Internet Surveillance And Iran: A Primer (How the people are getting around it)

[Mari333]

It's widely recognized that Iran employs systems of Internet restriction and monitoring to keep its people from engaging in activities it deems subversive, and much has been made of that restriction (recently in a Wall Street Journal story on the communications network sold to Iran by Siemens and Nokia--a story later refuted by the companies). With so much information coming to us from Iran via YouTube and Twitter, and yet all the talk of monitoring, there's a fundamental discrepancy in the discussion: if Iran puts so much effort into monitoring its citizens, how come we keep seeing cell phone videos of protests and violence; how is so much information coming to us via Twitter?
"One of the things that's unique about Iran is that it's actually a very tech savvy country," said Rafal Rohozinsky, a principal founder of the OpenNet Initiative, a group that seeks to investigate and expose Internet filtering and restriction worldwide, and currently a principal of The SecDev Group.

In the 1970s, Iran had the largest concentration of mainframe computers outside the U.S., and IBM had a full division in Tehran, Rohozinsky said.

"Engineering, computer engineering, and computer science has been kept up" there, he said. "It's part of the middle class engineering ethos."

















http://politics.theatlantic.com/2009/06/internet_surveillance_and_iran_a_primer.php