And a million other blogs with admins who have an interest in these events? It isn't tech related at all, there's no great cry for democracy. It's just another coup in an insignificant country.
It's the story. A good story bypasses the rational parts of our brains, goes straight to the emotions and grabs us.
The subtext of the Iran story is about the surprise of realising that a people we previously thought of as hostile (and frankly a bit too Muslim for comfort) are as much against their crazy muppet of a ruler as we are and decidedly less Muslim than the scary hard-line ones (relaxed dress codes, keen to party). It's the underdogs fighting The Man and we especially identify with the underdogs, because they use Twitter and speak English on TV. It has resonance.
It shouldn't work that way, but it does. Compare to a certain recent internet phenomenon. Someone who we previously thought was ugly (and a bit too Scottish for most Western tastes), is as good a singer as any that the crazy muppet Simon Cowell could point to. It's the underdog fighting The Man and we especially identify with the underdog because she sings in a perfect English accent and embodies all of our fairytale ideas of how the world should ideally be.
We don't care about Honduras for the same reasons we don't care about Fabia Cerra (Who? Exactly!) - the story has no resonance, so we ignore it.