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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.
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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?
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.
Please don't stress yourself out - my blood pressure went up when I read the parent you're responding to, but then again, I am Persian and what they wrote was 100% BS. The government and militia of Iran is composed of Lebanese and Palestinian arabs. The members of the Basij that were beating protesters couldn't even speak Persian properly, and were shouting commands in Arabic. The majority of Iranians want a democratically elected government and want normalized relations with the West. The parent that you responded to was just a troll trying to get a rise out of people.
Don't bother - some trolls aren't worth it. The sad part is that there are a lot of idiots that modded this guy up and agreed with them. Anyone who lived during the 60s and 70s knew that Iran had always been a 1st world country. It's slipped a little since the revolution, but hopefully a regime changed started by ethnic Persians will correct things.
Thanks for trying though.
Best "String" Ever!