As Elections Approach, Iran Uses "Far More Advanced" Internet Censorship (dailydot.com) 40
Patrick O'Neill writes: Election time in Iran means increased censorship for the country's tens of millions of Internet users. But this months parliamentary election, experts say, comes with a new level of aggressive censorship from a government notorious for authoritarianism in cyberspace. "What's happening [right now] is far more advanced than anything we've seen before," said Karl Kathuria, CEO of Psiphon Inc., the company behind the widely popular encryption and circumvention tool Psiphon. "It's a lot more concentrated attempt to stop these services from working."
Nice (Score:3)
It helps the iranians remember whom to elect. I really look forward to these votes, the deal with the western world has enabled more liberal candidates to be accredited.
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Hey, these Iraqis are awesome. I know! Let's give them weapons and money and pretend they're not a dictatorship for a little while! And then we get moody, we'll just claim they have built weapons of mass destruction, for which we and the Germans delivered components. Also lets ignore other countries sources that that is not reliable intel and start an illegal war against UN recommendations. Let's then burn the place down, kill tens of thousands of innocent people there, abduct some to other countries and th
Re:Sweet (Score:4, Insightful)
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Oh, great. Now I suddenly want to support the terrorists to help get rid of politicians.
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How do you think a country like Iran (or NK for that matter) would use drones or atomics compared to the US?
Re:Sweet (Score:5, Insightful)
You are President Truman. You have lost nearly 300,000 servicemen and women, plus many more civilians. You have just helped to defeat a very nasty Germany. The Japanese have defended the near islands (Saipan, Guam, Iwo Jima) to nearly the last man. Those fights were nasty The home islands have been mobilized down to even school children with pitchforks. An unbeaten Japan means you will have to deal with them for years in the future. The American people are damn tired of war. To invade Japan, your military leaders tell you, will take anywhere from nearly all you have lost so far to upwards of 1 million, they cannot be precise. The Russians are establishing their asses in Eastern Europe, Stalin likes to make trouble. They have kicked Japanese butt in Manchuria but have no fleet to assail the home islands.
You have some nukes which may or may not work, and which may or may not cause Japan to capitulate. And you only have 2 or 3 of them. What do you do Mr. President? You must act one way or another. To leave an unbowed Japan means to declare defeat and tell Americans they've wasted all those lives in the Pacific. And you have to tell them there will be a low grade military conflict for the next 10 years which could lead to another war just as bad as the current one.
The U.S. made the correct decision. Attempting to re-write history with all the accumulated facts it took 50 years to uncover and then accuse the U.S. of being negligent in not knowing all them at the time (and I'd dispute that "current" analysis) is just disingenuous.
The U.S was attacked by Muslim nutjobs who declared war on the U.S. The U.S. tries to minimize civilian casualties. To leave the Muslim nutjobs unfought means to hand them the tools to attack the U.S. mainland, which they have pledged to do time and again. You are President Bush or Obama, you must act or watch Americans die at the hands of Muslim nutjobs claiming it would be wrong to fight back. What do you do Mr. President?
The Muslim nutjobs didn't need any reason, and indeed had none, to attack the U.S. They did it because it is a means to political power in attracting recruits. If the West didn't exist, they would need to invent it. Religion is beside the point for them other than it is a very convenient recruiting tool.
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My Father had spent the previous 6 years or so fighting some Germans in France, North Africa and Italy, but was told in about June 1945 he would be sent to Japan.
I can tell you, he thought Truman made the right choice.
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While we're remembering, let's remember that the use of nuclear weapons ended a war started by Germany and Japan that had killed tens of millions, and the use of those weapons probably saved Japanese lives.
Obama abandoned Iranian people in 2009 (Score:1)
Iranians were in open revolt in 2009 [wikipedia.org]
If Obama were a Islamic Manchurian candidate, what more could he have done for radical Islam?
He's allowed ISIS to grow.
He gave nukes and $150 billion to the Iranian mullahs - after leaving them in power in 2009. And leaving the mullahs in power wasn't based on non-interference principles. Just ask Muammar Gaddaffi about that...
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Nixon was convinced if he had remained in office, South Vietnam would not have fallen, and he was probably right.
The new president inherits the country as it is, not as he wishes it was.
Re:Obama abandoned Iranian people in 2009 (Score:5, Insightful)
Iranians were in open revolt in 2009 [wikipedia.org]
If Obama were a Islamic Manchurian candidate, what more could he have done for radical Islam?
Well he could have attacked the Iranian regime with heavy rhetoric and publicly allied himself with the protesters. That would have made it easy for the regime to discredit and kill the reformist movement.
Instead he stayed back and a few years later got a relatively reformist president who's on much better terms with the west.
He's allowed ISIS to grow.
Because a Whabbist Sunni Arab movement is totally relevant to this discussion about a Shia Persian country.
He gave nukes
Yeah, because there's no more effective way to give someone nukes than by having them shut down their nuclear program and undergo a level of inspections generally loved by weapons inspectors.
and $150 billion to the Iranian mullahs
Shame on him for giving Iran back their own money!
And leaving the mullahs in power wasn't based on non-interference principles. Just ask Muammar Gaddaffi about that...
Brilliant idea, take the Muslim country in the middle east with the most sympathetic population to the US and then launch an unprovoked war again them, that's the way to combat terrorism!
Great point using Gaddaffi as a reference too, because Libya is doing absolutely great since then!!
UN Hypocrisy (Score:1)
Why the hell doesn't the UN condemn these countries? In 1948, the UN general assembly voted in favor of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This document supports freedom of speech and thought, of which Iran's actions are totally contrary to. Why is the UN silent on these matters? The UN has no right to condemn anyone for human rights violations if it is willing to turn its back on its own 1948 declaration.
Not to worry (Score:1)
New and better circumvention tools are on the way, but even they can't through an ISP that cuts you off entirely. I hope wireless mesh can get around that problem eventually.
Suggestion to Iran: flip IPv4 (Score:2)
Iran can really do this by altering IPv4 within their borders. Define public addresses as private, private addresses as public, and then use that in all their internet communications. Of course, they have to redo their routers. Maybe get Huawei to do it for them
Do that, and they effectively have an intranet, and foreign packets would go haywire trying to come in.
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Even with such a system in place, there has to be a way to tunnel out. But the worst blockage is at the ISP. Without them, there is no internet. The internet needs to route around them.
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That's what they don't want. They want to stop foreign packets from getting to their citizens.
I understand perfectly. I am only interested in getting around it. If they cut the cables and/or mess with DNS and NAT translation, let's send in a radio signal for them to piggyback. Even at 300 baud, it's better than nothing.
The U.S. is much more civilized (Score:4, Insightful)
Instead of censoring the internet, we use superdelegates [politicususa.com] to fix elections, and let people say whatever they like. After all the opinion of the people are irrelevant so why not?
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I find it interesting to see how Europeans get so testy whenever any other country is mentioned. Seems like you are projecting quite a bit there!
This post should make you happy since it only talks about Europeans, even only the failings, unlike the ability of Americans to consider a bigger picture.
Oops! Ha Ha, just did that to goad you further obviously. If you don't want buttons pressed you may not want to wear them on your sleeve.
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Is it quite simply a relationship measure ie censorship in Iran vs we do not give a fuck what you say in the US we can ignore you any way, main stream media says so, again and again and again and again an nausea. So they basically censor you internally unless you say what they want to hear versus blocking you from 'hmm' listening to other people they do not want you to listen to.
For the likes of Iran that means switching from a IP blocking system to an IP allowing system ie all IPs are blocked, until the
They're doing it wrong (Score:3)
Everyone knows that when you want to manipulate elections, you make large anonymous campaign contributions. And to manipulate public sentiment, have a couple guys own all the news media, and you can each do favors for each other. This way everything is legit.
It's all relative (Score:2)
By Western standards, Iran is a deeply flawed democracy.
Yet there is much more antagonism directed against Iran than a great many countries which are not democracies at all.
And if anything the censorship is proof that the elections are already on their way to bringing change.