RConversation

Iranian Blogosphere: Happy 4th B-day!!

Four years ago today, the first Farsi blog appeared. Today, with the help of Hossein Derakhshan (aka "Hoder") and others, there are believed to be 75,000 Farsi blogs in Iran. Today on Global Voices, Iranian blogger Farid Pouya marks the occasion with a post about Iran's "blogistory".

There are of course a number of Iranians blogging in English, whose blogs you can find over at the Global Voices bridge blog index page for Iran. They include "Mr. Behi," who I interviewed for Global Voices not long ago.  He is one of the many progressive young Iranians blogging in English, who want the outside world to know that many young Iranians are not particularly fond of their current leaders or the way their country is being run, and wish they could engage more directly with the Western world while maintaining their identity as Iranians at the same time.

As my colleagues note in their Report on Internet Filtering in Iran, the Iranian government censors and blocks a lot of blogs. Farid also notes that blogging can be dangerous if you're too critical of the government . Blogger Mojtaba Saminejad is now serving a 2-year prison sentence (you can sign a petition for his release here.) Blogger Omid Sheikhan is facing trial in October.

Farsi blogs do span the gamut of religious and political views.  Farid points out that there are even Hezbollah blogs, like this one.  And as I reported last year, Hossein received a death threat from an extremist blog called "Islamic Army."

How Iran blocks online speech with U.S. technology

(Cross posted at Global Voices)

Microsoft is not the only U.S. company whose technology is assisting in blocking free speech, and China isn't the only country where it happens.

The OpenNet Initiative and Berkman Center have just released a new report: Internet Filtering in Iran (PDF).   The press release is here (also PDF..sorry). Here is the executive summary:

Iran has adopted one of the world’s most substantial Internet censorship regimes. Iran, along with China, is among a small group of states with the most sophisticated state-mandated filtering systems in the world. Iran has adopted this extensive filtering regime at a time of extraordinary growth in Internet usage among its citizens and a burst of growth in writing online in the Farsi language. As this report demonstrates, Iran’s sophisticated Internet censorship regime is part of a trend that the OpenNet Initiative’s research has uncovered toward states focusing on blocking expression in local languages, such as Farsi, and with a particular view toward clamping down on what can be published through inexpensive and popular applications, such as weblogs.

Iran is also one of a growing number of countries, particularly in the Middle East region, that rely upon commercial software developed by for-profit United States companies to carry out the core of its filtering regime. Iran has recently acknowledged, as our testing confirms, that it uses the commercial filtering package SmartFilter – made by the US-based company, Secure Computing – as the primary technical engine of its filtering system. This commercial software product is configured as part of the Iranian filtering system to block both internationally-hosted sites in English and sites in local languages.

SmartFilter, as with all commercial filtering software packages, is prone to over-blocking, errors, and a near-total lack of transparency. In effect, Iran outsources many of the decisions for what its citizens can access on the Internet to a United States company, which in turn profits from its complicity in such a regime.

Click below to continue reading...

Media frenzy: China and etc.

Thanks to all who've been linking to and commenting on the Columbia Journalism Review's "watercooler" interview with me, about why I quit CNN and what I'm doing now with Global Voices and so forth.  I've been getting a lot of email about it (all positive so far).

Hiawatha Bray of the Boston Globe quoted me in a story today titled "Tech Firms Help Tyrants Keep their Grip." He described my little experiment with censorship on the Chinese version of MSN Spaces, then quoted me on the wider implications of corporate collaboration with censorship and filtering:

'It's not my place to make their laws," Scoble writes on his blog. ''It certainly is not my right to force their hand with business power. Any more than it's their place to make American laws."

Rubbish, MacKinnon replies.

''By not agreeing to comply with filtering requirements, you're not forcing the Chinese to do anything," she said. ''You're just not playing along with their game."

Indeed, MacKinnon said that Microsoft and other Internet companies should flatly refuse to comply with the Chinese government's filtering standards, and not only out of a love of free speech.

''We're getting into a national security issue," she fretted. MacKinnon fears that our support of Chinese censorship is storing up trouble for the United States in years to come, in the same way that our tolerance of Saudi fanaticism is now paying such ugly dividends.

Consider the case of Taiwan. Most Chinese support their country's bellicose attitude toward their ''rebellious province." But MacKinnon thinks this is largely because the Chinese get so little accurate information about Taiwan, through the Internet or any other media. ''If you did have a free exchange of opinion," she said, ''maybe more people on the mainland might say, you know, let's let those Taiwanese do what they want."

Instead, Taiwan is demonized, and the masses cheer their leaders' belligerent posturing. All in all, it's a good way to start a war. And US Internet companies would share some of the blame, in MacKinnon's view, for helping Beijing keep its citizens in the dark.

''This comes down as their larger responsibility as Americans," MacKinnon said.

In Chris Lydon's Radio Open Source this evening I elaborated further. UPDATE: YOU CAN LISTEN TO IT NOW HERE. 

Then later this evening I talked a little bit about Iranian blogs (after Hoder came on live from Teheran) on the BBC's Up All Night. They may eventually post that segment too. Not sure.

Iranian election: reformist defeat

Now that the results of the Iranian election are out, I just posted a roundup of blogger coverage of the Iranian election over at Global Voices. Go read it over there. Click through to the Iranian bloggers and ask them questions in their comments sections if you want to know more. They're eager to know that you care about what they think.

Iran's bloggers are young, tech-savvy, yearning for democracy, and yearning to be part of the global community. They don't want the mullahs controlling their lives. But from reading their blogs, it's clear they're drawing a sad conclusion from the past week's events.

They're concluding that the Bush administration and the conservative mullahs are united in a desire to see the reformist movement fail in Iran. 

This may or may not be an accurate conclusion if you're looking at it from the Bush administration's point of view, but that's how things look from the ground in Teheran... from the eyes of young Iranians whose hopes have been dashed.

How incredibly sad. 

Skyping with Teheran

Head over to Global Voices and check out my Skype chat with Iranian blogger "Mr. Behi". Due to his dialup connection we weren't able to do a voice conversation for very long, but had a long text chat on Skype. We talked about why he blogs, what young Iranians like him think about tomorrow's Presidential election, and his views of the U.S. He is pro-reform but is skeptical that a new reformist leader in Iran would have the power to stand up to the conservative mullahs, given that the current President, Khatami, has failed to live up to young people's hopes. He also thinks that U.S. interference would be counterproductive, and that Iranians will need to find their own way, despite their frustrations with the conservative leadership. Read the whole thing, but here's a small excerpt of the Skype text chat:

Rebecca MacKinnon says: ...so if the next administration (whoever it is) ends up failing to reform much, like this one, will the frustration of iran’s young people boil over into the streets at some point? will people totally lose patience?
Mr.Behi Himself says: they may
you can not say yes or no
one year before 1978, no one would say a revolution may come

Rebecca MacKinnon says: is there anything people outside iran can do to help you guys … assuming you don’t want “regime change” assistance from certain countries?
;)
Mr.Behi Himself says: US should try not to help the oppositions in Iran for GOD sake

Rebecca MacKinnon says: yes that would taint the opposition, wouldn’t it?
Mr.Behi Himself says: because here the first reason to go in jail is have US/CIA realation

Rebecca MacKinnon says: yep.
Mr.Behi Himself says: and this much pressure on Iranian government for this niclear issues

Rebecca MacKinnon says: does the nuclear pressure make the hard-liners stronger?
Mr.Behi Himself says: that is it
they make this a fact for national pride
and convice people that west is our enemy

Rebecca MacKinnon says: sounds like a vicious cycle.
Mr.Behi Himself says: One reason I blog
is to tell peole hey, we do not think as our goverment does
and this is not done in my word