"The spread and speed of the Internet changed the “calculus of censorship.” Over 35 governments—from China, Cuba to Burma—block access to the Web. Iran is one of the most aggressive, notes Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society. 'YouTube' traffic within Iran was down 90 percent last week. Facebook has been tamped down by more than half. Some 20 million Iranians are wired. In the Middle East, they’re second only to Israel’s Cyber-savvy citizens who are adept in hop-scotching controls." Juan Mercado,
Philippine Daily Inquirer, 25 June 2009.
"A venture between Nokia Corp. (NOK) and Siemens AG (SI) mentions in its Code of Conduct that it will respect the rights laid down by the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The statement did not seem to apply to its business in Iran. According to the Wall Street Journal, the European companies sold Iran the technology for what's known as deep packet inspection, which the paper says 'involves inserting equipment into a flow of online data, from emails and Internet phone calls to images and messages on social-networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter.'" Jonathan Berr,
DFaily Finance, 24 June 2009.
"Another agency in the U.S. government that has provided seed money to help Iranians avoid Internet censorship is the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), the body that oversees the Voice of America (VOA) and Radio Farda, a Farsi-language radio station that stepped up shortwave broadcasts recently to counteract Iranian government efforts to jam the signal. Ken Berman, acting director of engineering for the BBG, said he oversees a three-person anti-censorship team that focuses on China and Iran. He declined to provide the exact budget for the project, saying only that it was 'under $5 million' a year. 'We have realized that Iran has a growing audience of young activist Internet users and we have repurposed our tools to work in Farsi and make it available to Iranians,' he said. 'We open up the channels so the Iranian blogosphere is more accessible to Iranians in Iran.'"
Washington Times, 26 June 2009.
"One of those projects: design the Firefox Web browser to embed the TOR network. That’s the 'onion router' anonymous surfing service, which throws off the Supreme Leader’s online goons by 'distributing your transactions over several places on the Internet, so no single point can link you to your destination,' the project’s site explains." Noah Shachtman,
Wired Danger Room, 26 June 2009.
