Iran's Web Censorship Filters Supreme Leader's Own Statement 66
halfEvilTech writes "Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's own words have now become a victim of Iran's massive online censorship infrastructure. Khamenei, according to a translation by RFE, replied [to a question about the censorship laws themselves]: 'In general, the use of antifiltering software is subject to the laws and regulations of the Islamic republic, and it is not permissible to violate the law.' However, his own use of the word 'antifiltering' apparently triggered Iran's own filtering system, making Khamenei's words inaccessible to most Iranians."
Which seems to be a universal problem with such filters: even for proponents, they tend to backfire.
Appropiate (Score:1)
Those who live by censorship shall die by it.
Re:Appropiate (Score:5, Insightful)
Ummmmm, no. They are just minorly inconvenienced by it.
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sadly true. all they have to do is whitelist any thing that they want to let through.
Re:Appropiate (Score:5, Funny)
How Iranic.
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Poor Iran, they're between Iraq and a hard place. [wikipedia.org]
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No, I don't. Sand niggers hate us because we *gasp* allow women to do such risque things as show their hair and ankles in public. Oh and we don't stone women to death for being raped.
Uh, no...they hate is because we won't stop blowing them up for oil, installing dictators for oil and generally meddling in their lives for oil. Get it, stupid?
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Or maybe we went to war, because some of our politicians have actually read history, and don't want a repeat of WWII. You know the one where Hitler damn near conquered all of Europe, and was on his way to conquering Asia, until the Japanese did something stupid and pissed off the American people?
Saddam was an insane sadistic bastard.
It's funny how no one ever complains about the first war against Iraq? You know the one where the UN told us to go and bomb the fuck out of him, for invading Kuwait and killin
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Hitler raced through his surrounding countries like a knife through butter. Saddam fought an ineffectual multi-year, very bloody war with Iran which ground to a stalemate. He couldn't even fly an airplane in his ow
Re:lol asshole (Score:5, Interesting)
US gets most of its oil from Canada, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Venezuela. Only a fraction comes from places it's bombed, so the popular idea that the US bombs for oil has no basis in reality. In fact, after gaining complete military control of Iraq and its infrastructure, the new government was not only free to not sell to the US, but were allowed to sell a majority of their capacity to China, an economic adversary of the US.
You don't get it. It's not about where the US gets its oil. It's about multinationals who contribute to war mongering politicians getting the oil...that's why we went to war. Don't you get anything? These politicians and corporations are GLOBALISTS. They aren't out treasure hunting to bring the spoils back to the US people or even government (supposedly an extention of the people), they're setting their pals who contribute to campaigns up with wars to get their companies into Iraqi oil fields. Where the oil goes once a multinational oil company gets its hands on it is irrelevant. GET A CLUE, OK???
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Please just shut your fscking pie-hole. You are stating your opinion as fact, nothing more. Save your false rage for facebook.
Don't project, I'm not dumb enough to have a facebook account. And I don't care if you "like" me.
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Honestly? All the oil mongering corporations had to do to get the oil was convince the UN to lift sanctions. It wouldn't have been that hard. No one else really wanted those sanctions anyway.
You know why we went to war? Because there is/was a neo-con belief that it was America's job to spread liberty and also that a war in the Middle East was inevitable anyway. They allowed themselves to become convinced that there were WMDs in Iraq and went after them.
Of course, Iraq fed into that perception because e
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Honestly? All the oil mongering corporations had to do to get the oil was convince the UN to lift sanctions. It wouldn't have been that hard. No one else really wanted those sanctions anyway.
You know why we went to war? Because there is/was a neo-con belief that it was America's job to spread liberty and also that a war in the Middle East was inevitable anyway. They allowed themselves to become convinced that there were WMDs in Iraq and went after them.
Of course, Iraq fed into that perception because even though they had probably been destroyed by 2003, Saddam had played the brinksman game of trying to convince everyone he still had them. He did his job so well that no one listened when the Iraqis started to deny they had them.
That's what it was. Ideology and an idea that they were doing "the right thing". Look at other things where people believed that they were honestly trying to do the right thing and bloodbaths resulted. The French Revolution anyone? It doesn't require a global corporate conspiracy to start a war, although you can be sure they certainly did not stand in the way of it when it came time to sell their services.
You could blame the Military-Industrial complex, and I'd probably be more inclined to go for that, but I've never bought the idea that oil companies wanted to start a war in the middle of their resource areas. The chaos would keep production unavailable for years and destroy infrastructure that they would want to not have to rebuild to extract the oil later on. Building wells and terminals and pipelines is *expensive* and time consuming. You only fight a war over that stuff if you have no other option.
It's just not true that we went to war for anything other than our multinationals (defense, oil, etc and I should have mentioned the array of multinationals that benefitted and pushed hard for war). Sure, there may have been some people who pushed for war to "spread freedom", but the actual planners know why we went to war and it was to pay the piper. You know, the guys paying our politician's bills?
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So again, what was the actual benefit to an oil company in starting a war?
Higher oil prices? They already had those with sanctions. If they wanted to get them higher, they just use their cartels.
More oil to exploit? With a destroyed infrastructure? It took almost a decade for Iraqi production to really start up again. Just get sanctions taken down.
Saddam was not playing ball? And they were sure that who went into power would? They could have just waited for Saddam to die and it would have taken less
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So again, what was the actual benefit to an oil company in starting a war?
Higher oil prices? They already had those with sanctions. If they wanted to get them higher, they just use their cartels.
More oil to exploit? With a destroyed infrastructure? It took almost a decade for Iraqi production to really start up again. Just get sanctions taken down.
Saddam was not playing ball? And they were sure that who went into power would? They could have just waited for Saddam to die and it would have taken less time.
Perhaps a multinational company could pull strings to start a war, but what was their motive? Being capable of an action doesn't make you guilty of it by default. Trade doesn't benefit from uncertainties, and war is one big uncertainty.
You're telling me that people you believe are diabolically intelligent would actually opt to start wars to improve their profit margins, when they could do that in a host of simpler and more effective ways. Ways, I might add, that they are masters of, because they know how to make craptons of money without having to use armies to extract it. It just doesn't really make any sense, unless you are determined to consider them just pure Chaotic Evil.
Look, I'm not a college professor, ok? That said, Hussein had nationalized oil production. If you know what that means, you should know what the "actual benefit" was. Taking a decade to start up again is far preferable to never having access. Saddam not playing ball and they're sure the other ruler would? Uh...absolutely sure. Hello, we took over the country. Yeah, I'm pretty sure they're sure. And again, even if there was that risk, it's better than no access at all. All this uncertainty you speak
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That's right - you owe China several trillion dollars. And what's a dollar? Why, it's a piece of paper that U.S. Federal Reserve Bank says is a dollar.
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UM No we, USA have not owned the world in a long time. Last I checked we own China like 30 Trillion dollars or something ridiculous like that. I don't think we own shit anymore. u
It's funny that you think it's all about money. Nope. In the end, people with power understand one thing: Violence. Who can unleash the more violence than anybody? The US. Money is a spoil gained by war, it's not the means, it's an end. Violence is the means.
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Funny, because the 911 attackers were predominately Saudi yet the US neither bombed Saudi Arabia, installed any dictator in Saudi Arabia (the current royal family came into power through its own military conquests years before oil was discovered there), nor meddled in their affairs. Our presence currently in Saudi Arabia was at the request of the rulers. Your hilariously oversimplified view fails to explain that.
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Funny, because the 911 attackers were predominately Saudi yet the US neither bombed Saudi Arabia, installed any dictator in Saudi Arabia (the current royal family came into power through its own military conquests years before oil was discovered there), nor meddled in their affairs. Our presence currently in Saudi Arabia was at the request of the rulers. Your hilariously oversimplified view fails to explain that.
Failed to explain it because it wasn't part of the discussion at hand, but if you want to go into Saudi Arabia, that only bolsters my case. Saudi Arabia is a dictatorship that the US gets along with great, because they do what we want. Sorry that's so simple. Let me make it even simplet for you; The US gets along with anybody, regardless of human rights, as long as our multinationals are able to do business in their country, they give us basing rights for US military bases or anythinug else we like. And
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No, some islamic extremists hate us because there are haters everywhere and haters gonna hate. It's no different here. Look in the mirror.
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For every country there are stupid trolls. I'm just concerned for the two idiots with mod powers who modded him funny.
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Probably fans of slapstick of schadenfreude.
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and you wonder why the rest of the world hates us?
There's also people who hate him but not you.
And those people don't really like those others who hate you all because of him.
why would censors care? (Score:2)
1st RULE: You do not talk about FIGHT CLUB.
what crazy filtering would it be if journalists were allowed to circumvent int? they'd know it to be illegal anyways - and if not illegal then frowned upon by the rep. guard, which is all that matters in the first place in a land without decent law.
Re:why would censors care? (Score:5, Insightful)
This isn't secret filtering. This is the government (claiming it is only) trying to block out non Islamic content, it's censorship and they probably have similar policies for other media. In that situation it's no secret that they're filtering, or that they're censoring. In fact we censor child pornography in the west, and as a society people know about and are fully aware of this censorship. We don't make an effort to censor discussions of how to get around the censorship of child porn, but if you believe Islamic values will be compromised by exposure to decadent western culture and imperialist thoughts, or zionist propaganda then discussions of how to get around filtering are very much problematic.
Journalists here have a certain amount of power to know things which are censored but they don't talk about, or don't talk about yet. Usually the press gets a pre-brief before official briefings, they know what that loud banging sound at the whitehouse is, they know who is accused of a crime even if their name is protected by a publication ban etc.
Filtering is just an effort to enforce censorship. It's not the only method, and if you're reasonably upfront about what you're censoring then there's no need for secret filtering, it's just filtering in support of existing censorship laws. You may think Iran is not a country of decent laws, but I would argue they are middle of the road. Easily half the world is far more backwards, corrupt and far more arbitrary than Iran. They may not be good, but at least they acknowledge that they're censoring content and using filtering to try and enforce that.
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they're not a country of decent laws because there is a group inside which don't need to adhere to them and which can use them as they wish, hence they're not a real republic and a lot of the laws they do enforce are globally considered morally suspect.
the article is about how it's against the law to circumvent the filtering. no specific laws are mentioned actually, just that it's the statement from the religious leader that circumventing it is against existing laws(it's possibly revolutionary? you see, the
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As though the west doesn't have incompetent policies or mind numbingly stupid implementations? Ever heard of the TSA in the US, bridges to nowhere (also in the US), or the dozens of different rules about who can and can't publish mein kampf? Remember when Ted Kennedy, the US senator (when he was alive) was on the US No fly list? Half of europe still have rules on sunday shopping. You know they used to have rules in the EU about the shapes of food so that it looked like the right quality on store shelves
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Actually, you are right. Iran is definitely a republic, in the same way Rome was a Republic. In the way way that the Senate and People of Rome was oligarchic, Iran is theocratic. Iran does have elections and more to the point, it does have leaders elected or chosen to carry out governmental tasks that represent others. It does not have a monarch, although the Supreme Leader is pretty darn close to an elective king.
Iran is not is a fully *democratic* republic nor does it have a very large degree of libert
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i don't believe that you cross a line in the sand and human nature magically changes. what works ideologically in one place works just as well, or just as badly, anywhere else. you don't have to believe that a free exchange of ideas works for all people, but that idea you have, in and of itself, when it shapes a country or a society, it weakens that society
and then the society that does allow the free exchange of information beats the censorial one. whether through cultural dominance, because the children g
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LOL (Score:5, Funny)
He should have said: ant1f1t3r1ng...
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Pine Box?? heck if it comes to that they might not even get that . im sure there are a few "undisclosed locations" where folks can be left for the critters to feast on.
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Nah, that's too Zoroastrian for the Iranian government to put up with...
I have a feeling... (Score:2)
... they didn't see it coming.
YEEEEAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!
Actually a pretty reasonable statement (Score:3)
If I am not misunderstanding, he basically just laid down a fine line that implies that using anti-filter technology IS ok, as long as you arent doing that specifically in order to commit another crime. A pretty reasonable line to parse - and one that would give anyone caught in simple possession of such tools a nice legal out. "I only got that so I could read the Supreme Leaders statement! "
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Not exactly. To paraphrase more accurately, he said that any antifiltering software must be used in a way that is compliant with the law. The law says that private citizens are to be filtered. Therefore the correct logical deduction is that only 'special' people are allowed to have filter bypasses. I'm sure this "special" group includes the ayatollah, the president, and most of the government. You wouldn't want to obstruct THEIR access... But regular schmoes are boned.
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No, from TFA, it's pretty clear that he said that anti-filtering tools are illegal, and that citizens are required t
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The way "Iran" is reported in our press, it's easy to forget that the Iranian government is not a monolith. It has factions and power blocs within it. The Supreme Leader's view is not necessarily the same as the view of the minister responsible for internet filtering, which in turn may differ markedly from that of the police or other agents who actually enforce it.
I wouldn't be surprised to learn that this was actually triggered by some lowly employee who'd been told "Don't change the filter! These are the
Why ... (Score:5, Funny)
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Ahmadinejad: How do know so much about anti filtering?
Ali Khamenei : Well, you have to know these things when you're the Iranian Supreme Leader you know.
Wait for it... (Score:2)
This will be blamed on IT (Score:2)
Sigh (Score:2)
Why do nobody use this method to protest? (Score:1)
I mean, googlebombing your enemy with ridiculously trivial and prolific words so it can't easily be filtered?
Remember the Grass-mud-horse from China? Same thing.
Clbuttic (Score:3)