Anonymizer for Iran

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

> Date: Thu, 04 Sep 2003 15:55:44 +0530
> From: Suresh Ramasubramanian <suresh () hserus net>
> Subject: Anonymizer for Iran
> To: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>, Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>
>
> Did anybody note the "bulk emails gathered from human rights groups and 
> other sources" part?  Just how, precisely are these addresses being 
> gathered, and does anonymizer.com's ISP have an AUP of some sort? :)
>
>         srs
>
> http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/55/32567.html
>
> The Register
>   3 September 2003
>
> US sponsors Anonymiser - if you live in Iran
> By Kevin Poulsen, SecurityFocus
> Posted: 29/08/2003 at 15:26 GMT
>
> A pact between the U.S. government and the electronic privacy company
> Anonymizer, Inc. is making the Internet a safer place for controversial
> websites and subversive opinions -- if you're Iranian.
>
> This month Anonymizer began providing Iranians with free access to a Web
> proxy service designed to circumvent their government's online censorship
> efforts. In May, government ministers issued a blacklist of 15,000
> forbidden "immoral" websites that ISPs in the country must block --
> reportedly a mix of adult sites and political news and information outlets.
> An estimated two million Iranians have Internet access.
>
> Among the banned sites are the website for the U.S.-funded Voice of America
> broadcast service, and the site for Radio Farda, another U.S. station that
> beams Iranian youth a mix of pop music and westernized news. Both stations
> are run by the International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB), the U.S.
> government's overseas news and propaganda arm.
>
> The U.S. responded to the filtering this month by paying Anonymizer
> (neither the IBB nor Anonymizer will disclose how much) to create and
> maintain a special version of the Anonymizer proxy which only accepts
> connections from Iran's IP address space, and features instructions inFarsi.
>
> The deliberately generic-sounding URLs for the service are publicized over
> Radio Farda broadcasts and through bulk e-mails that Anonymizer sends to
> addresses in the country. The addresses are provided by human rights groups
> and other sources, says Anonymizer president Lance Cottrell.
>
> "We're providing a system whereby the people in the countries that are
> suffering Internet censorship can bypass the government filtering and
> access all the pages that are blocked," says Cottrell.
>
> The services' navigation boxes default to Radio Farda or Voice of America,
> but surfers are invited to put in any address they like, and browse free of
> the Iranian government's filtering.
>
> "Dissident sites, religious sites, the L.L. Bean catalog -- we point them
> to the Voice of America site, but they can go anywhere," says Ken Berman,
> program manager for Internet anticensorship at the IBB, "They're free
> explore the Internet in an unfettered fashion."
>
> Mostly unfettered. Like the Iranian filters, the U.S. service blocks porn
> sites -- "There's a limit to what taxpayers should pay for," says Berman.
> But the United States' hope is that a freer flow of online information will
> improve America's image in the Arab world. The service is similar to one
> Anonymizer provided to Chinese citizens under a previous government
> contract that ran-out ended earlier this year.
>
> Cottrell and Berman agree that it's only a matter of time before the
> Iranonymity service winds on the official blacklist. But Berman hints that
> the U.S. is ready for a prolonged electronic shell game with Tehran. "In
> China we're continually monitoring the state of the proxy, and when we see
> the traffic drop off, we change the proxy's address, usually within 24
> hours," says Berman. "In Iran, we're prepared to change the proxy address
> every day if necessary."
>
> A bill that passed the U.S. House of Representatives last month would
> create an Office of Global Internet Freedom that would have up to a $50
> million annual budget to help citizens of foreign repressive governments
> skirt Internet censorship.
>
> Copyright © 2003,

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