The minor storm over Telegraph journalist and blogger Will Heaven’s recentposts on social media and the ongoing unrest in Iran, has brought much discussion of the pros and cons of reposting Iranian activists’ comments on Twitter and Facebook. To get to the heart of the issue, however, one needs to take a look at Heaven’s assumptions regarding Deep Packet Inspection.
It is now thought that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard is using Deep Packet Inspection to check Facebook messages and tweets for “anti-regime” keywords. Once this is done, they are able to pinpont the location of online protesters using their IP addresses. Then it’s just a knock on the door and a confiscated laptop for evidence.
But is the use of DPI to punish dissent really this simple?
We lost Enduring America today for a couple of hours. Our hosting company noticed immediately and worked to restore the site, which took until about an hour ago. We’re now back up and running, but you may notice some slowness or parts of the site disappearing as I take the opportunity to install upgrades. As always, our Twitter feed will be updated with the latest news.
Further to my previous post about our hosting migration, it seems that some readers are not seeing any updates on site. We’re investigating.
UPDATE: Our hosting company reports that this is a DNS issue, with certain ISPs not pointing readers to our new server. Using Google’s Public DNS may help with this, but we can’t offer any guarantees- any connection problems should however be temporary.
2009 has been an amazing year for us, with EA gaining readership and recognition beyond our wildest imaginings. We wanted to take this opportunity to thank all of our readers for a great year- you’ve provided us with twelve months of news, thought-provoking discussion, and inspiration- and to give special thanks to everyone who’s supported us with generous donations. We wish everyone the best for 2010.
We had a great response to our inaugural caption contest, and after a short delay (note to selves: don’t organise any more contests on busy weekends just before Christmas) we have a winner. It was a close-run thing, but we finally decided that our favourite caption was #5 by bigwinnman:
“When I look at the world through this narrow confine it all looks good to me!!“
Well done bigwinnman, and thanks to everyone for participating!
Josh Shahryar brings us the latest news about ongoing protests in and around Tehran and Sharif universities:
For the third day students in Tehran University and Sharif Industrial University of Tehran protested against the government. News reports of the protests were scarce on pro-reform websites, however, ironically, it was the other side that gave it away.
Hundreds – perhaps close to a thousand – students protested outside Tehran University, but were reportedly not attacked by security forces that were present in the hundreds. No video of the event emerged. However, there were videos to prove the protest in Sharif Industrial University.
There, the protesters mostly gathered near the gates and about a hundred also gathered inside a hall in the university. Numbers were lower than at Tehran University, but the anger was quite evident. Both at Sharif and Tehran universities, students loudly chanted against Ahmadinejad and Basijis.
But the main chants were demanding the release of students who were arrested two days ago from universities across the country. At the gates of Sharif University, students also sang Yaare Dabestani loudly – a patriotic song often used by reformists to evoke emotion. No report of protests from outside Tehran surfaced.
As mentioned before, news was scarce to come. But government-run news agency Fars News inadvertently became a witness to the events and published them on their website. However, both stories were quickly removed after the buzz on twitter.
The minor storm over Telegraph journalist and blogger Will Heaven’s recent posts on social media and the ongoing unrest in Iran, has brought much discussion of the pros and cons of reposting Iranian activists’ comments on Twitter and Facebook. To get to the heart of the issue, however, one needs to take a look at Heaven’s assumptions regarding Deep Packet Inspection.
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