Why does Tehran continue playing into America and Israel’s hands? Repression is a bad look, politically and morally repulsive: Reporters Without Borders is outraged that the Iranian government is reinforcing and extending its online censorship and repression of netizens. Several news and information websites have been blocked in the past few days including those of…
Showing all posts tagged internet
How to receive a White House pat on the head
Here’s a lesson for progressive and Leftist writers and bloggers. If you want White House approval (God knows why you would, if independence is valued) then don’t be too critical, praise the wonders of Barack Obama and bask in the glow: The vice president told Democrats to “stop whining.” The president told them to “buck…
Hoder sees the darkest side of Ahmadinejad’s brutality
The outrage of imprisoning Iranian blogger Hossein Derakhshan for 19.5 years, the longest sentence ever given for anybody in his position. A profoundly insecure and undemocratic regime has shamed itself before the world.
Guess who would like to bring down Iran’s nuclear plans?
What a story: Little doubt remains that the Stuxnet worm represents one of the most sophisticated digital attacks on critical infrastructure systems that cybersecurity researchers have ever seen. The motives of whoever launched that attack is a far murkier question–but a mounting stack of theories is starting to point to a targeted sabotage of Iran’s…
Hearing the calls from Hoder deep inside Iran
Years ago, in Budapest, I briefly spent time with Iranian blogger Hoder, currently held in Iran and facing the death penalty. It’s a tragic case and highlights the immorality of large sections of the Islamic Republic elite. I was sent the following information via Facebook yesterday and it adds some details to a story that…
Jewish occupation via the iPhone
Following Zionist apartheid from the comfort of your portable device: Want to know what’s happening in the West Bank settlements in real time? In addition to ‘Sudoku’ and ‘Street Fighter,’ iPhone owners will now be able to install the “Facts on the Ground” application, which monitors the expansion of settlements in Judea and Samaria, created…
Listen to the lessons from Haystack or lives may be lost
The ongoing scandal over the faulty Haystack web censorship circumvention tool – aka web gurus being far too quick to praise something without proper testing – brings an important statement from Electronic Frontier Foundation: Writing software to protect political activists against censorship and surveillance is a tricky business. If those activists are living under the…
America, keep your dirty hands away from fighting web repression
Sami ben Gharbia, the advocacy director for Global Voices, asks that Washington cease its largely counter-productive campaign to assist dissidents around the world. Image problem, anybody? Many people outside of the U.S, not only in the Arab world, have a strong feeling that the Internet Freedom mantra emitting from Washington DC is just a cover…
There’s no truly safe way to surf the web in the Islamic Republic
For anybody who writes about web censorship and finding ways around it, the lesson in this story is that skepticism towards new-found tools is vital. We’ve all been guilty of celebrating prematurely a piece of software that may help a dissident in Iran or China. Beware: A piece of software called Haystack, which claimed to…