UPDATED Iran & Twitter: Last Words on The Hell of Heaven (Shahryar)

UPDATE 12 JANUARY: Patrick Philippe Meyer has posted a thoughtful response, "Where I disagree with Will Heaven vs Josh Shahryar", which concludes: "Digital activists really need to get up to speed on nonviolent civil resistance tactics and strategies just as the latter need to get up to speed on how to communicate more securely in repressive environments."

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EA's Josh Shahryar, to move beyond the myths of "security" on Iran and social media so we can continue in the task of information and analysis, offers some final thoughts to Will Heaven:

Before I get to your arguments, I want to clear something up first. My first response was rather insulting --- and it was knowingly so. You had clearly gone out of your way to insult people that I have come to know and cherish both as friends and as colleagues. These people are not 13-year olds with laptops who listen to Emo music all day and cut themselves for fun. They are experienced professionals from fields as diverse as psychology, law, journalism, medicine, politics, and information technology. And they care. So any attempt at undermining their efforts will be swiftly answered. Anyone questioning their intentions or work is going to receive a reply. And any insults hurled at them will result in ridicule for the hurler.

Iran & Twitter: Myth v. Reality of Security and “Deep Packet Inspection”
Iran & Twitter 101: Rereading A Tale of Two Twitterers
Iran & Twitter 101: Getting The Facts Right — A Response to Will Heaven
The Latest from Iran (11 January): Reading the Regime

Now let’s get to your latest, hopefully last, argument, posted on The Daily Telegraph website last Friday:

Picture this scene. In Tehran, during the summer of 2007, a group of young students – male and female – are enjoying a house party. It’s a very hot day. They are drinking, smoking pot and listening to music around a swimming pool. Then, unexpectedly, there is loud knock at the front door. Men wearing the uniform of the Revolutionary Guard barge in. The music is switched off and the party falls silent. The girls are wearing bikinis, and the boys are holding beers – they’ve all been caught red-handed. But the order given by the guards is this: every one of you with a laptop or a computer must hand it over to us now.

This anecdote – passed onto me by a trusted British-Iranian source – illustrates something very important about Iran’s authoritarian regime. For a long time, it has actively hunted for compromising hard-drive data in order to assert its control over the lives of Iranians. By confiscating the students’ laptops, the Guards gave themselves access to photos, documents and emails. Enough evidence, in other words, to prosecute (or at the very least threaten) the party-goers, who attended these sorts of events frequently.

More recent stories suggest these efforts have escalated. Take, for instance, Evgeny Morozov’s Iranian-American woman, who was asked by officers at Tehran’s International Airport to log into Facebook when she arrived there in July. At first, she denied having a Facebook account – so when they proved her wrong, they also noted down all of her Facebook friends’ names. I personally know of another Iranian who was arrested and imprisoned after posting anti-regime slogans, rather naively, on a publicly-listed Facebook profile.

I personally, as someone who looks at more substantial evidence, decline to tackle the anecdote you present. As for Morozov’s story and your other Iranian friend, yes, the regime has been actively hunting for data for years. But Morozov’s opinion about social media is pretty negative, not just about Iran but in general, and so I am not going to debate someone who has made up his mind even before tackling the Twitter Revolution. That Revolution is about awareness, not provoking a political revolt or helping it directly.

You persist:

It’s overwhelmingly clear, then, that it is dangerous for Iranians to partake in online protests on sites such as Twitter and Facebook, or to post compromising information online with the intention that it is read by a Western audience. Clearer still – as I wrote in the Daily Telegraph last week – that when Westerners encourage this communication, or provoke it, they could be putting Iranian lives in danger, especially given the prolific use of “Deep Packet Inspection” (DPI). It’s terrifying to think that a simple “re-tweet” could lead to torture, but it’s also worryingly plausible.

Your perception of what foreigners are doing for Iranians is unfounded and wrong. As for your continued worries about Deep Packet Inspection, the report about the Iranian regime using DPI is hotly contested --- have a look at Mike Dunn's dissection, posted today on EA, of your flimsy evidence or responses from professionals like David Isenberg or Christopher Parsons. DPI is not something that you can detect by simply checking systems from the outside. Indeed, About the only way you can tell if DPI is being utilized is if the user actually shows it to you.

You concede:

Now, I have received a lot of criticism for putting forward this view. The most recent from Daily Nite Owl writer Josh Shahryar, an influential#Iranelection Tweeter who has also written for The Huffington Post. His argument is forcefully made (to put it mildly), and he alleges that I have misunderstood the role played by Twitter in Iran. He writes:

Shahryar is spot on about one thing: Twitter has helped to share news about what is happening inside Iran – as I made clear in my Telegraph piece, “spreading awareness” is in theory a good thing. He is also to be commended for his efforts to conceal the identities of those Iranians who spread information online, by providing them with anonymity network software such as Tor and Freegate.

Thank you for the kind words, I certainly don’t deserve any of that. But our efforts are not concentrated on making the revolution a success. That is the job of Iranian protesters. Our job is to simply let the world know what is going inside Iran. If you have to measure our results, do it at how we have managed to spread the news about the protesters. I think there is enough evidence that that we have made a difference in that specific quest.

Instead of measurement, however, you make another fling at tearing down that effort:

But those softwares, as Shahryar admits, are only used by a “select few”. And it is foolish to think that their use guarantees safety: if the Revolutionary Guard were to find someone using the software, the consequences would be dire. “No one actually communicates with people in Iran,” he contests. “They post their stuff and they leave.” But who does he think they are posting their “stuff” for? If the regime was able to match information posted by someone in Iran with similar information being passed around in the US, does Shahryar think they would be forgiven?

Your initial argument was that Westerners are encouraging Iranians to engage in those activities. Now you’re saying not that we should stand aside but that we should intervene to discourage them from posting this information online? Who are we to do that?

"The select few" of whom I spoke  currently have software that is undetectable through even DPI. The exact nature of that software needs to remain a secret for their own safety. The other Iranians already have more primitive proxy server software that they use to access information.  They don’t post anything, but they certainly get informed.

If you genuinely have concerns about DPI, read the articles that I mentioned above. But remember this as well:

It is naïve to think that Iranians are totally dependent on Westerners to protect them. More than two-thirds of Iran’s population is young and a large majority is very well-educated. They know their way around the Internet better than some folks in Britain and the US. And they  know the risks that they face. Again, it is immature --- and rather insulting --- to think that they are kids that are being manipulated by the ‘superior’ race in the West into doing things – and rather insulting.

Insulting to them when you reach desperately for evidence that they are being manipulated by "outsiders":

The idea that, as Shahryar puts it, “we aren’t encouraging anyone” could not be further from the truth. Here are a few tweets from the #Iranelection hashtag posted in the last few days, most of which have been re-tweeted numerous times:

@houmanr: How to stop basij motor bikes http://vasabaha.com/1388/04/07/mikh/ #iranelection (2 days ago)
@jefryslash: ?????? ?????? ?? ???? ? ???? ?? ????http://tinyurl.com/luex5x How to DEFEND AGAINT BASIJ & POLICE #iranelection in Streets #iranelection (2 days ago)
@PersianTechie: Two nails will stop basiji bike/car/truck. http://twitpic.com/7ychu #iranElection (3 days ago)
@fr33dom_fighter break the basiji knees with fierce strikes w/Bat and break their pride and make them humble #iranelection (4 days ago)
@tehranweekly: take all pictures of basij agents and post on twitter &facebook so we can retweet them #cn4iran#iranelection (1 day ago)

And that was just a quick search. It seems difficult to deny that these sorts of messages --- mainly posted by Iranian-Americans -- incite those inside Iran to commit very dangerous acts. Even if they are not carried out, they could be used as evidence against those Iranians who choose to re-tweet them or post them online.

Many of those who use Twitter "on the outside" are Iranian-Americans; many still retain their Iranian citizenship, and they certainly have a stake in their homeland. However, for the very few "Westerners" who cross the line with provocation, you also note my reference to how much we --- as the members of the #IranElection hashtag on Twitter --- are opposed to such childish activities. Your argument is self-defeating: it is we, not you, who are maintaining "security".

So unable to prove danger, you choose to belittle us. More importantly, by reducing Iranians to our helpless victims, you belittle them:

The positive aspects of online activism for change in Iran have been vastly overstated. And when you consider the danger posed to Iranians by online participation – compared with what online participation has achieved – the overall result is hardly tangible, and certainly not worth the risks which have been undertaken. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his brutal regime remains in power after a vicious crackdown. Tens (if not hundreds) of Iranians have been killed, dozens tortured and raped, and many more imprisoned. The Twitter revolutionaries, however, are too proud to re-think their strategy.

You ignore any counter-arguments, including those in my previous response, and just keep on beating your own drum. But let me try one more time to make you stop.

Will, the overwhelming majority of people who were arrested, killed and beaten faced that terror on the streets while protesting. No one online is responsible for that. They willingly chose to go and engage in those activities.

If you’re suggesting that Iranians are going out to protest because we’re asking them to...then I don’t know if I should mourn the lack of your common sense or the waste of my time engaging in this debate. We weren’t even around when Iranians started protesting and they came out in millions. They want to do this. If you don’t get that, then I’m not sure what you do get.

Once more, the main purpose of the Twitter Revolution is to help spread the word about news and human rights events outside Iran.

I really hope you can eventually grasp that. Because then you won't resort --- perhaps unintentionally --- to the insult of those who have faced the risks not from our manipulation but from their bravery:

Witness the demise of @Persiankiwi, a twitter-user followed by some 30,000 people all over the world. In June, he or she (apparently from inside Iran) posted regular updates about the post-election protests. Here are the account’s final tweets:

@Persiankiwi we must go – dont know when we can get internet – they take 1 of us, they will torture and get names – now we must move fast -#Iranelection (June 24th)
@Persiankiwi thank you ppls 4 supporting Sea of Green – pls remember always our martyrs – Allah Akbar – Allah Akbar – Allah Akbar #Iranelection (June 24th)
@Persiankiwi Allah – you are the creator of all and all must return to you – Allah Akbar -#Iranelection Sea of Green (June 24th)

After that, only silence. Was @Persiankiwi arrested or tortured, even killed? Was @Persiankiwi tracked down online by the Revolutionary Guard? Tragically, we’ll never know. But for me, that silence is a powerful reminder of the dangers faced by online activists working in dictatorships. I would not encourage the activity, unless the benefits clearly outweighed the enormous risks. In Iran, I’m afraid, that is plainly not the case.

First of all, you clearly have no idea who @Persiankiwi is, even if I thank you for the concern. From what I know, @Persiankiwi is safe. If you want to pay a real tribute to @Persiankiwi, note that when @Persiankiwi was tweeting, there was no Twitter Revolution. We followed him/her as we made our decisions to support those inside Iran in distribution of information.

Here are a couple of paragraphs just to remind you of something that you have ignored in your previous opinion and your current response. More than 200 years ago, when the British tried to crush the American Revolution, peasants, innkeepers, merchants, students and ordinary folk in general knew that, if they took arms and fought for their freedom against an unjust ruler, some of them would die. Many did. But they kicked the tyrants out and took their freedom through force of arms.

The same happened with revolutionaries in South America in the early part of the 19th century and it has repeatedly happened all over the world. Just because the revolutions in the Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan, and Georgia were largely bloodless doesn’t mean revolutions are all going to be as peaceful. People don’t always get their rights by sitting at home and not doing anything. People have to put themselves in danger for what is dear to them. Sometimes, people die and still don’t get their rights. But the allure of having and enjoying human rights is too great.

The fact that Iranians are dying is not the fault of Westerners. It is not even a fault. It is a sacrifice that Iranians must make to gain their freedom. They know this very well. They aren’t doing it because anyone else is telling them to do it. They’re doing it because they’re humans. They’re not sheep. And humans need more than just food, clothes and a roof on top of their heads. Maybe you don’t get this, but Iranians do.

I don’t know you. You can be a perfectly nice guy in person. Criticism is just part of being a journalist. Here’s hoping next time I read something from you, I’ll be pleasantly surprised.

The Latest from Iran (11 January): Reading the Regime

2045 GMT: Sanctions La-Dee-Dah. Associated Press is a-quiver over this statement by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, though I'm not sure why:

It is clear that there is a relatively small group of decision makers inside Iran. They are in both political and commercial relationships, and if we can create a sanctions track that targets those who actually make the decisions, we think that is a smarter way to do sanctions. But all that is yet to be decided upon.

That's not a breakthrough declaration, only a holding one. The White House does not want the sweeping sanctions proposed by Congress and will go for a "targeted" approach. It's just not clear who is being targeted with what.

1945 GMT: Journalist Mohammad Reza Nourbakhsh has been sentenced to three years in jail by an appeals court for participating in rallies on 15 June. Nourbakhsh was originally given a six-year prison term.

1940 GMT: Beaten in Detention. Kalemeh claims Mehdi Mahmoudian, a senior member of the reformist Islamic Iran Participation Front, has been beaten by the authorities in Evin Prison.

NEW Iran Exclusive: The Latest Nuclear Riddle — Renewed Talks with “West”?
NEW Iran Analysis: Beyond the Headlines, The Regime Battles Itself
NEW Iran & Twitter: Myth v. Reality of Security and “Deep Packet Inspection”
NEW Iran & Twitter: Last Words on The Hell of Heaven (Shahryar)
Latest Iran Video: Military Commander Mullen on US Options (10 January)
Iran Special Analysis: A US Move to “Sanctions for Rights”?
Iran: Challenge to The Government in “The Heartlands”?
The Latest from Iran (10 January): “Middle” Ground?

1935 GMT: The Detained. Back from an academic break to find that an Iranian activist has posted the names of 156 people arrested between the religious days of Tasoa and Ashura (26-27 December) and 9 January.

1635 GMT: Spinning Rafsanjani. Hashemi Rafsanjani, speaking as chairman of the Expediency Council, has made another general call for reconcilation.

Press TV portrays this as "the Iranian nation should follow the rule of the law and avoid taking extrajudicial measures as not to obstruct the path of justice". While this could be applied as an injunction to both the opposition and Government forces, the state outlet puts the emphasis is on following the guidance of the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic: "If [this is] obeyed, balance will return to the society and there will be no room left for frictions. Foreign enemies have clung to the current state of affairs in the country as it is apparent in their tone."

The website also tries to rebut the claim, made by Rafsanjani's brother this weekend, that the former President has been pressured into silence. Instead, it claimed that "Rafsanjani rejected the notion and said he was always trying to resolve the problems away from media hype".

1615 GMT: Those Wacky Leveretts. They may have had their pro-Government, anti-Green movement opinion, published in The New York Times, shredded by analyst after analyst, but that doesn't stop Flynt and Hillary Mann Leverett from returning to their defence of the regime.

On their website, the Leveretts crudely twist a Wall Street Journal article (which was considered in an EA analysis yesterday on the US policy on sanctions, Iran's nuclear programme, and a "rights-first" approach) into "THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION MOVES TOWARD REGIME CHANGE IN ITS IRAN POLICY". They select and crop quotes, to the point of distortion, but this is their sleight-of-hand claim:

Buying into the proposition that the Islamic Republic is imploding has the effect of driving the policy argument toward support for “regime change” in Tehran.

Umm, no. There is a difference between analysis --- in this case, evaluating the internal difficulties in the Iranian regime --- and advocacy. It's the "is-ought" difference, one which should be picked up by an undergraduate student, let alone a supposed foreign-policy expert: noting that something "is" happening is not the same as declaring it "ought" to happen.

The Leveretts are not undergraduate students, so they know what they are doing. By putting out this claim, "whether President Obama and his advisers want to call their policy “regime change”, that is precisely the direction in which they are moving", they will buttress the propaganda line of the Iranian Government that the opposition can all be attributed to "foreign instigation". (I heard this declaration loud and clear in two presentations, including one by an  academic who works with the Leveretts, at the Beirut conference I attended last week.)

Since the survival of the Iranian regime rests in part on making that allegation stick, and since the Leveretts support the quest for that survival, let's just recognise this piece for what it is: an "ought" piece of advocacy rather than an "is" contribution to analysis.

(P.S. to Flynt and Hillary: Throwing in a picture of Senator Joseph Lieberman, who is calling for a "rights-based" approach to sanctions, with Ahmad Chalabi of Iraq "regime change" infamy, is a really nice touch.)

1505 GMT: Today's Fist-Shaker. It's Iran Prosecutor General Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejeie making an appearance to tell Tehran Prosecutor General Abbas Jafari Doulatabadi that it's time for measures against "elements behind the recent sedition....It is expected that the demands ... that those who were leading the post-election sedition are put on trial, are met."

1500 GMT: The "Reformist" Push. Former President Mohammad Khatami has put out his own statement, following that of Mehdi Karroubi, calling for an end to the "extreme violence" and dialogue over political, social, and economic issues.

1455 GMT: A Day for Analyses. Not sure why, but a lot of information seems to be falling into place today. The latest topic is Iran's nuclear manoeuvres with "the West" --- we've got an exclusive on Tehran's latest attempt to keep the discussions going.

1340 GMT: Waving Sticks. EA readers have offered comments considering the reasons for this weekend's declaration by General David Petraeus, the head of the US military's Central Command, that all military options are open in contingency plans for Iran (see yesterday's updates).

For the Iranian Government, however, there is a simple reading. The Foreign Ministry spokesman declared today, "[Petraeus'] comments are thoughtless and it is better that any statement made in this regard take a constructive approach."

1315 GMT: The Karroubi Statement (see 1150 GMT). Reuters has picked up on Mehdi Karroubi's declaration with takeaway quotes such as....

[I am] prepared for any disaster.....Some are thinking that they can block the reform course by closing down newspapers and putting reformers in jail ... but I remain firm in the path that I have chosen....I announce that such threats will not frighten me and will not weaken me in this path.

Agence France Presse has a shorter but similar article. Inexplicably, both Reuters and AFP miss the even more important part of Karroubi's statement, the 5-point proposal for resolution.

1200 GMT: We've posted a special analysis, based on latest developments and speech, of the battles within the Iranian regime. The conclusion? This will only be resolved "when someone stabs Ahmadinejad in the back".

1150 GMT: Karroubi's "5-Point" Plan. First it was Mir Hossein Mousavi with a 5-point post-Ashura proposal for political resolution; now it's Mehdi Karroubi.

Karroubi has written an open letter proposing 1) admission by Government officials of injustices; 2) adherence to the values of the Islamic Revolution through guarantees such as freedom of the press and legal rights; 3) adherence to non-violence for reform and acceptance of the Supreme Leader; 4) acceptance of criticism and an end to violence against those who dissent; 5) a national debate so Iranian people can make a free and informed decision about the way forward for the country.

1145 GMT: Rah-e-Sabz reports that 56 professors at Elm-o-Sanat University in Tehran have written in support of students, asking that they are able to take examinations without fear of disciplinary action over protests.

The intervention follows an open letter by almost 90 professors at Tehran University to the Supreme Leader, asking for a cessation of violence against demonstrations.

1130 GMT: The "Incomplete" Detainees Report. Parallelling and extending the "reformist" criticism that the Parliament report on detainee abuse is incomplete, Ayande News --- which is far from reformist --- is claiming that Iranian state media have not given a full account of the report and its discussion in the Majlis. Ayande even asks whether those responsible for the abuses at Kahrizak Prison are also responsible for output on Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting.

1110 GMT: Foreign Presence. The Government's overseas push is in Syria, as Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki visits Damascus. No significant news has come out of the talks so far.

0920 GMT: No major news this morning, but a lot of individual developments with deeper meanings this weekend. The Supreme Leader's speech, President Ahmadinejad's appearance in Parliament, the arrest of the Mothers of Mourning and their supporters in Laleh Park, the Parliamentary report on the abuse of detainees: all have gotten headline coverage, but the intra-regime tensions that they reveal have yet to be analysed, if recognised. We'll make a start on that analysis later today.

Meanwhile, Josh Shahryar and Mike Dunn have special analyses trying to put away the recent mis-information on #IranElection, Twitter, and security. Shahryar offers final words of reply to Will Heaven, the blogger for The Daily Telegraph who tried to blame "Twitterati" for endangering the Iranian people, while Dunn separates myth from reality over "Deep Packet Inspection".

Iran & Twitter: Myth v. Reality of Security and "Deep Packet Inspection"

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.

On his blog post of 29 December Heaven stated:

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?

• Firstly, Heaven bases his comments about the IRG's use of Deep Packet Inspection --- provided by Nokia Siemens Networks --- on a Wall Street Journal article which actually says (possibly after amendment), "It couldn't be determined whether the equipment from Nokia Siemens Networks is used specifically for deep packet inspection".


• In a press release issued in response to the article, Nokia Siemens Networks stated that they have "not provided any deep packet inspection, web censorship, or Internet filtering capability to Iran."


• Nokia Siemens Networks' head of media relations Ben Roome has followed up, for example with this comment in The Huffington Post in which he says that the WSJ "clarified its original report" and re-asserts, "We have not provided any Internet technology, let alone DPI to Iran".


• Further research  turns up a blog post which points out that, with Roome's denial of the original claim, the WSJ article is left to rely on an anonymous Iranian engineer who says, "We didn't know they could do this much ... Now we know they have powerful things that allow them to do very complex tracking on the network" and Bradley Anstis, CEO of an internet security company, who says "Iran is now drilling into what the population is trying to say ... This looks like a step beyond what any other country is doing, including China."  Neither of these comments are anywhere near as specific or certain as Heaven's contention that IRG can search for keywords then "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." (The blog post raises many other interesting questions and is well worth a read.)

So the question for me is: what does Will Heaven know about Deep Packet Inspection that we don't? He states in his Telegraph article of 29 December:

Using a state-of-the-art method called "Deep Packet Inspection", data packages sent between protesters are now automatically broken down, checked for keywords, and reconstructed within milliseconds. Every Tweet and Facebook message, in other words, is firmly on the regime's radar.

This dramatic conclusion is now based on a single article which was corrected over six months ago after refutation by one of the key actors. Even if this wasn't the case, there is nothing in the article which indicates that Deep Packet Inspection provides the "knock on the door" capability that Heaven portrays.

On Friday Heaven described the Iranian regime's use of DPI as "prolific" but linked only to his article of 29 December, which in turn linked to his blog post of December 29, which linked to the WSJ. Perhaps Heaven knows far more about Iranian use of DPI than he has up to now revealed, but so far he is repeating a a single, hazy assertion as fact.

UPDATED Iran & Twitter 101: Getting The Facts Right --- A Response to Will Heaven

UPDATE 8 January: Will Heaven will not give up --- he has made another attempt, informed only by anecdote, distortion, and speculation, to justify his campaign for silence on Twitter about #IranElection.

I will break my own vow of silence (see comments below), regarding any discussion of and thus further publicity for the thoughtless and indefensible in Mr Heaven's "analysis", to say this:

@WillHeaven: You insult those of us who use #Twitter wisely and, hopefully, effectively. You insult @persiankiwi, & you insult the people of #Iran. If you have any decency, stop.

(P.S. Maybe you can be of use writing about #uksnow.)

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Josh Shahryar writes:

Waking up every day and being a journalist is a very conflicting job. Sometimes, you read the work of other journalists who’ve written responsibly and with full knowledge of the subject matter and you feel proud of who you are. Other times, people write things that make you want to just sit there and mourn the fact that he or she belongs to the same profession as you.

Last week, in the online edition of Britain's Daily Telegraph, Will Heaven critiqued the people who have been active on Twitter for the cause of Iran --- some now for almost 200 days --- under the headline, “Iran and Twitter: the fatal folly of the online revolutionaries”.

Don’t get me wrong, Mr Heaven has freedom of speech on his side. But every now and then, I take the liberty to use the same right to point out where fellow journalists for filling the internet with assertions that misrepresent the truth and "analysis" that blatantly insults not only our intelligence but also our characters. I think Will Heaven fits that bill quite neatly.

I am simply going to reply to Mr Heaven's paragraphs one by one in order. I have not changed any of his words, and I will address him directly.

HEAVEN: As young men and women took to the streets of Tehran on Sunday to confront the Revolutionary Guard, another very different protest sprang to life all over the world. This one didn't face tear-gas or gunfire. And its participants didn't risk prison, torture or death. It took place on 2009's most trendy website: Twitter.com.

Well, now, how about the risk of having your family imprisoned, tortured or killed? Did you know that dozens of social media activists have families in Iran and dozens more have received e-mails from the Iranian government telling them to stop or else their families would face serious harm? Did you know that Fereshteh Ghazi (@iranbaan), another activist who writes about prisoners, has family in Iran? Did you know that Isa Saharkhiz, the father of the most active of the Twitterati, Mehdi Saharkhiz (@onlymehdi), is in prison and being tried in connection with the protests?

I think everyone would agree that even if these people aren’t personally facing imprisonment, torture and death, they might deserve a moment of recognition for persisting in their reporting when their families facing the same peril. If you don't choose to join recognition of them, at least pause and include these facts before you wag your finger at their supposed security.

For Twitter enthusiasts, this has been a bumper year. With a new online tool at their chubby fingertips, they've helped to change the world. Or at least, that's what they think: the so-called Iranian Twitter Revolution recently won a Webby award for being "one of the top 10 internet moments of the decade".”

Chubby fingertips? Nice use of the stereotype that portrays all geeks as being overweight. This here is just a direct and far from original insult. I’m not sure how you manage to call yourself a journalist and use such degrading language to get your fictitious points across.

As for the Iranian "Twitter Revolution", that is a creation of the mainstream media who are ignorant of what is going on inside and outside Iran.

If the protests in Iran are turning into a revolution, social networking websites had very little to do with it. The reason why the site are getting kudos is because they helped people bypass the failure of the mainstream media to cover the events in Iran and get informed about what was really happening on the streets of Tehran as well as shore up outside support for the cause.

Get this straight; it was the failure to provide timely and accurate news regarding the events in Iran that forced the citizens of the world to step up and help educate people about the courage and perseverance of the Iranian people and the brutality and inhumanity of the Iranian government. You can whine all you want, but you, if you are representing a responsible "traditional" media vs. a supposedly tangential and irresponsible social media, have failed. And the fact that you failed does not give you the right to attempt and devalue the work of others.

Let me tell you why I find that deeply troubling. There has been no revolution in Iran. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has held on to power after a rigged election. Meanwhile, protests continue to be violently suppressed by government forces and unregulated militias, with human rights groups saying that at least 400 demonstrators have been killed since June. Dozens of those arrested remain unaccounted for, and many of those set free tell of rape and vicious beatings in Iran's most notorious prisons.

So don't tell me that Twitter and other online networks have improved the situation in Iran. It's deluded to think that "hashtags", "Tweets" and "Twibbons" have threatened the regime for a second. If all the internet could muster in a decade was smug armchair activists and pontificating techies, we may as well all log off in the New Year.

Again, Twitter has not improved the situation in Iran; it has improved the flow of news about that situation to the outside world. It has helped mobilize activists outside Iran, protesting across the world, to pressure the international community into taking action against the Iranian government.

If you had followed the news or understood what you have read, you would have known about the 25 July protests where thousands of people gathered in more than 100 cities around the globe in support of the Iranian people’s struggle for human rights. There have been dozens of protests in dozens of other cities since then; I attended one just a week ago. These protests have served to both inform the public and to pressure governments to deal with Iran’s repression of its citizens more harshly then they might have otherwise would have.

This would not have been possible if social networking websites had not connected people and informed them about what was going on inside Iran since, frankly, I see the mainstream media's primary interest in Iran as the nuclear energy program.

Your ignorance does not change the facts on the ground.

Here's the other thing "social media experts" will forget to tell you: dictatorships across the world now use their own tools to hunt down online protesters. In Iran, for instance, the government controls the internet with a nationalised communications company. Using a state-of-the-art method called "Deep Packet Inspection", data packages sent between protesters are now automatically broken down, checked for keywords, and reconstructed within milliseconds. Every Tweet and Facebook message, in other words, is firmly on the regime's radar.

As a result, the crackdown in Iran has been easier than ever before. Once the Revolutionary Guard intercept a suspect message, they are able to pinpoint the location of a guilty protester using their computer's IP address. Then it's just a question of knocking on doors – and confiscating laptops and PCs for hard evidence.
Sadly, when this happens, those outside Iran cannot always absolve themselves of responsibility. If you're an internet user in Britain who communicates with an Iranian protester online, or encourages them to send anti-regime messages over the internet, you could be putting their life in danger.

Here’s a bit of education in anti-filtering software. There’s a software called Tor –-- similar to Freegate --- that allows people to connect to the internet without fear of Deep Pocket Inspection tools. You can figure out that someone is using Tor with DPI, but you can never find out what they’re sending. Our "chubby-fingered" friends were intelligent and passionate enough to get that into Iranian hands as early as June. And that’s not all. Net activists have already created several new anti-DPI softwares that have already reached Iranians and are being skillfully used by a select few to get information out. With these, the government can’t even figure out if someone is using anti-filtering software or is connected straight up.

If this had not occurred, you would not get all the videos, pictures and information readily available within minutes of protests in Iran.

Just because you do not know about these things does not mean they do not exist or they do not work.

And contrary to what you claim, no one actually has to encourage Iranians to communicate information about their country to the outside world. They do it themselves. They feel a need to help the world understand what is going on in their country and not have to read fear-mongering articles on the mainstream media about how Iran is going to bomb Israel and there would be World War III and such. What the techies have done is help them access the software that allows them to do it without fear of getting arrested.

There's nothing wrong with spreading awareness outside Iran, but it's horribly naive to think that supporting illegal activity in a foreign country has no ethical dimension. It's equally foolish, of course, to kid yourself that you're on the front line.
For the Iranian authorities, the detective work often doesn't have to be remotely hi-tech. As Evgeny Morozov recently noted, it is now possible to calculate a person's sexual orientation by analysing who their Facebook friends are. Sure, it's a quirky news story in Britain, but terrifying for gay people living in countries such as Iran, where homosexuality is outlawed.

Illegal activity? What illegal activity? Iranians are granted the right to take to streets and peacefully protest by the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Just because the government is overstepping Iranian law does not mean you have to go out of your way to accommodate their will to hammer home your fallacious arguments. As for your assertion that helping Iranians spread the word about the situation is wrong, well, maybe you should know that freedom of expression is a universal human right. No country’s laws can infringe upon that. None.

I’m not sure you know that Facebook and Twitter are officially banned in Iran right now. People in Iran who are using the two applications have created accounts specifically to disseminate news and information, not for dating. Even if the government finds those accounts, it will not be able to trace them back to their owners because of new software.

Perhaps Barack Obama was one of the first world leaders to realise that social media have their limits. In March, on the feast of Nowruz (the Farsi New Year), he posted an online video in which he addressed the Iranian people and their leaders directly.

It signaled the launch of "YouTube diplomacy", one commentator gushed. But, like the Twitter Revolution, it has achieved very little – Iran remains determined to become a nuclear power, and America is still described by the regime as "the Great Satan".

The jab at YouTube diplomacy is another creation of those in the media who know little about what is going on during protests on the streets in daylight, even with video evidence at hand, but who are more than ready to scare the hell out of everyone by proclaiming that Iran will get the ability to make a nuclear bomb soon. Your own retreat into that nuclear shelter, under cover of the ludicrous and unfounded accusations about the movement inside as well as outside Iran, is only an addition to that evasion.

So what can we do? Well, perhaps that’s a question for 2010, because the internet, combined with “offline” networks, probably can encourage openness in dictatorships. But before we work out how, let’s first drop the self-congratulation.

What can you do? You can actually report after researching the subject you are about to write on. You can find sources inside Iran to get some real news out. And you can stop hurling insults like poisoned candy.

Finally, we don’t need to self-congratulate ourselves. The media does it for us quite neatly. I will point you to just one article about the Twitter Revolution published a few days ago in one of Sweden’s largest tabloid newspapers, Expressen:

Today Mousavi's Facebook page [a page run by activists from outside Iran] is a more secure source of news than Al-Jazeera and the BBC, while micro-blogs and websites like the dailyniteowl.com and rahesabz.net [both websites that use direct information from tweets and Facebook] offer sympathizers as well as media consumers, fast, reliable news [about Iran] that traditional newsrooms cannot provide.

That is just one out of hundreds of articles that have been published about the worldwide effort to help get the reality on Iran’s streets to people around the globe through social networking websites like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube and through microblogs.

I understand your frustration at having to keep up with citizen reporting. But that does not give you the right to so flagrantly distort facts and insult a mass of people that have devoted their own time without any monetary compensation to helping their brothers and sisters in Iran.

Next time, if you’re going to write on this subject, please, inform yourself about the many terms you used and try to show the real picture.

Today on EA (7 January 2010)

Iran: We've caught up with all the latest news this evening on our LiveBlog.

Josh Shahryar lets loose his frustrations at Will Heaven: "Next time, if you’re going to write on this subject, please, inform yourself about the many terms you used and try to show the real picture." Scott Lucas offers another perspective with a tribute to the bravery of two Iranian Twitterers no longer with us.

Videos from last night's international football game between Singapore and Iran are posted in a special section. Iranian State TV reportedly cut the soundtrack to block the sound of the very political, pro-green, chants being heard throughout the stadium.

Israel/Palestine: EA's Ali Yenidunya analyses the various statements and asks whether change could be in the air over the peace talks.

Israel: We report on an article in today's Jerusalem Post which compares and contrasts the current Prime Minister  Netanyahu with former PM Ariel Sharon.

Gaza: Following a call from Hamas rulers on Wednesday, protesting at the delay of an international aid convoy, a policeman has died and many activists have been injured following clashes between them and Egyptian forces.