[HN Gopher] As unrest grows, Iran restricts access to Instagram,...
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As unrest grows, Iran restricts access to Instagram, WhatsApp
Author : perihelions
Score : 328 points
Date : 2022-09-22 04:56 UTC (18 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.reuters.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.reuters.com)
| egberts1 wrote:
| so that's what that strange USB plug poking out of a brick wall
| is for: transference of "ideas".
| 99_00 wrote:
| Iranian government is especially horrible.
|
| Also, restricting information and frees speech is something that
| western governments routinely do. Sometimes to skew election
| result in favor of the ruling regime.
|
| Supporters of the regime see it as stopping 'misinformation'. I'm
| not sure if they actually believe that or if it is just
| convenient cover for unethical and immoral conduct.
| dejj wrote:
| Which mesh networking app works on iOs?
|
| Bridgefy was never able to find my Android device and vice-versa.
| 7373737373 wrote:
| Does anything like Briar/Bridgefy exist for Linux? Something
| that relays messages/packets through a pure P2P meshnet using
| any connection available (ethernet, wifi, bluetooth), without
| any intermediate, special purpose routing hardware?
| questiondev wrote:
| gotta do communications over radio, if only cell phones had that
| access during an emergency situation. i know that would need more
| power and a bigger antenna to have a radio broadcast mesh
| network. i know there are issues with that but it's better than
| no communication to the outside world especially during a crisis
| situation, people really should have the freedom to communicate.
| [deleted]
| adolph wrote:
| Interesting contrast to Arab Spring. I wonder if blockage has to
| do with Iran govt or US Intel agencies. My assumption is that the
| latter is more influential. If Iran is inducing the blockage, the
| spies agree for some reason.
| pasc1878 wrote:
| Why would the US cut off things here. They have nothing to gain
| for suppressing this dissent.
| desindol wrote:
| Hu? During Arab Spring internet got cut off in Egypt, Libya,
| Syria...
| nashashmi wrote:
| Hate to post multiple messages, but social media (Twitter mainly)
| has been vital to the misinformation causing the protests.
| Iranians are convinced morality police brutally beat up a woman
| who did not wear her hijab properly and now has died.
|
| Reality: She attended a warning training at a center (women are
| issued a summons for improper hijab) and collapsed at the center.
| She had a brain tumor surgery long ago and it came up again. She
| was in a coma for several days and died. Iranian news had to
| release the video of her collapsing just to quell the protest.
| tokai wrote:
| A disgusting lie. And at the same time it is simply not a good
| argument against the unrest even if true. Irans totalitarian
| regime deserve to face its people.
| haskellandchill wrote:
| well if misinformation is causing the protests it's still a
| good thing. the Iranian people need to free themselves of the
| regime. wether it is done under false pretenses does not
| matter, just that it is done.
| toyg wrote:
| The fact is that, regardless of whether it's factually true,
| the first scenario is clearly (and awfully) credible enough for
| people to go "I've had enough of this shit".
|
| People don't like to revolt - it's messy, risky, dangerous, and
| chances it will end badly for any one person are way over 50%.
| If they do it, it's because they experience an incredible
| amount of nonsensical authoritarianism throughout their daily
| life, to the point that they feel they have nothing to lose
| from trying to change things.
| norwalkbear wrote:
| Holy shit, if that's true. Then it's likely another world
| government causing a coup
| pessimizer wrote:
| That's still enough to be just as angry about. Because the
| state wanted to lecture a woman on the morality of covering up
| her hair, she died in a "training center" instead of in bed.
| Her last moments were of being humiliated for being
| insufficiently modest.
| bnjms wrote:
| This is a defense that weakens the defender.
|
| If it's is true what you say the fact that so many of the
| population are primed to rebel mean the unrest already existed
| and would have been unleashed with another trigger.
|
| It is not the truth about the trigger that matters here but the
| truth about the situation which has prepared the unrest.
| solarist wrote:
| I've seen many tweets from people in Germany, USA, Turkey etc.
| that they can't access their WhatsApp account. Seems to be both
| Iranian government and Meta.
|
| Edit: can be a compromised CDN. See
| https://twitter.com/roozbehp/status/1572841090910388225?s=46...
|
| Edit 2: Videos are being removed too
| https://twitter.com/youranonstory/status/1572747450368290816...
|
| Edit 3: from Cloudflare: https://blog.cloudflare.com/protests-
| internet-disruption-ir/
| mrtksn wrote:
| I'm in Turkey currently and my father works in Moscow as an
| expat, yesterday we were not able to do video calls on Whatsapp
| and assumed it's the Russians blocking it because the error
| message that Whatsapp gave was something like the operator of
| the person you call doesn't support video calls. Tried Wi-Fi
| and mobile internet, the result was the same.
|
| Voice calls and text worked just fine.
| dang wrote:
| (I've moved your comment from
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32937709 to the merged
| thread because it's a good comment and I don't want it to get
| stuck where no one will see it.)
| solarist wrote:
| Thanks!
| lloeki wrote:
| > Edit: can be a compromised CDN
|
| I don't see mention of a CDN in the link or the conversation
| around it, the closest being "artifact of its infrastructure".
| Was it the correct link?
|
| I'm not seeing how a CDN exploit would result in Instagram
| replying with "your post has been removed". That said I'm only
| inferring how Meta uses its CDNs (e.g storing static user
| posted video/image assets)
| ImHereToVote wrote:
| ImHereToVote wrote:
| yieldcrv wrote:
| annual occurrence for one reason or another there
|
| interesting that it works
|
| might as well make it a national holiday for the purge
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| baybal2 wrote:
| nashashmi wrote:
| Didn't Obama give social media special status to serve in
| sanctioned countries
| nashashmi wrote:
| This was about a previous title where it was saying facebook
| whatsapp instagram refusing access to Iranians even outside the
| country.
|
| The title is corrected now.
| timcavel wrote:
| lagadu wrote:
| Wouldn't this be proof that Meta is dealing with the Iranian
| government directly and thus violating US sanctions against Iran?
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Possibly. Sanctions law is a hot mess of sometimes
| contradictory exceptions. In this case, the exceptions
| regarding "informational materials" may apply.
|
| https://www.lawfareblog.com/did-twitter-violate-us-sanctions...
| lupire wrote:
| The Berman Amendment protects transferring information
| to/from Iran. Blocking information seems quite the opposite.
| eqvinox wrote:
| (As much as I dislike Meta --) applying foreign laws to foreign
| users isn't "dealing" with the Iranian government. "Dealing" in
| the legal sense generally requires a two-way exchange. If Iran
| unidirectionally imposes a regulation, that's not a deal; Meta
| has made no decision to enter into it.
|
| (Reference/entry point for legal aspects about this: contracts
| are also invalid if they're purely unidirectional. If I
| remember correctly there's a LegalEagle YT video about this,
| but you can probably dig this up elsewhere too.)
| dang wrote:
| (This was originally a reply to
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32934936, which originally
| had a title implying that.)
| rippercushions wrote:
| Do we have any proof it's Meta doing this, as opposed to the
| Iranian government blocking Whatsapp within its borders?
| John23832 wrote:
| It's done at an application level?
| solarist wrote:
| https://twitter.com/roozbehp/status/1572841090910388225?s=46.
| ..
|
| | As a former WhatsApp engineer, I don't think WhatsApp even
| has any mechanism to do such a thing. It's probably an
| unintended artifact of its infrastructure that the Iranian
| government has exploited, and knowing the WhatsApp team, they
| are probably already working on a fix.
| synergy20 wrote:
| well it's disgusting, but, why twitter did not become part of it
| this time? that's a little surprise to me.
|
| the social network's censorship is unbelievable.
| jaimex2 wrote:
| They need all the human users they can get while the Musk
| ordeal is going on.
| norwalkbear wrote:
| Yikes it feels like arab spring again. I wonder if this will be
| Afghanistan, where things westernize for a decade then goes even
| more the other way than it was initially.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| Google pulling out of China instead of catering to censorship was
| a principled move, but fairly obviously did not lead to more
| freedom of speech in China. It helped kickstart a domestic,
| government-obedient tech industry.
|
| I don't know what the right move here is. Nobody who thinks
| there's an obvious right answer is worth listening to.
| anvic wrote:
| The right move is letting countries govern themselves in
| whatever way they see fit and leaving them alone.
|
| Or would you like to have Iran or Pakistan or whatever
| intervening in the domestic issues of the West?
| howaboutnope wrote:
| This includes not wanting to support or do business with
| people who look the other way as people get slaughtered. I'm
| not in Iran, I'm dealing solely with things that enter my ken
| and therefore become subject to my judgement.
|
| I can't go to a museum, admire the bravery of, say, Sophie
| Scholl, and then go "ah yes, but at the end of the day it's
| not _really_ anyone 's business", and you cannot _both_ have
| the dignity of a person who accepts the responsibility they
| have just by virtue of being human _and_ shut yourself off.
|
| At the end of the day, it's just a rationalization for
| kicking away the ladder. You don't care what happens to them
| as long as it doesn't happen to you or people you love. That
| is what it is, and all it is.
| norwalkbear wrote:
| People really do think their nations culture should be
| imposed everywhere. In reality it doesn't work. See Americas
| bitter defeat in Afghanistan. Which is now more Islamic and
| antiwestern than it's ever been
| shadowgovt wrote:
| FWIW, Google said they pulled out of China for principled
| reasons but they did it practically for self-preservation.
|
| Google got hacked by inside actors planted in their physical
| offices by the Chinese government. It's one of the very few
| times that Gmail's security was compromised. At the time,
| Google did not have the security countermeasures in place to
| protect against such an attack so they responded by severing
| the physical ties so such an attack could not be repeated. Once
| the BeyondCorp initiative had completed and they had the
| technology necessary to firewall pieces of their infrastructure
| where users had admin rights from other pieces of their
| infrastructure where users had admin rights, they reopened
| business in China because the risk model had changed.
| plantain wrote:
| >Google got hacked by inside actors planted in their physical
| offices by the Chinese government.
|
| This just isn't true? It was an IE 0-day.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| That was one of the tools used. The attackers got access to
| the Gmail backing store.
| Bakary wrote:
| Those are two very bold claims: that Google pulled out of China
| for purely ideological reasons, and that the Chinese tech
| industry would have otherwise failed if they had stayed. We are
| dealing with hypotheticals here, so it's not like we can back
| up our propositions with actual evidence. But both ideas just
| seem deeply unlikely based on what we know of both Google and
| Chinese tech.
| njdvndsjkvn wrote:
| not sure why this is downvoted. Chinese companies can
| definitely make their own search engine. And in fact search
| engines are not so big in china anyway; everything is an app,
| and questions are answered on Zhihu. Google's time in China
| was up anyway and they knew it. It was good PR for them to
| leave with a bang. Does anyone really thing the CCP would
| allow Google to collect data on every Chinese person as they
| do in the US? And without data collection ads become much
| less profitable (see: facebook). This would also set a
| precedent of barring Google from data collection which would
| spread elsewhere. Now its just seen as a domestic Chinese
| thing only.
| snehk wrote:
| > It helped kickstart a domestic, government-obedient tech
| industry.
|
| How long do you think US companies could operate in the US if
| they weren't government-obedient? Or any company in any country
| for that matter.
| _jal wrote:
| If you want to call Google's act "principled", you need to
| explain Project Dragonfly.
|
| It is and always has been the intersection of realpolitik and
| greed.
| desindol wrote:
| It's a bit of a pickle if someone really finds the right answer
| and you don't listen to it isn't it?
| bpodgursky wrote:
| I have no problem with people talking through the tradeoffs
| and listening. There's tautologically a least-worst option we
| should find.
|
| But if the answer is trite snark that summarizes evil vs
| obvious good, they haven't done that work, and I won't
| listen, no.
| surfpel wrote:
| Culture moves both ways.
|
| I would rather American companies not get so comfortable with
| blatant censorship. While we do still have some degree of
| censorship (and a whole lot pf privacy violation), it's still
| generally seen as a taboo and not as a moral or necessary
| thing.
|
| Once the social standards change however, the goalpost moves
| and it becomes harder to maintain the same freedoms we had
| before.
| criley2 wrote:
| I would rather the American people elect a government that
| will protect their rights through laws.
|
| Meta will not violate American law. As citizens, our most
| effective tool is our government of the people.
|
| The idea that we rely on culture or corporate benevolence to
| maintain our freedoms, and not our representatives and
| laws... it's insane, to the say the least. I'd prefer to
| elect the people to protect my freedoms, not hope a for-
| profit advertising company will do so automatically.
| surfpel wrote:
| You've given platitudes with an overall misunderstanding of
| both the parent comment as well as a the functioning of the
| real world.
|
| > I would rather the American people elect a government
| that will protect their rights through laws.
|
| I would also like a world where problems don't exist, but
| that doesn't change the real world. It's a naive take. The
| world is complicated.
|
| > Meta will not violate American law.
|
| This is both demonstrably false and borderline meaningless.
|
| False because they have and will, unless you're suggesting
| Meta/Facebook has NEVER broken a law. It's just a question
| of whether they got charged/sued for it.
|
| It's meaningless because laws can be highly interpretable,
| unenforceable, impractical... and the playing field is
| constantly changing, so there's always a new opportunity
| for new types of violations.
|
| That isn't to say laws are meaningless, obviously they are
| extremely necessary and must be enforced, but the public
| response to those ambiguous situations is what would help
| determine the next set of laws/norms.
|
| > The idea that we rely on culture or corporate benevolence
| to maintain our freedoms...
|
| Parent comment doesn't suggest this. "Corporate culture"
| has little to do with it. American culture is what would
| change, has changed, and is changing. When the tooling is
| developed to carry out efficient, sweeping censorship, it
| will be used. With more use, we become more comfortable
| with it and even see it as a necessary evil. Currently
| there is public outrage when a tech company censors
| information. How long will this remain interesting enough
| to draw our attention? TSA in airports after 9/11 is a good
| example of this.
| criley2 wrote:
| What an absurd, condescending and pointless reply.
|
| Example:
|
| >> I would rather the American people elect a government
| that will protect their rights through laws.
|
| >I would also like a world where problems don't exist,
| but that doesn't change the real world. It's a naive
| take. The world is complicated.
|
| What in the hell kind of reply is this? How dare you. (On
| the day that the EU fined Google 4 billion Euros, largest
| in history, demonstrating laws and governments of people,
| no less). Your nonsensically dismissive reply is immature
| and entirely unfit for this community. Take this tripe
| back to reddit.
|
| Shame on you for how you behaved here.
| surfpel wrote:
| I want to fully reply to this but there is too much to
| dismantle and it would be unenlightening to do so.
|
| All I will say is that in being offended by a rather
| benign comment, you have yourself committed what you
| accuse me of.
| criley2 wrote:
| I have no interest in any further communication with a
| child, please find another thread to troll.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| It's also viable to fight for neither capital or state
| dominance. You have a lot of confidence in the rule of law
| applying to power and liberal society
| peyton wrote:
| Yeah, wow, laws aren't code that runs on people instead
| of silicon.
| ideamotor wrote:
| Important point. To reiterate, the culture of companies
| change.
| surfpel wrote:
| Culture in general changes. A company is not an island.
| Employees move around, tech moves around. Society at large
| gets comfortable with censorship when its use spreads.
|
| We're all looking for ways to censor spammers or
| belligerents from internet forums. It could easily start
| there and spread to other areas.
| zmgsabst wrote:
| That already happened, eg, COVID policies on social media
| and YouTube.
|
| We had a breakdown in our consensus mechanism -- because
| the government partnered with corporations to censor
| rather than allow public debate.
|
| The nation is still bitterly divided.
| norwalkbear wrote:
| America is divided more than, Iran maybe a glimpse into our
| immediate future.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| Should American companies pull out of Germany instead of
| banning Nazi propaganda? The UK instead of removing court-
| ordered offensive speech?
|
| I mean, maybe, but since the US has the least-restricted
| speech of basically any nation, you are de-facto asking for a
| nationally partitioned internet. That's a big change.
| 988747 wrote:
| The problem is: if you want to ban Nazi propaganda you have
| to develop tools to do it. Once you have tools in place you
| can use it to ban anything you do not like, not just Nazi
| propaganda.
| surfpel wrote:
| Precisely. This is what it means for a company to get
| 'comfortable' with something. It means that given enough
| demand they have developed the tools necessary to do that
| aforementioned thing and those tools now can become
| accessible to any jurisdiction, even those who didn't ask
| for it.
| pjc50 wrote:
| You also have to develop tools to block spam, child porn,
| and (in practice on almost all social networks) legal
| porn that there is nevertheless considerable censorious
| pressure on.
| fragmede wrote:
| Or just copyrighted material. Try posting the new Disney
| movie or streaming the latest UFC fight for free and see
| what happens. The tools for censorship are there, they
| just don't count if it's to protect a corporation's
| assets, for some reason.
| olddustytrail wrote:
| > Should American companies pull out of Germany instead of
| banning Nazi propaganda?
|
| That would be a little ironic since it was the US who
| pushed for such laws in post-war Germany in the first
| place.
| NayamAmarshe wrote:
| Fortunately Telegram is still up. People are using MTProxy to use
| Telegram even on blocked internet and it's made it possible for
| people to organize protests and spread information quickly.
| n-i-m-a wrote:
| I'm an Iranian living in Italy and have an Italian phone/WhatsApp
| number. Couldn't call anyone or receive WhatsApp calls to/from
| Iranian and non-Iranian numbers yesterday afternoon when the
| internet blocking started in Iran. It was like all numbers
| somehow in touch with Iranian contacts were blocked from
| completing calls. As soon as either side of the call would
| answer, the call would end with a message like you are connected
| via a network that has blocked WhatsApp or something similar.
| lupire wrote:
| How is it possible for two non-Iranians (in a
| geographic/telecom sense, not ethnic sense) to lose the
| connection on WhatsApp due to Iranian government? Surely the
| blocklist isn't implemented inside Facebook, it must be based
| on cellphone carrier.
|
| Edit: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32937782 links to
| claims that the Iranian government hacked WhatsApp or one of
| its networking providers.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Normally the government (in this case Iran) contacts the
| service provider (in this case FB/Whatsapp)and lets them know
| that unless they self-block their service, the government
| will do blocking at the network level and might issue fines.
|
| Normally, that makes the service provider implement blocks on
| their end, because then at least they can present the user
| with a sensible error message, and other services that the
| government isn't trying to block are not impacted (eg.
| services hosted on the same servers - for example Whatsapp
| voice calls might be banned, but text chat not banned).
| aasasd wrote:
| To my knowledge, Iranian government doesn't have power to
| dictate FB's actions outside Iran. So FB could block by the
| IPs, but blocking everywhere by the nationality makes no
| sense (at least by the standards of a normal person).
| weard_beard wrote:
| I can only send email 500 miles and my nationality seems
| to impact my cell service
| aasasd wrote:
| Github once managed to ban accounts of Iranians, even
| students in the US. Afaik shortly after that GH went to
| the US government and convinced them that sanctioning
| every Iranian even outside Iran was technically and
| politically dubious, which resulted in the sanctions
| being relaxed in some way.
| hnaccount_rng wrote:
| Sure, but if Meta/Facebook/Whatsapp would react to such an
| order from _Iran_ they'd be in very big trouble _very_
| quickly. That's violating US sanctions level stuff.
|
| Ignoring the Iranian government might make them loose some
| users. Trying to ignore the US government will make some
| people go to prison. If that's what happens.. someone made
| a _very_ bad decision
| lupire wrote:
| It is illegal in USA for Meta to pay fines to Iran
| government.
|
| The government is blocking at network level anyway.
|
| The app provider should _detect_ the network outage and
| provide a good UI, not proactively block users who aren 't
| using the affected network at all.
| wyldfire wrote:
| > The app provider should detect the network outage and
| provide a good UI,
|
| Can the blocking be adequately distinguished from packet
| loss? If not it seems like it would be embarrassing for
| the app to declare Government blockage when it's not
| really the case.
| ffk wrote:
| It's probably validated by a human before the message is
| deployed.
| stickfigure wrote:
| There is _zero_ chance that FB /Meta is complicit in this.
| The occam's razor answer is that the Iranian government has
| figured out an attack, and a bunch of FB employees are
| frantically trying to mitigate it instead of reading HN.
| nindalf wrote:
| I doubt Iran needs to go to the extent of hacking Meta to
| block a few random users in Italy? They've achieved their
| main aim of quelling protests by simply blocking at the
| network level. I'm skeptical about the original bug
| report.
| panarky wrote:
| _> blocking at the network level_
|
| How could any network-level block by Iran prevent a user
| in the UK from calling a user in India?
| toyg wrote:
| There are tons of Iranians abroad, figuring out a way to
| cut them off from the local population is definitely a
| worthy goal for the regime.
| NoImmatureAdHom wrote:
| Facebook is working with the Iranian government, of course.
| timcavel wrote:
| wyldfire wrote:
| I have friends here in the US who use WhatsApp and they are
| originally from Iran. I wonder, if it's been many years since
| they lived in Iran if they're still considered "Iranian" for
| the purposes of this blockage?
| joshuaissac wrote:
| I noticed this issue last night while trying to call WhatsApp
| numbers in India from the UK (no Iranian numbers involved). I
| got the same error message: "Couldn't place call because your
| device is connected to a Wi-Fi network that prevents WhatsApp
| calls. Connect to a different network or turn Wi-Fi off." I
| wonder if that was collateral damage from the Iranian block.
| scandox wrote:
| Slight OT: When I was in Monaco recently the Monaco Telecom
| network prevented me making or receiving WhatsApp calls. I could
| message, but no calling. Presumably therefore it is something
| that the network provider can interfere with effectively.
| codedokode wrote:
| Could it be that WhatsApp has a mechanism for ISP and telcos to
| block calls to prevent unnecessary competition? Like Apple has
| one to prevent using Apple's VPN?
| inglor wrote:
| It's not hard nor does it require WhatsApp's cooperation.
| It's fairly easy to figure out something is an (even
| encrypted) video call (for example by the consistency of
| throughput of "wanting to upload") and certainly pretty easy
| to use a simple algorithm to deduce what that traffic looks
| like.
|
| Hiding video traffic with other traffic is hard since it's
| easy to assume "long persistent video-like upload with
| consistent throughput over something like srtp" is video and
| get a few false positives and no false negatives.
| rippercushions wrote:
| Yes, Dubai in particular is notorious for this.
|
| https://www.cloudwards.net/whatsapp-ban-in-dubai/
| crabshot wrote:
| This highlights the problem of communications metadata still
| being available to an outside observer or manipulator. A
| messaging network where source and destination identifiers can't
| be linked to real-world identifying information, such as phone
| numbers, would have been resistant to such censorship.
| upofadown wrote:
| If they can't target some particular group then they just shut
| down the whole thing. This more highlights the problem of
| systems with a single point of control.
| zaik wrote:
| Multiple providers who federate would still not be enough.
| With some effort one could block every XMPP server, Jami (or
| Tor) node out there. You would need something like Briar
| which does mesh networking via Bluetooth.
| pessimizer wrote:
| With "some effort" you can block anything. Encryption is
| better than open, federated and encrypted is better than
| centralized and encrypted, federation over a mesh network
| is better than just federation.
| pentae wrote:
| Here I am wondering why a censorship proof meshnet version of
| WhatsApp or Telegram has not reached wide popularity in these
| countries yet.. is it because these governments dictate they be
| blocked from the app store?
|
| Another reason why we need sideloading ..
| [deleted]
| theGnuMe wrote:
| Starlink iPhones can't come soon enough.
| 7373737373 wrote:
| Not just Starlink, smartphones have to become truly P2P-Meshnet
| compatible
| pessimizer wrote:
| If it works well for dodging censorship and catches on, it
| will be made illegal. Not just in Iran, but also in the USA
| and Europe.
| sriram_malhar wrote:
| I'm sure repressive governments will make it illegal to use
| phones that can connect to Starlink. Satellite phones are
| banned in India, for example. You will be arrested for a lot
| longer for owning a satellite phone than if you owned a gun
| illegally.
| WHATDOESIT wrote:
| Let's see the governments try to ban iPhone. What a nice
| revolution trigger.
| staticman2 wrote:
| If you think violence in the name of Apple products is
| plausible you may have an unhealthy obsession with Apple
| products.
| WHATDOESIT wrote:
| Yes, I think violence in the name of affordable satellite
| phones is plausible.
| 5pComb wrote:
| They already tried: https://www.globaltradealert.org/interv
| ention/80877/import-b...
|
| From the same site: Iran smartphone imports (sept 2021 -
| sept 2022)
|
| 1 Samsung 48% 2 Xiaomi 28% 3 Nokia 12% 4 Apple 6%
| WHATDOESIT wrote:
| Good thing other manufacturers are going to copy the
| feature soon.
| lupire wrote:
| Most Iranians can't afford iPhones.
| WHATDOESIT wrote:
| New iPhones. It's very common to buy secondhand in these
| markets. The satellite-able ones will need some time to
| "trickle down" but it's going to happen - especially if
| it offers this feature.
| sriram_malhar wrote:
| They'll just declare it a satellite phone and defect make
| them illegal.
|
| I mean, we are discussing hair here, so it is a (bitter)
| laugh to imagine that they are going to let citizens have
| access to an unfettered network ...
| ReptileMan wrote:
| A government that beats young women to death could probably
| intimidate people that grumble that they can't buy the
| least apple fashion accessory
| WHATDOESIT wrote:
| Right now there's practically a revolution because they
| don't want to wear a piece of fabric on heads. I don't
| think they could.
| hef19898 wrote:
| You do realize that these topics arw differwnt? Also a
| nice stab at supressed women standing up for their rights
| in very repressive country, doing so takes a _lot_ of
| courage. Don 't diminish that.
| WHATDOESIT wrote:
| I didn't diminish a thing. If anything, it was a stab at
| the dumb religion the damned government is basing it on.
| I lived through communism in Europe and was present
| during the local revolution, I know very well how much
| courage is required, I was staring inside the gun of a
| Russian tank there. And no I don't think these topics are
| too different - everybody knows unfree people need secure
| communication first and foremost, it's only your take
| that the iPhone is merely a fashion accessory, but in
| practice it's also the most secure phone on the market
| and now it's getting sattelite comms too.
| [deleted]
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _Starlink iPhones can't come soon enough_
|
| Yeah, authoritarian governments will just allow that to happen,
| let alone the cost of such a device is out of reach for most of
| these people.
| lm28469 wrote:
| With their 50% inflation and ~10k% average salary I bet they
| can't wait for these tech gadgets either...
| javajosh wrote:
| Does anyone know how this works in Iran? All the way from the
| decision making to the question of: who do you call? What
| commands do they execute? I would naively start with physical
| ingress points and add routing rules that stop traffic to service
| IP blocks (obtained by examining DNS records). Depending on how
| DNS is deployed (like, is there a national law to only use
| government run name servers?) you could freeze DNS records from
| updating.
|
| That would be MY back-of-the-envelope approach to doing internet
| censorship in a totalitarian dictatorship. But I'm not convinced
| it's the best way.
| martinald wrote:
| I imagine SNI too - which is in cleartext. There is encrypted
| SNI but I don't know how far that is along in terms of
| deployment.
|
| But really for a company like FB you could just blackhole their
| entire IP range(s) and/or AS (AS32934?) which would take
| everything offline very quickly.
| LinuxBender wrote:
| Cloudflare supports ESNI. AFAIK none of the mainstream
| browsers support ESNI by default. I believe the latest build
| of Firefox [1] may have an option in about:config to enable
| it. One could check if a website supports ESNI with [2]
| ESNICheck. Support for ESNI is still subject to change. [3]
|
| [1] - https://blog.cloudflare.com/encrypt-that-sni-firefox-
| edition...
|
| [2] - https://esnicheck.com/
|
| [3] - https://serverfault.com/questions/976377/how-can-i-set-
| up-en...
| XorNot wrote:
| ESNI is useless. Nobody cares that it's secret - they care
| that they don't know what you're doing.
|
| It removes plausible deniability, which means no more
| domain fronting bypasses.
|
| It's not enough to be "secure", you need to be able to hide
| in plain sight.
| baybal2 wrote:
| rodolphoarruda wrote:
| Oppressive governments must be thankful to all BigTechs able to
| consolidate userbase and services around a handful of apps. It
| makes it really easy to switch things on/off when needed. The
| original purpose of the Internet as being a resilient p2p network
| for the people has been completely defeated in some nations.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Yeah. People love the convenience of Big Tech and never think
| about the abuses their enable. Even if someone built a
| perfectly resilient uncensorable mesh network and E2E encrypted
| messaging service, what is the point if nobody uses it?
| Abekkus wrote:
| Building a resilient p2p service on the internet doesn't just
| require not using big name SaaS, it means building that service
| to not need the WebCAs or even DNS, two core services that are
| anything but p2p. I honestly don't know of any applications
| that require neither.
| planede wrote:
| Jami and Tox should mostly qualify, I believe. The hard part
| is bootstrapping the discovery network, I don't know if there
| is a true p2p way for that.
| ugjka wrote:
| You have to make a connection to something to get anywhere,
| that's how the net works
| marcosdumay wrote:
| You can distribute DNS data over any transport, p2p or not.
| Ans with DNSSEC, you can trust the contents you get from any
| transport.
|
| Are you concerned with countries forcefully removing entries?
| Because there are a lot of other country TLDs where you can
| add your entries if you want.
| tptacek wrote:
| Virtually everyone relies on ISP DNS servers, which can
| trivially bypass DNSSEC (DNSSEC collapses down to a single
| bit in the header on the last hop from server to stub
| resolver). If all you're trying to do is resist DNS
| censorship, you can get almost everything you need from
| using an out-of-country name and DoH, which is universally
| available, very much unlike DNSSEC.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| DNS without DNSSEC is pretty much vulnerable to the kind
| of censorship that won't even let you know you are being
| censored... Any name system without something equivalent
| to DNSSEC is.
|
| With DNSSEC it is still vulnerable, but only to the kinds
| that you will know you are being censored, so you can try
| to get it from another country or another channel.
|
| If your ISP denies DNSSEC for you, you already know you
| are being attacked, and can get it through some other
| channel. DoH is a cool channel, just make sure it has
| DNSSEC.
| akerl_ wrote:
| For the vast majority of DNSSEC-enabled end user systems,
| the user's device is not doing its own DNSSEC
| validations. It's using a DNSSEC-enabled resolver and
| trusting the bit set on the DNS query response where the
| recursive resolver says "yup, I confirm that DNSSEC is
| good here". Given that these resolvers are generally
| provided by the user's ISP, if the ISP wants to lie about
| DNSSEC, they can just fudge the results and set that bit
| to "yup, we're good".
|
| The only way around this is for local systems to do their
| own recursive resolution, which isn't the default
| configuration on any OS or distribution that I'm aware
| of.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Honestly, this is something I shouldn't have to say. But
| getting a DNS response with a flag saying "yep, trust me,
| it's valid" is not DNSSEC.
|
| What is it with DNSSEC that people have to pollute
| discussions saying that stupid stuff that isn't DNSSEC
| isn't secure?
| akerl_ wrote:
| Are there any operating systems or distributions that
| actually ship with DNSSEC validation via local recursive
| resolution?
|
| The reason I'm describing local stub resolvers that check
| the dnssec bit of their upstream recursive resolver is
| because that's how DNSSEC is implemented in every
| OS/distro I'm aware of. So that configuration is what
| actually matters when we talk about users being protected
| (or not) by DNSSEC.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| It's not like ordinary people were running their own mail
| servers or other p2p tech in the pre-Big-Tech days, nor would
| it have been considerably harder for the government to disrupt
| email traffic than it is for them to block Facebook/etc. This
| isn't a pro-Big-Tech or pro-centralization message, only that
| we never actually lived in a golden age of ubiquitous
| decentralized communication that was robust against state actor
| censorship.
| mylons wrote:
| this just sounds like whataboutism and is skirting the issue.
| there is an enormous amount of censorship power within
| BigTech right now. given the "value" their core businesses
| provide, which is funded by manipulating your attention to
| get ad impressions, they should be broken up. why does
| facebook get to run whatsapp when it's an ad business?
| pyinstallwoes wrote:
| Not really that distributed given that everything is controlled
| by 'hubs/isps' which are within arms reach for any government
| within their borders.
|
| The internet was built for fail-over to maintain communicatoin
| during a nuclear event.
|
| The internet is less concerned about being a p2p network, which
| it clearly is not. A totally ad-hoc p2p network would be
| interesting, and more resiliant in some ways and lossy in
| others. It probably makes sense to entertain such a model. They
| aren't mutually exclusive.
|
| Totally agree with you though. It's a big problem with the
| _increased amount of centralization_ in traffic flow / routing.
| That and BGP is wack.
| mercy_dude wrote:
| That includes our own government in US. If you have not
| noticed, there has been a constant pestering from Congress to
| censor big tech and "severe consequences" otherwise. And not to
| say the clear as daylight funding they provide to people in
| power as part of the lobbying effort. Oh and the same people in
| media and big tech then decide what is misinformation and not.
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| You drastically underestimate power that those oppressive
| governments have in real world that some fancy decentralized
| solution would solve. They just take down the internet.
| adventured wrote:
| > They just take down the internet.
|
| Or kill a lot of people if they rebel. Which is what Iran did
| just before the pandemic, and which the media only briefly
| covered. They machine-gunned people in the streets by the
| thousands and the West barely batted an eye.
|
| It was as bad as Tiananmen Square in 1989, but you'd never
| know it going by the media coverage then or since.
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| The only way to win is the point when police and army joins
| your side. That's only how those are won.
|
| Of course, Iran has parallel structures with IRGC
| specifically made for those situation.
| michaelwww wrote:
| I'd be surprised if by now Iranians hadn't figured out alternate
| means of communication.
| howaboutnope wrote:
| I think it's not so much about them talking to each other, it's
| about shutting them off from the outside.
|
| > The last time the Islamic Repubic cut off the Internet in
| Iran, they brutally massacred 1500 people, just 3 years ago. I
| beg you please save my people (crying while typing)
|
| -- https://twitter.com/AsingleNight/status/1572930406709530624
|
| > We are covered in blood, don't forget us, they want to
| suffocate us. Please be our voice.
|
| -- https://twitter.com/dokhtr81/status/1572907289774006272
|
| It's heartbreaking, and I for one do not intend to let it go.
| Enough is enough.
|
| https://twitter.com/AlinejadMasih/status/1572273975639642114
| anthk wrote:
| Install Briar from FDroid, it can comunnicate even over
| Bluetooth.
| LinuxBender wrote:
| Can people in Iran SSH out to other countries? If so the folks
| familiar with SSH could use something like sshchat or devzat
| [1] _see demo info, not my project_ This does not persist chat,
| but that may be a net positive in a surveillance state.
| ssh-keygen -q -t rsa -b 2048 -N "" -C "devzat" -f
| ~/.ssh/.id_devzat ssh -i ~/.ssh/.id_devzat some-
| name@devzat.hackclub.com
|
| If DNS is blocked then edit ~/.ssh/config and append:
| Host devzat devzat.hackclub.com Hostname 150.136.142.44
| Port 22 # Port 443 User some_name
| IdentityFile ~/.ssh/.id_devzat LogLevel VERBOSE
|
| [1] - https://github.com/quackduck/devzat
| joshxyz wrote:
| What are the odds someone makes iranstagram.com lol
|
| Edit: i've just read the article. disheartening series of
| events. my country philippines has flaws but damn i can still
| say i'm lucky in a lot of ways.
| michaelwww wrote:
| I was thinking more like sneaker net - passing thumb drives
| of photos and videos around
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| .com is probably not the right TLD for the iranstagram
| product.
| dc-programmer wrote:
| Am I paranoid to to think Iran has the CA signing key for
| any TLD you can register with there?
| joshxyz wrote:
| don't leave us hanging, tell us the right one! HAHA
| NayamAmarshe wrote:
| They're using Telegram now with MTProxy.
| andrewinardeer wrote:
| I think this may be implemented at the government level:
|
| https://twitter.com/KianSharifi/status/1572885353551339521?t...
| [deleted]
| edsimpson wrote:
| Just a reminder that Signal supports both censorship
| circumvention and independently hosted proxies (e.g. Search
| Twitter, etc. for proxy links using the #IRanASignalProxy
| hashtag.)
|
| https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360056052052-Pr...
| suoduandao2 wrote:
| I believe Telegram is the private messaging app of choice
| within Iran.
| edsimpson wrote:
| Iran has blocked Telegram in 2017 and 2018. Presumably they
| could be doing that as well soon which is why I was
| highlighting some Signal features to help.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telegram_in_Iran
| NayamAmarshe wrote:
| It's blocked but it's still working with MTProxies. VPNs
| aren't working in Iran (a friend told me) and he's
| surprised Telegram is the only app that's working fine.
| yorwba wrote:
| Does Signal support signup without a phone number yet?
| Otherwise Iranian telcos could easily eat Signal's SMSs to
| block signups.
| the_svd_doctor wrote:
| Signing up is a one time thing though.
| [deleted]
| aljgz wrote:
| Iranian software engineer here, AMA
| spraveenitpro wrote:
| Balgair wrote:
| How are the protests going where you are?
|
| How are the sanctions impacting you as a SWE?
|
| Why HN?
|
| How was your summer, do anything fun?
| aljgz wrote:
| I'm no longer living in Iran for a few years, so this is
| based on my close friends' observations, not mine.
|
| People are doing their best and the riots are intensifying.
| But the riot police is using warfare to scatter them and when
| it does not work, they fire directly into the crowd, killing
| and wounding many. People have no way to fight back.
|
| Sanctions are a serious problem for a SWE who lives in Iran.
| It's almost impossible to work for a foreign company. 40+
| years of 40%+ inflation has hurt the economy so bad that more
| and more people are going down the Maslow's hierarchy. Lots
| of internet services (youtube, facebook, twitter, telegram,
| to name a few) are blocked by the government. Many others
| block requests from Iran because of sanctions. You cannot
| download java from the official source, you can guess the
| rest. Any paid service is out of question, as the country is
| shut off from international money transfer. Even after
| migrating to a western country, I still cannot work for any
| of the big American companies, until I become a PR of this
| new country. While I was working in another country, banks
| were afraid of opening an account for me and eventually gave
| me an account with no internet banking and no credit card.
|
| I've been checking out HN for many years. It's the only
| remaining social network of like minded people, that has
| managed to stay clean of what infects others.
|
| When I was in Iran (and while it's just a few years ago,
| things were much better at that time), I would go hiking,
| camping, biking, played tennis, much like what I do now.
| boeingUH60 wrote:
| >While I was working in another country, banks were afraid
| of opening an account for me and eventually gave me an
| account with no internet banking and no credit card.
|
| This is something that gets to me about sanctions. It seems
| they prevent everyday citizens just wanting to work and
| live from doing so, while the government elites still get
| to enjoy themselves because they can easily find ways to
| circumvent it. What's then the point?
| snovv_crash wrote:
| > What's then the point?
|
| It eventually makes things hard enough for the normal
| people that they revolt and (hopefully) replace the
| government.
| boeingUH60 wrote:
| That may be the intention, but that's not the reality of
| sanctioned countries. Iran, North Korea, Cuba et al are
| still rolling with their old rich leaders in pleasure,
| but an agonizing populace. It's really sad-- some
| countries are just unlucky :(
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| On one hand I don't want to ruin this thread with what is a
| common topic of disagreement; at the same time your kind offer
| provides a unique opportunity.
|
| There is a fairly, if not pervasive let's call it vocal
| technical sentiment that blockchain and related crypto
| technologies, in some form, are government/oppression-proof;
| that it provides financial and communication paths and channels
| that are so firm they withstand attempts by government to shut
| them down and infiltrate. And that therefore they would "solve
| a lot of problems" in an oppressive / troubled society.
|
| I come from a country that suffered a civil war, and I've
| always felt that was naive... Blockchain feels like a complex
| stack with myriad potential points of failure and accidental
| reveal for a normal citizen. More to the point, I feel many
| people are underestimating just how totalitarian and ruthless a
| government CAN get - a) in locking down through technological
| means by owning and monitoring infra and coming down
| immediately to anybody downloading/using/sending
| software/hardware/protocol/tokens/packets/dns/whatever that is
| even remotely suspicious, and b) their ability and willingness
| to apply violence quickly and mercilessly on mere suspicion,
| happily just as an example and upon a potentially innocent
| person, and therefore its quick and chilling effect on
| populace. Or to put it other way - there are places on this
| Earth where I would not personally _dare_ install some software
| or send some data, and I 'm reasonably technically competent;
| the risk and impact are just too high.
|
| What's your and your friends' perspective? Are there bullet-
| proof / safe technological means? What's the risk ratio and
| success for subverting government whether via blockchain or VPN
| or Signal etc?
|
| Thx for any thoughts you might contribute :)
| danrocks wrote:
| Why do protests in Iran always seem to lose steam before any
| change is made? Rust or Zig?
| aljgz wrote:
| There are several factors.
|
| One is the government's violence. They shoot people with
| rifles, arrest them and kill them in the prison, do
| everything they can to scare people off.
|
| Another is government's total control over communication. In
| 2009 they shut down the internet and SMS for a week. They did
| that again recently. When people cannot communicate, they
| can't organize.
|
| Another is a lack of leadership. The government has
| successfully removed (killed or imprisoned) anyone people
| trusted. Intolerance plagues cooperation of opposition
| groups. Maybe that's because of the history of Iran, maybe
| part of that is fueled by the government (it maintains an
| army of supporters in cyber space, spreading misinformation,
| hatred, and everything else they can do to prevent a large
| scale movement, some times masquerading as opposition)
| 7373737373 wrote:
| The internet really shouldn't be something that can be shut
| down
| aljgz wrote:
| Unfortunately, when dealing with an authoritarian
| government, there is not much that can be done. In Iran,
| the government invests heavily on censorship
| infrastructure.
|
| The country's entire internet traffic passes through an
| organization controlled by the government.
|
| The telecom companies were sold to the military (we have
| two military branches, one is made to support the
| government, to to defend the country) and they control
| all communication, shutting down the service when
| necessary. They can even shut down specific regions when
| a riot is happening there.
|
| The government sends EM noise in urban regions to block
| satellite TVs. This cannot be done easily to block
| something like Starlink due to spread spectrum
| modulation, but as the government controls official
| import gateways, there is no simple way to buy the
| equipment. Also, anyone with such a connection should
| take extreme measures to stay under radar. For most of
| them it's not easy for a normal person to even know they
| are revealing their identity, as many domestic service
| providers (food delivery, ride hailing, etc) have servers
| inside Iran and should cooperate with the government to
| share user data with them.
| nashashmi wrote:
| For anyone confused, the HN title has been changed to "As unrest
| grows, Iran restricts access to Instagram, WhatsApp
| (reuters.com)"
|
| before it was, [Social Media] banning Iranian users.
| rippercushions wrote:
| I'm a little surprised Whatsapp even works (worked) in Iran,
| given the US sanctions against the country.
| javajosh wrote:
| Iran seems to think Whatsapp & Instagram are destabilizing such
| that turning them off can help quell domestic unrest.
|
| A couple of takeaways. First, holy shit. Communications
| software is powerful enough to put fear in the hearts of
| political rulers! Second, insofar as sanctions are designed as
| punitive measures against a government who's actions our
| government doesn't support, it makes no sense to restrict their
| access to goods and services their government finds disruptive.
| In fact, we'd probably want to give them extra.
| codedokode wrote:
| > Communications software is powerful enough to put fear in
| the hearts of political rulers!
|
| Of course it is. No government wants people to get falseful
| information from unapproved sources.
| x86_64Ubuntu wrote:
| Communication networks are the first thing to disable or
| compromise in any conflict. Whether it's banning African
| slaves from having Talking Drums or cracking the Enigma
| during WWII, it's always a feature.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > Communications software is powerful enough to put fear in
| the hearts of political rulers!
|
| Yes. Encryption software can also defeat courts, judges,
| governments, militaries.
| pjc50 wrote:
| > Communications software is powerful enough to put fear in
| the hearts of political rulers!
|
| Well, yes, is this a surprise? Did you miss the "Arab
| Spring?" Or the Rohingya massacres?
|
| It's a double-edged sword. It can give you a revolution
| whether you need it or not or whether it's justified or not.
| toyg wrote:
| The internet is the digital equivalent of Guthenberg's
| press in Europe: on one hand, it ended the cultural primacy
| of the Catholic Church; on the other hand, it opened the
| door to hundreds of years of violence over who could
| reclaim that primacy.
|
| Eventually we will find a new equilibrium, but right now
| we're in choppy waters.
| Balgair wrote:
| The Arab Spring was about a decade ago. The poster could
| have been 8 years old at the time. HN's age range is pretty
| large.
|
| https://xkcd.com/1053/
| sleepyhead wrote:
| Perhaps it is because the sanctions are financial and WhatsApp
| does not charge users?
| toast0 wrote:
| Communications software and services are generally exempt from
| those sorts of sanctions.
| andrewinardeer wrote:
| The US government can issue licences to operate in Iran.
| Perhaps Meta secured one?
|
| GitHub has: https://github.blog/2021-01-05-advancing-developer-
| freedom-g...
| ReptileMan wrote:
| Let's hope the prosters are successful this time.
| steve76 wrote:
| duxup wrote:
| -crosses fingers.... again-
| throwayyy479087 wrote:
| Unfortunately, they won't be. China has been exporting some
| really amazing surveillance tools to Iran, NK, Russia that make
| revolutions basically impossible now.
|
| When was the last successful overthrow of a despot in a middle
| income country? Euromaiden 2014?
| ailef wrote:
| Euromaidan 2014 overthrew a democratically elected president.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| It's not clear that he was "democratically elected"--there
| were many allegations of election fraud and voter
| intimidation. Moreover, he wasn't "overthrown", parliament
| voted to remove him (because he ordered the police _to
| shoot protesters en masse_ ). The courts also convicted him
| of treason, and he was even disavowed by his own party.
| ailef wrote:
| Allegations? I thought one had to provide evidence in
| order to invalidate election results. It's funny how
| allegations are enough when it's useful to one's own
| side, but hard evidence is needed for the rest.
|
| > "Yesterday's vote was an impressive display of
| democratic elections," said Joao Soares, the president of
| the OSCE's Parliamentary Assembly and Special Coordinator
| for OSCE short- term observers.
|
| It seems election were pretty democratic unless you can
| provide some evidence to the contrary.
|
| Also, parliament voted his removal without reaching the
| needed majority, _according to Ukraine 's own
| constitution_, so the removal itself was
| unconstitutional.
| adventured wrote:
| If that had been a democratically elected regime, Ukraine
| wouldn't be making the stand it is today vs Russia. Ukraine
| would have immediately folded under popular domestic
| pressure to give in to / join up with Russia.
| ailef wrote:
| The elections have been internationally recognized as
| democratic. Please refer to the quote from the head of
| the OSCE observers mission I just posted in the parent
| thread.
|
| That's the only thing that counts, not your assumption on
| how Ukraine would behave, especially 12 years after said
| elections.
| amir734jj wrote:
| This protest is very different from previous protests. Look it
| up. Women in Iran are just tired of being oppressed and their
| movement is an embodiment of feminism. I'm an Iranian and
| unfortunately this protest hasn't received world wide attention
| in the news. This is a first time women taking the lead in
| protesting against this tyrannical regime.
| influxmoment wrote:
| It's been on the BBC front page about a woman lead protest
| since a few days ago
| jlundberg wrote:
| Here in Sweden this has also been on the national television
| news the last two days.
|
| Hopefully this will somehow be a step towards more freedom in
| Iran.
| amir734jj wrote:
| I hope so. I have lived more of my life in the US than in
| Iran and I hope to go back and visit one day.
| rjsw wrote:
| There have been daily reports on the Guardian website.
| boeingUH60 wrote:
| >This protest hasn't received world wide attention in the news
|
| I'm in faraway Nigeria, and I'm seeing this stuff on the news
| much against my wishes even.
| tokai wrote:
| >this protest hasn't received world wide attention in the news
|
| ? Its on every news page I have looked up.
| danrocks wrote:
| Welcome news, for sure. It seems that Iranians are fierce
| people who are not afraid of protesting their government. Why
| do protests usually stall, though? Is it the virulence of the
| repression machine?
| eternalban wrote:
| A legacy of social mistrust. USSR had the same exact feature.
| A variation on 'Everyone was dissatisfied, but no one trusted
| anyone else'. This is what keeps _any_ regime in power even
| when the general population doesn 't like them: fear of
| betrayals at personal and movement levels (in places
| reinforced by recent historic examples).
| jimbob45 wrote:
| Iran is geographically two countries away from Israel, the
| country that clandestinely fomented similar riots/insurrections
| in 10+ other countries that border Israel during the Arab
| Spring. Furthermore, Israel has been greatly outspoken in its
| hatred of Iran and Iran's nuclear program, going so far as to
| deploy the most sophisticated cyberattack in history[1]. It
| would hardly be a conspiracy theory to pin this on Israel
| rather than women suddenly waking up and deciding to riot after
| thousands of years of oppression.
|
| [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuxnet
| mylons wrote:
| uhm --- even if israel is fanning the flames of this, so
| what?
| ethotool wrote:
| Isn't that called state sponsored terrorism?
| cuteboy19 wrote:
| not really terrorism is it. just state sponsored?
| mylons wrote:
| how? are you defending the iranian theocracy?
| luckylion wrote:
| > It would hardly be a conspiracy theory to pin this on
| Israel rather than women suddenly waking up and deciding to
| riot after thousands of years of oppression.
|
| Or, you know, it could be that Iranian women just want that
| freedom back that was taken from them some 40 years ago. It's
| not like they've had to cover their hair and follow islamist
| rules for all of history. If you have any trust in pictures
| left, go look it up. You'll find plenty of photos of Iranians
| looking very much like Westerners 70 years ago.
|
| I understand the love for conspiracy theories, but this one
| is just lacking any effort.
| amir734jj wrote:
| Agreed. People are just tired.
| caeril wrote:
| edit: disregard.
|
| The historical record of intelligence services fomenting
| revolutions over and over again in rival nations is legion,
| but I understand it's very complicated for people to use a
| "search engine" for documentation of it.
|
| But yes, I should have known better than to run afoul of the
| HN hivemind. I regret my error.
|
| What I meant to say is that I <3 Mossad and the CIA. Flawless
| institutions serving as stalwart guardians of Democracy and
| Human Rights for us all. God bless them, and may The Holy
| Spirit watch over them and protect them. Amen.
| davisoneee wrote:
| Further, editing your message to completely remove all
| trace of the original is highly disingenuous.
|
| Even if there is strong concern for CIA and Mossad in this
| situation, do you think your snark does anything to improve
| the situation? Do you think it brings people towards, or
| pushes people away from your position? Or perhaps people
| just read your snark and think "im not going to even
| fucking pay attention to this guy"? Or is it just for your
| own shits and giggles?
| davisoneee wrote:
| Or, you know, provide and expect evidence, rather than
| conspiracy?
|
| Try to improve the situation by providing some real data as
| to why _this_, or some other event, IS being driven by
| Mossad/CIA/whoever, rather than just throwing snark into an
| online chat.
|
| The world doesn't benefit from people just throwing shit at
| each other. If you have evidence, educate the world. If you
| don't, useful actions would be to _look_ for evidence, not
| just promote antagonism.
| twixfel wrote:
| How about some evidence? And why are you getting all high
| and mighty? Your stance is among the basest imaginable, you
| have no reason to speak in that way.
| wishfish wrote:
| How many major protests have happened in Iran over the past
| ten years? That's actually a serious question. I remember big
| ones in 2019. Smaller ones since in the time before the
| current uprising. Some before 2019 as well. There's
| tremendous anger beneath the surface in Iran and it's not
| caused by Mossad.
|
| Iran banned abortion in 1979. There's been a baby boom since.
| The country is lopsided towards young people. People who
| don't want the repressive government. They want women to live
| freely. Many of them want the gay people of their country
| treated equally. It's an insult to them to say this revolt
| isn't grassroots. There's so much anger from people who just
| want to live quiet, normal lives in freedom. Without the rule
| of clerics and morality police.
|
| I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if a Mossad and/or CIA
| agent on the ground in Tehran is providing some assistance.
| That's what they do in times of unrest in an unfriendly
| country. But "some assistance" is a far cry from fomenting.
| This is mainly an Iranian effort.
| davisoneee wrote:
| Miriam Webster
|
| Definition of conspiracy theory
|
| : a theory that explains an event or set of circumstances as
| the result of a secret plot by usually powerful conspirators
|
| You have no evidence that this is likely to be Israel. Just
| speculation. This is conspiracy theory by definition.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| People are taking my comment out of context. I'm not saying
| that Israel is 100% for sure behind this. I'm offering an
| equally likely explanation in response to the individual
| above who concluded that this was _definitely_ because
| women randomly decided that they 'd had enough.
|
| Was it actually Israel? Was it just angry women? Nobody
| truly knows, least of all me or GP.
| davisoneee wrote:
| There's been a gradual relaxing of adherance to the hijab
| in Iran for decades, and this year a woman was murdered
| because of her 'lax' hijab. You are entertaining the idea
| that this _could_ be an israeli plot, which you don't
| have evidence for, alongside the idea it's just "angry
| women". So yes, even _with_ the context, it sounds a lot
| like you're spouting conspiracy theories behind a veil of
| "but I'm just asking _'what if'_?"
| ethotool wrote:
| This has been going on for many years in the Middle East:
|
| https://gulfnews.com/world/americas/the-new-middle-east-
| and-...
| prox wrote:
| It's been in the news here (w-europe) a lot and in
| conversations with colleagues! I also think it's a worldwide
| struggle for self determination for women, especially in
| countries that are run or dominated by men.
| unsigner wrote:
| It's on every pro-Ukrainian telegram channel I read (and I'm
| reading way too many), mostly in the context of comparing
| Iranian boldness to feeble Russian protests against the war.
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