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Iranian Government Cuts Off Internet Access Again
AlbionTourgee writes "It is reported that Gmail and Yahoo mail at least have been blocked in Iran, along with many English-language sites. While news of demonstrations seems to be getting out of the country, the government appears to be trying to prevent people within Iran from communicating and from learning what's happening. It remains to be seen whether TOR and Freenets can be effective to combat this sort of effort to block communications, and whether the general circulation of information about the protests around the world will help."
All they have to do is block the known Tor entry points or set up their own hacked TOR routers.
There really isn't any technical reason why Iran couldn't stop covert communications over the Internet they could even go to a white list system if they really needed to.
The only thing preventing is their own population. I just don't think they would tolerate becoming prisoners in the their own nation.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
well.. It seems tor is showing is usefullness for us, these that love freedom.
maybe could be a good idea to start building a system better than tor, for.. you know, if theres something like a race arms, and tor is blocked / detected. :-I
-Woof woof woof!
Unfortunately, given the current socio-economic state that the US and it's allies are in, Iranian leaders -- very possibly not being the caricatures many americans would assume them to be -- may be making a large bluff in this and other moves it has made. The US can ill-afford a continued string of wars in smaller powers that do not offer a consumer incentive; i.e. any war that doesn't have us retooling our auto companies to make tanks, telling our people that if they ride alone they ride with the ayatollah. If we're to go to war, it needs to be a manufacturer's war, not a war of attrition fought by a people that have sufficient stores of it's most important tactical resource (people) to not care about when it "wins".
Iranian leaders, if they have any semblance of intelligence, knows that we cannot call their bluff unless a larger ally steps in and makes the war "interesting". For now, despite the horrible situation in Iran, the best thing that we can do is encourate the Iranian people, and let them know that their voices are being heard, that they have the power to revolt and change their own destinies. Most of all, that if they take the initiative, we will respect any free government they impliment in the aftermath.
But we cannot help them with guns. We cannot help them with bullets. We cannot help them with manpower. Any fight we make on their behalf, is fighting their cause. Every bullet we fire at an oppressive Iranian government, we fire at Democracy. If we have learned anything from Iraq-ganistan, it is that a policy of policing the world leads to later generations of peoples turned from ally to staunch enemy with the memory of american guns killing their people outweighing the memory of american guns killing their enemies.
May God and Allah see eye to eye in this conflict.
-1, Disagree is not a valid option. Troll, Flamebait and Offtopic are not a substitute.
Why is this tagged nukem? Lots of Iranians are extremely hot, like princess Princess Jasmine from Aladdin - they are largely Persian. We have one at our lab and she says about 70% of Iranians hate their government but are being oppressed (people disappearing in the middle of the night kind of thing). They need liberating more than Iraq did (though that's not too hard) and they probably would WELCOME a liberation instead of blowing up! In fact that's what they're scared of most - not being liberated by America but being blown up by America because their government is an asshole.
No, sorry, I disagree. The USA was founded on the premise that human beings have some inalienable rights endowed by their creator. Whether you believe your creator is God, Mother Nature, your Mom & Dad, I believe this in this idea with all of my heart. For hundreds of years it has inspired oppressed people everywhere that their rights are independent of the capricious whims of the current dictator in charge. The Iranian people have a natural right to communicate with one another even if their current turd of a leader does not respect it at this time.
If the Iranian government wants to completely exterminate its' constituency, let it. If the Arabs and Jews want to mutually remove each other from human memory, let them.
I suppose that is the Iranian government's *own* right but it's not what the majority consider a global right and thus the concern. Do you believe that it's acceptable for the head of a household in the next town to kill all but themselves and one other family member to cleanse their household?
While the majority of us would probably say that's not ok, I really want to know if that's ok to you.
And if Iran was the USA, you'd have a point.
cryfreedomlove's point was that the rights are inherent to humanity, not tied to a nation. That such a right is codified only provides a statement of intent by a government to respect and enforce that right. He speaks of an an underlying entitlement to those rights shared by human beings as a species. Oppressive governments and cultures seek to suppress that sense of entitlement, and succeed largely by doing so. The rights themselves transcend governments and circumstance, and their denial in any situation is oppressive, regardless of the international and local legalities involved.
Iranians, consisting mostly of human beings*, share these inalienable rights on virtue of their humanity. And the Iranian government, by suppressing them, is evil in the greater moral sense.
Granted the specific set of rights and the significances behind them are quite subjective, but the principle stands. Also granted the USA's specific track record on respecting and enforcing its statement of such rights is sketchy at times, but remember that a flawed implementation doesn't signify a flawed underlying principle.
* One of my ex-girlfriends was Iranian and proved to be an exception to the rule :)
why these countries have leaders that vehemently insist they have the best hackers and the best computer cultured cyberpunks in the known world, however actively block collaboration tools and sites that are used by practically all of them.
im not sure the censorship is a huge deal, or not as huge as im being led to believe..i think its a self correcting problem. have internet, or restrict it, you will reap the consequences either way. If your iranian computer wizards hate your censorship enough, they will leave. If you censor your internet enough, you'll find your relevance and influence on the network as a whole to be rather paltry. Censored internet is a countries most apparent resignation to continue living in the stone age, pounding the drum to dictatorial policy that will never be considered compatible with the information age.
Good people go to bed earlier.
- War and Peace
The irony inherent in this being quoted here is incredible.
1984 mentioned the very concept of endless war which America's government has always sought to implement; and which now, with the War on Terror, it has finally succeeded in implementing. That book, which you are quoting from here, also laid bare the consequences of such a doctrine of endless war, at least in political terms.
Yet none of you see it. All of you defend the belief in interventionism that you have simply been raised with, and do so with a kind of smug self-righteousness that blatantly ignores American history, and the grotesque acts of tyranny and mass murder which have been commited within that country's own history. (When the speaker is American, at least)
The replies that I have received here would be laughable, if the implications, for a scenario where people actually believe said replies, were not so distressing.
It doesn't matter how many of your own people are killed, Americans. It doesn't matter how much your own economy is gutted, or how much your own civil liberties are progressively destroyed. Every single time your government and/or military/industrial complex produces the usual lies about why interventionism is necessary, you take the bait as enthusiastically as possible. In the case of Iran, you're apparently doing it even without the Ministry of Propaganda's (sorry, Fox News') encouragement that you do so.
I am tired of your support for interventionism advancing the cause of fascism, Americans. The problem, you see, is the fact that when you continue to support interventionism, the fascist consequences which occur in your own country, do not occur only in your own country. They occur in mine as well.
I also haven't even bothered trying to address the insoluble nature of the Middle East's problems, either. There are two related ethnic groups there, (the Jews and the Arabs) who are determined to exterminate each other, and with whom said determination goes back close to six thousand years. If you really think that animosity which is that deeply entrenched, is going to be resolved in any of our lifetimes, then there is no appeal to logic that I can make.
Some of the solutions proposed seem overly complicated, microwave links, CIA dropping wi-fi equpment behind the lines, wtf? A primitive HAM trancivier and morse code should be enough to get information out of the country.
US-UK-Israel: The real Axis of Evil