Iran Getting Better At Filtering Web Traffic 68
Al writes "Rob Lemos reports that Iran's national ISPs seem to have recently gained the ability to filter large quantities of web traffic more effectively. Arbor Networks used data gathered from distributed network sensors to monitor the data going to Iran from the global internet. The firm found that all of the country's providers showed an enormous drop in traffic following the contested June 12 election, then nearly normal traffic patterns until June 26. After that, five of six national ISPs showed an 80 percent drop in traffic for approximately three weeks. The one internal ISP that continues to see significant traffic during those three weeks counts many government ministries among its clientèle. The picture painted by the data is of an ISP that is becoming increasingly skilled in filtering, says Craig Labovitz, chief scientist for Arbor Networks."
Re:Tactics (Score:5, Interesting)
Lacking in two departments (Score:2, Interesting)
You know, for all those "non-existent" gays, minorities and other undesireables in Iran ... After all, he's still congratulating him for killing (quite literally) dissent, falsifying elections and those general sorts of things socialists admire ? [npr.org]
Democrats ? Why are you all agreeing with this ? Can *any* democrat explain this to me ?
America ... land of the free my ass.
Neither satirically funny nor troll worthy. The last line is bound to ensare loads of karma-hungry Slashdotters. Of course, they will all point out something along the lines of "You're missing the point. Iran is a soverign nation with their rules and regulations and the United States of America is a separate entity. You are confusing the two. It's not Iran... land of the free. Clearly." only with a more smug, more socially-awkward nerd tone.
A more interesting attempt at humor could have been to make a subtle case of the land of dichotomies that is Iran: ruled under a iron-deficient clad fist, yet with pervasive "Western" influences. Not going to do your homework for you, but worth a thought.
A better take on the troll angle would have been to concoct a whole series of web pages that purported several allegations that made mainstream media's lazy journalists publish details onto their front covers, which inevitably show up on Slashdot's "front page."
Helping Iran with freedom of speech (Score:1, Interesting)
Can anyone provide some updates on this - helping Iran citizens get free speech on Internet?
Sorry I'm a bit rusty here. I know we can set up proxy servers, and modify our Twitter accounts, and so on (I use Google) but I'm not sure if the information is still accurate (especially the IP address filtering for proxy services).
Re:is it possible to do (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Tactics (Score:1, Interesting)
UK and USA demand the same listening/spying features from their equipment, so this seems a bit hypocritical.
Not true (Score:1, Interesting)
How do you do this with a telephone switch?
To clarify: Nokia Siemens Networks has provided Lawful Intercept capability solely for the monitoring of local voice calls in Iran. Nokia Siemens Networks has not provided any deep packet inspection, web censorship or Internet filtering capability to Iran.
http://blogs.nokiasiemensnetworks.com/news/2009/06/22/provision-of-lawful-intercept-capability-in-iran/
Re:Helping Iran with freedom of speech (Score:4, Interesting)
Another interesting thing is that international TV is illegal in Iran as well. The police flies around with helicopters and later demolishes the dishes, and fines the owners. DVDs are illegal aswell. Young Iranians are fans of western culture though, and there is a lively black market. Fashion rules continuously loosened in the last decade.
I hope some day the momentum of youth is strong enough to overthrough the old peoples opinion and form government (which is very unpopular). Iran has a lot of potential as a nation. Would it refine its oil within the country instead of exporting it and importing petroleum, it would be a wealthy nation that could afford the best for its citizens.
I wish the Iranian young generation the best.
Re:is it possible to do (Score:2, Interesting)
Owning a dish is illegal in Iran, but it is pretty widespread, and the authorities generally turn a blind eye to it.
I believe they stopped the blind-eye bit a few weeks ago. Saw a photo from Iran a few weeks ago of a truck full of satellite dishes that had apparently been confiscated by uniformed police or paramilitaries. Sorry I can't find the link for you. Looked through my browser history and it's not jumping out at me.
Re:Before jumping to theories (Score:5, Interesting)
I was in Iran recently. It was just before the protests. Internet connectivity in Tehran pretty sluggish. It's like stepping back ten years. Most people are using dial-up. Cybercafes brag that they're hooked up on a 1Mbps DSL.
For kicks, I thought I would dig up something on the CIA World Fact book. cia.gov is blocked. Imagine that.
There were many other sites which were blocked, but for the most part, the censorship on the net was pretty moderate. The real tool in the government arsenal is fear.
It's truly sad what the government is doing. Old technology, like yelling from rooftops seems to be all that you can muster. Apparently the possession and use of encryption technology is illegal, and the govenrment merely has to suspect you of doing something wrong for you to get into serious trouble. Remember too, that just asking your friends to gather at your home is also very suspicious.
Remember too that the government employs tactics like the German Stasi. They corrupt, influence and interfere with citizenry to turn your neighbours into spies. You can never be sure that the person you're talking to is legitimate. So the bad guys aren't aways wearing uniforms or beating people. And the bad guys are often good guys who are just trying to get themselves out of trouble. Your dial-up connection has your name on it and every cybercafe probably has somebody who's loosely in the services of the government.
The Internet is not safe in Iran. Not safe at all. I'm sure the phone systems are just as bad and satellite is, as other posters have pointed out, quite illegal, although comparatively lax in penalties.
The question is how do you create a decentralized kind of communication system which requires legally available technology?
Yelling messages of peace from rooftops is one way to get a message out and avoid being killed for it.
All this wasn't so bad when I was there. People are willing to risk a beating to spend time together and talk about slightly subversive topics, particularly with a foreigner. As a foreigner, I too had to be careful that the person I was talking to was not reporting to the government... else I could find myself... well, they'd probably arrest me, cancel my visa and take me to the airport. They're not too bad to foreigners.
Point is. No. I think they really did turn the screws on the net connections. The pipes in the capital are slow enough that modern technology could be doing automated deep-packet inspection and building databases correlating data on everything going in and out of the country.
A comment before the election was telling about the feeling of the average Iranian. "Not much is going to change... except we'll see an increase in the price of green paint."
That government needs reforms. Badly. And I can't see it coming about peacefully when the people aren't even allowed to talk to one another about it.
before we act smug, WE don't have unfiltered net (Score:3, Interesting)
yes, its true, the west has more information available to us. at least we think so.
and generally, we do have more.
but lets ask ourselves, how much info that our government(s) (collective, it is a world-wide effect, after all) have that we'll never see?
this isn't filtering of public vs public, its stuff our govs know that they withold. 'freedom of information' was a farce under bush, we all know that. this is the kind of thing I'm talking about; stuff we want to know about *ourselves* and yet we aren't allowed to. or we're lied to.
war on drugs, good example. its a case of our gov lying to us. there have been studies (gov funded! that's my point) that prove, time after time, that MJ is not harmful. just to pick one example that's pretty easy to research. nixon's people even told him that it was not a big deal, yet that's where the war on drugs pretty much started. even in the face of real data showing the opposite.
so what I'm saying is that we are given the impression that we are free and we have access to all the info we need. but its not true, its only that we're given *a lot* of info and the feeling of being able to research and find answers, but in many areas, we are intentionally kept dumb.
before we act all 'USA USA, we are free here!', we should examine how much we really can find out and how much is kept 'for national security'. these days, a 'national security letter' can squelch almost anyone from talking. the gov has that much power, now.
much of the important info is kept from us. so in a way, we are also very filtered by our own governments. not just at the internet level, but independant of the way you try to get the info, freedom-of-info letters take forever, if they're even honored at all. and if they're honored, are they going to be worth anything after all the edits 'for your safety'?
they give us a lot of freedom, and so we feel free. feeling free is not being free.