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.)
Haystack Gets A Dell, Dude
Well actually two Dells, one for backup. The other night we just ordered our first two Dell PowerEdge blades to handle some of the network load from Haystack users. We hope to take delivery on them in the next week or so (everything takes so long!) and we’ll get them up in their data center home as quickly as we can. Without further ado, I give you the first two in-house Haystack work horses:
PowerEdge R610 – Chassis for Up to Six 2.5-Inch Hard Drives, No Operating System
Unit Price: $4,796.00
Quantity: 2
Total Price: $9,592.00– PowerEdge R610 –
– Chassis for Up to Six 2.5-Inch Hard Drives
– [224-4848]
———————–
– Shipping –
– PowerEdge R610 Shipping
– [330-4122]
———————–
– Memory –
– 16GB Memory (8×2GB), 1066MHz Dual Ranked UDIMMs for 2 Processors, Adv ECC
– [317-0233]
———————–
– Feature Upgrades for Embedded NIC Ports –
– Dual Two-Port Embedded Broadcom® NetXtreme II 5709 Gigabit Ethernet NIC
– [430-1764]
———————–
– Primary Processor –
– Intel® Xeon® X5550, 2.66Ghz, 8M Cache,Turbo, HT, 1333MHz Max Mem
– [317-0202]
———————–
– Additional Processor –
– Intel® Xeon® X5550, 2.66Ghz, 8M Cache,Turbo, HT, 1333MHz Max Mem
– [317-0211]
– [317-1215]
———————–
– 1st Hard Drive –
– HD Multi-Select
– [341-4158]
———————–
– Primary Controller –
– SAS 6/iR Integrated
– [341-9145]
———————–
– BIOS Setting –
– Power Saving BIOS Setting
– [330-3491]
———————–
– Operating System –
– No Operating System
– [420-6320]
———————–
– Embedded Management –
– iDRAC6 Express
– [467-8649]
———————–
– Internal Optical Drive –
– DVD ROM, SATA, Internal
– [313-7541]
———————–
– Bezel –
– No Bezel
– [313-0869]
———————–
– System Documentation –
– Electronic System Documentation, OpenManage DVD Kit with DMC
– [330-3523]
– [330-5280]
———————–
– Hard Drive Configuration –
– No RAID for SAS 6/iR Controllers
– [341-8753]
———————–
– Rails –
– No Rack Rails or Cable Management Arm
– [330-3522]
———————–
– Hardware Support Services –
– 3Yr Basic Hardware Warranty Repair: 5×10 HW-Only, 5×10 NBD Onsite
– [992-9872]
– [993-3570]
– [993-9359]
– [993-9457]
– [993-9458]
– [994-4019]
———————–
– Installation Services –
– No Installation
– [900-9997]
———————–
– Power Supply –
– Energy Smart Power Supply, Non-Redundant, 502W
– [330-3517]
———————–
– Power Cords –
– No Additional Power Cord
– [310-9057]
———————–
– Power Cords –
– NEMA 5-15P to C14 Wall Plug, 125 Volt, 15 AMP, 10 Feet (3m), Power Cord
– [310-8509]
———————–
– Hard Drives –
– 250GB 7.2K RPM SATA 2.5″ Hot Plug Hard Drive
– [341-8725]
———————–– Save $549 on each PowerEdge R610 servers through Dell Small Business
- $1,098.00 total savings
With these two machines we should easily be able to serve 7,500 Haystack users while we ramp up to full capacity. The whole team is very excited to get these into place as we press on with the launch of Haystack. We’ve been very busy organizing the logistics of everything and I can’t thank everyone enough for helping make this possible — Twitter, the Internet, and the wonderful group of people I work with endless hours doing the hard labor.
Everyday we continue to test Haystack inside of Iran and are refining the program to make it better, faster, and stronger before our wide-scale release. If you can, consider donating to Haystack to help us bring proper uncensored Internet to Iran.
We’ll post pictures of the babies when they get here 
A Stick for the Stack?
I know it’s a cheesy title but a lot of people have asked how they can help Haystack. We’re working on new ways each day that people can chip in just a little to have a big impact. Today I’m thrilled to announce our first public effort: USB thumb drives! Distribution will largely be a person-to-person effort, and we all know USB keys are nice and tiny. I get the tiny 128mb versions all the time at tech conferences, and now I’ve learned they’re actually useful
So if you’ve got some spare USB keys laying around, why not send them for us to use for Haystack? Just stick them in a regular envelope (or the bubbly kind, just no boxes please) and mail to:
Austin Heap
PO Box 423060
San Francisco, CA 94142
USA
I’ll always post new ways you can help out here, but a “master list” will be kept on Haystack’s donation page.
Building the ’stack
Sorry I’ve been AFK on the blog front lately. I know it looks quiet, but that certainly doesn’t reflect what’s going on behind the scenes. So, here’s a quick recap of what’s happened, what’s going on, and what’s to come.
Also, I’d like to take a moment to thank everyone who has made this project possible. From the Twitter support, to the incredibly supportive donations, to private organizations volunteering, people donating their time in real life to help this come together — I’m just amazed at the willingness of people to come together to make this project a success <3
Weeks before Haystack was even announced, we were feverishly working out the technical details, trying to layout what the network would look like, and procuring the first servers we would test our anonymous, anti-censorship tool for Iran with.
A few days after it was announced, we realized that the tech side wasn’t the hardest part. As the Iranian government cracked down on citizens and stepped up Internet filtering, the new challenge would be distribution. We needed to get people together — and fast — to figure out how both parts of the Haystack network would roll out. So we reached out for the first time to the Internet & Twitter to make sure this could happen — and support Haystack you did! Less than a week later we had our first successful test of Haystack from inside of Iran.
The dialogue that came out of our meet-up propelled Haystack beyond my wildest expectations. Since then, we’ve been putting the parts of the plan that came out of that dialogue in place.
On the Haystack front we’ve been building out capacity, testing the network, improving on the Haystack protocol, and meeting with specialists to review our strategy and network security principles. On the organizational front, there’s a non-profit being formed! This will serve to provide the necessary support and legal structure around Haystack. In the future we hope to support human rights and free speech with technology throughout the world. While very exciting, this adds lawyers, banks, accountants, and a whole bunch of other things into the mix. And a huge thanks to everyone donating their time, energy, and hard earned money to make this possible.
Then there’s the PayPal fiasco…
On Monday, I got a notice from PayPal saying that my account was under review and they needed some clarification for what it was for. Great, that’s fine! So I faxed over a letter stating what I was working on, and pointing them to relevant media about Haystack and my past work in the Iran election technology circle.
Somehow they decided that meant I wanted to have my account changed to non-profit status and asked for proof. I call them up and, after getting transfered four times, am told that there’s a problem with the account being in compliance of these laws that pertain to non-profit, tax exempt organizations. Wha? We never represented to paypal or any donors that we were already non-profit. I explain what I’m doing and the service rep tells me I have 14 days to provide documentation to prove the 501(c)(3) status of a non-profit that does not yet exist. We’ve been moving so quickly to get everything done, but changing how quickly the government grants non-profit status is one thing that is totally our of our hands.
So much has happened and yet so little time has gone by.
In the upcoming weeks as we continue to test the platform, we’ll also be gearing up for the launch of Haystack 1.0 and introducing our non-profit more formally, so stay tuned. If you’re going to the rallies in San Francisco or Los Angeles (and possible NYC!), swing by the Haystack booth and say hi!
Connect 2.0
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