[kictanet] FW: News - ELECTION FALLOUT / ACCESS TO INFORMATION Iran's cyber-revolution gets a hand from Canada

[Edith Adera]

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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/17/world/middleeast/17media.html?ref=middleeast
June 17, 2009
U.S. Steps Gingerly Into Tumult in Iran
By MARK LANDLER and BRIAN STELTER

WASHINGTON - The Obama administration says it has tried to avoid words or deeds that could be portrayed as American meddling in Iran's presidential election and its tumultuous aftermath.

Yet on Monday afternoon, a 27-year-old State Department official, Jared Cohen, e-mailed the social-networking site Twitter with an unusual request: delay scheduled maintenance of its global network, which would have cut off service while Iranians were using Twitter to swap information and inform the outside world about the mushrooming protests around Tehran.

The request, made to a Twitter co-founder, Jack Dorsey, is yet another new-media milestone: the recognition by the United States government that an Internet blogging service that did not exist four years ago has the potential to change history in an ancient Islamic country.

"This was just a call to say: 'It appears Twitter is playing an important role at a crucial time in Iran. Could you keep it going?' " said P.J. Crowley, the assistant secretary of state for public affairs.

Twitter complied with the request, saying in a blog post on Monday that it put off the upgrade until late Tuesday afternoon - 1:30 a.m. Wednesday in Tehran - because its partners recognized "the role Twitter is currently playing as an important communication tool in Iran." The network was working normally again by Tuesday evening.

The State Department said its request did not amount to meddling. Mr. Cohen, they noted, did not contact Twitter until three days after the vote was held and well after the protests had begun.

"This is completely consistent with our national policy," Mr. Crowley said. "We are proponents of freedom of expression. Information should be used as a way to promote freedom of expression."

The episode demonstrates the extent to which the administration views social networking as a new arrow in its diplomatic quiver. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton talks regularly about the power of e-diplomacy, particularly in places where the mass media are repressed.

Mr. Cohen, a Stanford University graduate who is the youngest member of the State Department's policy planning staff, has been working with Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and other services to harness their reach for diplomatic initiatives in Iraq and elsewhere.

Last month, he organized a visit to Baghdad by Mr. Dorsey and other executives from Silicon Valley and New York's equivalent, Silicon Alley. They met with Iraq's deputy prime minister to discuss how to rebuild the country's information network and to sell the virtues of Twitter.

Referring to Mir Hussein Moussavi, the main Iranian opposition candidate, Mr. Crowley said, "We watched closely how Moussavi has used Facebook to keep his supporters informed of his activities."

Tehran has been buzzing with tweets, the posts of Twitter subscribers, sharing news on rallies, police crackdowns on protesters, and analysis of how the White House is responding to the drama.

With the authorities blocking text-messaging on cellphones, Twitter has become a handy alternative for information-hungry Iranians. While Iran has also tried to block Twitter posts, Iranians are skilled at using proxy sites or other methods to circumvent the official barriers.

A Twitter account called IranNewsNow sent a message to CNN's Twitter account that read, "don't listen to what iran gov says u can or can't do! You can report the pics/vids coming from Twitter!"

An account called StopAhmadi wrote on Tuesday evening, "We need ppl around world helping to raise the issues put pressure on Iranian gvmt." It posted links to pictures from Tehran, including one that showed a man bleeding profusely from his chest, surrounded by protesters.

There were also suspicions that some pro-government forces might be using new-media outlets to send out misinformation. One popular opposition site, Persiankiwi, warned its followers on Tuesday to ignore instructions from people with no record of reliable posts.

In addition to Twitter, YouTube has been a critical tool to spread videos from Iran when traditional media outlets have had difficulty filming the protests or the ensuing crackdown. One YouTube account, bearing the user name "wwwiranbefreecom," showed disturbing images of police officers beating people in the streets. On Monday, Lara Setrakian, an ABC News journalist, put out a call for video on Twitter, writing, "Please send footage we can't reach!"

The BBC's Persian-language television channel said that for a time on Tuesday, it was receiving about five videos a minute from amateurs, even though the channel is largely blocked within Iran. One showed pro-government militia members firing weapons at a rally.

"We've been struck by the amount of video and eyewitness testimony," said Jon Williams, the BBC world news editor. "The days when regimes can control the flow of information are over."

As new media proliferate, however, traditional journalists are having a harder and harder time.

Journalists were told on Tuesday that they could not cover protests without permission. The restrictions "effectively confine journalists to their offices," a spokesman for the BBC said.

Still, many ventured out into the streets to witness pro- and antigovernment protests, at considerable risk. At the Laleh Hotel in central Tehran, the Time magazine columnist Joe Klein said, "A number of journalists were coming back from the streets pretty badly beaten."

As their visas expired, journalists were looking for any chance to report. Jim Marshall, the last Sky News staff member in Tehran, was barred from reporting, so he went shopping instead and came upon thousands of supporters of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at a rally.

"I kept shopping, and they kept demonstrating," he wrote in a blog post. "This was turning into a test of wills. How much longer could I shop without slipping into reporting?" Once he realized he was carrying a notepad in his pocket, he swiftly left the scene.

Mark Landler reported from Washington, and Brian Stelter from New York. Richard Pérez-Peña contributed reporting from New York.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Adel El Zaim, PhD
Senior Program Specialist / Administrateur de programme principal
ICT4D - Acacia

Centre de recherches pour le développement international (CRDI) /
International Development Research Center (IDRC)
aelzaim at idrc.org.eg
Le Caire, Egypte / Cairo, Egypt
http://www.idrc.ca/acacia

________________________________________
From: Laurent Elder [lelder at idrc.ca]
Sent: June 17, 2009 4:18 PM
To: ICT4D-Futures Workspace
Subject: FW: News - ELECTION FALLOUT / ACCESS TO INFORMATION Iran's cyber-revolution gets a hand from Canada

Apologies for cross-posting, but nice to see our colleagues at ONI/Citizen Lab involved with the recent activities in Iran...


PUBLICATION:    GLOBE AND MAIL
IDN:    091680092
DATE:   2009.06.17
PAGE:   A14 (ILLUS)
BYLINE:         OMAR EL AKKAD AND MATT HARTLEY
SECTION:        International News
EDITION:        Metro
DATELINE:
WORDS:  1194
WORD COUNT:     1275
________________________________


ELECTION FALLOUT / ACCESS TO INFORMATION Iran's cyber-revolution gets a hand from Canada Psiphon, a censorship avoidance tool created at U of T, has been 'pushing' government-blocked Internet content to Iranian activists

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OMAR EL AKKAD AND MATT HARTLEY At the heart of the disputed Iranian elections, a group of Canadians is helping Iranian activists gain access to what has become the most precious and tightly controlled commodity in Iran: information.

The Canadian researchers behind Psiphon, an online censorship avoidance tool, have begun a massive grassroots campaign to give Iranians access to sites that the Iranian government has gone to great lengths to ban - including Facebook, Iranian opposition sites and international news networks. Psiphon has been "pushing" that content to Iranians, giving them a glimpse of the outside world that has been largely blocked since the elections began.

But Psiphon's founders are walking a tightrope in their attempts to empower Iranians, as they try to simultaneously offer activists unfettered access to the Internet and dissuade those same activists from launching cyberattacks on the government institutions that took that access away in the first place.

"Thousands of people are arguing for [cyberattacks against government infrastructure]," said Greg Walton, editor of the Information Warfare Monitor and a research fellow at the Citizen Lab in the University of Toronto's Munk Centre, where Psiphon was first developed. "We're concerned that if people launch [denial of service attacks] - the Iranian government is already throttling [down] bandwidth - this may take up the remaining bandwidth." Mr. Walton said some government sites have been defaced and that others had gone down, possibly as a result of cyberattacks.

Iran's biggest mass protest since the 1979 Islamic revolution has become a full-fledged global movement, fought on and fuelled by the World Wide Web.

The cyber-revolution's epicentre is the microblogging site Twitter.

Often disparaged as trivial because of its 140-character limit on posts, the site has proved to be an effective way for activists to post updates on the situation in Iran.

Among the thousands of posts popping up are descriptions of government raids and the date and location of planned protests.

Indeed, Twitter was supposed to go offline on Monday for prescheduled maintenance. However, the site's founders delayed that shutdown because of "the role Twitter is currently playing as an important communication tool in Iran." Washington officials reportedly also asked Twitter to postpone the maintenance.

Without tools such as Psiphon, most Iranians would still be unable to gain access to sites such as Twitter. The censorship avoidance tool essentially links "trusted members" together with members who have access to content, sending it to those who don't, all under the authorities' noses.

"When a people has no access to a free press, of course they have to get their words out there," said Jaffer Sheyholislami, an Iranian-born assistant professor of linguistics at Carleton University who has been monitoring the election closely. "As soon as the election results were announced in Tehran, you could tell something was not right from the beginning and you could tell by the fact that the Internet services such as Facebook and many websites were shut down - especially . . . opposition-group websites." One Tweet in particular caught Mr. Sheyholislami's attention.

It was sent from Twitter account mousavi1388 (1388 is the year in the Persian calendar), and it read: "We have no national press coverage in Iran, everyone should help spread [Mir-Hossein] Mousavi's message.

One Person = One Broadcaster." Without tools such as Twitter and cellular technology, it would be much more difficult for Iranians to get information out of the country, said Jeff Jarvis, associate professor and director of the interactive journalism program at the City University of New York's Graduate School of Journalism.

"Once you have access to the Internet, information will flow around the despots," he said. "It is now inevitable. It will be more and less efficient and they'll be more and less smart about trying to stop it, but it will flow around tyranny and that is new and that is an absolute impact." *** THE REVOLUTION WILL BE DIGITIZED The widely disputed Iranian presidential election has spurred the largest wave of civil unrest in that country since the Islamic revolution of 1979. But even as hundreds of thousands take to the streets, a larger revolution is under way in cyberspace, where digital activists have taken to blogs - and, especially, Twitter - to express frustration and provide first-hand reporting. This digital revolution has raised questions about the rules of virtual activism: Cyberwarfare: There's an ongoing debate among online activists about launching Internet-based attacks against Iranian government infrastructure. Attacks such as "denial of service" are easy to launch and can cripple a server. Some argue such attacks are one of the few ways citizens can fight back against a repressive government, while others argue that using up bandwidth to launch such attacks makes it even harder for Iranian citizens to gain access to the Web.

Anonymity: Facing serious consequences if caught, many Iranian bloggers are posting anonymously. However, this has made it difficult to tell which bloggers are activists and which accounts are fake.

Some bloggers have begun building small communities of trusted sources, but are preferring not to publicize them for fear of putting them at risk.

Safety in numbers: Many users around the world have taken one blogger's advice to change their personal information in Twitter such that their hometown appears to be Tehran. The purpose is to make it more difficult for Iranian security personnel monitoring the site to determine which activists are based in the country.

Access: Internet service in Iran dropped significantly around the time of the election. However, it is unclear whether that was a result of government tampering or simply a result of massive worldwide interest in Iranian Web content. What is known is that many sites - including opposition websites, social networking hubs and news outlets - are blocked in Iran. Users have begun creating go-arounds that allow Iranians access to these sites. However, it seems that when the address of such a server is made public, it isn't long before it is blocked inside Iran.

Omar El Akkad *** What is Psiphon? Developed at the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto's Munk Centre, Psiphon is essentially a tool that allows users to get around content-blocking systems, such as filters that ban users from gaining access to certain websites. First released in late 2006, the tool was designed with a social or political purpose. It is mainly aimed at users in countries with repressive regimes, where Internet usage is highly regulated.

Early versions of the software worked on a "trusted member" model - essentially, encrypted information is passed between computers run by known and trusted users in small networks. This model reduces the likelihood that a government agent will be able to infiltrate the network and shut it down. The downside, however, is that networks of trusted users tend to stay small.

Psiphon's developers took the software out of the lab in 2008, when they spun it out as a Canadian corporation. In the words of Ron Deibert, vice-president of policy and outreach for Psiphon and director of the Citizen Lab, "We are the first explicitly political company to be spun out of the University of Toronto." Omar El Akkad


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