Iran Blocks 'Illegal' VPNs, Google, and Yahoo 176
First time accepted submitter voul writes "Iran is at it again. Taking a page from China's playbook, Iran has moved to cut off illegal VPNs. 'Quite aware of the censorship they face, many Iranians use proxy servers over virtual private networks to circumvent government restrictions and mask their activities,' CNET reports. 'However, officials now say they have blocked use of the "illegal" tool.' Slashgear reports that users are 'unable to access social networks like Facebook and Twitter, or use services like Skype to make phone calls. Along with the blocking of the VPNs, the Iranian government have also blocked access to Google and Yahoo.'"
With Friends Like These, Who Needs Sanctions? (Score:5, Insightful)
So, we are going to handle the physical sanctions and the Iranian government is going to handle the internet sanctions. Sounds like a great plan!
Not entirely (Score:5, Informative)
http://nos.nl/artikel/483130-ahmadinejad-onder-vuur-om-knuffel.html
For those unfortunate enough not to be Dutch, the article claims Ahmadinejad is under attack from the religious leadership for hugging/comforting the wife of Chavez. In Islam, touching women is forbidden, unlike say goats. Not even the president, acting in an world with many cultures escapes this. There are of course many rules which only apply to the ruled but some dictatorships manage to suppress everyone, except those who like the suppression.
NK is rather famous for going after even Generals who don't show the right amount of grieve. There are systems where even the holiest are not immune to the system.
This is not saying these systems are nice but to understand them, you need to understand that the idea of the evil overlord at the top controlling all is best left to the movies. Most of these systems have become self perpetuting, it is the system that rules the people, not people. Of course, the system is people in the end but what I mean is that those doing the dictating are just as much dictated as the rest. That is why these systems endure for so long. Because if one leader should falter, the system simply replaces him or pulls him back in line. Dictators change, the system endures. And it isn't creepy guys meeting in secret, it is grannies who spy on their neighbors and are first in line at the stonings. That is why the west has been unable to "liberate" Iraq or Afghanistan. Because they shot the "leaders" who are just puppets of the systems and left the grannies who tell their grandsons they will go to heaven and stone their granddaughters for not obeying their grandmothers little empires, alone.
Want to fix the world? Kill the people behind the curtains watching and reporting.
didn't work entirely for Pol Pot or Mao, did it? (Score:5, Interesting)
Want to fix the world? Kill the people behind the curtains watching and reporting.
Hmmm...Pol Pot did as you suggest, so did Mao. When you attack the ideological infrastructure of the regime you are trying to overthrow, as you are suggesting, you leave a vacuum that has to be filled. If you can replace that ideological infrastructure with one more commensurate with your own, fine -- but you have to get your own in place and then protect it so that some other ideologue can't displace you by attacking you in the same way, which is where Pol Pot and Mao failed. The lesson to be learned from their failures? Control the sources of information about competing ideologies. Whacking ideological opponents was a viable strategy, back when suppressing competing ideas was merely a matter of killing the brains where those ideas resided. Technology (starting with writing, then the printing press, then radio and TV, and then the net) allowed ideas to slip from brain to brain faster than the regime could kill off the contaminated brains. Pol Pot killed teachers and parents (by the millions) and successfully inserted his own ideology into a new generation, but failed to keep competing ideologies out, resulting in his ultimate loss of control. Mao made the same mistake at first, but realized (too late, perhaps, but he did try to correct course) that keeping opposing ideologies out was impossible when you had over a billion vulnerable brains to protect. His course correction resulted in complete state control of information, culminating in the Great Firewall of China, which at least delayed the onset of ideological rot, which in theory would give time for the regime to devise a way to innoculate all those vulnerable brains. Iran is doing the exact same thing by clamping down on the sources of ideological rot. It remains to be seen whether or not regimes like Iran and North Korea can delay it long enough to survive, but I kinda doubt it, though ideologues in the US seem to have found a way that might work -- make it easier for your subjects to get the information you want them to have while simultaneously attacking the sources of information that oppose your ideology. Rupert Murdoch may be a multi-billionaire capitalist running dog in Mao's eyes, but he is Mao's spiritual heir none-the-less.
Re: (Score:2)
Hmm...the website offers you a cookie if you'll learn to speak freaky deaky dutch. :D
Re: (Score:2)
So ... starting with Kansas, Louisiana, or Texas?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Goatse. Ain't it obvious?
Iran cut off from the Internet... (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3)
Yeah if you lived in the Internet, how would you get back to Iran for food?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
...and nothing of value was lost. (Unless you happen to live there, that is.)
What was lost was a nation of people that could contribute their creativity to the rest of the internet. We have lost quite a lot.
Re:Iran cut off from the Internet... (Score:5, Informative)
You fail at history.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
the several Iranians I have met and worked with. They (also women!) typically are well schooled, well opiniated, and very different from the neighbours you mention.
Then why haven't those several people used their articulate, educated, smart-people powers of persuasion to help drag their beloved country back from the depths of medieval Islamist theocratic thuggery? Because not enough Iranians want that. Obviously it doesn't help when activists who are actively seeking and working towards a more forward-looking, democratic Iran are put in jeopardy by having their names and families identified by idiots like Bradley Manning. Yay, noble leaker of hundreds of thousands of
Re: (Score:2)
The people tried, at least in the cities, after the elections in 2008. Remember that uprise? Many risked (and some lost) their lives. It was not just a small minority, but it was suppressed.
I was in Esphahan just before those elections and the ordinary city people I met were in general very open, interested, longing for change.
Re: (Score:2)
You already have the answer to your question. The well-schooled ones with liberal tendencies worked with you because they *left* Iran. And there is a reason they left. If it wasn't the Shah, it was the mullahs. I went to school with a number of Iranian kids whose parents used their brains and jumped ship as soon as it was clear who was steering it.
As far as extremist or "dumb", rural support has always been important to these religious leaders in Iran, and those folks have always been a lot more religio
Re: (Score:2)
You already have the answer to your question. The well-schooled ones with liberal tendencies worked with you because they *left* Iran. And there is a reason they left. If it wasn't the Shah, it was the mullahs. I went to school with a number of Iranian kids whose parents used their brains and jumped ship as soon as it was clear who was steering it.
Iran has had a huge brain drain problem, starting in 1979. A lot of smart people left, and also a lot of them were in the West getting their degrees, and never went back. As someone who is part Iranian, this saddens me. Had the Revolution stopped with just deposing the Shah, and the government been fully in the hands of Bazargan [wikipedia.org] or Banisadr [wikipedia.org], Iran would probably be the most democratic country in the region now, and have a tech industry along the lines of India's, though not as large owing to the smaller popu
Re: (Score:2)
It was western, all right, but civilized... I mean, how much do you have to oppress a people until they go out on the street facing almost certain death and even consider a nutjob like Khomeini a better alternative?
Don't get me wrong, I'm pretty sure part of what hit the streets in '79 was islamist, but I highly doubt that the majority was. He was simply the lesser evil... at least he seemed like it. And judging from the difference, I'm still not sure whether this is really the greater evil now. Sure, from
Re: (Score:3)
Khomeini in-charge was a result of two things: he was a symbol of resistance which made him a household name and then, the hubris of the educated liberal groups in Iran in thinking they could control him.
They thought they were getting a Dalai Lama sort of person, albeit a much more conservative sort, and instead, they got.... well what the Dalai Lama used to be, the ruler of a theocracy. Surprise!
Re: (Score:2)
Khomeini in-charge was a result of two things: he was a symbol of resistance which made him a household name and then, the hubris of the educated liberal groups in Iran in thinking they could control him.
They thought they were getting a Dalai Lama sort of person, albeit a much more conservative sort, and instead, they got.... well what the Dalai Lama used to be, the ruler of a theocracy. Surprise!
Basically, what happened is the same thing that has happened with many revolutions in the last hundred years or so: a coalition gets together to overthrow a dictator, and once this is accomplished, the most-motivated, most-trained, best-organized subgroup of the coalition takes over, turns out to be worse than the dictator who was just overthrown, and starts executing or at least suppressing its former coalition partners. In Iran, this subgroup was Khomeini and the Islamists. In Russia, this was Lenin and t
Re: (Score:2)
Why do you say westernized? Is it wrong to say Iran was a modernized country? It was not westernized - Iran still had it owns culture, traditions, way of doing things etc.
Oh, they were quite westernized. In some ways, horribly so. This was during the disco era, and they loved it. I can still hear "Disco Duck" in my head, after 35 years. Please, please, make it stop.
Just because the women were free to wear hijab, means it was westernized? Just because women could dress like they wanted, it means westernized? Does west have a patent on this or something?
When you speak of culture rather than technology, "modernizing" means more or less the same thing as "adopting Western societal norms regarding individual freedom of behavior." That's not to say that Western countries are perfect, or that non-Western countries have no good points, but "letting women dress like the
Re:Iran cut off from the Internet... (Score:5, Interesting)
Not just history, but current events. A combination of a bloody, eight-year war with Iraq and policies that encouraged large families have lead to a glut of young people; something like 2/3 of the population is ~30. That generation is not particularly religious (particularly not by the standards that most Americans use to hypocritically stereotype the Middle East), is very pro-Western and anti-isolationism, well-educated, and very aware of the world. The policies of the country, however, are dominated by a small, ultra-conservative minority of old assholes. Decades of turmoil and common sense drive smart, young people out of the country rather than driving them to stay and launch some sort of up-rising that may result in an even worse regime. They watched the "Arab Spring" and took away the lesson that the arabs didn't really improve their situation. Those that see the sanctions as the fault of their government's stubbornness want out, those that see them as the fault of the imperialist West don't; everyone agrees that the sanctions hit ordinary Iranians the hardest.
When you see sweeping generalizations about intolerance, religious fundamentalism, and insane foreign policy, just remember that the Bush administration arrested and tortured people in secret prisons with no trials. Does that mean that all ~300,000,000 Americans supported that policy? Should the world now treat all Americans like paranoid war-mongers that embrace pre-emptive war and a police state? Was Bush v Gore definitive evidence that Americans can't hold fair elections? If you answered yes, then feel free to un-hypocritically pass the same sort of judgements against the entire population of another country with crazy political leaders. Otherwise, put yourself in the shoes of a 28-year-old with an advanced degree that is fluent in English and that has to use an "illegal" VPN to exercise your curiosity of the outside world--would contribute to society by risking everything to join a violent rebellion or by trying to get out and establish a career and citizenship in the West?
Re: (Score:2)
When you see sweeping generalizations about intolerance, religious fundamentalism, and insane foreign policy, just remember that the Bush administration arrested and tortured people in secret prisons with no trials. Does that mean that all ~300,000,000 Americans supported that policy? Should the world now treat all Americans like paranoid war-mongers that embrace pre-emptive war and a police state? Was Bush v Gore definitive evidence that Americans can't hold fair elections?
As an American, yes, yes, and yes
Re: (Score:2)
Otherwise, put yourself in the shoes of a 28-year-old with an advanced degree that is fluent in English and that has to use an "illegal" VPN to exercise your curiosity of the outside world--would contribute to society by risking everything to join a violent rebellion or by trying to get out and establish a career and citizenship in the West?
The answer to that question depends on your level of national pride and self-sacrifice. Most will choose what benefits the individual, however it only takes a few of the right people to destabilize a regime.
You need a critical mass of patriots with courage, vision, education, and capability to pull it off though.
Re: (Score:2)
Anyone arrogant enough to reject the verdict of the judge or of the priest who represents the LORD your God must be put to death. Such evil must be purged from Israel. (Deuteronomy 17:12 NLT)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The only thing good to ever come out of Iran was the oil. When that's gone it will return to being the shit hole that it always was before the oil was found.
Actually, the Sassanian silverware was pretty nice. But they stopped making that a *long* time ago.
MPAA Hopefully Not Paying Attention (Score:5, Interesting)
Soon as MPAA realizes everyone went VPN to escape six strikes, they'll want a similar law here in the US
Of course all corporate VPNs will be exempt as long as they're willing to report any "suspicious" activity
Re: (Score:1)
Dang, how do I add to the score for this post. It's exactly what will befall the internet in all countries for various reasons. And, if you try to create your own mesh to escape the filters and controls you'll be shut down like a pirate radio station.
Re: (Score:1)
If you wish to boost the credibility of the post by expressing your support then it helps to begin your eulogy with a word other than "Dang".
Re:MPAA Hopefully Not Paying Attention (Score:4, Informative)
Instead of focusing on the rather innocent little exclamation you should be more worried about the fact that even though things like Tor, VPNs, hired proxies and the like are held up as solutions and workarounds for almost all these internet blocks, we have here, in Iran, a real world demonstration that such things are useless against deep packet inspection and filtering.
Sure, but we're not there yet. The blocking in Iran is nothing more than basic port and protocol blocks; just block 1723/tcp and protocol 47 (gre) and you've blocked PPTP VPN, the most common form of VPN. IPsec VPN can be blocked by blocking 500/udp and protocol esp+ah. The more rare SSL-only form of VPN is probably blocked using blacklists as no form of deep packet inspection can see inside encrypted packets and there's no other way to find out if it's a regular SSL connection or something like VPN. But then maybe they simply block all use of SSL across the borders.
Such techniques will be used in the States, in Canada, in the UK, anywhere, either under the direction of the intellectual property owners or to protect us all from terrorism and any attempt to use such techniques or others to circumvent the blocks to certain types of files or information will be considered a criminal act.
For smaller files, encryption of the files within other files can be used but for larger files, streams or participation in open conversations of prohibited subjects will become harder over time.
I agree with you there.
Re: (Score:2)
They don't need to: these days, relatively few VPNs around the world can be trusted [torrentfreak.com] to not throw users under the bus at the first hint of trouble from the **AA or US government, and there's no way to really know whether the 'trustworthy' VPNs were being totally honest. Outlawing VPNs would drive the users to companies or resources that are less **AA/government-friendly; if they're smart about it, they'll mimic lobbyists by giving nice large gifts to helpful VPNs as tokens of their gratitude.
Heh. (Score:5, Interesting)
Let's see them try to block SSH and have a functioning internet.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Heh. (Score:4, Interesting)
And don't miss the opportunity to sockify a whole tunnel of TCP connections, instead of socksifying programs, to use with your ssh -D connection. The tun2socks program does this, and can do UDP with a remote side helper program.
They will have to shut off ssh to block it. They might, but that ends up breaking a lot more stuff and getting more of their population angry at the government.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Heh. (Score:4, Interesting)
People (even Iranian people) need to be able to manage their networks. Block too much and there wont be a functional Iran Internet for much longer.
Re:Heh. (Score:5, Interesting)
Block too much and there wont be a functional Iran Internet for much longer.
I not quite sure that that is one of their top concern.
Re:Heh. (Score:5, Interesting)
Correct. Their primary concern is to *not* have a functioning Internet.
Re: (Score:2)
Block too much and the unemployed youth will finally revolt.
They know what they are missing from talking with friends in Europe.
Re: (Score:2)
Because there's no unemployed youth in Europe. And even those few who are, generally don't spend time on the Internet.
Re: (Score:3)
And even those few who are, generally don't spend time on the Internet.
Sorry were you being sarcastic? I have plenty of unemployed Euro buddies I talk to and play games with regularly. There is not much to do in between job interviews and collecting the unemployment/welfare handout, so most of them are indeed on the internet. Laptops are cheap you know, even in Europe.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, I was being sarcastic, I hoped it would be obvious but I know it's hard to tell on the internet. As a student of physics, I don't have these problems, and all my classmates have either jobs or paid PhD programs (as in, we'll be paid for working on the PhD) lined up. However, the situation is quite different for other young people.
I believe that is the point. (Score:3)
Their has been talk in the news about Iran building a giant Iran wide Intranet just for their own use. This would help ease the transition into their Intranet by removing the appeal and usability of the Internet. Effectively cutting their people off without actually cutting people off would probably fit very well in their political landscape.
Re: (Score:3)
They could achieve it by cutting the cables or any number of other technical means. For political purposes they need to first degrade the experience to make it less valuable for their citizens. By removing the ability to have privacy, Google and other feature that they don't want their citizens to have access to they diminish the value of the Internet before flipping the switch.
What they don't want is their own Arab spring, something are keenly aware of (is anyone better at stirring up dissonance in the mid
Re: (Score:2)
I can't argue the point about their not being Arabs any more than someone from Turkey. The Arab spring is a regional concept more than an ethnic one though. My fundamental point about regional instability and people rising up against oppressive governments stands though.
Haha - The Tehran Chronicle (Score:5, Interesting)
facebook twitter and skype (Score:2)
If I did not know better I am not sure its really a bad thing
Re: (Score:2)
From what I've heard, as a VOIP service that's well-known & easy among non-techies, Skype is too useful for lower-income people that want/need to have long voice calls with people that live in a country that it costs a hefty amount to call. If worthwhile encryption is an option with it, then it could be particularly useful for finding out what's going on in reality (as opposed to government claims) from a trusted source without getting caught going onto "illegal" websites.
Besides, Skype isn't near-impo
It must be a Microsoft conspiracy (Score:2, Funny)
... Since they can only use Bing to search....
Slashdot should stop the Iran bashing already (Score:3)
There are war mongers -- and then there's Slashdot,
and I for one would like to keep it that way.
Re:Slashdot should stop the Iran bashing already (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
dont forget car analogies
Re: (Score:2)
The CIA would love to stage another coup, but slashdot is always there, with simpsons quotes and star wars references, to shut them down.
And cavalry, don't forget the cavalry [youtube.com] and infantry [youtube.com] that sweeps all before it [youtube.com]. Compared to that power, CIA is just another bunch of paper pushers [youtube.com].
Keep up the censorship bashing already (Score:5, Insightful)
Funny, I was under the impression that a large majority of Slashdot participants were in favor of unfettered communications and against censorship, especially when it comes to the Internet. There is a story category named "Your Rights Online." Should it be renamed to "Your Rights Online Unless You Live In A Country The US Considers Bad, In Which Case We'll Pretend Everything Is OK"?
Censorship should be criticized, whoever does it and wherever it is done, period.
Re: (Score:2)
It was actually named that way, but it didn't fit into the subject line.
Re: (Score:2)
Slashdot should stop the Iran bashing already
So, when the Iranian government imposes yet another new repressive measure to build on its existing repressive [abc.net.au] measures against the Iranian people that result in death, mutilation, torture, and other atrocities, your concern is that people on Slashdot don't criticize - don't say harsh things against the Iranian government? I think there is a word for that, Mr. Liberty [youtube.com].
If you think the Iranian government is for peace, you aren't listening carefully.
All Iran is saying,
is give cutting people into pieces a cha [go.com]
How Can We Be Supportive? (Score:2)
Re:How Can We Be Supportive? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:How Can We Be Supportive? (Score:4, Informative)
the largest "tool" that was blocked is Tor.
Tor has thousands of exit nodes, and all were blocked, they don't have to block specific ports they use deep packet inspection to identify if it's a proxy request or direct request and can deny all which is why at the moment Tor don't work from Iran
Re: (Score:2)
This makes no sense. The client isn't talking directly to the exit node. The exit node is communicating with the server, and when both are outside of Iran and their communication isn't going through Iran, then any blocking of the exit nodes by the Iranian regime, won't have any effect.
They can try to block the communication between Tor clients and the entry point to the Tor network. But there are secret entry relays. A user can acquire a small list of
Re:How Can We Be Supportive? (Score:4, Interesting)
One problem with this: Iran has a history of doing Deep Packet inspection and dropping all encrypted connections (or at least, non-whitelisted encrypted connections). For now, obfsproxy gets around this. Running a simple VPN will not.
Re: (Score:2)
For a second there, I thought you wanted to tokenize hash values with passages from "Conan". That would be much more hilarious, although completely nonsensical.
Re: (Score:2)
Those governments can only block so many IP addresses and they have the big VPN providers in their crosshairs.
You obviously haven't considered DPI. I have been to Iran in the past and OpenVPN to my own server in Europe was entirely blocked, no matter what protocol/port combination I used. I could see the initial packet exchange (tcpdump), and after a short while the connection was identified as illegal and dropped, and the protocol/port combination entirely blocked from there on.
However, they did allow PPTP (possibly because it's so insecure), and SSH. As a side note, I haven't seen any try to do MITM on SSH.
Re: (Score:2)
Right. You need to prevent them from discovering you to begin with. There is no matter of proving anything in a court of law. If they are interested in you, you've already lost.
However, going on the experiences from the Gestapo, the people you really need to protect yourself against are people close to you and around you. It is said that the Gestapo had so many denunciations from people about their neighbors that they could only deal with some small fraction of them with the staff they had on-hand, even
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
There's obfsproxy, a tool put out by the Tor project, designed to get around the Deep Packet inspection Iran was doing about a year ago or so. Running an obfsproxy tor bridge is probably one of the best things you can do to help. And for those not versed in Tor, running a bridge is NOT the same as running an exit node, nor does it come with the risk factor of mistaken identity resulting in excess hassling.
https://www.torproject.org/projects/obfsproxy.html.en
Re: (Score:2)
Can we find ways to make it harder - and costlier - for governments to censor their citizens?
That's kinda the whole point of Freenet, but you'd need an internet connection to the outside world for that to work. If governments and corporations keep interfering with the free flow of ideas over the internet, I'm sure a technical solution will found. Necessity is the mother of invention, after all. I wonder if in a few years when wireless networks become ubiquitous if we can abandon large ISPs altogether in favor of many decentralized services or some sort of peer-to-peer network.
Blocked access to Google and Yahoo, but not Bing? (Score:3)
This seems inconsistent.
So, of the three search engines only Google will actually use SSL, even if you go to http://google.com/ [google.com] the form is submitted over https. The other two not only won't do that, they will *downgrade* you to http even if you explicitly navigate to https://yahoo.com/ [yahoo.com] or https://bing.com/ [bing.com]. Iranians can easily use DPI to spy on Yahoo and Bing users, only Google presents a problem. So I'm not surprised Bing didn't get blocked, it's not clear to me why Yahoo did.
The only explanation i see is that Iranian gov't is stupid - DPI is too hard, let's hijack the domains or blackhole a couple AS and go shopping (or shooting, or praying to almighty allah, or whatever). As to why Bing was left out, it's either
a) Iranian gov't is stupid, they were just unaware of Bing's existence. Unlikely.
b) Bing just doesn't work well enough in Arabic for the gov't to care. Also unlikely, given that Yahoo is powered by Bing and it got banned.
c) they contacted Microsoft and reached some kind of a deal where Microsoft bends over backwards but doesn't get banned. getting caught dealing with Iranian gov't is a big risk for Microsoft, but the potential reward of being the only game in a not-so-small country of 75 million people (mostly young and active adults) is just too high.
hmm...
Re: (Score:3)
Arabic? Iranians aren't Arabs. Their language is Farsi which, unlike Arabic, is one of the Indo-European languages.
Your a,b,c conjectures are equally unrelated to anything factual or likely.
Re: (Score:2)
re: arabic vs farsi - aw, that's embarrassing. thanks for the correction.
re: explanations as to why bing was left out - AC below suggested that bing was left out simply because it's just not popular enough. i don't know, it's still a major search engine which is bound to become popular real fast if it's not blocked when two of its competitors are. what do you think?
Re:Blocked access to Google and Yahoo, but not Bin (Score:4, Informative)
[O]f the three search engines only Google will actually use SSL, even if you go to http://google.com/ [google.com] the form is submitted over https. The other two not only won't do that, they will *downgrade* you to http even if you explicitly navigate to https://yahoo.com/ [yahoo.com] or https://bing.com/ [bing.com]. Iranians can easily use DPI to spy on Yahoo and Bing users, only Google presents a problem. So I'm not surprised Bing didn't get blocked, it's not clear to me why Yahoo did.
https://duckduckgo.com/ [duckduckgo.com] and https://ixquick.com/ [ixquick.com] both support SSL/TLS. The latter allows viewing searched content through their embedded HTTPS proxy service.
Sorry to bring it up... (Score:2)
I'm curious how this will affect BitCoin in Iran...
My understanding is that any blocks generated in Iran after 20 hours (120 blocks) of a network split would be lost when the network rejoins. So even if no one tried a double spend attack, there could be "lost money" that has been spent.
I realize that it isn't likely anyone here would know, but are there currently routes around the firewalls that people are using to avoid this situation. Or is BitCoin still connecting fine from within Iran?
Re: (Score:2)
I don't know enough about bitcoint to give a definitive answer. But it certainly is an aspect that could be handled. In case of double spending, there is obviously a need to decide which one is official. And the way bitcoint works, it would most likely be the one from the lar
social networks and repressive governments (Score:1)
Why would you post anything on social networks if you lived in a country with a repressive government? It's bad enough in the civilised world, but if your government has bad habits surely you would censor yourself to avoid trouble with the authorities?
Persian Spring (Score:2)
They are probably sniffing every network connection for that string (in multiple languages). Spring is just a few weeks away.
You gets what you pays for (Score:2)
When retarded priests rule, there will be retarded laws.
Re: (Score:2)
aka: "The 13th Imamaluke".
Re: (Score:2)
Wait until the media companies force the same to the US (they will reason that people use VPN to avoid ISP warnings).
Re: (Score:2)
They must have reasonably high IQs to still be in charge, and the law is clearly intended to help them stay that way; what they actually are is sickeningly controlling and unethical... Just slinging common insults like "retarded" reduces the conversation to the level of little kids that lack the vocabulary/maturity to be more specific on their own. Slashdot can do a hell of a lot better than that.
Re: (Score:2)
You think the Kim's in North Korea have "reasonably high IQs"?
Anyway, I didn't necessarily mean intellectually retarded.
Next: Russia (Score:2)
As Russian "government" is fond of Iran, China and Syria, this practice will soon be implemented there. There were already voices to ban "circumvention" of recently introduced blacklist, meaning ban of VPN, proxy, TOR and any other technology which might be a nuisance for the ruling criminals.
Old news (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Hear, hear! China is not the threat some make it out to be... truly Iran is our economic rival!
Re: (Score:3)
what economical climate is in Iran?
we have goats, sand, and a bunch of ignorant fucks running the country, thanks but we dont need to import that from you.
While I would not want to disrespect the economic and cultural nirvana that is modern Iran,
I would point out that we can export to you things like:
women wearing shorts that actually spread their ass cheeks,
thong underwear and even better,
thong swim suits,
camel toes that have nothing to do with actual camels,
college age girls that have "Daddy issues"
and the fact that getting laid regularly will seriously decrease the probability that you will end up dying in the hope of spending eternity with 72 people
Re: (Score:3)
....with 72 people who by definition can not give a reasonable blow job.
Blow jobs have nothing to do with virginity or sex. The best law Bill Clinton ever introduced to mankind.
Re: (Score:3)
Blow jobs have nothing to do with virginity or sex. The best law Bill Clinton ever introduced to mankind.
Well, it's not exactly a law, but it is one of the few positions that has wide bi-partisan support amongst politicians.
Re: (Score:2)
there is nothing bigotry about it,
Sure... What, do you think that bigots ever admit to being bigoted?
Of course you believe your own bullshit, that's why you are a bigot.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
There are hundreds of private ISPs but all of them pass through the government controlled gateways.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It is easy to track illegal gateways if you provide services to public. But I guess if you use it for yourself no one can easily find (unless the dish is very easy to identify among the millions of satellite dishes in Iran).
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Why is illegal in quotations? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's illegal to use a VPN that the government can't decrypt and monitor the traffic on. And they're not just wanting access "in case they need it", they run software 24/7 that flags "items of interest" for human review. If they find you're breaking any laws, as defined by their legal system (clerics and thousand year old books), or doing anything that threatens their control over their sheep (not the hoofed variety) then they lock you up or behead you or whatever they feel is appropriate.
Considering the broadness of their laws, the harshness of their penalties, and the almost complete lack of legal protection the average (non wealthy) citizen has over there, it's basically dangerous to use the internet over there, for any reason. A week of monitoring you, regardless of what you were trying to do or not do, and they are likely to have enough dirt to hang you (literally) if they feel like it. It's a scary place to live.
Web search for some goat milk recipes. Click a link. Wow look at that, the banner ad on that page is showing titties! Your computer has just downloaded porn, which is illegal to possess. That's all it takes over there to lock you up. I can't imagine how you'd go about actually using the internet over there without setting yourself up. It's a shame really, all these controlling countries (be they religious or just plain dictators like NK) are forced to create an environment of stagnation to maintain their control, and they care more for that then the future of their country. Quite sad for the people. I look at it and it's like being in the supermarket and watching some mother just scream at her kids, treating them like crap, and wishing you could do something about it, but you can't. Depressing to watch.
Almost (Score:2)
You are close but you keep getting stuck in the Hollywood idea of a super villain at the top controlling everyone. So nice isn't it that when Palpatine went down the drains, the empire just collapsed and the day was won and good triumphed? All those generals and moffs and whatnot were just under the control of this Sith and just gave up their power. All those officers, sergeants and even corporals just gave up their little empires and went for democracy and freedom because that is what people do. NOT!
In Eu
Re: (Score:2)
Blocking Facebook is indeed good for countries, universities and companies. Wherever I go in our university (libraries, computer labs, ...) most of the students are wasting their time on Facebook and similar websites.
If Facebook was available 2000 years ago, we possibly would raid donkeys now and newton was updating his Facebook status instead of doing research.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, Iran does have DPI facilities. I have seen them personally 7 years ago. It was around 20 Standard racks of equipment at that time (in the main site I saw). I guess the size of equipments has increased by many times now (to cover the whole country).
But I read in a news website that they have closed VPN "ports". If that means blocking standard ports then it will be easy to change ports.
Re: (Score:2)
But back then someone had an interest of this not happening. What's the world's interest in the Iran not blocking VPN?
Re: (Score:2)
The Chinese blocking the Opium import led to the Opium war between China and the British Empire. I kinda doubt the US start a war over the Iran blocking VPNs. Right now it would seem they'd rather go "hey, good idea".