Mediaboss Marketing

Millions of Iranians have suffered serious disruptions to email and social networking services, raising concerns authorities are stepping up censorship of opposition supporters ahead of parliamentary elections next month.

Iranians have grappled with increased obstacles to using the internet since opposition supporters used social networking sites to organise widespread protests after the disputed 2009 re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The government denied any fraud in the vote, which ignited street protests that were crushed violently by security services after eight months.

The country is preparing to hold parliamentary elections on March 2, the first time Iranians will go to the polls since President Ahmadinejad's disputed re-election.

The new internet blockade affected the most common form of secure connections from Friday, according to outside experts and Iranian bloggers.

Traffic was said to have returned to normal on Monday.

"I haven't been able to open pages for days but now it's working again, although slowly," said Hamid Reza, a 20-year-old student in Tehran who was reluctant to give his surname.

The cut-off appeared to target all encrypted international websites outside Iran that depend on the Secure Sockets Layer protocol, which display addresses beginning with https, according to Earl Zmijewski of Renesys, a US company that tracks internet traffic worldwide.

Google, which uses SSL for its Gmail service, reported that traffic from Iran to its email system fell precipitously.

Iran's Ministry of Communications and Technology denied knowledge of the disruption.

"The government is testing different tools," said Hamed Behravan, who reports on Iranian technology issues for the US Government-funded Voice of America.

"They might have wanted to see the public reaction."

National internet system

Many Iranians are concerned the government may be preparing to unveil its much documented national internet system, effectively giving the authorities total control over what content Iranian users will be able to access.

The authorities say it is designed to speed up the system and filter out sites that are regarded as "unclean".

"The internet is an uninvited guest which has entered our country," said Mohammad Reza Aghamiri, a member of the Iranian government's Internet filtering committee.

"Because of [the internet's] numerous problems, severe supervision is required."

He told the daily Arman that internet search engines like Google were a threat to the country.

"We have never considered Google as appropriate to serve Iranian users, because Google is at the service of the CIA," he said. "It has adopted a vivid hostile stance against us."

Iranian authorities have vowed to quell any public protest against the protracted house arrest last year of opposition Green movement leaders, Mirhossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karoubi.

"It could just be a coincidence but my guess is that the system was looking to block communication between opposition supporters," said an Iranian analyst who did not want to be named.

The disruption has riled some Iranian members of parliament and they have vowed to look for those responsible.

An MP, Ahmad Tavakoli, told the semi-official Mehr News Agency that the issue was creating widespread discontent that could "cost the establishment dearly".

"This filtering leads people to break the law, and using proxies makes the blocking of sites and signals ineffective, because using proxies becomes widespread," he said.

Authoritarian Arab governments under popular pressure have sought to shut down Internet service to make it harder for opponents to mobilise protests but with little success.

(Additional reporting by Joseph Menn in San Francisco; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

Copyright Reuters. Click for restrictions.

Here is the original post:
Censorship fears as Iran's internet disrupted

Mumbai:  Telecom Minister Kapil Sibal today said India does not intend to censor online social networks such as Facebook, but demanded that they obey the same rules governing the press and other media.

"I want to say once and for all, without any obfuscation, no government in India will ever censor social media," Mr Sibal said at an IT summit in Mumbai.

"I never wanted to censor social media and no government wants to do so. But like the print and electronic media, they have to obey the laws of the country," added Mr Sibal.

He held a number of meetings with leading Internet companies late last year in which he asked about the possibility of pre-screening content posted online by users.

Mr Sibal reportedly showed executives examples of obscene images found on the Internet that risked offending Muslims or defaming politicians, including Congress President Sonia Gandhi.

Since then, 19 Internet firms including Google, Yahoo! and Facebook have been targeted in criminal and civil cases lodged in lower New Delhi courts, holding them responsible for content posted by users of their platforms.

The government has given its sanction for the firms to be tried for serious crimes such as fomenting religious hatred and spreading social discord, offences that could land company directors in prison.

Google and Facebook said earlier this month that they had removed the allegedly offensive content used as evidence in the court cases.

The groups have appealed to the Delhi High Court asking for the cases against them to be quashed on the basis that they cannot be held responsible for the actions of their clients.

The comments of a judge hearing the case raised further fears that freedom of expression online could be restricted.

"You must have a stringent check. Otherwise, like in China, we may pass orders banning all such websites," the judge said during a hearing in January.

For NDTV Updates, follow us on Twitter or join us on Facebook

View post:
No censorship for social media, but laws must be followed: Sibal

Tor network connections from Iran plummeted amidst a new government censorship program

Last week, the Iranian government apparently started a new censorship program that blocks encrypted Internet traffic. Even Iranians who had taken steps to evade government firewalls were being stymied—and the immediate impact can be seen in usage of the Tor network.

Tor anonymizes Internet activity with client software that routs traffic through the Tor network, a worldwide network of relays and bridges set up by volunteers. Iran is second only to the US in Tor usage, with roughly 50,000 Iranians anonymizing their Internet traffic each day by routing it through the Tor network. Yet between Feb. 8 and Feb. 9, connections dropped from about 50,000 to fewer than 20,000, and plummeted to nearly zero by Friday, Feb. 10.

The dramatic change proved the prediction of Tor project member Jacob Appelbaum distressingly accurate. Last week, as reports of the Iranian crackdown began circulating, he warned, "It's likely that more than ~50,000 - ~60,000 Tor users may drop offline." But Appelbaum and his fellow Tor project members had a plan: a new obfuscated bridge (obfsproxy) that makes encrypted traffic appear to be regular traffic. Obfsproxy was an "ace up our sleeve," as Appelbaum described it, and Tor put it into action over the past few days despite its user interface being a bit rough.

Obfsproxy is already helping some Iranians get back online. The number of Tor connections was back up to roughly 15,000 on Saturday, although it's likely obfsproxy is playing only a small role. Tor's statistics show the use of bridges to connect to the Tor network from Iran have inched up only slightly since last week's dropoff. Statistics for Sunday and Monday haven't come in yet.

"It's not clear if Iran has lessened censorship of SSL traffic or if we're having that much of an impact," Tor Executive Director Andrew Lewman told Ars. Regardless of the cause, the dramatic upswing and downswing of Tor connections from Iran provides "a fine graph of what government censorship can do to a country," he said. "We've been working mostly flat out for the past few days to help the people of Iran and it's nice to see that we are having an impact."

On Friday, Appelbaum put out the call to the Tor community to start running obfsproxy bridges. He warned that the software is not easy to set up, that it might be effective for only a few days "at the rate the arms race is progressing," and that people who set up bridges need to either contact the Tor Project or share the bridge addresses directly with users who need them.

Obfsproxy is "still very alpha-quality software," Lewman said. "We're seeing a few thousand connections through obfsproxy relays already. We have roughly 300 obfsproxy relays around the world already, some of them already pushing many megabits per second of traffic. It's definitely picking up as the world awoke over the past 24 hours, to the point where our Web servers alone were handling 500 mbps of download traffic. Our BitTorrent seeds of the software are doing well, too."

Appelbaum promised that an easy-to-use client is in the works, but for now, people setting up bridges or obfsproxy client connections must follow these somewhat complicated instructions.

Tor isn't the only method for staying online in places like Iran. One product called Hotspot Shield uses a VPN to secure Web traffic and bypass firewalls. A Hotspot Shield spokesperson tells Ars "we've observed that the Iran blockades have had no effect on our users."

Read more here:
Tor's latest project helps Iran get back online despite new Internet censorship regime

AP

A man shouts his objections during a protest against the Protection of State Information Bill outside Parliament in Cape Town.

Had it not been for the media and whistle-blowers, many instances of corruption would not have been exposed, the National Press Club (NPC) said on Tuesday.

The Protection of State Information Bill in its present form would lead to wide classification of information, NPC chairman Yusuf Abramjee told a public hearing on the draft legislation in Mamelodi, outside Pretoria.

“The bill in its current form is clearly open to abuse. It provides for wide-ranging powers, relating to the classification (of information),” said Abramjee.

“Officials, including junior civil servants and members of security services, are authorised to classify documents with the head of departments.”

Abramjee said this was in conflict with another clause in the bill which stipulated that classification had to be done on a senior level. Whistle-blowers were going to be scared “to lift the lid on corruption”, fearing long jail terms.

He appealed to the National Council of Provinces (NCOP) to consider including a public interest clause in line with the dictates of the Constitution.

“We cannot sit back and allow unconstitutional laws to be passed. Editors and journalists are prepared to go to jail defending our freedom,” said Abramjee.

Another contributor, Amos Mkhontho, said that as a member of the ANC's MK Veterans he believed the bill, if passed, would take South Africa backwards.

“Do you still remember those days we used to read newspapers hiding under carpets? We do not want those days to come again. Look at countries like Zimbabwe who have such laws. Their people have fled to our country.”

Most of those participating in the hearing took the opportunity to voice problems with service delivery around Mamelodi.

“Our identity documents show that we have voted continually. Our lives are not evident of people enjoying democracy,” said one woman to the applause of the floor.

Residents gradually filled and eventually packed the church hall where the hearings took place.

Two public hearings on the so-called secrecy bill are scheduled in Gauteng. The second takes place in Sharpeville, near Vereeniging. – Sapa

More here:
No censorship: press club

14 February 2012 Last updated at 05:33 ET

India will not censor social media websites, Information Technology Minister Kapil Sibal has said.

But he added that internet firms must obey the country's laws.

Late last year, Mr Sibal said the government would introduce guidelines to ensure "blasphemous material" did not appear on the internet.

Internet firms say it is impossible to pre-filter material, but Facebook and Google recently said they had removed content after receiving complaints.

The firms are among a number of major internet players facing court cases and judges have threatened to block sites that fail to crack down on offensive content.

"I want to say once and for all, without any obfuscation, no government in India will ever censor social media," news agency AFP quoted Mr Sibal as saying at an information technology summit in Mumbai.

"I never wanted to censor social media and no government wants to do so. But like the print and electronic media, they have to obey the laws of the country," Mr Sibal said.

Crackdown threat

A court in the capital, Delhi, last month threatened a crackdown against sites which failed to take steps to protect religious sensibilities.

The Delhi High Court asked Facebook and Google India to "develop a mechanism to keep a check and remove offensive and objectionable material from their web pages" or "like China, we will block all such websites".

Facebook and Google say they have complied with the court directive and removed "objectionable" material.

They are among 21 web firms, including Yahoo and Orkut, facing a civil suit in Delhi accusing them of hosting material that may cause communal unrest.

A criminal case of similar allegations is due to be heard next month.

Internet firms argue that it is not feasible to pre-monitor material posted by "billions of people across the globe".

Google says that the issue also relates to a constitutional issue of freedom of speech and expression.

Facebook says policies are in place that enable people to report abusive content.

In December, Mr Sibal said his aim was to ensure that "insulting material never gets uploaded. We will evolve guidelines and mechanisms to deal with the issue".

He said the companies would have to give the data where these images were being uploaded and who was doing it.

Mr Sibal was angered by morphed photos of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress President Sonia Gandhi, as well as images of pigs in Islam's holy city of Mecca.

Continue reading here:
'No censorship of social media'