infoneer-pulse:

Millions of Internet users in Iran could soon be permanently cut off from the Web, social networks, and e-mail.

In a statement released last week, Reza Taghipour, the Iranian minister for Information and Communications Technology, announced it plans to establish a national intranet within five months in an effort to create a “clean Internet,” according to an International Business Times report. “All Internet Service Providers (ISP) should only present National Internet by August,” Taghipour said in the statement.

» via CNET

(via vinegarwilliams)

ryking:

Failing to disclose this fact is a breach of journalistic ethics. Also: Typical of that right-wing propaganda mill.

(Source: diadoumenos)

goodreasonnews:

Today I called a Senator’s office for the first time.

First, let me say how fantastic it is that when you call the office, a real-live human picks up the phone and can speak to you. There’s no annoying menus, no transfers, no answering machines. Washington, please don’t ever change this.

I was calling mostly to find out why the Senator supports (and co-sponsored!) S.968, aka the PROTECT IP Act aka PIPA. Perhaps there was an argument I was missing — I know how myopic the tech world can be sometimes.

What I got was a reminder of how dangerous this legislation will be, for people who care about:

• the internet
• technology innovation
• creativity
• freedom of speech
• startups and job creation
• facebook, tumblr, youtube, reddit, 4chan, and any other major site that touches user-generated content

OK so back to my phone call. The first question I asked was “why does the Senator support this legislation?”

The guy on the other end of the phone said: “well, he’s a co-sponsor so he’s not changing his position.”

He must have known why I was calling.

Asked the same question again. This time the reply I got this time was different: “Senator Schumer is in favor of censoring the internet.”

….whhhhhhat? Up until now, most of the statements from congresspeople have done that neat thing politicians do where they say words but don’t actually answer the question. They do the “censorship” dance very well – never say it out loud, but vote for the bill nonetheless. From what I can tell “anti-piracy” and “pro-censorship” are actually the same thing here, though politicians usually argue the former so as not to seem anti-first-amendment. No one has been brazen enough to drop the C-word without hesitation. But this dude apparently had no problem with it. I said again: “So you’re saying Senator Schumer is in favor of censoring the internet?”

“Yes.”

“Senator Schumer is in favor of censoring the internet.”

(Source: azspot)

anti-propaganda:

#10 Statistical Games with the Unemployment Rate. At Information Clearing House, Greg Hunter showed that instead of 9%, the real unemployment rate is over 22%.


#9 Chemtrails. Atmospheric Geoengineering: Weather Manipulation, Contrails and Chemtrails, July 10, 2010.


#8 The Truth on Nuclear Power. The Union of Concerned Scientists published a report describing 14 near-miss nuclear accidents in 2010 in the US. (One is Fort Calhoun, which I covered here and here.) Other nuclear pieces mentioned in this category include Jeff Goodell’s “America’s Nuclear Nightmare” at Rolling Stone.


#7 U.S. Army and psychology’s largest experiment – ever. Horrified by war? Be positive! A series of APA articles describing and promoting a program of “psychological resilience” is confronted by Roy Eidelson, Marc Pilisuk and Stephen Soldz at Truthout.


#6 Google Spies for CIA, US Military. In January 2010, Eric Sommer wrote “Google’s Deep CIA Connections” for Pravda.ru.


#5 Prison Companies Fund Anti-Immigrant Legislation. Exposed in depth by Peter Cervantes-Gautschi at AlterNet, Wall Street is profiting from immigrant lock-ups.


#4 Wall Street Engineers Food Crisis. On March 24, 2011, David Moberg wrote “Diet Hard: With a Vengeance” for In These Times showing that speculating on food commodities, along with income inequality, cause hunger – not lack of production.


#3 Obama’s Extrajudicial Hit List. State sanctioned assassinations outside the scope of law is somehow okay by this dictator. This is an under-reported story later covered by Glenn Greenwald atSalon and William Fisher at IPS. Originally titled “Death by Drone: ‘CIA’s hitlist is murder’,” IPS later changed it to “Death by Remote: But Is It Legal?”


#2 Army of Fake Personas to Promote Propaganda. Two sites broke the story on Feb. 22, 2011: Darlene Storm at Computer World and Stephen Webster at Raw Story. In March, Guardian writers Nick Fielding and Ian Cobain covered it.


#1 US Soldier Suicides Exceed Combat Deaths in 2010. Cord Jefferson broke the story on Jan. 27, 2011 at Iceland’s Good Magazine.

(via nihilismfornegroes)

The Iranian Cyber Police published new rules on Wednesday designed to allow officials to know exactly who is visiting what Web sites. Before they can log on, Iranians are required to provide their name, father’s name, address, telephone number and national ID, according to an Iranian media report cited by Radio Free Europe. Cafe owners will be required to install security cameras and to keep all data on Web surfers, including browsing history, for six months.

The rules, which come as the country prepares for parliamentary elections in March, are a deterrent to activists who might want to use the Internet cafes to organize protests. Calls to boycott elections distributed via social networks or e-mail will be treated as national security crimes, the Iranian judiciary announced last week, according to a report today in the Wall Street Journal. Government officials claim they need to control access to the Internet to counter what they say is a “soft” cultural war being waged by Western countries to influence the morals of Iranians.

Monitoring Web surfers is an interim measure until the government is done building out its own domestic intranet that is “halal,” or pure. Initially, the Iran intranet will run in tandem with the Internet before the global Web is shut off to the 23 million Internet users in Iran, according to reports. Payam Karbasi, spokesman for Iran professional union Corporate Computer Systems, told Iranian media that the domestic network, which was announced last March, would be launched in coming weeks, the WSJ reported.

Iranians have reported that during the intranet tests this week, Internet connections have slowed down and Web sites have been blocked. Access to VPNs (virtual private networks) Iranians use to access sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube have also been affected, reports said.

Widespread protests over purported fraud in the 2009 election, which brought President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad back to office, prompted the Iranian government to cut off access to opposition Web sites and mobile telephone networks. But protesters flocked to Twitter and Facebook to skirt the communications crackdown, to spread videos and news and to organize demonstrations. Tor and other tools were then used to get around government shutdowns of those sites.

Some of the extreme censorship measures adopted by Iran have also been used in Libya and in China, which deploys the “Great Firewall” to keep objectionable content out of the country. China also requires identification to use Internet cafes in Beijing, and has a history of shutting down blogs as well as allegedly meddling with Gmail and targeting activists with cyber attacks.

(via mohandasgandhi)