Iran Blocks Google, Moves Forward With Domestic Network Plans 134
hlovy writes "Iran moved forward with their previously discussed plans for a domestic version of the Internet over the weekend, as government officials announced that Google would be one of the first websites to be filtered through their state-controlled information network. According to Reuters, officials are claiming that the country's self-contained version of the World Wide Web, which was first announced last week, is part of an initiative to improve cyber security. However, it will reportedly also give the country the ability to better control the type of information that users can access online."
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Re:Hey (Score:5, Insightful)
It means Iranian the business, education and research industries will be starved of the valuable interactions that have made the Internet such a key part of the global economy. Even China is wise enough not to actually build a wall, contenting itself with imperfect filtering.
This whole concept underlines what is so critically wrong with the Iranian regime. It's not that it is an authoritarian government, it's that it is an authoritarian government that knows a lot about being authoritarian, but lacks the imagination or wit to understand that if you keep adopting measures that suppress economic activity, sooner or later the house of cards will topple and the very power you seek to keep in your clutches will fall away.
Even Burma/Myanmar has finally figured it out, as it watches its neighbors making vast fortunes as its own economy underperform with tragic social consequences. Iran is rapidly moving to join North Korea in the incurable basket case club. Yes, they will likely have nukes like NK does, and that will certainly mean they are immune from direct threat, but internally it will be a situation of where the elite spend their days and nights wondering whether they should point the nukes at neighboring countries, or at their own populace.
Re:Hey (Score:4, Insightful)
Shh.. keep it down (Score:2)
What Iran has that China and Burma lack? (Score:3)
This whole concept underlines what is so critically wrong with the Iranian regime. It's not that it is an authoritarian government, it's that it is an authoritarian government that knows a lot about being authoritarian, but lacks the imagination or wit to understand that if you keep adopting measures that suppress economic activity, sooner or later the house of cards will topple and the very power you seek to keep in your clutches will fall away.
You mentioned 3 countries - Iran, China and Burma.
You also pointed out that China and Burma have not done what Iran is doing.
Now, let me ask you this - What truly differentiate the Iranian dictatorship from that of Burma and/or China?
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They have their own version of AOL now.
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According to this link from the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, Iran is a middle income developing country:
http://unctad.org/en/Docs/iteipc20057_en.pdf
It just needs to going through the pain that the West had to take in separating Church from stat
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Actually, it was less Obama being a SEKRIT MOOSLIM and more likely him getting pressured by Israel not to interfere.
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How long until the first idiot shows up to say things are just as bad in the US.
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I'm not going to say that, but I could see it happening. All they'd have to do is tell people that it's to stop pedophiles & terrorists and far too many people would be perfectly OK with it. It's not that bad here, but give it a few years and it may get there... the only difference is that here we will vote for it.
Not even that ....
Here in the States especially here in the Bible Belt, there are folks who vote on "Social Issues". And when you actaully listen to everything they have to say - get'em going and you'll hear it! - what they describe for what they want for this country isn't too far off from what is happening in Iran, Saudi Arabia, and any other country that has oppressive societies.
When you point that out to them, they usually respond with "that's different".
It's only wrong when Islamic countries do it.
Bel
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The Tea Party doesn't have room for intolerance and hate
Sure, sure [huffingtonpost.com].
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Same same, but different.
A government doesn't need censorship when it has good propaganda like "there is WMD in Irak".
That would be a clear example, but governments all over the world do the same thing.
Perhaps the question boils down to what is worse. Not knowing because of censorship, or being lied to by the government.
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Re:Hey (Score:5, Insightful)
They wanted an Islamic government, and now they have one.
They got what they asked for, but not what they wanted. At that time, they didn't think about any back out or early termination clauses either.
"Every country has the government it deserves (Toute nation a le gouvernement qu’elle mérite)" -- Joseph de Maistre, Lettres et Opuscules Inédits vol. 1, letter 53, written on 15 August 1811 and published in 1851.
Re:Hey (Score:5, Insightful)
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Mossadeq was a socialist, not communist. He was certainly democratically elected, and he did not dismantle the country's democratic institutions - indeed, while in power, he curbed the privileges of the monarch quite a bit - so that makes him a democrat. "Liberal" can be debated, but he was no conservative.
some will want it. (Score:3)
It's not clear that it's not what they wanted. Sure, many in Iran won't want this, but I suspect a good number of people (i.e. the mullas and hard line Islamists) will be more than happy to cut themselves off from the Infidels. Maybe an international islamic internet will emerge from this with Iran being the central hub...where no one insults Muhammed or Islamic governments.
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Re:Hey (Score:5, Interesting)
The Iranian revolution was anything but. My relatives tell me that the Shah was reasonably fair — sure, kind of a dictator, but he and his father had taken the country from an agragrian backwater to a modern industrial society in a matter of two generations — and basically... the U.S. funded student groups, pro-democracy organizations, &c and sowed dissent so that none of them would agree enough to stand in unity... and then gave guns to the Ayatollah. All because the Shah had the audacity to defy U.S. regional interests... funny, since the U.S. basically cemented the power of the Shah too (didn't count on an educated populace making a gradual transition to democracy, eh?). Left to their own devices, in all likelihood there would have been a democratic revolution in the 80s and the entire geopolitical situation would be different.
My father and many of his friends are still here in the U.S. because they were in a University exchange program learning various engineering disciplines when it all went down. It really is a shame... and then the youth attempted a real revolution just before the Arab Spring, and ... well, where was the U.S. when people started disappearing and the Revolutionary Guard was slaughtering people on the streets? Really, the work of the CIA in 70s is amazing: they managed to install such a brutally repressive regime that any hope of the people revolting has been quelled for over 30 years. It's not in our best interests to have a free Iran, or a free middle east. But, hey, when we think the populace is sheepish enough to accept a puppet... time to liberate!
The United States of Apostasy (Score:4, Insightful)
My relatives tell me that the Shah was reasonably fair â" sure, kind of a dictator, but he and his father had taken the country from an agragrian backwater to a modern industrial society in a matter of two generations â" and basically... the U.S. funded student groups, pro-democracy organizations, &c and sowed dissent so that none of them would agree enough to stand in unity... and then gave guns to the Ayatollah.
I really like the United States of America. I stayed there for many many years, and there, I have met with a lot of very, very good friends.
I love the American spirit. I truly admire the original intent of America - At least according to what the founding fathers (and also President Abe Lincoln) had written, including the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Gettysburg Address.
However, I have to confess that I simply can not understand what the government of USA is doing, for the past few decades.
Instead of carrying out the mission of the founding fathers, the US government has been doing a lot to the opposite.
Many years from now, historians in the future will compile the things the the government of the United States of America had been doing, since World War I, and they will find out that the United States of America is no more than a "name", a "label", a "billboard".
The spirit that made America so much different from the rest is long gone.
It's unfortunate, but it's the truth.
Nowadays it's not cool to say things that I've said, and I know that I will be modded down.
But, if this message (and others) can be archived, so that future generations get the chance to read, they may get to see a clearer picture of what is happening right now.
Novell, baby (Score:3)
IPX/SPX FTW!
Re:Novell, baby (Score:4, Funny)
IPX/SPX FTW!
...
Half of me wants to punch you right now.
The other half want's to climb to the mountaintop and shout "APPLETALK!!!"
Don't be evil corrolary (Score:2)
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I suggest we allow Google to commit one evil act
Scandalous!
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Re:So, basically Iran is deploying a LAN? (Score:5, Insightful)
Sounds like a big LAN to me. But, it might be harder for us to get viruses into them now.
In the end it won't be about viruses, but Twitter, Facebook, various blogs and forums, which they want to keep their people away from, so the only source of information becomes the state. If you can't trust the state, whom can you trust?
BTW, Ahmadinejad has won the next election by a landslide, take their word for it.
Re:So, basically Iran is deploying a LAN? (Score:5, Informative)
BTW, Ahmadinejad has won the next election by a landslide, take their word for it.
No he hasn't because his final term is up soon and he can't run again. That doesn't matter though as he is just a disposable puppet, the real power lies with the Supreme Leader who doesn't need to concern himself with silly things like elections.
Re:So, basically Iran is deploying a LAN? (Score:5, Interesting)
I think we know enough about Iran's internal power dynamic to know that Khameini and the Guardian Council themselves are just figureheads. It certainly was the case when Khomeini was Supreme Leader that the position was unassailable, but Khameini was always considered a relatively weak man, and almost certainly since 2009 Iran is now really run by the Revolutionary Guard and the leadership of the Basij. If Khameini was independent before, he is now a sick old man dominated by the "guardians of the Islamic revolution", and most certainly when he kicks the bucket, the next Supreme Leader will be the Revolutionary Guard's man. The day when the Supreme Leader was an independent authority capable of bringing the other factions to heal are gone. Iran is essentially a thinly veiled military dictatorship.
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I think we know enough about Iran's internal power dynamic to know that Khameini and the Guardian Council themselves are just figureheads. It certainly was the case when Khomeini was Supreme Leader that the position was unassailable, but Khameini was always considered a relatively weak man, and almost certainly since 2009 Iran is now really run by the Revolutionary Guard and the leadership of the Basij. If Khameini was independent before, he is now a sick old man dominated by the "guardians of the Islamic revolution", and most certainly when he kicks the bucket, the next Supreme Leader will be the Revolutionary Guard's man. The day when the Supreme Leader was an independent authority capable of bringing the other factions to heal are gone. Iran is essentially a thinly veiled military dictatorship.
Yep. Next president will be hand picked and approved of by the Republican Guard.
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Sounds like a big LAN to me. But, it might be harder for us to get viruses into them now.
A big LAN is a WAN. There are also some technical differences that make a WAN a WAN (WANs use different IP address space, and most specifically are a network composed of networks, unlike a LAN which is almost always a single network), although there isn't really a set rule that I am aware of that distinguishes a large LAN from a WAN.
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A big LAN is a WAN
No, a big LAN is a big LAN. What makes a LAN, CAN, MAN, and WAN is just distance:
-LAN = Local area network. Usually, this is a single building, regardless how many networks are inside
-CAN = Campus area network. Multiple buildings on the same property connected together. These usually take a different set of hardware & may start using routing.
-MAN = Metro area network. Buildings on separate properties connected together in the same metro area. Usually done by radio or laser wireless or private leased fib
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I normally don't respond to AC, but this is too incorrect to let it go:
Network protocols and speeds and boundaries (as in routers vs switches, firewalls, etc) usually differentiate LAN's and WAN's.
So, one place I worked at had 30 locations across a state connected by 1gbit links, running ethernet. Are you really trying to say that such a network is a LAN simply because they are fast links & not talking HDLC?
Wikipedia:
A Wide Area Network (WAN) is a network that covers a broad area (i.e., any network that links across metropolitan, regional, or national boundaries)
Hmm..not mention of protocols or speed.
How about Webster's?
a network of computers (as the Internet) in a large area (as a country or the globe) for sharing resources or exchanging data
How about some fucking common sense:
LOCAL vs WIDE = nothing do to with speed or protocol.
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I think a nice way to define them is at what network level they operate. e.g. LANs don't use routers... they use switches.
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Stupid is as stupid blocks. (Score:1)
Re:Stupid is as stupid blocks. (Score:5, Insightful)
what is wrong with google (in the eyes of iran) is that it allows for easy access to education. education is the enemy of a religious based government such as the iranian government. education makes the masses less likely to believe in religious doctrine.
basically, this is the equivalent of burning the library of alexandria.
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they seem to be cultured and enlightened people who have a lot of respect for education
Yes, but unfortunately those are also the same people who tend NOT to be the ones with the guns and ammunition to change the policies set by the people who do.
Makes you wonder what kind of sadistic fuck would come up with such a paradigm on purpose, doesn't it?
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The Iranians I've met buck the trend with Islam in general -- they seem to be cultured and enlightened people who have a lot of respect for education.
No doubt you've also noticed that these people mostly tend to live in exile outside of Iran, either as private businessmen or as academics in American and European universities. The intelligent and cultured people with the means to do so mostly fled the country after the Iranian Revolution of 1979 and many of them haven't been back since. So the people that you meet are mostly not the ones who can effect any sort of real change in their former homeland. They're nice people, but any change isn't going to sta
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The Iranians I've met buck the trend with Islam in general -- they seem to be cultured and enlightened people who have a lot of respect for education.
You should also try meeting Indonesian, Malay, Thai and Brunai Muslims.
That's most of the Muslim world right there so you'll quickly realise that they are the trend and the stereotypes perpetuated by the likes of Fox News are the Muslims that buck the trend.
Asian Muslims tend to be extremely moderate and well educated, not to mention quite friendly (as is typical of SE Asian culture in general).
Re:Stupid is as stupid blocks. (Score:4, Informative)
The are specifically targeting Google because Google is not censoring their content. I held a couple shares of Google a couple years ago and censorship based on the demands of certain countries went up for vote. The vote ruled that Google would not censor their content because of governmental demands. This was specifically put up for vote because of their move into China.
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Don't forget that they also censor in the US from demands of the government; specifically in the form of DMCA takedown requests.
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I was mistaken. I thought it passed. It was rejected.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/131745/article.html [pcworld.com]
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just because the republicans base their laws on religious doctrine(and ultimately fails to pass those laws) doesnt mean that the democrats have no reason to pass laws that infringe on our rights
In layman's terms - just because someone points out that Group A is a bunch of douchebags, does not necessarily imply they think Group B is not a bunch of douchebags.
Sad that I feel compelled to simplify it so, but some folks gotta make everything a pissing contest, you know?
Not quite an iron curtain (Score:2)
But the effect of cutting their people off from the rest of the world appears to be the goal.
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hey, does this qualify as a google beheading?
tune in friday night and find out!
Just wait. (Score:2, Funny)
Ask Slashdot: Creating your own network.
Hi Slashdotters, I work for the Ayatollahs of Iran. As you may know, we have decided to create our own internet, without the dangers of a free society like porn (seeing any part of a woman besides her eyes), pictures of Muhammed (Allah Akbar!), and Jewish influence (banks). I bought a Linksys router and am reading the user manual, however I do not understand how this works. There is a thin cable with 2 large metal sticks on one side. I thought it would plug into m
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Re: the 4 ports. It's OK, without porn, jokes against religion, and banking, no more than four people will want to use the Internet at any given time anyways, so that'll be fine. Probably won't even have to set up timesharing.
Oh and Linksys is unfortunately not CAMEL compatible. I'm not sure where you could get a router that is, but you can probably Goog... oh, wait, right.
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Only four connections? Just get a big bag of tee connectors [google.com].
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When I go to that site, I get the following error message:
BANNED: This website has been blocked by the Ayatollahs for promoting intolerance against Muslims. For attempting to access it, our Revolutionary Guard ninjas will be coming to arrest you, put you in front on a puppet court, and sentence you to death. To save yourself some time, you can always leave a loaded AK-47 in your doorstep and the ninjas will be more than happy to stage a suicide for you.
Sincerely - The Ayatollahs
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LOL (Score:5, Funny)
"self-contained version of the World Wide Web"
You're doing it wrong.
Re:LOL (Score:5, Funny)
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the loopback subnet is easy to filter and still performs quite well.
I think they'll enjoy that level of connectivity.
IPv4 (Score:4, Interesting)
Is this going to free up a bit of IPv4 address space?
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Is this going to free up a bit of IPv4 address space?
No, because the rulers will still want to see both the public and private Internet.
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Back! Back to the middle ages. (Score:5, Funny)
Unfettered access to information? How unacceptable to my locked-in dogmas.
But nuclear power? That's a technology my stupid caveman government can support.
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How unacceptable to my locked-in dogmas.
as long as you let them run outside twice a day and keep their water dishes filled I don't see a problem.
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they're on a collision course for building nuclear powered datacenters.
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That's pretty much true. Not sure what your point is though.
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It was implied. Don't be willfully dense.
On a clear day (Score:3)
This is very good (Score:2)
I'm sure many of us are very interested how well such a blockade holds up. Let them do their worse, and let the games begin. The first one to break through wins an iPhone and a stuffed Mohamed doll.
So they're creating their own Internet? (Score:3)
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Proper Islamic internet with no images! (Score:3)
This should give Lynx a jump in usage.
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lynx is the one true messenger of god. packets be upon him!
Article poor on details (Score:2)
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It would work very easily. You just drop all the packets at your choke points to international lines. You capture all DNS requests and forward them to approved internal DNS servers, and voila, probably 95% of your Internet surfing populace now can only see internal Iranian servers.
Sure there are ways around it, and the technically savvy will be able to scale the wall, so to speak, but for the bulk of the populace, the Internet ceases to be accessible.
It's like telling your firewall to block all outgoing tra
Beginning of the end? (Score:5, Interesting)
Back when I was in college 10 - 12 years ago the internet was this thing that would never be tamed. It was the wild west of free expression that could never be taken away. Censorship would be automatically routed around and all was good. That was a common belief by many here and in academia. I had one professor, philosophy professor with an undergrad in comp sci from Berkeley back in the 70's and a masters in math, who thought it very differently. He felt by 2020 the beast would be tamed, the powers that be would find ways to regulate it and bring it back under their control. The genie, he insisted, would indeed be put in the bottle. Not only that, but it would be come the tool of easy mass surveillance and that the internet would be the end of privacy as we knew it. I didn't want to believe him either, but a decade later here we are. And it seems like he was more right than wrong.
When China erected its Great Firewall it proved the internet could indeed be censored. Is it perfect, no, but it doesn't have to be. Just good enough. Soon a lot of countries were doing it.
Now, if (and I stress if) Iran can create their own internal network and succeeds then it is the end of the "internet" as we know it. The world wide web will be Balkanized so that content can be better regulated by local regimes.
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Back when I was in college 10 - 12 years ago the internet was this thing that would never be tamed. It was the wild west of free expression that could never be taken away.
So, care to tell me what happened to the wild west?
A very nice move from the Iranian Government (Score:1, Funny)
It's really a nice move from the Iranian Government and it shows us the way things should be handled. They don't like us, so far so good, they can block the
western websites but on our side we MUST block any http request from Iran, and especially for these kinds of websites:
* scientific : no scientific information must be given
Finally... (Score:2)
A project that can be outsourced to China due to expertise and not just cheaper labor.
Who Gets Iran's IPv4 IPs (Score:1)
I say we help them with that (Score:1)
First China... (Score:1)
Google must be doing something right!