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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.
Iran probably just pointed its Linksys router to OpenDNS.
Another interesting thing is that international TV is illegal in Iran as well. The police flies around with helicopters and later demolishes the dishes, and fines the owners. DVDs are illegal aswell. Young Iranians are fans of western culture though, and there is a lively black market. Fashion rules continuously loosened in the last decade.
I hope some day the momentum of youth is strong enough to overthrough the old peoples opinion and form government (which is very unpopular). Iran has a lot of potential as a nation. Would it refine its oil within the country instead of exporting it and importing petroleum, it would be a wealthy nation that could afford the best for its citizens.
I wish the Iranian young generation the best.
I was in Iran recently. It was just before the protests. Internet connectivity in Tehran pretty sluggish. It's like stepping back ten years. Most people are using dial-up. Cybercafes brag that they're hooked up on a 1Mbps DSL.
For kicks, I thought I would dig up something on the CIA World Fact book. cia.gov is blocked. Imagine that.
There were many other sites which were blocked, but for the most part, the censorship on the net was pretty moderate. The real tool in the government arsenal is fear.
It's truly sad what the government is doing. Old technology, like yelling from rooftops seems to be all that you can muster. Apparently the possession and use of encryption technology is illegal, and the govenrment merely has to suspect you of doing something wrong for you to get into serious trouble. Remember too, that just asking your friends to gather at your home is also very suspicious.
Remember too that the government employs tactics like the German Stasi. They corrupt, influence and interfere with citizenry to turn your neighbours into spies. You can never be sure that the person you're talking to is legitimate. So the bad guys aren't aways wearing uniforms or beating people. And the bad guys are often good guys who are just trying to get themselves out of trouble. Your dial-up connection has your name on it and every cybercafe probably has somebody who's loosely in the services of the government.
The Internet is not safe in Iran. Not safe at all. I'm sure the phone systems are just as bad and satellite is, as other posters have pointed out, quite illegal, although comparatively lax in penalties.
The question is how do you create a decentralized kind of communication system which requires legally available technology?
Yelling messages of peace from rooftops is one way to get a message out and avoid being killed for it.
All this wasn't so bad when I was there. People are willing to risk a beating to spend time together and talk about slightly subversive topics, particularly with a foreigner. As a foreigner, I too had to be careful that the person I was talking to was not reporting to the government... else I could find myself... well, they'd probably arrest me, cancel my visa and take me to the airport. They're not too bad to foreigners.
Point is. No. I think they really did turn the screws on the net connections. The pipes in the capital are slow enough that modern technology could be doing automated deep-packet inspection and building databases correlating data on everything going in and out of the country.
A comment before the election was telling about the feeling of the average Iranian. "Not much is going to change... except we'll see an increase in the price of green paint."
That government needs reforms. Badly. And I can't see it coming about peacefully when the people aren't even allowed to talk to one another about it.