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U.S. Funds Anonymizer for Iranians 498
SiliconEntity writes "British online rag The Register is reporting that the U.S. Government is funding anonymizer.com to provide anonymous browsing services to Iranians. Using U.S. funding, the company created a special version of its anonymizing proxy which has instructions in Farsi and only accepts connections from Iranian IP addresses. The service defaults to the Voice of America web site, but users can input any address and browse free of (Iranian) government censorship."
It's understandable (Score:5, Interesting)
Propaganda both prevents and wins wars. Propaganda can serve as a tool of persuasion in trying political struggles between two or more nations. In the case of Iran, it is imperative that we win a large portion of mindshare to use as security in the future. For it would seem that the possibility of armed conflict with Iran is a reality, and we should do what we can to avoid it, considering the implications of such a thing.
Re:It's understandable (Score:5, Insightful)
I do fine it ironic and irritating, though, that our own country (US) doesn't seem to like for us to do the same...trying to pass laws where anonymity, or falsifying online id in order to hide ones identity...
If its good enough for US to pay for them to do it...should be open and good enough for us to use it in all our communications.
Re:It's understandable (Score:3, Funny)
Re :It's understandable (Score:5, Funny)
> I don't mind it at all...
> I do fine it ironic and irritating, though, that our own country (US) doesn't seem to like for us to do the same...trying to pass laws where anonymity, or falsifying online id in order to hide ones identity...
> If its good enough for US to pay for them to do it...should be open and good enough for us to use it in all our communications.
As Jay Leno said about the US plan for Iraq (paraphrasing) -
Re:It's understandable (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Hell yeah... (Score:5, Funny)
I'm waiting for Iranian goverment to fund Anonymiser for U.S. citisens so they can browse the Web anonymously without fear of being spied by U.S. goverment.
Re:It's understandable (Score:2)
Why would anyone in this country worry about that? After all, we gave $95 mil to N. Korea for their nuclear programs after naming them as part of the "Axis of Evil".
No one seems to be worried about that, now are that?
Re:It's understandable (Score:2, Interesting)
Perhaps (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Perhaps (Score:3, Funny)
Hay, don't knock checkers! It is a thinking man's game too.
Re:It's understandable (Score:3, Insightful)
The people in the country aren't what put it on the "Axis of Evil", anyway. It's the actions of the government and political leaders. But people are just people. The everyday citizens of any country deserve the same thing no matter what country they live.
Re:It's understandable (Score:3, Informative)
I wouldn't say the Iranian government holds sway over it's people. My best friend is Iranian and he tells me that people are sick of the current regime and love america.
Re:It's understandable (Score:4, Interesting)
I've been watching Iran long enough to know that the parent is correct. the 65%+ of the population who are under 30 have no use for their government at all. The joke at the beginning of the Iraq war was "Good, we're next."
Re:It's understandable (Score:3, Funny)
Oh crap, never mind.
Re:It's understandable (Score:4, Interesting)
This guy, as well as the other Iranians that I worked with both hated and feared the government of Iran. But mostly feared.
--- Rich
Re:It's understandable (Score:3, Insightful)
What it gets you is "moral" fucknuts commiting a crime. Fuck Jesus, and double-fuck any supposedly morally superior idiot who would commit a crime just because I said "Fuck Jesus".
-
Re:It's understandable (Score:3, Informative)
I have an Iraqi friend who said the same thing with respect to Iraq. It's since become clear that not everyone in Iraq shares her view.
Maybe the people your friend surrounded himself with hate the Iranian goverment and love America, but,as crazy as it may seem, that doesn't necessarily mean it's the universal opinion in Iran.
Of course, it may be entirely different in Iran, but just remember, it's probably not as simple as it seems...
Time to offer normalized relations to Iran? (Score:3, Interesting)
I suspect either you or he meant "Americans" (people) and not necessarily "America" (government).
Don't be too sure.
Apparently a VERY large percentage of the Iranian people are in favor of normalizing relations with the US. (Up until recently that couldn't be determined very well, given that the regime was still run by people heavily invested in the immediately-post-Shah anti-American rhetoric. But
What about China? (Score:2, Insightful)
Or is China just too large of a trading partner, even if they have the world's largest oppressed population and a navy designed to defeat the United States [fas.org].
We are past this point with China (Score:2, Insightful)
Nevertheless, I have a sneaking suspicion that some propaganda arm of the US may still be assisting those that are using the old "Safe Web" technology to circumvent the Great Fire Wall.
Re:We are past this point with China (Score:5, Interesting)
Bzzt. Wrong.
If anything the Chinese were pulling for us in Vietnam. Who was the next country to declare war on the Chinese after the US? That's right, it was the PRC.
People have this illusion that the various Marxist nations were lovey-dovey as part of the quest for International Socialism. The reality is that, while most were Soviet satellites, the Chinese were displeased with the USSR for a long time. There are dozens of recorded instances of territorial infractions, shots fired, and planes shot down between the PRC and the USSR. The Chinese basically took a neutral position on the issue of a NATO vs. Warsaw Pact war; their hope was that both sides would nuke each other into cinders.
Re:We are past this point with China (Score:3, Insightful)
Interesting.
Re:We are past this point with China (Score:3, Interesting)
This sometimes meant that China aided Vietnam. And sometimes it didn't. But it was a "let's you and him fight" kind of attitude.
Quite reasonable, actually, from their point of view. As long as the US
Re:What about China? (Score:5, Informative)
RTFA.
Re:It's understandable (Score:4, Insightful)
First of all, they want us here in the US to abide by their bullshit (DMCA and the two sons of Satan (Patriot I and II)) yet we are in another country blasting radio stations and FUNDING (at an undisclosed amount) a free proxy to *circumvent* another countries security. We should put the government in jail for violating the DMCA.
Second, we shouldn't be funding shit (not Iraq, not free proxies for Iran, nothing), we should be funding the fucking Americans without jobs (I don't know if
Third, I wasn't aware that we were back in the 1950s and 1960s where we feel the need to stop the possibility of the spread of communism, I mean the threat of terrorism. I get those ism's confused.
Let's fucking work on freeing our own country first TYVM. I would PREFER that our own people are fed, clothed, covered, and paid, rather than worrying about 10s of billions of dollars being sent overseas to countries that (for the most part) don't want us there.
Remember who is funding this funding.
Re:It's understandable (Score:5, Funny)
Now, now. The current administration's new "Fucking Americans Without Jobs" initiative has been doing quite well for itself.
Re:It's understandable (Score:3, Insightful)
FDR took over with the country in a far worse mess than this and turned things around to the extent that the US could take on two of the largest military powers on the planet and emerge as bigger than either. I have heard that described as socialism (which is probably crap) but it set the US up economically for decades.
Would that sort of solution work now?
No idea. Globa
Re:It's understandable (Score:3)
I haven't yet mentioned the vileness that is Ashcroft, or what he perpetrated. But everyone sees that, so I don't need to.
Re:It's understandable (Score:5, Interesting)
I think it demonstrates that we have no quarrel with the people of Iran. It's the regime whose jackboot they're under with which we take issue. With access to outside news/information sources, maybe a few of them will learn that (1) we're not the Great Satan the ayatollahs told them about and (2) maybe they'll give the ayatollahs the heave-ho and make available to themselves the choice to live in the 21st century instead of the 13th.
Re:It's understandable (Score:5, Insightful)
Saddam Hussein is a homicidal maniac, but he was bending over backwards to avoid war - doing all he could to comply with UN demands. The trouble was, the US and Britain were not prepared to consider any outcome other than war. A war which killed tens of thousands while doing damage which Paul Bremer indicated a couple of days ago, was almost impossible to overestimate. Now countries which see themselves as threatened by the US know that behaving rationally will get them nowhere. The way to go is to accumulate nukes and point them at an ally of the US. At the time, I thought the N Koreans were insane. It took time to work out what they were up to.
To go back on-topic, it is rather ironical that the US is against anonymous browsing at home (or have I got that one wrong?) but supportive when it can cause other people trouble.
So what is the next stage? Given a proxy web-server in Iran (is there one there?), surfers in other countries can also make use of this service. Iran is a semi-open country nowadays, there won't be a similar service available in N Korea any time soon for obvious reasons.
Re:It's understandable (Score:5, Insightful)
Playing shell games with inspectors and flagrantly violating UN resolutions for ten years is "bending over backwards"?
The trouble was, the US and Britain were not prepared to consider any outcome other than war. A war which killed tens of thousands while doing damage which Paul Bremer indicated a couple of days ago, was almost impossible to overestimate.
I'll overestimate it for you: the world was destroyed, and everyone died. There that wasn't so hard, you see?
Re:It's understandable (Score:4, Insightful)
Israel violates UN resolutions how come we don't invade them. The US violates UN resolutions or just ignores them and invades other countries.
"I'll overestimate it for you: the world was destroyed, and everyone died. There that wasn't so hard, you see?"
This is a very handy thing to fling out when you can't dispute somebodies facts or arguments in a rational way.
Re:It's understandable (Score:3, Informative)
Bullshit. Here is the post he was responding to
The trouble was, the US and Britain were not prepared to consider any outcome other than war. A war which killed tens of thousands while doing damage which Paul Bremer indicated a couple of days ago, was almost impossible to overestimate.
Should I help you out pick out a fact or an argument? Here
grow up (Score:4, Insightful)
This is the nonsense rhetoric I and him were referring to, and it is absolutely ridiculous. The damage caused by the war was quite mild as far as wars go, and the number of dead was remarkably very few civilians, and the fact is, the naysayers predicted a lot more death and destruction than actually happened. "Impossible to overestimate" is ridiculous.
Furthermore, the Iraqi regime is responsible for far more deaths than were caused by the war, so for all this anti-war talk, within a year or two the war will actually result in a net reduction in the number of lives lost. And THAT is a fact. Just look up the number of deaths in Iraq that were the result of the Iraqi regime, and consider the torture and fear caused by the Iraqi leaders.
Oh sure, you can blame the U.N. sanctions for the deaths related to poor drinking water quality, but the starvation and malnutrition is purely the result of the regime abusing the food for oil program and generally not caring about their own populace. But now that the country is no longer controlled by a dangerous regime, things can be restored, and lives can be saved.
I'm not even saying the U.S. had pure intentions, but this cry me a river nonsense is ridiculous. Boo-fucking-hoo, people died. People always die. The actions of the U.S. will eventually result in far fewer deaths, so what's the problem? You don't like the current U.S. regime? Fine, but you're working the wrong angle.
And if you point out that the Iraqi people don't have electricity and running water currently... Yes, that is pissing me off too, so save it. The U.S. needs to get its act together and show the Iraqi people that they're making a good faith effort to improve their conditions. I don't care how much it costs, get it done! Otherwise, it casts a shadow on everything they've done up to this point. If you want heads to roll, it should be for that!
<snip - of course it's not fun... *rolls eyes* />
For every israeli killed by a palestenian three palestenians are killed.
1. Most Israeli deaths are the result of suicide bombings, meaning at least one Palestinian dies in every attack.
2. The Palestinians are far weaker than the Israelis, therefore their attacks are far less effective.
3. The Palestinians have turned down every chance for peace, and the offers have been good compromises on the part of Israel, I've read them.
And I never said that I support the position of the U.S. w/regards to Israel, nor do I support the Israeli attacks on Palestinians, as they more often than not result in nothing but the deaths of innocent people. However, the Palestinians are FAR from blameless, and are in fact more to blame for the continuation of the violence than the Israelis are.
Now if you were to ask me who I feel the most compassion for in the whole mess, I'd say the innocent Palestinians, because there are many of them, and they're living in very poor conditions. But I feel it's their own leaders who are mostly to blame at this point.
Try looking at both sides of the issues, because there are two sides, and more often than not, the truth is somewhere in-between.
Cheers.
Re:It's understandable (Score:3, Insightful)
The answer is simple.
Make the palestenians Israeli citizens. This is what civilized nations do when they invade and occupy some land. We did ti with the Indians, The russians did it with all their republics, the ch
Re:It's understandable (Score:3, Interesting)
So even if there were zero "WMD's" he certainly did
Re:It's understandable (Score:5, Insightful)
Various UN resolutions were passed regarding Iraq, and weapons inspectors were sent there.
Iraq continually violated those resolutions and was as uncooperative with the inspectors as it felt it could get away with without provoking another war.
Iraq at the present moment does not appear to posess WMDs.
Those three statements can logically exist together in the same universe without any self-contradictions.
It seems to me that you're like most anti-Bush fanatics out there, trying to paint anyone who disagrees with you as a pro-Bush fanatic. That's wrong; I can disagree with you and him at the same time. The fact that Bush was wrong about WMDs and lied in his case for war does not change the fact that Iraq was extremely uncooperative in every way with the UN and with the weapons inspectors. Are you capable of understanding this?
If you respond to this post, please try arguing with the points and opinions I have actually expressed, rather than the points and opinions you imagine I should hold.
Re:It's understandable (Score:4, Insightful)
There were those short-range missiles which were designed to be within the permitted specs, but were capable of flying beyond their nominal range (nothing unusual, remember when the Ukranians shot down an aircraft at around twice the distance they thought their missiles were good for) and the Iraqis had started destroying those when the Allies invaded.
Exotic claims are easy to make, the US, UK and Australian Governments all made hysterical claims over Iraq before the war.
They have had 4 months to provide proof. Are you still holding your breath?
Re:It's understandable (Score:3, Informative)
population dont like americans nor 'the american way of life' and aproves some terrorist actions on then.
WTF? I call bullshit. I have several friends from Brazil, and a bunch of friends who have travelled to Brazil on multiple occassions, and I have never heard anything about any kind of widespread Anti-American sentiment in Brazil.
If anything, I hear a lot of talk from my friends, about wanting to move her
freedom as tool (Score:4, Insightful)
sigh.
-sarcasm-
And now that our tax dollars are being used to allow members of a radical Islamic regime (one that harbors terrorists and has WMDs) to anonymously look at all the bomb plans burried in steganographied images on eBay, aren't we opening ourselves up for more terror?
-/sarcasm-
Makes you wonder if anyone believes that Axis of Evil crap.
Re:freedom as tool (Score:5, Funny)
Re:freedom as tool (Score:4, Insightful)
The members of the regime already have the ability to do this anyway. What the US is funding here is the ability for the people being oopressed by that regime to do so. There's a big difference. You show your ignorance by not recognizing the difference.
Makes you wonder if anyone believes that Axis of Evil crap.
It's the Iranian government that has been branded dangerous, not the Iranian people. It's hard to expect you to believe something if you're too ignorant to understand what is being talked about.
Re:freedom as tool (Score:4, Insightful)
I put my statement inside -sarcam- tags for a reason. Or government doesn't believe all the WMD and nuclear capability stuff any more than I do.
Iran is a potential threat much in the way that France is or the soviet union was--they present alternatives to our system of running things. The soviet union had to be destroyed because it was a competing system, not because it was evil. The US is much like MSFT in this way. Who cares if other options are better, worse, or indiferent--if they are an option other than ours, they must be destroyed.
Re:freedom as tool (Score:3, Insightful)
Secondly, your is not the only negative post so far, and I don't understand it at all. Maybe it is easier to think negatively on short notice
Re:freedom as tool (Score:3, Insightful)
We went into Iraq to get rid of Husein and his WMDs. We knew they had WMDs because Bush told us. He had no proo
iran can just block the service... (Score:2)
Ever-changing IP (Score:2)
It'll still be possible to block, but it will be a continuous arms race.
Re:iran can just block the service... (Score:2, Informative)
I admit, this is kind of a si
Re:iran can just block the service... (Score:2)
but the deal is.. blocking can be dynamic..
i.e. your
ALL: *.anonymizer.com
or add in a whole class B if you wanted..
unless anonymizer has a huge number of IP's in various blocks then this would be pretty easy to block..
unless they are doing something totally wacky.. but I am sure they won't release details on exactly how they plan to keep the proxy alive..
blocking works.. just watch what happens when SPEWS gets ahold of a larger domain.
Re:iran can just block the service... (Score:4, Insightful)
Also, when I renewed my EFF membership, the first thing I did was to drop anonymizer.com a note asking if it was anything they could do to undo the damage of the block.
I haven't had a lot good to say about the current US administration, but funding anonymizer for Iranians is a very good move, in fact, I think it is the best thing the US administration has done for Iran and iranians for a very long time.
this is great.... (Score:2)
they also will get the benefit of goatse.cx
pr0n is still filtered... (Score:2)
Re:this is great.... (Score:3, Informative)
No, I'm pretty sure the Iranian government wasn't blocking sites with bomb-making tips since those are so useful for the, er, "cause". In fact, the fine article says:
[Iranian] government ministers issued a blacklist of 15,000 forbidden "immoral" websites that ISPs in the country must block -- reportedly a mix of adult sites and political news and information outlets
So, they were blocking por
Re:this is great.... (Score:2)
Awesome! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Awesome! (Score:2)
Re:Awesome! (Score:2)
Kjella
Anarchist's Cookbook? (Score:2)
Sounds like a good way to get rid of them. Hell, I say we have VoA directly link to the anarchist's cookbook. Get rid of 20 terrorists an hour that way.
When will Americans need it for copyright? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:When will Americans need it for copyright? (Score:2, Interesting)
Now.
Aren't you running a Freenet node yet?
tinfoil hat warning (Score:2, Interesting)
Also, the fact that 'the company' agreed probably means they agree to a whole bunch of other terms to, which might include log-access to non-iranian surfers.
Fight the system. (Score:5, Funny)
Could some Iranian please set up a proxy so that we can bounce back and use anonymizer for free. Thanks :-)
So now I just need to ... (Score:3, Funny)
Muwahahahahahahahaha
Topsy Turvy. (Score:5, Insightful)
How come these things are not good enough for US
Be Careful of What You Wish For... (Score:3, Insightful)
I suppose you also want martial law?
Re:Topsy Turvy. (Score:3, Interesting)
Em... that's what they promise. Wake up and smell the cofee, dude. If iraq is ever gonna get such stuff, they'll have to stamp it out themselves. And if the US is ever gonna build it, it will be for the powers that be (i.e. the US oil buddies), not for the ordinary people. ALL aid-oranisations agree on the
Might be a good reason (Score:2, Interesting)
My guess is that U.S. Millitary special ops who are undercover need to be able to safely communicate back home with out fear of being discovered by the local government. This could also be a big benifit to anyone who is trying to escape to freedom to coordinate things with relitives back home.
How does this help? (Score:3, Insightful)
Jason
ProfQuotes [profquotes.com]
Holy crap... (Score:2, Funny)
privacy for US users? (Score:4, Funny)
We now need someone to create a system that lets US users tunnel INTO Iran so we can use Iran's privacy protection (funded by the US gub'mint) to protect US users from the US gub'mints warrantless TIA Big Brother spy programs.
Why only Iran (Score:3, Interesting)
Why doesn't the US do the same for the Chinese people? Last I heard their government had bolcked off google! (correct me if that is wrong). Is it because the US wants to trade with China but doesn't care for the business Iran can provide? Where is the true spirit of freedom?
Where is the true spirit of RTFA? (Score:3, Informative)
A bill that passed the U.S. House of Representatives last month would create an Office of Global Internet Freedom that would have up to a $50 million annual budget to help citizens of foreign repressive governments skirt Internet censorship.
I'm conflicted (Score:2)
Yay for giving Iranians open internet access. Boo for the USA undermining Yet Another Government's authority.
Dancing with the devil (Score:5, Insightful)
On second thought, it depresses me.
Re:Dancing with the devil (Score:3, Interesting)
US citizens having tanks would be considered a tool of terrorism, but the US uses them all the time. Same goes for M-16s, body armor, and a million other examples.
It's a fact of life that any dangerous weapon belonging to US citizens is considered a weapon of extremeists that want to overthrow the government, while that weapon is quite useful to the government itself. That's just how things work. Look at cryptography as well... Plenty
Re:Dancing with the devil (Score:3, Insightful)
And it's **STILL** censored! (Score:4, Insightful)
So, the object is to provide Iranians with access to political sites that the Iranian government wants blocked. As a taxpayer, I want to know what filter is being used, and what political sites are still being blocked.
Active bloggers (Score:2)
For those who haven't discovered, Iran has a very vibrant community of bloggers, for those interested, start at Hoder's blog [hoder.com].
I haven't had a lot good to say about the current US administration, but funding anonymizers is an excellent move, that may help a lot of people.
However, it may become a rat-race between the anonymizing services and the Iranian authorities, who will try to block it.
Any suggestions how the anonym
Lance in bed with the enemy? (Score:2)
A poster on the previous article on this subject (surely it's not just a dupe...) pointed out that Anonymizer is, in a way, a single-point-of-failure for the something-to-hide community. Without the Anonymizer, one out of a bazillion ISP's might have information about your surfing habits. With Anonymizer, all the "potentially hazardous" surfing is right there in one place.
I've never heard an
Iran...view from a Barskahye (Score:5, Insightful)
In the late 70's, students were protesting the overthrow of the Shah because he was corrupt, pro-West, etc.
Now, in Iran, the children of the students who were protesting in the 70's, are the same people who are protesting against the corrupt Ayatollah and his cronies. The students as well as the majority middle class is aching for Western reforms. They overthrew the shah because he was corrupt, but only a handful of the government owns the majority of the wealth in the country. Essentially, they have turned into a socialist nation and the people are fed up.
It is only a matter of time they will be a more moderate nation again, sharing with the world the beauty of the nation. The US's persistent feeding of western ideas is only fueling a fire of revolution that the Iranian people (sidenote: being of Persian-Armenian descent, we hate referring to ourselves as Iranians, sounds so 1980...) will take part in.
What does this have to do with the
Why start at '79 (Score:4, Insightful)
So the students rebelled thinking they were going to get a democracy, but instead got a dictatorship that was even worse than the previous one. One that saw as its mission the export of islamic fundamentalism and the funding of terrorist groups.
Skip many years. Fast forward through Iran-Iraq war and our role in helping both sides with intel so that neither side would wons, etc...
Now we're sponsoring freedom and democracy. About 50 years and hundreds of thousands of lives too late, but better late than never, right?
If all of this anonymizer shit means the people of Iran will get some help freeing themselves from a group of bloodthirsty fundamentalist fuckwads, great. But let's not delude ourselves about our real motivations. We use lofty language about democracy when it suits us, and just as easily discard it to support dictators.
By the way, there hasn't been a Persia for a long time. It's been "Iran" since 1935. If you want to make yourself sound like a rug or a cat, be my guest.
Blacklist (Score:2)
In May, government ministers issued a blacklist of 15,000 forbidden "immoral" websites that ISPs in the country must block -- reportedly a mix of adult sites and political news and information outlets.
So, when does Anonymizer become added to this blacklist?
Revenge? (Score:2)
That'll last all of two seconds (Score:4, Insightful)
It'll last until the Iranian goverment puts blocks on their border routers and then it's case closed.
China has followed and blocked all such services from their country and in some cases has recorded what the people were doing through those sites first (IIRC).
wow talk about irony (Score:3, Insightful)
DECSS... hello????
pretty soon i will have to use a foreign system like this and i live in MICHIGAN!!
since i am not sure if its legal to link to this site i will just post the URL
http://raisethefist.com/index1.html
So let me get this straight... (Score:5, Insightful)
Why are Iranians entitled to view more of the web then Americans?
Re:So let me get this straight... (Score:3, Interesting)
hmm anonymizers are not so anonymous (Score:5, Insightful)
He used a US based anonymiser service to cover up his contacts with the police. He was caught because the anonymizer sevice in question happily cooperated with the legal forces, after some pressure from the dutch police and their US counterparts.
I don't approve of this guy's actions. He actually poisoned someone (who survived) with his actions. Apparently he actually tried out the poison on his goat to make sure the stuff wouldn't kill anyone. However it's a clear demonstration that anonymizers are just as anonymous as the FBI/CIA wants them to be. Anyone using the anonymizer.com services can be sure someone is watching what they do.
Triangle-boy (Score:4, Informative)
Here's a whitepaper on Triangle Boy [safewebinc.com], a solution to allow users to circumvent a censoring firewall (with the help of an external network of proxies, of course).
It's a little complex, so I advise you read the article to get the details, but here's my take: The general idea is the user behind the firewall doesn't connect to a single proxy; instead, it connects to any one of a network of ever-changing mini-proxies. These mini-proxies forward the request to the real proxy.
The mini-proxies can be blocked, but you just switch to a different mini-proxy. In order to reduce load on the mini-proxies, the real proxy returns data directly to the user, but with a spoofed ip address of the mini-proxy.
Pretty cool.
U.S. Funds Anonymizer for Iranians (Score:3, Funny)
"Funds Anonymizer", heh...
-JT
Land of the free? (Score:5, Insightful)
Let me get this straight -- if I go to a public library, my browsing is censored by mandate of the U.S. government (unless the librarians are rebels, of course).
But an Iranian can browse the web free of government-imposed censorship?
Aarrrgggghhhhhh!
Actually, the dichotomy makes sense: the U.S. government wants to control its own populace while mucking about in the politics of other countries. The U.S. government doesn't care about the freedoms of the Iranian people; it just wants to undermine the Iranian government.
Well, I hope those Iranians enjoy their freedom now; as soon as the U.S. trumps up enough false data to "liberate" Iran, they'll be in the same boat we are in terms of censorship and spying.
"May you live in interesting times", indeed.
Re:Land of the free? (Score:3, Insightful)
Indeed.
Capitalistic governments are little more than agents for transnational corporations. There's nothing wrong with business, or profit -- the problem is greed and gluttony. A case in point: profiteering in Iraq by companies associated with Bush's cronies (Cheney and Haliburton, for example).
And don't get me started on corporate-controlled WTO polic
Could get people killed (Score:3, Insightful)
Otherwise it only makes you anonymous to the site your a visiting. Not the effect they are going for I'm sure.
Even the attempts to connect to the changing ip address as the article states could be tracked and used to identify people trying to use the service, expect a visit if you do this.
Remember the government controls all the wires in the country, it's trivial to sniff the traffic or track usage on the proxy server they use I'm sure.
I would think they would be better off funding GPG so the people could communicate with each other freely and organize. Also no worry about black lists or gambling, or reading slashdot.
It allows for no more abuse than SSL and authentication to a forum site on the web and is probably more accessable to users in Iran anyway.
And it seems more realistic than one point of failure/survelance like anonymizer.com.
Becareful if you use this, make sure you understand how it works and what protections it really provides.
Cheers
cool - maybe they'll do the same for us (Score:3, Funny)
Double standard (Score:5, Insightful)
When it comes to so called economic self interests, nothing goes too far, such as procesuting russians for violating absurd laws such as the DMCA, allowing industry lobby groups such as the RIAA to deny people the right to share files and make personal copies, removing the right to reverse engineer, removing the right to invent because of software patents (which it is trying to push through worldwide).
In short: the USA government also is restricting a lot of people (their own and elsewhere), not representing the people (as should be in a democracy) but instead representing those who have the money to bribe the politicians and to buy laws.
Young Iranians are rebels (Score:3, Interesting)
I wonder how effective the actual blocking within Iran is. I know that many Iranians can be found on Yahoo Chat. Iranians also download mp3's and porno. I doubt the filesharing services and chat would ever be effectively blocked by the Iranian government. Nevertheless, the anonymizer should help Iranians read western media and get a more accurate report of the world's news.
Imagine if most of the rich and educated Iranians had't fled to places like Los Angeles, Toronto, Dubai, Washington, D.C., Paris and London. The Islamic government would have been dead by now.
Notes from a months' travel in Iran... (Score:4, Informative)
1- Internet access is unfiltered, from what I could tell. From pr0n to sites advocating political dissent, people where happy to show me that things weren't blocked in Internet cafes. Since most people access the net from these cafes, they benefit from a layer of anonymity assuming that they can afford the $0.50-0.80us/hour rates.
2- The government is a complex machine. THE PEOPLE VOTE for their elected representative. Mr Khatami, the current president is a reformist. However, he cannot push reforms through too fast for a host of reasons, the first being that the country's spiritual leader, Ayatollah Khameini holds veto power over all decisions made by the elected government. Khameini also controls the military and the police. The conservatives, on their part, cannot block all reform, for the knowledge that reformists get violent if there's no progress. The end result is a country that's slowly moving towards reform. Conservatives think things are moving too fast, reformists think things are moving too slowly, but most people agree that the last thing the country needs is another war or revolution - far too many people die then. From my visit, I'm steadfast in my opinion that Iran will sort itself out on it's own, but it will take time. Sort of like Turkey, which has gone from an Islamic Monarchy in the 1910's to a democratic state today.
3- America's allies in the Middle East, such as the United Arab Emirates (spent 2 weeks there), do have filters, and nasty ones at that. There is only one ISP in the UAE, the governements, and it filters lots. I could frequently reach a blocked site when following links in slashdot stories, and there's nothing that you can do about getting those sites unblocked. The government of the UAE is a big-time monarchy, but is Open for Business. Will the proxy be available to the UAE? I don't think so.
4- Iran isn't as isolated as you would think, and a lot of this is due to the Internet and the availability of cheap international phone calls. For example, I was in the city of Qom, some 180km south of Tehran on the 17th of December. This is the conservative hub of the country. Ayatollah Khomeini was born and operated from there, and the city is home to the important Shiite shrine of Fatimeh's tomb. Through a long sequence of happenstance events, I found myself touring a school, and was amused when a teacher gave a copy of The Two Towers on vcd to the vice-principal who was showing me around. Information flows...
Iran does still leave a lot to be desired, but people seem generally happy, the standard of education is high, and there's universal medicare for citizens... but most medical drugs have to be purchased from smugglers because of some country's trade embargo. Certainly the lifting of the later wourld be a much better perceived sign of goodwill than an unnecessary proxy.
Big Falacy (Score:3, Insightful)
The anonymizer.com service protects you from the sites that you are connecting to, not really from anyone else. Your web accesses go through the anonymizer site, then get stripped of any identifying information, and then are sent to the destination. This is useful when you don't want to be tracked by Doubleclick, or you want to view a site that you don't trust with your IP address, but it does nothing to prevent sniffers from seeing who you intend to connect to if they can see the traffic before it hits the anonymizer. (Which Iran is surely doing.)
This is actually worse than doing nothing at all, because some mistaken Iranians may believe that their actions are protected from snooping when in fact the Iranian government is probably paying more attention to this kind of traffic. It could get someone killed or imprisoned.
Luckily all those Iranians that want to protect their identity from Doubleclick will be safe, though.
It's really unbelievable how many bad security decisions are made every day by organizations that should know better. All you really have to do is think about a security problem for a second in a real-life context and it becomes obvious how stupid this answer is. Imagine sending a kid into a store to buy you something, but the person you really are trying to avoid is standing right next to you, listening to you tell the kid what to buy.
*sigh* I applaud the intentions, but I guess it's too much to expect that they think it through a little first.
Obligatory Conspiracy Theory (Score:3, Interesting)
Maybe they all got modded down, but I'm noticing a disturbing lack of conspiracy theories, for the slashdot crowd.
Personally, I see this as more of the same TIA/PATRIOT nonsense we've been enduring since 9/11. I find it far more likely that the GWB / Ashcroft crowd is using this as a tool for our own 'National Security'. Of the following 2 scenarios, which seems more likely given the practices we've seen from the current US administration?
A> Washington truly and deeply cares for the plight of the Iranian citizen, and the censorship they're subjected to by their oppressive government, despite showing no such concern for its own citizens.
B> Washington provides 'anonymous' internet access, in order to monitor the browsing activities of 'potential terrorists'. (Read: Everyone in Iran). All in the name of national security of course.
Considering the US's track record on things like this, I'm personally voting for B. Total Information Awareness really said it all for me. The United States Government has decided that privacy is the antithesis of freedom and security. I find it really hard to take this act at face value, considering the US's current stance on Internet Anonymity.
Re:P2P Version? (Score:2)
" So where's the p2p version of this software? Seriously..."
Sourceforge [sourceforge.net]
Yes, yes, I know it's not *exactly* the same...