Five Technologies Iran Is Using To Censor the Net

alphadogg sends in a Network World piece on the unexpectedly effective technologies Iran is now employing to thwart their citizens' access to the Net. "While the government's initial efforts to censor the Internet were blunt and often ineffective, it has started employing more sophisticated tools to thwart dissidents' attempts to communicate with each other and the outside world. Iranian dissidents are not alone in their struggle, however, as several sympathetic hacker groups have been working to keep them online. One such group is NedaNet, whose mission is to 'help the Iranian people by setting up networks of proxy severs, anonymizers, and any other appropriate technologies that can enable them to communicate and organize.' NedaNet project coordinator Morgan Sennhauser, who has just written a paper detailing the Iranian government's latest efforts to thwart hackers (PDF), says that the government's actions have been surprisingly robust and have challenged hackers in ways that the Chinese government's efforts at censorship have not."

Comments

technical assistance

[Red Flayer]

And who is providing the Iranian government with the technical know-how to implement these censoring measures?

Is it private consultants? Is it foreign governments?

Is there sufficient know-how within Iran's pro-government citizenship to effect the censorship?

I'm very curious who, if anyone, is helping Iran's government do this. Because I do control a decent amount of spending, and I'd like to know if there's anyone I do business with that I should think twice about renewing contracts with. I'd be disappointed, and more than a bit shocked, if any of my suppliers are helping Iran do this. But there is precedent. And my (and my employer's) dollars can speak a lot louder than this comment.

Re:technical assistance

[grcumb]

And the company themselves debunked this rumor. http://www.nokiasiemensnetworks.com/global/Press/Press+releases/news-archive/Provision+of+Lawful+Intercept+capability+in+Iran.htm

That's a rebuttal, not a refutation.

Nokia-Siemens are basically stating (correctly) 'we didn't do anything there that we aren't required to do elsewhere.' That's all well and good, but it doesn't address the fundamental question: Is what they did in Iran (and do elsewhere) the Right Thing?

The whole question about how - and when, and who - to intercept in the context of the Internet is particularly troubling. Here's an excerpt from a longer piece I wrote about the situation:

Nokia-Siemens, defending its role in the creation of a centralised mobile telecommuncations network, stated recently that:

In most countries around the world, including all EU member states and the U.S., telecommunications networks are legally required to have the capability for Lawful Intercept and this is also the case in Iran. Lawful Intercept is specified in standards defined by ETSI (European Telecommunications Standards Institute) and the 3GPP (3rd Generation Partnership Project).

Yes, decentralised communications come at a cost. They make surveillance efforts of all kinds more difficult. The two competing questions we need to ask ourselves are:

1. How far are we willing to compromise ourselves in the pursuit of state security?
2. How much are we willing to compromise state surveillance capability in order to protect our own freedom to communicate?

These are knotty issues with complex and often subtle ramifications on society. They demand a level of public engagement on the principle - and more importantly, the practice - of free speech that we havenâ(TM)t seen since the Red Scare of the 1950s.

Re:No business

[aaandre]

Oppressive regimes see their own countries' intellectual elite as an enemy.

Re:Censorship is absolute or doomed.

[mindbrane]

>The alternative to censorship is self-censorship

The Iranian, Farsi speaking people have a complex and fascinating history. Farsi, like English, is an Indo-European language, and, the Persian Empire could be said to be the catalyst driving the birth of Europe. The Spartan and Athenian alliance bringing the victory of the Persian Wars was thought by the Greeks to be caused by the Gods as the Persians were seen as Asians and, it was thought, the Gods would never allow one people to rule both Europe and Asia. The matter grows complex as Alexander Hellenized the Persian world. Although in Persia lower caste people would abase themselves before someone seen to be a superior, but the Greeks only bowed to a God and thus the Persian custom was seen as Alexander elevating himself to the ranks of the Gods. But for my money the big fillip was introduced, perhaps by the Jews, when sin was passed from the King to the people. Some ancient civilizations were known to have beaten the statues of Gods when things went wrong and, further down the road, Kings and priests were punished when things went wrong as it was thought they were custodians and servants of the Gods and thus responsible if the Gods should be made angry. Some tyrant, somewhere, came up with the truly remarkable idea that if sin was ascribed to the people s/he ruled, then, if the Gods punished the people it was the peoples fault. This ascription of sin to the populous was one of the neatest tricks a ruling elite ever effected on an enslaved population. I think all western theocracies are supported by this central idea, that each person is born into sin and is a sinner and thus accountable for anything and everything that goes wrong.

We're creatures of context and our ideologies are drawn from and enforced by the symbols that surround us. From this it follow that freedom of speech is fundamental to democracy and personal growth. If Iran is to grow and the Iranian people free themselves, then they must always have available to them the symbols of freedom.

Just my loose change, btw "hello", a decade or so ago we exchanged what I enjoyed as some interesting posts here when I was new to Linux and /., but that was another incarnation.