Iran's YouTube revolution

Times:

When the Iranian regime eventually crumbles, as all tyrannies must, the events that brought it down will be remembered as the first YouTube revolution. Once uploaded on to the internet, the snatched, grainy video footage, the camera angle lurching up and down and from side to side, has an instant impact, both domestically and internationally. Footage shows protesters turning on both the symbols and instruments of repression: the sacking of a police station with a police helmet flying through the air, or smoke rising from burning barricades as thousands of protesters take on the security forces.

News is pouring out despite the best efforts of the Iranian censors. The monitoring centre is believed to engage in a process called Deep Packet Inspection, which deconstructs every packet of digitised data, examines it for keywords such as “democracy” and “freedom” and then reconstructs it within seconds. This enables the Government to monitor protesters’ activities, block communications and gather information. But in this continuing cat-and-mouse game the opposition is winning.

Many are using proxy servers to connect to the internet and either e-mail or upload their films. Proxy servers are servers that act as intermediaries for internet users seeking to access banned sites. For example, TOR — The Onion Router — bounces users’ requests through a chain of routers around the world, rather like a cybercell system where no single router knows the complete data path.

“Citizen journalists in Iran are technically very savvy. They send their films and pictures out to their contacts, who upload the material for them. The internet is hugely important in getting information out of Iran and for people in smaller cities there to know what is happening,” said Golnaz Esfandiari, an Iranian-born journalist for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, based in Prague.

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The internet has made it harder for despotic regimes to hide the truth, particular if there is a tech savvy population who knows how to exploit it. Iran has that. Unfortunately, places like Burma do not. The tyranny of the regime of religious bigots in Iran is being exposed to the world right now and it is not a pretty sight.