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Iranian Crackdown Goes Global

Posted by timothy on from the innocuous-backup-account dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Tehran's leadership faces its biggest crisis since it first came to power in 1979, as Iranians at home and abroad attack its legitimacy in the wake of June's allegedly rigged presidential vote. An opposition effort, the 'Green Movement,' is gaining a global following of regular Iranians who say they never previously considered themselves activists. The regime has been cracking down hard at home. And now, a Wall Street Journal investigation shows, it is extending that crackdown to Iranians abroad as well. Part of the effort involves tracking the Facebook, Twitter and YouTube activity of Iranians around the world, and identifying them at opposition protests abroad. People who criticize Iran's regime online or in public demonstrations are facing threats intended to silence them."

5 of 313 comments (clear)

  1. Facebook spam? by Pharmboy · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I know this sounds odd, but it makes we want to get a million people who are not Iranians and put enough information on our Facebook pages to at least slow the Iranian govt. down, by making them wade through it.

    --
    Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
    1. Re:Facebook spam? by rysiek · · Score: 5, Interesting

      It might even work, you know. In 70's and 80's, while fighting our own communist regime in Poland, to help people that carried flyers and other (illegal) prints, lots of people wore backpacks, even when they didn't need them. This way the SB ("Security Service", secret police) had a hard time finding the 1 in 100 that actually had illegal flyers inside.

    2. Re:Facebook spam? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I have a large number of Iranian and Iranian-American friends. Many have participated in Green movement protests in the DC area. Most of them have changed their names on Facebook since the elections, and many have obfuscated their photos or replaced them with pro-Green banners.

      I thought this was probably paranoid, but given recent these developments it seems very prudent.

      What I worry is that, even with their names changed on Facebook, their old names could possibly be found via the Wayback Machine or some other web archive. Any issues here?

      (Reluctantly posting anon in case the Iranian regime starts poking through Slashdot looking for people-with-Iranian friends. Now *that* seems paranoid but...)

  2. just a matter of time by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    the best thing to do is to wait it out. this is the first time that the new generation is old enough to get involved in politics, and they made a very strong statement. over 70% of the country is under 30 due to the iran-iraq war, which basically wiped out a whole generation. this government is a legacy outdated establishment that is totally incompatible with Iran. The country was run by a foreign minority of non-Persians who used religion to control a country of children. Well, the kids grew up and they will rebel. Iran has a strong history and culture, and is too mature to put up with this crap for much longer.

  3. Iran isn't doing this alone! by SexyKellyOsbourne · · Score: 5, Interesting

    When Iran cracked down on their citizens last time, during this summer's protests, Western companies such as Siemens and Nokia provided them the technology to do this.

    http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124562668777335653.html

    I also highly doubt they're building massive databases with worldwide surveillance on Iranian citizens -- for the purposes of going after their relatives within Iran -- with their own home-brew technologies.

    This takes some scary stuff some Iranian University students could not simply hash together -- things like deep-packet inspection of all internet traffic and massive data-mining algorithms in the scope of millions upon millions of megabytes.