Boing Boing » iran

At least 34 people have died in earthquakes in Iran

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 00:45:28 +0000

A 6.3 earthquake and one with a magnitude of 7.8 hit Western Iran in the course of just a week. These are largely rural areas, with a lot of mud brick buildings that tend to collapse when the earth shakes. It's hard to say how many casualties there are, in total. Scientifically speaking, the earthquakes were also fairly interesting, writes Chris Rowan at Highly Allochthonous. They happened in different — in fact, totally opposite — ways, with the smaller one happening as plates crashed into one another and the larger caused by tectonic plates moving away from each other. This was along the same plate boundary. How's that work? Rowan has the details.

American once placed in solitary confinement in Iran explores solitary confinement in US prisons

Xeni Jardin — Thu, 18 Oct 2012 16:55:07 +0000

Brilliant multimedia, multi-part feature in Mother Jones by Shane Bauer, one of the American hikers who was arrested by Iranian authorities on the Iran-Iraq border, then placed in solitary, then eventually released.

In this investigative feature, Bauer goes inside the notorious isolation units of California's Pelican Bay prison.

Even before reading the piece or watching the video, one has to respect the man for the sheer pain of the PTSD that must have induced. This is just 7 months after he was freed from prison in Iran, and was his first time behind bars since being released.

Snip:

"So when you're in Iran and in solitary confinement," asks my guide, Lieutenant Chris Acosta, "was it different?" His tone makes clear that he believes an Iranian prison to be a bad place.
He's right about that. After being apprehended on the Iran-Iraq border, Sarah Shourd, Josh Fattal, and I were held in Evin Prison's isolation ward for political prisoners. Sarah remained there for 13 months, Josh and I for 26 months. We were held incommunicado. We never knew when, or if, we would get out. We didn't go to trial for two years. When we did we had no way to speak to a lawyer and no means of contesting the charges against us, which included espionage. The alleged evidence the court held was "confidential."
What I want to tell Acosta is that no part of my experience—not the uncertainty of when I would be free again, not the tortured screams of other prisoners—was worse than the four months I spent in solitary confinement.

"Solitary in Iran Nearly Broke Me. Then I Went Inside America's Prisons." (Mother Jones, thanks Mike Mechanic)

How Roger Zelazny's Lord of Light transformed into the CIA's Argo covert op

DJ Pangburn — Tue, 16 Oct 2012 12:00:20 +0000

Argo, a thriller directed by and starring Ben Affleck, dramatizes the rescue of six U.S. diplomats from Tehran, Iran, during the 1979 hostage crisis. To infiltrate the country and facilitate the diplomats' return, CIA technician Tony Mendez concocts an incredible cover story: they're part of a film crew, scouting out locations in the Islamic republic for an epic science fiction movie. One core prop: a convincing, ready-to-shoot screenplay.

The movie obscures its real-life origins, but it started with one of the 1960s most cutting-edge novels, Roger Zelazny's Lord of Light. Winner of the 1968 Hugo Award, Lord of Light was inspired by Buddhist and Hindu texts and chronicles the lives of people who who have mastered mind-uploading, genetic engineering and bodily transmigration. Zelazny's novel, like many of Philip K. Dick's most hallucinatory narratives, anticipated many of cyberpunk's thematic concerns.

In the late 1970s, a comic and science fiction fanatic by the name of Barry Ira Geller adapted Lord of Light into a screenplay, then recruited the country's best creative talent to take it from page to celluloid. Jack Kirby, the famed comics creator, illustrated the film's visual world. Planet of the Apes makeup master John Chambers advised, while science fiction author Ray Bradbury, architect Paolo Soleri and legendary futurist Buckminster Fuller also lent their talents to the project.

At some point during Lord of Light's development, Geller decides to focus his efforts—and investor money—on the Science Fiction Land theme park in Aurora, Colorado, inspired by the novel's message of technological liberation. While theme park attendees would have to buy tickets for admission, its technological revelations would be, in a manner of speaking, open-source.

His plans unraveled amid accusations of fraud and corruption. But Geller's project was ultimately reborn as the CIA's Argo cover-story, an integral part of "the Canadian Caper" in which the CIA rescued six American diplomats trapped amid the chaos of the Iran hostage crisis. That improbable story is detailed in Ben Affleck's new film, Argo—but the Lord of Light subplot is left out.

And so documentary filmmaker Judd Ehrlich, who has been working on a documentary on the Geller/Zelazny story for six years, is raising funds to tell the whole absurdly convoluted saga.

"Barry was this kid from the Bronx, who from a very young age was obsessed with comic books and science fiction, and would just read everything," said Ehrlich. "Zelazny's Lord of Light was a huge book that came out in 1967. And Barry wanted to adapt it. I think it spoke to him on a number of levels. A big part of the book is putting technology back into the hands of the people, and taking it out of the hands of the few. And through technology we could attain power."

Anyone who has read Lord of Light will note that it is, at heart, a story of shifting identities—the identities of people who constantly assume new avatars. As Ehrlich sees it, it's no surprise that it would appeal to Geller.

"There's also a story of reinvention in Lord of Light. People change bodies," says Ehrlich. "Barry has constantly reinvented himself. He's worn a lot of different masks through his life. This comes out in a much more literal sense when the CIA and Mendez—literal masters of disguise—get involved in the Argo ploy."

In the process, Geller managed to go from living in a $150 per month apartment to a house designed by one of Frank Lloyd Wright's disciples in the Hollywood Hills."

"I talk about him being this chameleon," Ehrlich said. "This is a guy who reinvented himself as this idea of a Hollywood producer. And, in fact, it really worked. Not only did he recruit all these creative people, but a bunch of investors, too. The creative people were all masters."

Added Ehrlich: "He really did get people to believe in his vision, which was the biggest-budget science fiction movie ever and the largest theme park in the world."

Buckminster Fuller was even enlisted to enclose the entire theme park in a floating Fuller Dome, similar to the futurist's proposal for a dome over Manhattan.

The problem was simple: Geller had never produced a film before and had absolutely zero experience in building theme parks. But his ambition was Walt Disney-sized.

"Ultimately Geller's plan with making a film of Lord of Light, and then the creation of Science Fiction Land, was to excite a new generation of people who would go to this theme park," said Ehrlich. "To create an incubator of science at the theme park that would do this groundbreaking research, and sort of put it out there for the public—not hold on to it, package it and take ownership for profit, but to give it to the world."

The city gave Geller and his collaborators—Kirby, Chambers, producer Jerry Schafer, football player Rosey Grier, all joined him from Hollywood—the red carpet treatment. But Geller's grand vision soon collapsed, the project coming to resemble a twisted pulp noir plot like Chinatown.

"Schafer said that there was a land deal for 200 acres," Ehrlich said. "They had $500 million dollars from the bank promised. They had this, they had that. It turned out there were all sorts of back room deals. Basically, the park promoters and half the government of Aurora ended up being indicted, including the mayor." About a week later, the CIA's Tony Mendez took off for Tehran with Geller's script in hand. It was only around 2000 that Geller realized that his Lord of Light script—including Jack Kirby's designs—had made its way to the mastermind of the Argoruse, by way of John Chambers. Played by John Goodman in Argo, Chambers worked for both Mendez and the Science Fiction Land/Lord of Light project.

Chambers learned that that the CIA needed a cover story for its convoluted plan to rescue the hostages; Ehrlich is quick to point out that it's unclear if Chambers or Mendez conceived of transforming Lord of Light into the fake Argo production, but claims that Geller supposedly got the truth out of Chambers.

"Barry actually said he had a conversation with Chambers just before he died, in which Chambers said it was his idea and not at all Mendez's," said Ehrlich. "Chambers gave Mendez all of Jack Kirby's drawings and Geller's screenplay for Lord of Light. They just changed the name for their cover. In Affleck's film Argo, there's no Geller, no Science Fiction Land and no Lord of Light."

Asked about the genesis of his documentary, Ehrlich states that the documentary's former producer, Diane Bernard, came across the story in 2000 when she was working for Errol Morris on a short television piece. Morris got Mendez talking about the Argo mission, who in turn talked about the Kirby illustrations and Geller's screenplay.

"At that point she was thinking, 'Where did all these Kirby drawings and screenplay come from?'" says Ehrlich. "And she tracked it all back and found Barry. So that's when Barry found out, too, which is around the time that all this stuff was declassified."

"You do have people who wonder if the CIA could have had something to do with the downfall, so they had a clear cover," says Ehrlich, intrigued by the possibility of a conspiracy. "But, I don't know if there is any truth to that."

Given all the many layers of reality and fantasy, of simulacra, running through this saga, would anyone really be surprised if this were the truth?

Experience the Iranian Internet in central London

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 11 Sep 2012 00:48:01 +0000

Runa from the Tor Project sez, "What is the Iranian Internet? How does it feel to be censored? Filtered? Under constant surveillance? Unsure? Restricted? Oppressed? On Wednesday September 26, Small Media will transform their office in central London into a space where you can really get a feel of how it feels to be oppressed by censorship." (Thanks, Runa!)

Report: hackers targeting Iranian nuclear facilities "AC/DC-rolled" workstations after attack

Xeni Jardin — Tue, 24 Jul 2012 18:14:39 +0000

Mikko H. Hypponen of F-Secure publishes an email he claims is from a scientist with the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (or AEOI), which details a new "cyber attack" wave against Iranian nuclear systems.

Snip: "There was also some music playing randomly on several of the workstations during the middle of the night with the volume maxed out. I believe it was playing 'Thunderstruck' by AC/DC."

Mikko can't validate the email or the tale therein, and neither can we, but if it's true? Heh.

* The 'shoop above is mine, not the hackers'.

Stuxnet, the worm that targeted Iran's nuclear facilities, was created by US and Israel

Xeni Jardin — Fri, 01 Jun 2012 16:00:33 +0000

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad inspects centrifuges at a uranium enrichment plant.

Reporting for the New York Times, David Sanger confirms what internet security researchers suspected all along: Stuxnet, the worm that targeted computers in Iran's central nuclear enrichment facilities, was a US/Israeli project and part of an expanded effort at cyberweaponry by the Obama administration.

Mr. Obama decided to accelerate the attacks — begun in the Bush administration and code-named Olympic Games — even after an element of the program accidentally became public in the summer of 2010 because of a programming error that allowed it to escape Iran’s Natanz plant and sent it around the world on the Internet. Computer security experts who began studying the worm, which had been developed by the United States and Israel, gave it a name: Stuxnet.
At a tense meeting in the White House Situation Room within days of the worm’s “escape,” Mr. Obama, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and the director of the Central Intelligence Agency at the time, Leon E. Panetta, considered whether America’s most ambitious attempt to slow the progress of Iran’s nuclear efforts had been fatally compromised.
“Should we shut this thing down?” Mr. Obama asked, according to members of the president’s national security team who were in the room.
Told it was unclear how much the Iranians knew about the code, and offered evidence that it was still causing havoc, Mr. Obama decided that the cyberattacks should proceed. In the following weeks, the Natanz plant was hit by a newer version of the computer worm, and then another after that. The last of that series of attacks, a few weeks after Stuxnet was detected around the world, temporarily took out nearly 1,000 of the 5,000 centrifuges Iran had spinning at the time to purify uranium.

Read the full story here. Don't miss the related infographic that explains, in simple steps, how the secret cyberwar process operated.

Related reading: Why did antivirus firms fail to detect phenomena like Stuxnet, and the more recent Duqu and Flame, for so long? Writing for Wired's Threat Level blog, Mikko Hypponen explains. "The truth is, consumer-grade antivirus products can’t protect against targeted malware created by well-resourced nation-states with bulging budgets."

The Washington Post reports on plans to further expand US cyberwarfare. And a response in Time: on this matter, the American public is being played by the Pentagon.

Iranian finance/tech manager publishes 3,000,000 bank accounts' details and PINs

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 18:12:07 +0000

A finance technology manager named Khosrow Zarefarid discovered a critical flaw in Iran's online banking systems. He extracted 1,000 account details (including card numbers and PINs) and emailed them to the CEOs of 22 Iranian banks along with detailed information about the vulnerability. A year later, nothing had been done. Zarefarid extracted 3 million accounts' details from the bank's systems and posted them to ircard.blogspot.ca. Many Iranian banks have now frozen their customers' accounts and are only allowing PIN-change transactions at ATMs. Some banks have texted their customers to warn them of the breach. The Central Bank of Iran has published an official notice of the breach, but the notice does not say that the underlying vulnerability has been fixed, or even whether it is being addressed. Zarefarid is said to have left Iran, though his whereabouts are not known, at least to Emil Protalinski, who wrote about the breach for ZDNet:

It does not appear as if Zarefarid stole money from the accounts; he merely dumped the account details of around 3 million individuals, including card numbers and PINs, on his blog: ircard.blogspot.ca. I found the link via his Facebook account, along with the question “Is your bank card between thease 3000000 cards?”
...Zarefarid previously worked as a manager at a company called Eniak, which operates the Shetab (Interbank Information Transfer Network) system, an electronic banking clearance and automated payments system used in Iran. The company also manufactures and installs point of sale (POS) devices. In other words, Zarefarid worked for a firm that offered services to Iranian banks for accepting electronic payments.

Update: In a post to the ircard blog, Zarefarid clarifies what he has done, and claims he is not a "hacker." (via "Khosrow Zarefarid, in the comments)

3 million bank accounts hacked in Iran (via /.)

Iran's "Halal Internet" evolves into a mere more-ambitious censorship regime

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 15:42:11 +0000

Iran's governing elite have been making noises for years now about the construction of a "Halal Internet," a kind of national intranet with its own email service, microblogging, search tools, etc. Now a leaked Persian-language "Request for Information" from the Research Institute for ICT in Tehran, which consults on technology for Iran's Ministry of ICT suggests that the plan has evolved into a more ambitious version of the existing national censorship regime. In Ars Technica, Cyrus Farivar analyzes the proposal:

Collin Anderson, the researcher who found the document, said this RFI shows an unexpected shortcoming of the Iranian government to capitalize on its own domestic ability and recent deals with Chinese telecom companies such as Huawei and ZTE.
Huawai said late last year it was pulling out of Iran. ZTE, meanwhile, has previously sold millions of dollars of telecom and surveillance equipment to the Islamic Republic.
"I believe this clearly demonstrates that the Iranian government does not intend on cutting off access to the external Internet time soon," Anderson told Ars on Tuesday, explaining that the acquisition of a censorship system would not be necessary if Iran was trying to create a highly restricted whitelist or completely cut itself off from the Internet.
"This might suggest that the government has not been able to acquire the services of foreign companies for planning and optimizing an infrastructure," he added.
"This is surprising for those, including me, who believe that much of the censorship software and hardware was being developed internally. The RFI seems to imply the desire to move beyond blacklisting sites and keywords, to a more intelligent system of detecting and blocking ‘immoral’ content, such as pornographic or culturally offensive material."

I'm in the middle of reading Rebecca McKinnon's Consent of the Networked, which is probably the best single book on the subject I've read to date (review coming soon). McKinnon's analysis of Iran and other Middle-Eastern dictatorships is that they're stuck playing catch-up relative to China, and will have a hard time replicating China's strategy of combining censorship with floods of pro-government astroturfers and popular national alternatives to services like Facebook and Twitter, because Iranians have already widely adopted the "western" technologies and would aggressively circumvent national blocks for non-political reasons, providing cover for political dissidents.

Security researcher unearths plans for Iran's halal Internet

(Image: Internet censorship/blocking, Iran, a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike (2.0) image from 39967291@N04's photostream)

Iran denies reports that internet will be cut, replaced by "clean, national intranet"

Xeni Jardin — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 20:32:51 +0000

PHOTO: Technicians monitor data flow in the control room of an internet service provider in Tehran February 15, 2011. REUTERS/Caren Firouz

There's an AFP item today on Iran's denial of online reports that it plans to shut off access to the Internet this August, replacing that access with a "national intranet." Snip:

The reports derived from a supposed interview with Communications Minister Reza Taghipour published on April 1 that was in fact a hoax, the ministry said in the statement on its own site www.ict.gov.ir -- which itself was not accessible outside of Iran. “The report is in no way confirmed by the ministry” and is “completely baseless,” the ministry statement said.
The hoax report quoted Taghipour saying that Iran would from August launch a “clean internet” that would block popular services like Google and Hotmail and replace them with government-sponsored search engines and e-mail services. The ministry statement slammed the false report as serving “the propaganda wing of the West and providing its hostile media with a pretext emanating from a baseless claim.”

(via Jillian York)

Iran attacks internet access on Islamic Revolution anniversary

Xeni Jardin — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 18:33:20 +0000

At Hacker News, a user named "Sara70" posts:

I'm writing this to report the serious troubles we have regarding accessing Internet in Iran at the moment. Since Thursday Iranian government has shutted down the https protocol which has caused almost all google services (gmail, and google.com itself) to become inaccessible. Almost all websites that reply on Google APIs (like wolfram alpha) won't work. Accessing to any website that replies on https (just imaging how many websites use this protocol, from Arch Wiki to bank websites). Also accessing many proxies is also impossible. There are almost no official reports on this and with many websites and my email accounts restricted I can just confirm this based on my own and friends experience. I have just found one report here. The reason for this horrible shutdown is that the Iranian regime celebrates 1979 Islamic revolution tomorrow.

Jake Appelbaum and the Tor Project folks confirm that Iran is partially blocking encrypted network traffic, and they are trying to help ensure free and safe access for activists (and everyone else inside the country).

More at Washington Post, at CNET, and The Next Web.

(via @jadi)

PHOTO: Iranian schoolgirls chat online at an internet cafe which is exclusively for females, near the city of Karaj, 60km (38 miles) west of Tehran, May 24, 2007. REUTERS.

Was American arrested for spying in Iran producing "propaganda games" for CIA?

Cory Doctorow — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 01:15:51 +0000

Dominic Girard from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation sez,

It's one thing for Iran to arrest an American and sentence him to death for being a spy. It's a whole other thing when you say the spy made video games as propaganda for the CIA. Yet that's precisely one of the charges Iranian-American Amir Hekmati confessed to on Iranian television in December. (Let's remember that Iran routinely accuses foreigners of being spies, and there's no way of knowing exactly what methods were used to get Hekmati to read out his confession).
Hekmati did once worked with Kuma Games - a New York based game developer. Iran believes Kuma Games are CIA propagandists, that the company makes video games to disseminate a pro-USA message internationally. Some of Kuma Games' offerings are playable scenarios of real-world events. You can be a rebel trying to track down Gadhafi in Libya. You can join Team Six and kill Osama bin Laden. You can also be a soldier inserted in Iran, trying to sabotage their nuclear weapons program. But does that necessarily mean they're a CIA front? This short CBC Radio documentary tries to sort out if the CIA would ever consider such an idea, and if it would even be worth the effort.

Day 6 Documentary: Propaganda Games

Iran tests new radar-evading missile

Xeni Jardin — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 22:36:30 +0000

A soldier carries ammunition on a naval ship during the Velayat-90 war game on Sea of Oman near the Strait of Hormuz in southern Iran December 31, 2011. Iran test-fired a new medium-range missile, designed to evade radars, on Sunday during the last days of its naval drill in the Gulf, the official IRNA news agency quoted a military official as saying. (REUTERS/Fars News/Hamed Jafarnejad - IRAN)

Danish company helped Iran with surveillance program that identified journalist who was arrested and tortured

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 15:06:16 +0000

RanTek, a Danish company, is reportedly supplying Iran with censor/spyware technology, which was part of a larger effort that was used to identify a dissident journalist who was arrested and tortured.

Until he was arrested, he worked for Mehr, the official Iranian news agency. He received information from all over the country about protests and demonstrations, information too controversial to be used in the news agent's official work. Instead he published it through other channels, e.g. Facebook. However, after the elections in June 2009, when people took to the streets in protest against Ahmadinejad's election victory, it was clear to the Iranians that the Internet is in no way safe.
Nearly 4000 people were arrested solely on the basis of monitoring of their private internet traffic«, says Farahani.
Now it seems that the Danish company RanTek helps the Iranian regime with the monitoring of the Iranian population. The day before Christmas the Bloomberg news agency reported that the Danish IT company re-packages and sells surveillance equipment to Iran. Ironically, the equipment originally comes from the Israeli manufacturer Allot Communications, which means that the Israelis through a Danish intermediary have helped their mortal enemies.

Eksperter: Dansk firma hjælper med iransk overvågning (Danish)

Danish company helps Iran spy on citizens (English)

(Thanks, Henrik!)

Zahra's Paradise: graphic novel about Iranian uprising is a story and a history

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 12:40:24 +0000

Zahra's Paradise, a new book from FirstSecond, collects in one volume the serialized (and brilliant) webcomic, written by two pseudonymous Iranian dissidents. It's the gripping story of a Medhi, a young man kidnapped by Iran's secret police during the election-season demonstrations of 2009, and it is a heart-rending tale of loss, hope, technology, revolution, politics, bravery and resilience. Told form the point of view of Medhi's blogger brother (who has previously been arrested for publishing political material), it features an in-the-round look at the power and limits of technology to effect revolution. Its cast includes bloggers, secret policemen, brave copy-shop/Internet cafe owners, influence peddlers, disgraced bourgeois, broken prisoners and a family devastated by loss.

And while Zahra's Paradise is an informative (if fictionalized) account of the Iranian election uprising and a vivid condemnation of the stern, joyless Khomeniest version of Islam, it is also a fantastic story, a graphic novel that races to its conclusion. The webcomic was serialized in 12 languages (including Farsi and Arabic) and the print edition is available in a dozen countries from today.

Zahra's Paradise

Understanding the SSL security breach, preparing for the next one

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 18:38:36 +0000

Electronic Frontier Foundation staff technologist Peter Eckersley has a good, in-depth analysis of the revelation that Iranian hackers acquired fraudulent SSL certificates for Google, Yahoo, Mozilla and others by spoofing Comodo, a major Certificate Authority. CAs are companies that are allowed to sell cryptographically signed certificates that browsers use to verify their network connections; with these spoofed certs, the hackers could undetectably impersonate Yahoo and Google (allowing them to read mail even if it was being read over a secure connection), the Mozilla certificate would allow them to slip malicious spyware onto the computer of anyone installing a Firefox plugin.

It appears that the fraud was detected before any harm could be done, but Eckersley explains how close we came to a global security meltdown, and starts thinking about how we can prepare for a more successful attack in the future.

Most Certificate Authorities do good work. Some make mistakes occasionally,2 but that is normal in computer security. The real problem is a structural one: there are 1,500 CA certificates controlled by around 650 organizations,3 and every time you connect to an HTTPS webserver, or exchange email (POP/IMAP/SMTP) encrypted by TLS, you implicitly trust all of those certificate authorities!
What we need is a robust way to cross-check the good work that CAs currently do, to provide defense in depth and ensure (1) that a private key-compromise failure at a major CA does not lead to an Internet-wide cryptography meltdown and (2) that our software does not need to trust all of the CAs, for everything, all of the time.
For the time being, we will make just one remark about this. Many people have been touting DNSSEC PKI as a solution to the problem. While DNSSEC could be an improvement, we do not believe it is the right solution to the TLS security problem. One reason is that the DNS hierarchy is not trustworthy. Countries like the UAE and Tunisia control certificate authorities, and have a history of compromising their citizens' computer security. But these countries also control top-level DNS domains, and could control the DNSSEC entries for those ccTLDs. And the emergence of DNS manipulation by the US government also raises many concerns about whether DNSSEC will be reliable in the future.

Iranian hackers obtain fraudulent HTTPS certificates: How close to a Web security meltdown did we get?

Iranian paper covers Baroness Ashton's cleavage

Rob Beschizza — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 03:44:30 +0000

Baroness Ashton, in Iran for negotiations over its nuclear program, was given a less revealing outfit by a local newspaper. [BBC]

Hossein "Hoder" Derakhshan temporarily released from Iranian prison

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 06:16:28 +0000

Cyrus Farivar sez, "Iranian-Canadian blogger Hossein Derakhshan was temporarily released from a Tehran prison, after having been incarcerated for 26 months, according to a report Thursday on Mashregh News, a conservative Iranian news website. The site was among the first to report Derakhshan's conviction at the end of September on charges of 'conspiring with hostile governments, disseminating anti-Islamic propaganda, disseminating anti-revolutionary propaganda, blasphemy, and operating and managing obscene pornography websites.' The account was confirmed by a source close to the Derakhshan family, who wished to remain anonymous and said Derakhshan was 'happy to be out,' adding 'we have been pushing for this for months, especially after his trial, but it has always been refused.'"

Iranian blogging pioneer temporarily released from prison

Iran rebellion webcomic enters the secret prison

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 02:29:54 +0000

Gina from FirstSecond books sez,

Following Iran's 2009 elections, thousands of people took the streets in protest. An as-yet-unknown number of these protesters were arrested and taken off the grid, removed from the system, and many of them still cannot be found, despite continual inquiries from family, friends, and compatriots.
This is the subject of the current chapter of the webcomic Zahra's Paradise, titled Kahrizak. Kahrizak is the incarceration center where so many protesters disappeared to. It was eventually closed when it became public knowledge, and an embarrassment for the regime.
In this chapter of Zahra's Paradise, the narrator/blogger receives news: one of his friends who was missing, Ali, has been released and has returned home. Everyone rejoices, and they gather to celebrate. But Ali does not want to celebrate; his experiences in prison have been traumatic. He does have a message for the blogger, though: his brother, Mehdi, was held with him in Kahrizak, where the government moved troublesome people it wanted out of the normal system, inaccessible to any pleas for help.
This chapter, Kahrizak is a story about intimidation and rape and torture; it's a story about what people do when they're given power over others and no limits to restrain them. It's a story of systemic brutality that leaves everyone who goes through the prison system broken, sometimes for no more reason then the fact that they had an opinion, and spoke about it.

Zahra's Paradise - Chapter 10: Kahrizak (Thanks, Gina!)

Canadian/Iranian blogfather Hoder faces death penalty; will Canada intervene?

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 03:56:19 +0000

Jesse Brown writes:

If you haven't been following the case of Hossein Derakhshan, here's all you really need to know: he's a blogger and a Canadian citizen who was arrested in Tehran in 2008 because of things he wrote. He was finally tried, and now he may be executed, and the Canadian government has done nothing to help him.
There are many more details, of course. Details of good things he's done, like when he taught thousands of Iranians how to blog in their own language, and when he traveled to Israel to show his readers that Israelis were not their enemies. And there are details of lousy things he's done, like when he decided to support Ahmadinejadand and his nuclear arms program, and when he turned on peaceful friends and baited the media.
And there are details that muddy his case: he is also an Iranian citizen, and Iran doesn't recognize dual citizenship, and that makes it harder for Canada to do anything, and so they haven't tried.
But these details are irrelevant. "Hoder" is a Canadian citizen with the same rights as any other, and the fact that his country is sitting idle while he faces execution is a shame and an outrage.
If the Canadian Embassy is pressured to do something, they might, and that could well save Hossein's life. The Canadian Embassy in Iran can be contacted at teran@international.gc.ca.

Free Hoder

Iranian activists release free Persian Little Brother

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 21:19:56 +0000

A group of Iranian activists abroad and in Iran have produced a professional translation of my novel Little Brother and have released it online with the hope that it will be of interest to Iran's online activists. I've written an introduction to the edition on online activism and dissidence. It was a volunteer-led project, but they paid the translator (whose identity is a not publicly disclosed at this time), and are asking for donations to help defray the cost.

We are pleased to announce that the first version of the Persian edition of "Little Brother" by Cory Doctorow is available for download now.
The translation of the book is licensed under the Creative Commons Atrribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 license. Little Brother (in English) can be downloaded for free from Cory's website.
Please send us your comments to littlebrother.fa@gmail.com.

Little Brother Persian Edition version 1.0 Released!

Anonymous Iranian dissidents launch online comic about Iranian current events

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 03:51:32 +0000

Gina from kick-ass comics publisher FirstSecond sez,

First Second Books is pleased to announce a new online serial project: Zahra's Paradise, a graphic novel about the social and political situation in today's Iran, will be serialized on line beginning 12:00 a.m., February 19, 2010 and be published in book form in 2011. In the beginning, the serialization will reflect events in Iran's recent past, but in the months to come, as current events unfold in Iran, they will be woven into the story.
Written by Amir, a human rights activist, and illustrated by Khalil, Zahra's Paradise tells the story of an Iranian blogger's search for his brother, Mehdi, a nineteen year old protester who has disappeared in Tehran after the June 2009 unrest. As the blogger and his mother, Zahra Alavi, begin their search for Mehdi, we are drawn into the underbelly of the Islamic Republicâ€"an elaborate labyrinth in which countless dissidents have vanished over the past decades. Although the characters are fictional composites of actual people in Iran, the context and events are real. The project is a roman Ãƒ clef of history as it happens.

Zahra's Paradise (Thanks, Gina!)

(Disclosure: I'm happy to say that FirstSecond will publish a graphic novel based on one of my short stories)

Previously:

Iranian dissident site back online!

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 04:26:24 +0000

Ethan Zuckerman writes,

Thanks for the post regarding mowjcamp on Monday. Less than 48 hours later, the situation's been resolved, thanks in no small part to Yahoo! who put serious resources into resolving the situation. I've updated my post:
Mowjcamp.com is back up! Friends at EFF were able to broker a conversation between Yahoo, Moniker, Melbourne IT and Access Now. The situation is complicated, and I'm still trying to understand the details of the resolution, but it's fantastic news that the site is back up. Special thanks to friends at Yahoo! who ended up taking the brunt of the criticism for the downtime. That wasn't fair, and was in part my fault for not understanding everyone's role in the situation. Yahoo! worked extremely hard to resolve the situation after being called out and deserve special thanks for their hard work, as does everyone who took action to get this important site back online.

Mowjcamp (Thanks, Ethan!)

Previously:

Yahoo's intransigence means leading Iranian dissident site is ...

Yahoo's intransigence means leading Iranian dissident site is still offline six weeks after hack attack

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 02:16:45 +0000

Ethan Zuckerman writes, "Mowjcamp, the green movement's main citizen media site, was hacked by the 'Iranian Cyber Army' the same day they hit Twitter, in mid-December 2009. Twitter was back online within two hours. Mowjcamp - despite the intervention of AccessNow and others - is still offline six weeks later, caught in an apparent dispute between Yahoo and Moniker over control of the domain. I've posted about the situation today, looking at the process of Denial of Service via bureaucracy. Danny O'Brien at EFF will be writing on Deep Links about the situation later today. Would love some help shining the light on Yahoo in particular, a founding member of the GNI (group focused on freedom of expression online), which has been unresponsive and difficult throughout the process. "

I've been in regular contact with the administrators of Mowjcamp as they've tried to regain control of their site. For six weeks, they've been getting the runaround from Yahoo! (where they'd originally registered the domain names) and Moniker (where the hackers moved control of the domain name). Yahoo has been informed that the site was illegally moved by hackers who managed to access a Yahoo Mail account and authorize a transfer to Moniker - they've told the site administrators that there's nothing they can do, and the problem's in Moniker's hands. Moniker, in turn, tells the administrators that they've responded to Yahoo, which will resolve their problem. In the meantime, the site continues to be inaccessible from the URLs by which it is most widely known. (Yes, I've contacted friends within Yahoo! So have many other well-connected friends, who've put pressure on Moniker as well. That I'm complaining in this blogpost shows just how successful we've been so far going directly to the companies involved.)

Update, Feb 3 2010: Ethan adds, "Mowjcamp.com is back up! Friends at EFF were able to broker a conversation between Yahoo, Moniker, Melbourne IT and Access Now. The situation is complicated, and I'm still trying to understand the details of the resolution, but it's fantastic news that the site is back up. Special thanks to friends at Yahoo! who ended up taking the brunt of the criticism for the downtime. That wasn't fair, and was in part my fault for not understanding everyone's role in the situation. Yahoo! worked extremely hard to resolve the situation after being called out and deserve special thanks for their hard work, as does everyone who took action to get this important site back online." Yahoo!, Moniker: why is Mowjcamp.com still offline 6 weeks after hack attack? (Thanks, Ethan!)

Previously:

Search Engine video podcast: Free Hossein Derakhshan, even if he's kind of a jerk!

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 02:39:30 +0000

Search Engine's Jesse Brown sez, "Canadian/Iranian blogger Hossein Derakhshan has been held and tortured in a Tehran prison for over a year, without being charged. Both the Canadian and Iranian governments seem content to let him stay there. The media has also largely forgotten his case. Hoder's imprisonment begs the question: do we only fight for the freedom of dissidents whose beliefs we agree with?"

JESSE BROWN: Free Hoder (Thanks, Jesse!)

Previously:

Torture whistleblower in Iran killed by poisoned dinner salad

Xeni Jardin — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 10:20:58 +0000

In Iran, a 26-year-old doctor who exposed the torture of jailed protesters died after eating a salad laced with an overdose of blood pressure medication. Political opposition members believe he was killed because of what he knew.

Iran threatening expat critics in the US via email

Xeni Jardin — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 08:48:27 +0000

"Koosha," a 29-year-old Iranian-American engineering student, received an email warning that his relatives in Tehran would be harmed if he didn't stop criticizing Iran on Facebook. Two days later, he realized the email was no joke when his mom called from Tehran to say that his father had been arrested by state security agents. (thanks, Cyrus)