Correspondent Cyrus Farivar reports on how technology activists around the globe are working to help Iranians bypass their government’s Internet censorship.
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LISA MULLINS: Technology has also enabled protesters in Iran to mobilize. And, as in China, the government has fought back. It’s blocking web sites and slowing Internet traffic, and that’s making it hard for dissidents to get the word out. But as Cyrus Farivar tells us, some outside Iran are offering technical assistance.
CYRUS FARIVAR: From his studio apartment in San Francisco, Austin Heap has been at the center of a growing legion of tech activists around the world trying to help Iranians get the word out. Shortly after the post-election turmoil began, Heap posted a list of instructions to create proxy servers. They can be used to re-route Iranians’ Internet traffic through outside computers. That’s a way to get around the Iranian government’s filters. But Tehran is catching up, says Heap.
AUSTIN HEAP: At this point it looks like the Iranian government has stepped up their filtering efforts and is now blocking all plaintext proxies out of Iran, which makes, you know, all of the work that the volunteers did, obsolete.
CYRUS FARIVAR: So now Heap’s come up with another idea. It’s a custom-designed piece of software that Heap claims will get around Iran’s filtering system. He calls it Haystack. Heap won’t say how it works, but he says it will enable users in Iran to have complete unblocked access to the Internet.
AUSTIN HEAP: Primary goal about Haystack, I mean, beside it being small, is that it was easy to run. And, you know, at this point there are zero steps. You just double-click and it does the rest. No windows, no options. Just Twitter and Facebook again.
CYRUS FARIVAR: It’s not just Heap who’s working on this. Late last week, the Dutch Parliament passed a motion calling for Dutch and European companies to ban the sale of Internet filtering technology to Iran. The motion calls for the Dutch government to provide funding for projects like Austin Heap’s. But some observers question whether any single technique will solve the problem. Ali Reza Eshraghi points out that Iran’s government has been engaged in a technological cat and mouse game with opponents for decades. Eshraghi is an Iranian journalist now living in California. He says, even though tech activists might think they’re getting ahead of the game right now, the government probably isn’t far behind. And that means any Internet user in Iran should remain cautious.
ALI REZA ESHRAGHI: I am not 100 percent sure that by using all these technologies, all of these softwares, that means that ok, I can be safe and secure in Internet. But yes, it will definitely be helpful for me, but also they are also trying to find out, you know, again new softwares, new technology, how to monitor again the browsers?
CYRUS FARIVAR: Whether projects like Haystack can ultimately succeed in helping Iranians stay ahead of their government may depend on money. Heap says he needs sustained funding to keep what’s been a voluntary effort going. He and other activists are hoping that governments in Europe, and elsewhere, will step up to the plate in the coming weeks. For The World, I’m Cyrus Farivar, San Francisco.
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