Slashdot Mirror
Iran Getting Better At Filtering Web Traffic
Al writes "Rob Lemos reports that Iran's national ISPs seem to have recently gained the ability to filter large quantities of web traffic more effectively. Arbor Networks used data gathered from distributed network sensors to monitor the data going to Iran from the global internet. The firm found that all of the country's providers showed an enormous drop in traffic following the contested June 12 election, then nearly normal traffic patterns until June 26. After that, five of six national ISPs showed an 80 percent drop in traffic for approximately three weeks. The one internal ISP that continues to see significant traffic during those three weeks counts many government ministries among its clientèle. The picture painted by the data is of an ISP that is becoming increasingly skilled in filtering, says Craig Labovitz, chief scientist for Arbor Networks."
Iran's national ISPs seem to have recently gained the ability to filter large quantities of web traffic more effectively.
Quite good tactic. Instead of fighting, now every country and RIAA/MPAA wants to do business with Iran to implement these high-performing filters everywhere.
Their suppliers have. The same companies which deliver our network infrastructure.
Perhaps Australia should seek advice on implementing efficient censorship technologies from both the Chinese and Iranian governments.
Will Iran find a new export market in the Western "democracies" like the USA and United Kingdom which also want to filter traffic so only "approved" (pro-government) content flies around the internet?
Iran probably just pointed its Linksys router to OpenDNS.
You know, for all those "non-existent" gays, minorities and other undesireables in Iran ... After all, he's still congratulating him for killing (quite literally) dissent, falsifying elections and those general sorts of things socialists admire ?
Democrats ? Why are you all agreeing with this ? Can *any* democrat explain this to me ?
America ... land of the free my ass.
Neither satirically funny nor troll worthy. The last line is bound to ensare loads of karma-hungry Slashdotters. Of course, they will all point out something along the lines of "You're missing the point. Iran is a soverign nation with their rules and regulations and the United States of America is a separate entity. You are confusing the two. It's not Iran... land of the free. Clearly." only with a more smug, more socially-awkward nerd tone.
A more interesting attempt at humor could have been to make a subtle case of the land of dichotomies that is Iran: ruled under a iron-deficient clad fist, yet with pervasive "Western" influences. Not going to do your homework for you, but worth a thought.
A better take on the troll angle would have been to concoct a whole series of web pages that purported several allegations that made mainstream media's lazy journalists publish details onto their front covers, which inevitably show up on Slashdot's "front page."
Can anyone provide some updates on this - helping Iran citizens get free speech on Internet?
Sorry I'm a bit rusty here. I know we can set up proxy servers, and modify our Twitter accounts, and so on (I use Google) but I'm not sure if the information is still accurate (especially the IP address filtering for proxy services).
Maybe they bought some stuff from Cisco. You know, same stuff they've sold to China.
satellite wifi, just think if there was a satellite over iran that beamed wifi and radio & television on open channels & frequencies, that will sure get the ayatollah's panties in a bunch
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Iran has been attacked by foreign government's propaganda before (Operation AJAX) so the establishment are trying to protect their rule.
We are so lucky we live in nations with free speech and free press. It helps keep the government honest.
Maybe they bought some of Arbor's E-Series products.
How do you do this with a telephone switch?
To clarify: Nokia Siemens Networks has provided Lawful Intercept capability solely for the monitoring of local voice calls in Iran. Nokia Siemens Networks has not provided any deep packet inspection, web censorship or Internet filtering capability to Iran.
http://blogs.nokiasiemensnetworks.com/news/2009/06/22/provision-of-lawful-intercept-capability-in-iran/
is one of the marvelous products from Sandvine...
While there were reports of sites being inaccessible, I doubt that filtering is to blame for all of this traffic reduction.
How much was due simply to people being out in the streets protesting, instead of inside their houses watching YouTube videos?
- RG>
Hey pal, this isn't a pleasantforest, so don't waste my time with pleasantries!
Maybe they just got really efficient at blocking SPAM?
I can't understand why a totalitarian dictatorship would have an Internet AT ALL.
I don't see what's the big deal? They're only blocking criminal activities; which is to say, dissenting from the government.
The one internal ISP that continues to see significant traffic during those three weeks counts many government ministries among its clientèle.
This strikes me as a rather fundamental big red flag. When a government feels that otherwise public information is safe for government officials to view, but that the citizens must be forbidden from seeing it, there is a foundational problem.
We have a few such cases here in the United States (even outside the scope national security, which information is typically not "otherwise public"), but they are thankfully limited. We have done fairly well in this regard, and should continue to be diligent in fighting its spread.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
There were many observers from different countries during the Iranian presidential elections, has anyone of the observers shown evidence that there were enough serious frauds to declare the election void?
you want to
yes, its true, the west has more information available to us. at least we think so.
and generally, we do have more.
but lets ask ourselves, how much info that our government(s) (collective, it is a world-wide effect, after all) have that we'll never see?
this isn't filtering of public vs public, its stuff our govs know that they withold. 'freedom of information' was a farce under bush, we all know that. this is the kind of thing I'm talking about; stuff we want to know about *ourselves* and yet we aren't allowed to. or we're lied to.
war on drugs, good example. its a case of our gov lying to us. there have been studies (gov funded! that's my point) that prove, time after time, that MJ is not harmful. just to pick one example that's pretty easy to research. nixon's people even told him that it was not a big deal, yet that's where the war on drugs pretty much started. even in the face of real data showing the opposite.
so what I'm saying is that we are given the impression that we are free and we have access to all the info we need. but its not true, its only that we're given *a lot* of info and the feeling of being able to research and find answers, but in many areas, we are intentionally kept dumb.
before we act all 'USA USA, we are free here!', we should examine how much we really can find out and how much is kept 'for national security'. these days, a 'national security letter' can squelch almost anyone from talking. the gov has that much power, now.
much of the important info is kept from us. so in a way, we are also very filtered by our own governments. not just at the internet level, but independant of the way you try to get the info, freedom-of-info letters take forever, if they're even honored at all. and if they're honored, are they going to be worth anything after all the edits 'for your safety'?
they give us a lot of freedom, and so we feel free. feeling free is not being free.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
but this really annoys me. No government in the world can justify filtering information to their people. Its basically saying- 'i know YOU actually own this country, and YOU just choose us to run it for you, but you are just too stupid to know anything'. I live in the U.K., the worst big brother government in the west and I swear I will move out the day I find out they filter internet information.
I'm betting they're probably using something like suid+squidguard and with shared caches. Does anybody know for fact what there filtering system is based on?