The
Haystack application aims to use
steganography to hide
samizdat-type data within a larger stream of innocuous network traffic. Thus, civilians in Iran, for example, could more easily evade Iranian censors and provide the world with an
unfiltered report on events within the country. Haystack earned its creator
Austin Heap a great deal of positive coverage from the media during the 2009 Iranian election protests. The BBC described Heap as
"on the front lines" of the protesters' "Twitter revolution", while The Guardian called him an
Innovator of the Year. Despite the laudatory coverage, however, the media were never given a copy of the software to examine. Indeed, not much is known about the software or its inner workings. Specialists in network encryption security were not allowed to perform an independent evaluation of Haystack, despite its distribution to and use by a small number of Iranians, possibly at some risk. As interest in the project
widens and criticisms of the media coverage and software continue to
mount, Heap has currently asked users to
cease using Haystack until a security review can be performed.
posted by Blazecock Pileon
on Sep 13, 2010 -
31 comments
Misreading Tehran: Leading Iranian-American writers revisit a year of dreams and discouragement. "With a full 12 months now between us and the election, the time is ripe to start revisiting the hype and hope in a year of writing: which stories were overblown, what stories were missed entirely, and what can be gleaned about Iran's
annus horribilis from a more thorough understanding.
FP asked seven prominent Iranian-Americans, deeply immersed in both the English- and Persian-language media, to look through the fog of journalism at what actually happened in Tehran -- and why so many of us got it so wrong."
[Via]
posted by homunculus
on Jun 8, 2010 -
29 comments
Iran: The Rooftop Project. "This is meant to be the most complete possible collection of recordings of nighttime protest in Iran since the beginning of the uprising. Its goal is to locate and profile at least one video for each night primarily focusing on the nightly chanting of Allah-o-Akbar from the rooftops, whenever that footage is available. Some of these videos have not been widely seen until now."
[Via]
posted by homunculus
on Jul 10, 2009 -
24 comments
‘No one should be imprisoned – not even for a second – for expressing an opinion’ Akbar Ganji announced his hunger strike on May 20 with these words.
Ganji, an Iranian journalist and writer, was arrested on April 22, 2000 following his participation in an academic and cultural conference held at the Heinrich Böll Institute in Berlin on April 7-9 entitled "Iran after the elections," at which political and social reform in Iran were publicly debated. He was sentenced on January 13, 2001 to 10 years imprisonment plus five years internal exile.
He is now on 50th day of hunger-strike, weighs 52kg, is unconscious much of the day, and
may die soon.
[more inside]
posted by lenny70
on Jul 31, 2005 -
12 comments
Pre-emptive protest: Iranians for peace "No war can contribute to the establishment of liberty and democracy in our country. 'Iranians for Peace' welcomes the opinions of Iranian people around the globe who are in opposition to war."
posted by hoder
on Feb 2, 2005 -
17 comments
