Get Off My Internet, Censorship!
Growing up in a small town in Ohio, a 2400 baud modem was my only connection to the rest of the world. I sat behind my 25mhz computer, dialed up to the local free Bulletin Board System and started typing. Chatting with the admins about when they were going to add another phone line so more people could connect and waiting what seems like days for simple text to load. I’ll never forget skipping out of class in the 4th grade (said I had to use the restroom) to run to the computer lab, dial-in for a moment to check the news, when I read about the Oklahoma City bombing which had happened moments before. “Wow,” I thought, “this Internet stuff is fast!”
From New York to Ohio, my link was to amazing people like Daniel Colascione, one of the many fighters of open-source, and a fore-front defender of democracy. Dan has made it possible to fight for the dream of free speech.
I didn’t realize it then, but this wonderful thing called the Internet would become the place where I made friends and a place where a mere teenager could be innovative and find his voice.
Online, never once did I have to stop and wonder: is it okay to be me, okay to share my thoughts. I found courage, strength, beauty, validation, joy, life and so many other things online. It may sound lofty, trite and grandiose in a nerdy sort of way, but for me, it’s true.
As an adult, the Internet would become even more influential in my life and the lives of others, bigger than anyone could have ever imagined a decade ago. The Internet has created social forums, information sharing, enhanced creativity, and shrunk the world. It allows me, an American living in San Francisco, to easily communicate and learn more about my friends in Iran, Europe, and elsewhere around the world. And through these communications and understandings, it has strengthened our sense of humanity and common bonds. The problem, however, is that the internet is under siege.
There are so many groups of oppressed people in the world but the Internet can be a tool for them to find their own power. People have droned on for centuries about how “knowledge is power.” But the Internet is the first thing that gave that cliché any real meaning. Unfortunately, its potential brings pitfalls with it.
It all started at 10:40 p.m. on an otherwise quiet Sunday night. After talking about the Iranian election on and off for several hours, I saw a tweet in my Twitter feed that pointed out CNN’s failure to cover the story. As an obviously rigged election in one of the world’s most important countries was being perpetrated, America’s oldest 24-hour news network was reporting primarily on consumers’ problems with digital TVs in this country.
The Iranian people used the Internet to communicate their frustration with their government, express their democratic ideals, and organize for greater freedom and democratization. When their government began shutting down newspapers and imprisoning journalists, Iranians turned to the Internet as the most trusted source for news. Students and advocates turned into street journalists and bloggers. And the Iranian government, understanding that information is power, particularly when it reveals the crimes of the government, began cracking down even harder on Iranians who expressed themselves online.
Using social networking, individual Iranians were also able to mobilize each other. Twitter hashtags created an instantaneous collectivity that could never be created by mainstream media. When the government realized what was happening, it tried to shut it down. Members of the tech community across the globe did what they could to support it.
This is when we stepped in and made Haystack, an anti-censorship tool for those Iran.
Oppression is even more insidious in countries where governments use the Internet as a tool against its own people, a way of controlling, instead of opening, minds. When the Iranian election happened in the summer of 2009, I couldn’t stand by and let that oppression win: I couldn’t stand by and let the government use the thing that has brought such freedom to my life to destroy the hopes and dreams of others.
Why do it? I have to.
The commitment to freedom runs deep in my blood, but not the “freedom” of George W. Bush. I’m talking about freedom that allows people to define their own freedom, to think their own thoughts, to take their own actions. If I, and the group I’m so privileged to be leading (the Censorship Research Center), can be any part of protecting the voices of students, women, gays and lesbians, religious and ethnic minorities, the diaspora—then that’s what we must do.
It is the job of each and everyone one of us to do whatever we can no matter how small or how large to protect human rights of our fellow human beings from being crushed or diminished by evil people who do not respect but fear that freedom we all deserve.
That’s my job and that’s your job too.
So let’s start with sanctions, let’s start with rebuilding our laws to reflect the 21st century. Roger Cohen wrote a great piece in last week’s International Herald Tribune that goes into the details. It’s the next big step to get on.
Keep on keepin’ on.
(This article originally appeared at Zahra’s Paradise.)
New Day, New Internet Threats in Iran
It was widely reported today that Iran vowed to step up its efforts in digital censorship, saying the era of “mercy” is over. But what does this mean for those in Iran and for the people trying to help them abroad?
In the statement released by ILNA — a regular mouthpiece of the regime — national police chief Ismail Ahmadi Moghaddam said: “These people should know where they are sending the SMS and e-mail as these systems are under control. They should not think using proxies will prevent their identification.” He added that those who have used the Internet for organizing the opposition had “committed a worse crime than those who come to the streets”.
Let’s break these claims down…
- Proxies can be tracked. It’s true that proxies are easy to detect. If one is not using an encrypted proxy, the contents can be read and even altered.
- Text messages can be tracked & read. We know that Iran (along with the United States) uses the same monitoring technology sold by Nokia Siemens. What they call ‘lawful intercept’ technology can certainly be used to track & read text messages sent from cellphones. When possible, people should use prepaid cellphones and calling cards to disassociate their location/identity with calls being made.
- E-mails can be tracked & read. This is certainly true for clear-text emails. People need to make sure they’re accessing their e-mail using an encrypted connection (POP + SSL or IMAPS) and for extra security, people should really be using PGP/GPG encryption on emails they send. There are great tutorials for Mac and Windows available.
Bottom line: if you control the network, you can control & inspect the contents. Think of sending an email like sending a package. What FedEx is to your package, the government is to emails in Iran. But what if FedEx decided it wanted to open every box, poke around inside, and change or remove anything it didn’t like? That’s kind of like communications in Iran.
In a recent interview with PRI’s The World, I discussed how the Iranian government will ramp up censorship on certain days considered crucial in suppressing the opposition. This demonstrates further that they are shifting tactics, grasping for an effective policy of strategic oppression.
Maghaddam’s statement, though, is important in two other ways. First, it shows that the regime knows the power of the Internet. They know arresting, beating, and killing thousands of people that show up to protest makes more and more Iranians oppose their regime. Now, they will try to focus on silencing the organizers. Ultimately, this strategy will fail because the strength of the opposition has been its diffuseness: the “organizers” and the “protesters” are one in the same. Moreover, this new strategy demonstrates the continuing and pressing need to disseminate information and technology in Iran to allow people to continue to communicate freely, without fear. As time goes by, will they give up on the public violence again the protesters? Or are they trying to murder the vox populi before it can take tangible form? Either way, this is exactly why tools like Haystack are crucial for the people in Iran.
(This article originally appeared at PBS FRONTLINE’s Tehran Bureau.)
The Long Road to Free Speech
Many of you know how Haystack was born — there was, and still is, a dire need to provide those in Iran with a safe way of getting online and securely communicating. Since the elections, the Iranian government has demonstrated time and again that it’s willing to ‘crank up’ its filtering of the Internet with little reason beyond stopping those who wish to communicate on popular social networks.
This kind of ‘thought control’ (sorry, I went there) is not unique to Iran. Just last week, another popular anti-censorship tool called Tor was blocked in China. There are countries all over the world experiencing varying degrees of government-imposed censorship.
In Australia, the Labor Party introduced a policy of mandatory Internet filtering. They did so partially under the guise of protecting children, but when the blacklist was leaked on WikiLeaks, it was quickly shown to block many completely benign sites. This is just another example, but those who enjoy and appreciate being able to communicate freely online need to also be aware of how quickly that freedom can be taken away.
I, and the rest of the Haystack team, agree and that’s why we’ve formed the Censorship Research Center — a San Francisco-based non-profit. The CRC seeks to do three key things: research the ways censorship is being performed, educate people about the impact of censorship by providing outreach programs and finally, when necessary, building the software tools that will enable people to get around Internet censorship.
Getting to just this point has been neither easy nor fast. The amount of resources — legal, organizational, and technical — required to make this happen has been astounding and we’re just getting started. The goal: to protect bloggers and journalists, students and professors, anyone who wants to get involved. To do this, we need to guard all aspects of social media and our links to them.
Most of us never have to stop and think, “What will happen if I blog this? Am I safe?” But what if you had to?
(This article originally appeared at Commitee to Protect Bloggers.)
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