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Iran's internet blackout may become permanent, with access for elites only

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Re: Iran's internet blackout may become permanent, with access for elites only

#51
post #46

It actually surprised me that they didn't do it before. China already achieved this in 2010s.

Have they though? Everybody I know who grew up in China has told me its trivial to bypass restrictions with VPNs

The question is what do you win when found using VPN?

Re: Iran's internet blackout may become permanent, with access for elites only

#52
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A company using legal action to protect their IP rights is so different from a theocratic dictatorship shutting down the entire Internet to prevent their overthrow. Perhaps you don't follow the news about Iran but these comments are incredibly daft.

[flagged]

A republic with a supreme religious leader who actually decides everything, that fakes elections and has a council of religious leaders that can disqualify any candidate

that's without even talking about killing 30,000-40,000 citizens for wanting their rights

> It subsidize basic needs of its poorer citizens, such as fuel, bread, housing, education and healthcare.

I'd start with supplying basic needs like water and electricity.

The actual subsidizing is for the IRGC which steals whatever they can get their hands on so they can be counted on to mass slaughter the people

Re: Iran's internet blackout may become permanent, with access for elites only

#54

They already have uncensored unfiltered sim cards they issue to their own people, we found that out when X (Twitter) started showing which country you made the accout from and thousands of people had Iran which normal people can't access X without VPN. Its just that they shut off the internet for normal people now, which they hadn't done before.

No, This is different.

In "normal" filtering situations, we can connect to most VPNs and do our stuff. When blackouts like these happen, EVERYTHING is blocked. It gets almost impossible to connect to a VPN. They have advanced tech that detects and blocks all VPNS and proxies. The internet speed is also now at crawling speed so you really can't upload download anything.

Also, in each blackout, people find ways to work around the censorship. And each time, they detect them and patch them. We have almost ran out of ways to prevent the censorship now.

Re: Iran's internet blackout may become permanent, with access for elites only

#55
There is active discussion on net4people about using DNSTT, but as more of these tunnels go up, I'm sure it will be blocked.

Given the denied environment the Iranian people see themselves in. I believe its worth mentioning asynchronous networks[1].

For example, they could use NNCP[2] in sneakernet style op[3].

Couriers could even layer steganography techniques on top on the NNCP data going in and out on USB drives. This can all be done now, and doesn't require new circumvention research or tools.

NNCPNET[4] is now active which provides email over NNCP and therefore can be done completely without internet. Once a courier gets to a location that isn't as denied, they can route it over the internet via a NNCP relay. Both for getting information out, and getting data back in.

For those wanting to get information to new agencies, you should consider SecureDrop. Here[5] is a list of securedrop locations.

Like all operations, please consider your OPSEC.

Good luck

[1] www.complete.org/asynchronous-communications/

[2] www.complete.org/NNCP/

[3] www.complete.org/dead-usb-drives-are-fine-building-a-reliable-sneakernet/

[4] www.complete.org/nncpnet-email-network/

[5] https://docs.securedrop.org/en/stable/source/source.html

Re: Iran's internet blackout may become permanent, with access for elites only

#56
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That assumes the regime cares more about the economic prosperity of their people than about staying in power. So far they seem to care more about power. North Korea provides a model for how terrible the situation can get for every day people in that sort of arrangement.

You can only let that go so far, because at the end of the day you need to pay the military to keep you in power.

The rules are rather different when your economy is mostly oil - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrostate

Re: Iran's internet blackout may become permanent, with access for elites only

#57
post #46

It actually surprised me that they didn't do it before. China already achieved this in 2010s.

Have they though? Everybody I know who grew up in China has told me its trivial to bypass restrictions with VPNs

It’s a deliberate “pressure valve.” China tolerates access for productivity but retains a kill switch for sensitive periods: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/how-...

Re: Iran's internet blackout may become permanent, with access for elites only

#58
post #53

It actually surprised me that they didn't do it before. China already achieved this in 2010s.

Hard to make it airtight without tanking the economy. Since the economy is already tanked, I guess they don’t care anymore.

Does the Iranian economy rely heavily on access to the global internet? They can’t trade with most of the world due to sanctions, so what in their internal economy grinds to a halt without global communications? I’m not saying I think that it wouldn’t, just that I don’t immediately grasp the mechanism.

Re: Iran's internet blackout may become permanent, with access for elites only

#59
There must be so much video footage from smartphones during the demonstations that show gruesome killings and masacres, the iranian elites have to make sure this footage never sees the rest of the world. They have to ban the internet forever.

Re: Iran's internet blackout may become permanent, with access for elites only

#60

Spacex satellites blockage was the surprise. How did they do it? I thought it would be the best dooms day kind of insurance. Turns out not.

RF and GPS jamming has been a solved problem for decades. As a SWE, we are all expected to take Physics E&M, Circuits, and CompArch in our CS undergrad - think back to those classes.

Genuine question, is it that easy to deploy these tools over a country that big?
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