Op-ed of Interest WSJ - Let's Help Iranians Beat the Censors
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Heather Blanchard
Jul 18, 2009, 5:35:21 PM7/18/09
to CrisisCamp
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124779708428055757.html
Opinion
Let's Help Iranians Beat the Censors
From satellite phones to Internet hacking, the U.S. can make a
difference.
By JEREMY RABKIN and ARIEL RABKIN
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave a speech Wednesday in which
she condemned Iran's crackdown on democracy protesters as "deplorable
and unacceptable." What she didn't say was how U.S. policy might be
used to help ordinary Iranians. In the 1980s, the Reagan Doctrine
offered military assistance to rebel groups fighting communist
repression. We may be glad that Iranian dissidents have remained
nonviolent but we can still help them resist government repression. We
should certainly help them get their story out.
In a world that is wired for instant transmissions of words, pictures
and videos -- such as last month's shocking images of 26-year-old Neda
Agha Soltan, shot dead in the streets of Tehran -- information is a
crucial front in the struggle. The tyrants in Tehran know this
perfectly well. Even as it announced President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's
supposed victory at the polls, the government cracked down on outside
media. Foreign journalists were confined to their hotels -- when not
simply arrested or expelled from the country. Cameras and other
devices were confiscated and satellite television transmissions were
jammed.
The crackdown, of course, also targeted ordinary Iranians. For hours
after the election, the Internet in and out of Iran was entirely
disconnected. Later, bandwidth was limited in an attempt to keep
images and reports from being posted or sent. Dissidents and ordinary
Iranians turned to new communication media like Twitter and Facebook,
and for a time managed to disseminate images of mass protest through
these channels. The regime responded by blocking access to established
portals like Facebook and MySpace. Dissidents then turned to proxy
servers, which relay traffic to otherwise-inaccessible sites.
Government censors responded by blocking the proxies. Within a few
weeks, very few were still available.
Early in the crisis the State Department did ask Twitter to delay a
scheduled downtime. But since then the Obama administration has
remained notably passive. It doesn't have to be. We have no obligation
to help Ahmadinejad keep his people cut off from the world. To the
contrary, international human-rights law -- which the new State
Department legal adviser, Harold Koh, has often insisted is
fundamental law for the world -- is quite clear on this point.
Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
stipulates that "Everyone shall have the . . . freedom to seek,
receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of
frontiers . . . in writing or in print, in the form of art or through
any other media of his choice." Iran is a party to this human-rights
convention, as is the United States.
The U.S. can help Iranians combat Ahmadinejad's censorship regime in
three distinct ways: We can help them go around it, smuggle data
through it, or else knock it down. Smuggling satellite telephones into
Iran would be the most direct way to implement the first approach.
Instead of communicating through a network of towers on the ground,
satellite phones (for image as well as voice transmission) connect
directly to orbiting communication satellites, entirely bypassing
government-supervised phone networks.
But satellite phones are expensive and we could not expect to make
them as readily available as computers in Iran with Internet
connections. We should, therefore, supplement this approach by seeking
ways to communicate across existing networks while circumventing the
censors.
Computer scientists have been working for decades on anonymous and
censorship-resistant communication. We know a lot about how to build
secure and anonymous proxy servers. We know a lot about how to hide
sensitive information, encrypted inside seemingly-innocuous traffic,
provided that some system on the outside understands the code and can
decrypt and pass along the messages.
Such techniques can be deployed by private citizens. Some activists
are already doing so. But such spontaneous efforts will be less
effective than larger, more systematic programs. Large software
companies have the resources to mount such programs, but they are much
more likely to contribute to anti-censorship efforts if they have
explicit U.S. government approval and encouragement.
The third and most dramatic approach would be to launch electronic
attacks on the censorship system in order to disrupt and disable it.
The Defense Department is now organizing a U.S. Cyber Command, led by
the National Security Agency, with a purview that can embrace this
sort of mission. Cyber-activists are sure to try this on their own, as
well. We ought to be quietly giving advice and assistance to
responsible activists. This will help maximize the effectiveness and
minimize the collateral damage from such efforts.
It's true that the Iranian government retains the option of simply
disconnecting its people from the Internet altogether. But that would
have very severe costs for the Iranian economy. It would also derail
Iran's ambitions to be a communication center for the Islamic world.
Indeed it would reduce Iran from a would-be world power to the status
of an isolated pariah state like Burma or North Korea.
There is no good reason why the Obama administration should not pursue
such initiatives. Nongovernmental organizations and human-rights
groups could also help mobilize anti-censorship efforts. Indeed, many
online activists are already helping their Iranian counterparts. The
Internet is a great mobilizing tool. And in the struggle against
tyranny, it is on our side.
Jeremy Rabkin is a professor of law at George Mason University. Ariel
Rabkin is a graduate student in computer science at the University of
California, Berkeley.
Opinion
Let's Help Iranians Beat the Censors
From satellite phones to Internet hacking, the U.S. can make a
difference.
By JEREMY RABKIN and ARIEL RABKIN
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave a speech Wednesday in which
she condemned Iran's crackdown on democracy protesters as "deplorable
and unacceptable." What she didn't say was how U.S. policy might be
used to help ordinary Iranians. In the 1980s, the Reagan Doctrine
offered military assistance to rebel groups fighting communist
repression. We may be glad that Iranian dissidents have remained
nonviolent but we can still help them resist government repression. We
should certainly help them get their story out.
In a world that is wired for instant transmissions of words, pictures
and videos -- such as last month's shocking images of 26-year-old Neda
Agha Soltan, shot dead in the streets of Tehran -- information is a
crucial front in the struggle. The tyrants in Tehran know this
perfectly well. Even as it announced President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's
supposed victory at the polls, the government cracked down on outside
media. Foreign journalists were confined to their hotels -- when not
simply arrested or expelled from the country. Cameras and other
devices were confiscated and satellite television transmissions were
jammed.
The crackdown, of course, also targeted ordinary Iranians. For hours
after the election, the Internet in and out of Iran was entirely
disconnected. Later, bandwidth was limited in an attempt to keep
images and reports from being posted or sent. Dissidents and ordinary
Iranians turned to new communication media like Twitter and Facebook,
and for a time managed to disseminate images of mass protest through
these channels. The regime responded by blocking access to established
portals like Facebook and MySpace. Dissidents then turned to proxy
servers, which relay traffic to otherwise-inaccessible sites.
Government censors responded by blocking the proxies. Within a few
weeks, very few were still available.
Early in the crisis the State Department did ask Twitter to delay a
scheduled downtime. But since then the Obama administration has
remained notably passive. It doesn't have to be. We have no obligation
to help Ahmadinejad keep his people cut off from the world. To the
contrary, international human-rights law -- which the new State
Department legal adviser, Harold Koh, has often insisted is
fundamental law for the world -- is quite clear on this point.
Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
stipulates that "Everyone shall have the . . . freedom to seek,
receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of
frontiers . . . in writing or in print, in the form of art or through
any other media of his choice." Iran is a party to this human-rights
convention, as is the United States.
The U.S. can help Iranians combat Ahmadinejad's censorship regime in
three distinct ways: We can help them go around it, smuggle data
through it, or else knock it down. Smuggling satellite telephones into
Iran would be the most direct way to implement the first approach.
Instead of communicating through a network of towers on the ground,
satellite phones (for image as well as voice transmission) connect
directly to orbiting communication satellites, entirely bypassing
government-supervised phone networks.
But satellite phones are expensive and we could not expect to make
them as readily available as computers in Iran with Internet
connections. We should, therefore, supplement this approach by seeking
ways to communicate across existing networks while circumventing the
censors.
Computer scientists have been working for decades on anonymous and
censorship-resistant communication. We know a lot about how to build
secure and anonymous proxy servers. We know a lot about how to hide
sensitive information, encrypted inside seemingly-innocuous traffic,
provided that some system on the outside understands the code and can
decrypt and pass along the messages.
Such techniques can be deployed by private citizens. Some activists
are already doing so. But such spontaneous efforts will be less
effective than larger, more systematic programs. Large software
companies have the resources to mount such programs, but they are much
more likely to contribute to anti-censorship efforts if they have
explicit U.S. government approval and encouragement.
The third and most dramatic approach would be to launch electronic
attacks on the censorship system in order to disrupt and disable it.
The Defense Department is now organizing a U.S. Cyber Command, led by
the National Security Agency, with a purview that can embrace this
sort of mission. Cyber-activists are sure to try this on their own, as
well. We ought to be quietly giving advice and assistance to
responsible activists. This will help maximize the effectiveness and
minimize the collateral damage from such efforts.
It's true that the Iranian government retains the option of simply
disconnecting its people from the Internet altogether. But that would
have very severe costs for the Iranian economy. It would also derail
Iran's ambitions to be a communication center for the Islamic world.
Indeed it would reduce Iran from a would-be world power to the status
of an isolated pariah state like Burma or North Korea.
There is no good reason why the Obama administration should not pursue
such initiatives. Nongovernmental organizations and human-rights
groups could also help mobilize anti-censorship efforts. Indeed, many
online activists are already helping their Iranian counterparts. The
Internet is a great mobilizing tool. And in the struggle against
tyranny, it is on our side.
Jeremy Rabkin is a professor of law at George Mason University. Ariel
Rabkin is a graduate student in computer science at the University of
California, Berkeley.
Mikel Maron
Jul 20, 2009, 6:20:13 PM7/20/09
to crisi...@googlegroups.com
We also had a fairly good response to help map Tehran in OpenStreetMap from satellite images
http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/06/map-of-tehran-open-street-map-google-mapmaker.html
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Humanitarian_OSM_Team
http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/06/map-of-tehran-open-street-map-google-mapmaker.html
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Humanitarian_OSM_Team
-Mikel
From: Heather Blanchard <popli...@gmail.com>
To: CrisisCamp <crisi...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Saturday, July 18, 2009 2:35:21 PM
Subject: Op-ed of Interest WSJ - Let's Help Iranians Beat the Censors
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124779708428055757.html
Opinion
Let's Help Iranians Beat the Censors
From satellite phones to Internet hacking, the U.S. can make a
difference.
By JEREMY RABKIN and ARIEL RABKIN
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave a speech Wednesday in which, w
Patrick Meier
Jul 20, 2009, 6:21:18 PM7/20/09
to crisi...@googlegroups.com
Thanks very much for sharing, Heather.
Here's a blog post I wrote up shortly after the Iranian elections on "How to Communicate Securely in Repressive Environments." More related information on DigiActive.
Cheers,
Patrick
Here's a blog post I wrote up shortly after the Iranian elections on "How to Communicate Securely in Repressive Environments." More related information on DigiActive.
Cheers,
Patrick
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