Tag Archive for 'censorship'

Al-Jazeera’s Listening Post on Syria media restrictions

The struggle for democracy in Syria has continued for most of this year. The media has been largely locked out of the country, so independent reporting has been very difficult (though local bloggers have remained essential).

Al Jazeera’s Listening Post discusses the crackdown and I was asked to comment (my last appearance on the show was in February on the Egyptian revolution). My comment is at 9.26:

Internet turning into tool of national security state

We see evidence for this everywhere, in both democracies and repressive nations alike. But how many of us in Western states recognise that tools like Facebook can be utilised for both “good” (connecting friends and family) and bad (surveillance)?

Freelance journalist Inga Ting interviewed me for this piece in Crikey yesterday:

Yet the problem may not simply be historical myopia; it may be cultural. In Western liberal democracies where citizens are continually told they are free, citizens are simply not as wary of their governments — or each other — as they perhaps should be.

“The bottom line of this is that if we can use certain tools to communicate, bring people together, identify people, make friends, etc, exactly the same things can be done by the other side,” said freelance journalist and author Antony Loewenstein, who has conducted extensive research on the internet in repressive regimes.

“Sort of a self-evident thing to say, but a lot of people simply don’t think of it like that. In repressive states they do because they know how it works… The regime in Iran, for example, has literally armies of Iranian cyber-warriors who go around identifying dissidents or trying to destroy dissident websites… China is of course the most extreme example. No one knows an exact figure but at least 150,000 people every day surf the internet looking for suspect comments, websites.

“So the amount of thoughtless information that people put on Facebook simply doesn’t happen in a repressive state… It literally is a matter of life and death.”

David Vaile, executive director of the Cyberspace Law and Policy Centre at the University of NSW, hopes the aftermath of this event will serve as a clear warning to social media users.

“In real life it’s recognised that we don’t want to live in a police state … [yet] people are putting up on Facebook evidence that they [the police] would have had to get a warrant for before,” Vaile said.

Google head, fond of Chinese censorship, worries about Arab repression

His comments are fair and yet I can’t help but wonder about Google’s complicity with a range of autocratic regimes to censor some of its content, from search returns to YouTube clips:

The use of the web by Arab democracy movements could lead to some states cracking down harder on internet freedoms, Google’s chairman says.

Speaking at a conference in Ireland, Eric Schmidt said some governments wanted to regulate the internet the way they regulated television.

He also said he feared his colleagues faced a mounting risk of occasional arrest and torture in such countries.

The internet was widely used during the so-called Arab Spring.

Protesters used social networking sites to organise rallies and communicate with those outside their own country, such as foreign media, amid tight restrictions on state media.
‘Completely wired’

Mr Schmidt said he believed the “problem” of governments trying to limit internet usage was going to “get worse”.

In most of these countries, television is highly regulated because the leaders, partial dictators, half dictators or whatever you want to call them understand the power of television”

“The reason is that as the technology becomes more pervasive and as the citizenry becomes completely wired and the content gets localised to the language of the country, it becomes an issue like television.”

“If you look at television in most of these countries, television is highly regulated because the leaders, partial dictators, half dictators or whatever you want to call them understand the power of television imagery to keep their citizenry in some bucket,” he added.

US official; we love the internet (as long as views approved by State Dept)

Let me get this straight. A web evangelist, working for the US government, admires the ability of the internet to assist Arab revolutions and compares its power to Che Guevera, a man the establishment regards as a terrorist.

I guess backing real freedom in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain is a bridge too far for this real lover of democracy:

Hillary Clinton‘s senior adviser for innovation at the US state department has lauded the way the internet has become “the Che Guevara of the 21st century” in the Arab Spring uprisings.

Speaking at the Guardian’s Activate summit in London on Wednesday, Alec Ross said “dictatorships are now more vulnerable than ever” as disaffected citizens organise influential protest movements on Facebook and Twitter.

The US has pledged to back the pro-democracy movements that have swept the Middle East and north Africa since January. Ross welcomed the “redistribution of power” from autocratic regimes to individuals, describing the internet as “wildly disruptive” during the protests in Egypt and Tunisia.

“Dictatorships are now more vulnerable than they have ever been before, in part – but not entirely – because of the devolution of power from the nation state to the individual,” he said.

“One thesis statement I want to emphasise is how networks disrupt the exercise of power. They devolve power from the nation state – from governments and large institutions – to individuals and small institutions. The overarching pattern is the redistribution of power from governments and large institutions to people and small institutions.”

Ross said that the internet had “acted as an accelerant” in the Arab spring uprisings, pointing to the dislodging of former Tunisian president Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali in little over a month. The internet had facilitated leaderless movements, Ross added, describing it as the “Che Guevara of the 21st century”.

However, he said it was a “bridge too far” to describe the Egyptian uprising as a “Facebook revolution”.

Understanding cyber warfare from the other side

The US is unsurprisingly worried about cyber attacks from hackers, Russia, China or even a friendly nation. The future of warfare may well be fought in a different space altogether.

But this report proves how unprepared America is for the inevitable attempts to understand its inner workings. The problem lies in how hackers are viewed. Is Wikileaks in the same category? Clearly not, but Washington’s counter-attack may be far too draconian for a supposed democracy:

The Pentagon is about to roll out an expanded effort to safeguard its contractors from hackers and is building a virtual firing range in cyberspace to test new technologies, according to officials familiar with the plans, as a recent wave of cyber attacks boosts concerns about U.S. vulnerability to digital warfare.

The twin efforts show how President Barack Obama’s administration is racing on multiple fronts to plug the holes in U.S. cyber defenses.

Notwithstanding the military’s efforts, however, the overall gap appears to be widening, as adversaries and criminals move faster than government and corporations, and technologies such as mobile applications for smart phones proliferate more rapidly than policymakers can respond, officials and analysts said.

A Reuters examination of American cyber readiness produced the following findings:

* Spin-offs of the malicious code dubbed “agent.btz” used to attack the military’s U.S. Central Command in 2008 are still roiling U.S. networks today. People inside and outside the U.S. government strongly suspect Russia was behind the attack, which was the most significant known breach of military networks.

* There are serious questions about the security of “cloud computing,” even as the U.S. government prepares to embrace that technology in a big way for its cost savings.

* The U.S. electrical grid and other critical nodes are still vulnerable to cyber attack, 13 years after then-President Bill Clinton declared that protecting critical infrastructure was a national priority.

* While some progress has been made in coordinating among government agencies with different missions, and across the public-private sector gap, much remains to be done.

* Government officials say one of the things they fear most is a so-called “zero-day attack,” exploiting a vulnerability unknown to the software developer until the strike hits.

That’s the technique that was used by the Stuxnet worm that snarled Iran’s enriched uranium-producing centrifuges last summer, and which many experts say may have been created by the United States or Israel. A mere 12 months later, would-be hackers can readily find digital tool kits for building Stuxnet-like weapons on the Internet, according to a private-sector expert who requested anonymity.

“We’re much better off (technologically) than we were a few years ago, but we have not kept pace with opponents,” said Jim Lewis, a cyber expert with the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank. “The network is so deeply flawed that it can’t be secured.”

“IT’S LIKE AN INSECT INFESTATION”

In recent months hackers have broken into the SecurID tokens used by millions of people, targeting data from defense contractors Lockheed Martin, L3 and almost certainly others; launched a sophisticated strike on the International Monetary Fund; and breached digital barriers to grab account information from Sony, Google, Citigroup and a long list of others.

The latest high-profile victims were the public websites of the CIA and the U.S. Senate – whose committees are drafting legislation to improve coordination of cyber defenses.

Terabytes of data are flying out the door, and billions of dollars are lost in remediation costs and reputational harm, government and private security experts said in interviews. The head of the U.S. military’s Cyber Command, General Keith Alexander, has estimated that Pentagon computer systems are probed by would-be assailants 250,000 times each hour.

Some question and answers about responsibility of writers

Following my essay in the latest edition of literary journal Overland on cultural boycotts, politics, Palestine and Sri Lanka, the magazine interviewed me on various matters:

Passionate and outspoken about Israel/Palestine, among other things, Antony Loewenstein is a freelance independent journalist based in Sydney. Author of My Israel Question and The Blogging Revolution, he is a denizen of the Twittersphere. Antony speaks regularly at literary festivals around the world and his essay ‘Boycotts and Literary Festivals’ is published in the 203 edition of Overland.

What was your pathway to becoming a speaker at literary festivals?

I wrote a book and many festivals in Australia invited me. It was My Israel Question, first published in 2006, and told the story of a dissident Jew challenging Zionist power in the West and the realities of occupation for Palestinians. Many Jews hated it, smeared me and tried to shut down the debate. It was typical Zionist behaviour. Thankfully, they failed miserably, despite continuing to try, and even today literary festival directors tell me that the Zionist lobby still tries to pressure them to not invite me to speak on the Middle East, or anything really. This is what Zionism has done to my people, convince them that victimhood is a natural state of affairs and that honest discussion about Israel/Palestine is too threatening to be heard by non-Jews.

The audiences at my literary festival events, since the beginning, have been largely supportive of my stance – though I don’t just speak about Israel/Palestine, also Wikileaks, freedom of speech, web censorship and disaster capitalism – and curiously the strongest Zionist supporters of Israel rarely raise their voices at literary festivals. Instead, they’ll later go into print arguing that festivals were biased against Israel (as happened recently by the Zionist lobby in Australia, condemning my supposedly extremist views on Israel during the Sydney Writer’s Festival). As I say, victimhood comes so naturally to some Jews.

I often have mixed feelings about attending writers’ festivals. I rarely reject an invitation – and have been lucky to speak at events in Australia, India and Indonesia – but it’s often a cozy club that shuns controversy. I like to provoke, not merely for the sake of it, but I know the middle-class audience will not generally hear such thoughts in events about ‘the art of the novel’ or ‘where is the US in 2011?’ I guess if I wrote about knitting or frogs, it may be harder to stir debates.

What is the purpose of a literary festival?

It should be to entertain, challenge and dissect contemporary life. As books sell less in our societies, attendance at literary festivals has increased. People crave intelligent discussion. They generally aren’t receiving that in the corporate media. To see massive audiences in Sydney, Ubud or Jaipur sitting or standing to hear robust debates on the ways of the world can only be a good thing. But there is an important caveat. Do these events too often provide comfort for the listener, a warm glow about themselves and their existence and all-too-rarely tackle the real effects of, say, government policies or the civilian murders in our various wars in the Muslim world?

I argue for a far more politicised literary scene, where intellectuals aren’t so keen to be loved and embraced by an audience but the art of discomfort is raised as an art form. This is why I argue for boycotts in my Overland piece, relating to Palestine and Sri Lanka. Surely our responsibility as artists is not to kow-tow to the powerful but challenge them? And surely our duty is to make people think about the role of non-violent resistance to situations in which we in the West have a role? Literary festivals are a unique opportunity to capture a large audience and throw around some ideas, thoughts which may percolate. If a reader can digest this, still buy a book and ponder something they hadn’t pondered before, my job here is done.

Writer discomfort, to being feted at literary festivals, is my natural state of being. I welcome it.

As a writer, what inspires you?

Passion, direct action, living life in a way that doesn’t ignore the hypocrisy of our realities, lived experiences, detailed journalism, inspiring tales of heroism (that don’t involve women giving up everything and living in Italy for a few months) and voices that struggle to be heard. I’ve always seen my job as a writer as to highlight and brighten the silenced voices in our society. It may be a Tamil or Palestinian, somebody living under occupation or the worker of a multinational who gets shafted for simply doing her job. This may sound pompous or self-important but frankly most journalists say they believe these things but then spend most of their lives dying to be insulated within the power structures of society.

The recent debate in Sydney over Marrickville council embracing boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) over Israel was a rare example of government seeing injustice and trying to do something about it. The faux controversy concocted by the Murdoch press, Zionist lobby and Jewish establishment proved just how toxic the occupation of Palestinian lands has become. As a writer, I savoured the few brave individuals who stood up in the face of overwhelming bullying and spoke eloquently for Palestinian rights and real peace with justice in the Middle East. This position is not something that will be taught on a Zionist lobby trip to Israel (something undertaken by most politicians in Australia and many journalists) but real investigation. There are times, though, when I nearly despair, such as my recent visit to New York and attendance at the Celebrate Israel parade.

I think anger is an under-valued attribute in a good writer.

Where are you now, with your writing practice?

I know far more today than when I started my professional career in 2003. In some ways my anger is far more targeted and my writing has improved because of it. I’m pleased that both my current books, My Israel Question and The Blogging Revolution, are currently being updated and translated in various countries around the world. I’m working on a book about the modern Left and another about disaster capitalism in Australia and the world. And that’s just for starters. I’m rather busy. I constantly struggle with the sheer volume of information that exists out there. The internet is a blessing and a curse. Taking time away from this device would be just lovely but I’m not too sure how to do it. Feeling connected as a writer is one of the most pleasing aspects of my job. From a schoolgirl who uses my work in her classes to an Iranian dissident who reaches out to raise the brutal nature of the Ahmadinejad regime.

Our society is infected with writers who seem to see their role as robots, spokespeople for a predictable cause, afraid to offend or provoke. Being on the road as a writer is a humbling experience, hearing people’s stories, but it can also be lonely. Being challenged on my positions, as I often am over an issue like Palestine, can (usually) only make my work better. The ignorance and cowardly behaviour of our media and political elites over such questions – Wikileaks, Palestine or refugee policies – is indicative of a wider societal malaise and sometimes I’m not surprised that I have so few friends in the media. It’s not a loss. Who wouldn’t want to breathlessly report on the latest press release by the Gillard government? Sigh.

If anything, I hope my Overland piece stimulates thought over the far-too-comfortable and insulated work of the literary and arts scenes in the West. Self-congratulatory back-slaps may feel good at the time but history ain’t being written by time-keepers.

Global dissidents may not want US openly backing them

Promoting web freedom is a noble idea, especially since so many autocratic regimes and Western multinationals are working together to stop citizens accessing the glories of information on the internet.

But this idea is full of potential problems (via the New York Times), not least because Washington has a shocking record of supporting dictatorships at the expense of democracy and this won’t stop anytime soon. It’s called hypocrisy. Besides, being funded by the US to challenge US-backed regimes will likely end in tears, torture or worse:

The Obama administration is leading a global effort to deploy “shadow” Internet and mobile phone systems that dissidents can use to undermine repressive governments that seek to silence them by censoring or shutting down telecommunications networks.

The effort includes secretive projects to create independent cellphone networks inside foreign countries, as well as one operation out of a spy novel in a fifth-floor shop on L Street in Washington, where a group of young entrepreneurs who look as if they could be in a garage band are fitting deceptively innocent-looking hardware into a prototype “Internet in a suitcase.”

Financed with a $2 million State Department grant, the suitcase could be secreted across a border and quickly set up to allow wireless communication over a wide area with a link to the global Internet.

The American effort, revealed in dozens of interviews, planning documents and classified diplomatic cables obtained by The New York Times, ranges in scale, cost and sophistication.

Some projects involve technology that the United States is developing; others pull together tools that have already been created by hackers in a so-called liberation-technology movement sweeping the globe.

The State Department, for example, is financing the creation of stealth wireless networks that would enable activists to communicate outside the reach of governments in countries like Iran, Syria and Libya, according to participants in the projects.

In one of the most ambitious efforts, United States officials say, the State Department and Pentagon have spent at least $50 million to create an independent cellphone network in Afghanistan using towers on protected military bases inside the country. It is intended to offset the Taliban’s ability to shut down the official Afghan services, seemingly at will.

The effort has picked up momentum since the government of President Hosni Mubarak shut down the Egyptian Internet in the last days of his rule. In recent days, the Syrian government also temporarily disabled much of that country’s Internet, which had helped protesters mobilize.

The Obama administration’s initiative is in one sense a new front in a longstanding diplomatic push to defend free speech and nurture democracy. For decades, the United States has sent radio broadcasts into autocratic countries through Voice of America and other means. More recently, Washington has supported the development of software that preserves the anonymity of users in places like China, and training for citizens who want to pass information along the government-owned Internet without getting caught.

But the latest initiative depends on creating entirely separate pathways for communication. It has brought together an improbable alliance of diplomats and military engineers, young programmers and dissidents from at least a dozen countries, many of whom variously describe the new approach as more audacious and clever and, yes, cooler.

Mrs. Clinton has made Internet freedom into a signature cause. But the State Department has carefully framed its support as promoting free speech and human rights for their own sake, not as a policy aimed at destabilizing autocratic governments.

That distinction is difficult to maintain, said Clay Shirky, an assistant professor at New York University who studies the Internet and social media. “You can’t say, ‘All we want is for people to speak their minds, not bring down autocratic regimes’ — they’re the same thing,” Mr. Shirky said.

He added that the United States could expose itself to charges of hypocrisy if the State Department maintained its support, tacit or otherwise, for autocratic governments running countries like Saudi Arabia or Bahrain while deploying technology that was likely to undermine them.

The Net Delusion is alive and well

My following book review appeared in Saturday’s Sydney Morning Herald:

THE NET DELUSION
Evgeny Morozov
Allen Lane,
408pp, $29.95

As people in the Middle East have been protesting in the streets against Western-backed dictators and using social media to connect and circumvent state repression, it would be easy to dismiss The Net Delusion as almost irrelevant.

Born in Belarus, Evgeny Morozov collects mountains of evidence to claim the internet isn’t able to bring freedom, democracy and liberalism.

Sceptics would tell him to watch Al-Jazeera and see the power of the Facebook generation in action.

In fact, it is a dangerous fantasy to believe, he argues, because countless regimes are using the same tools as activists – Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and email – to monitor and catch dissidents.

He writes that “the only space where the West (especially the United States) is still unabashedly eager to promote democracy is in cyberspace. The Freedom Agenda is out; the Twitter Agenda is in.”

Morozov condemns “cyber-utopians” for wanting to build a world where borders are no more. Instead, he says these well-meaning people “did not predict how useful it would prove for propaganda purposes, how masterfully dictators would learn to use it for surveillance” and the increasingly sophisticated methods of web censorship.

Furthermore, Google, Yahoo, Cisco, Nokia and web security firms have all willingly colluded with a range of brutal states to turn a profit.

The Western media are largely to blame for creating the illusion of web-inspired democracy. During the Iranian uprisings in June 2009, many journalists dubbed it the Twitter Revolution, closely following countless tweets from the streets of Tehran. However, it was soon discovered that many of the tweets originated in California and not the Islamic republic. The myth had already been born.

None of these facts is designed to lessen the bravery of demonstrators against autocracies – and Morozov praises countless dissidents in China, the Arab world and beyond – but lazy journalists seemingly crave easy and often inaccurate narratives of nimble young keyboard warriors against sluggish old men in golden palaces.

The New York Times’s Roger Cohen was right when he wrote in January that “the internet’s impact has been to expose the great delusion that has led Western governments to buttress Arab autocrats; that the only alternative to them was Islamic jihadists”.

But most protesters in the streets of Egypt had no access to the internet or any use for it and the main gripes were economic rather than ideological. However, it is undeniable that many of the young organised through online networks and clearly surprised the former Mubarak regime with their ability to harness a mainstream call for change.

Morozov, hailing from a country that knows about disappearances and suppression, urges the West to “stop glorifying those living in authoritarian governments”.

One of the Western fallacies of web usage in non-democratic nations is the belief that people are all looking for political content as a way to cope with repression. In fact, as Morozov proves with research, an experiment in 2007 with strangers in autocratic regimes found that instead of looking for dissenting material they “searched for nude pictures of Gwen Stefani and photos of a panty-less Britney Spears”.

I noted similar trends in China when researching my book The Blogging Revolution and found most Chinese youth were interested in downloading movies and music and meeting boys and girls. Politics was the furthest thing from their minds.

This would change only if economic conditions worsened. A wise government would pre-empt these problems by allowing citizens to let off steam; Beijing has undoubtedly opened up online debate in the past decade, though there are certainly set boundaries and red lines not to cross.

Morozov sometimes underestimates the importance of people in repressive states feeling less alone and mixing with like-minded individuals. Witness the persecuted gay community in Iran, the websites connecting this beleaguered population and the space to discuss an identity denied by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Ultimately, The Net Delusion is necessary because it challenges comfortable Western thinking about the modern nature of authoritarianism.

This year we have already been left to ponder the irony of the US State Department deploying its resources to pressure Arab regimes not to block communications and social media while the stated agenda of Washington is a matrix of control across the region.

These policies are clearly contradictory and a person in US-backed Saudi Arabia and Bahrain won’t be fooled into believing Western benevolence if they can merely use Twitter every day.

How Western firms helping repressive regimes monitor Skype

We have been warned:

When young dissidents in Egypt were organizing an election-monitoring project last fall, they discussed their plans over Skype, the popular Internet phone service, believing it to be secure.

But someone else was listening in—Egypt’s security service.

An internal memo from the “Electronic Penetration Department” even boasted it had intercepted one conversation in which an activist stressed the importance of using Skype “because it cannot be penetrated online by any security device.”

Skype, which Microsoft Corp. is acquiring for $8.5 billion, is best known as a cheap way to make international phone calls. But the Luxembourg-based service also is the communications tool of choice for dissidents around the world because its powerful encryption technology evades traditional wiretaps.

Throughout the recent Middle East uprisings, protesters have used Skype for confidential video conferences, phone calls, instant messages and file exchanges. In Iran, opposition leaders and dissidents used Skype to plot strategy and organize a February protest. Skype also is a favorite among activists in Saudi Arabia and Vietnam, according to State Department cables released by WikiLeaks.

In March, following the Egyptian revolution that toppled President Hosni Mubarak, some activists raided the headquarters of Amn Al Dowla, the state security agency, uncovering the secret memo about intercepting Skype calls. In addition, 26-year-old activist Basem Fathi says he found files describing his love life and trips to the beach, apparently gleaned from intercepted emails and phone calls.

“I believe that they were collecting every little detail they were hearing from our mouths and putting them in a file,” he says.

A cottage industry of U.S. and other companies is now designing and selling tools that can be used to block or eavesdrop on Skype conversations. One technique: Using special “spyware,” or software that intercepts an audio stream from a computer—thereby hearing what’s being said and effectively bypassing Skype’s encryption. Egypt’s spy service last year tested one product, FinSpy, made by Britain’s Gamma International UK Ltd., according to Egyptian government documents and Gamma’s local reseller.

Don’t allow any country to sever web connections to our planet

The Arab Spring hasn’t been kind to countless Middle East dictatorships. Internet censorship has been a key plank of trying to maintain order in the face of a massive popular uprising. At least in Egypt we’ve now seen former Mubarak ministers and the former President himself being fined for daring to cut internet connections and mobile phone services during the revolution.

But a new kind of war is underway:

For weeks, Syrian democracy activists have used Facebook and Twitter to promote a wave of bold demonstrations. Now, the Syrian government and its supporters are striking back — not just with bullets, but with their own social-media offensive.

Mysterious intruders have scrawled pro-government messages on dissidents’ Facebook pages. Facebook pages have popped up offering cyber tools to attack the opposition. The Twitter #Syria hashtag — which had carried accounts of the protests — has been deluged with automated messages bearing scenes of nature and old sports scores.

“There is a war itself going on in cyberspace,” said Wissam Tarif, head of the Middle East human rights organization Insan, whose Web site has been attacked.

Syria offers just one example of the online backlash in countries ruled by authoritarian regimes. Although social media sites have been lionized for their role in the Arab Spring protests, governments are increasingly turning the technology against the activists.

One of the most ominous signs is in Iran, where the brutish government seemingly wants to cut itself off from the world. This could be the response of many autocratic states aiming to hold onto power, no matter what. It must be resisted:

Iran is taking steps toward an aggressive new form of censorship: a so-called national Internet that could, in effect, disconnect Iranian cyberspace from the rest of the world.

The leadership in Iran sees the project as a way to end the fight for control of the Internet, according to observers of Iranian policy inside and outside the country. Iran, already among the most sophisticated nations in online censoring, also promotes its national Internet as a cost-saving measure for consumers and as a way to uphold Islamic moral codes.

In February, as pro-democracy protests spread rapidly across the Middle East and North Africa, Reza Bagheri Asl, director of the telecommunication ministry’s research institute, told an Iranian news agency that soon 60% of the nation’s homes and businesses would be on the new, internal network. Within two years it would extend to the entire country, he said.

The unusual initiative appears part of a broader effort to confront what the regime now considers a major threat: an online invasion of Western ideas, culture and influence, primarily originating from the U.S. In recent speeches, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other top officials have called this emerging conflict the “soft war.”

On Friday, new reports emerged in the local press that Iran also intends to roll out its own computer operating system in coming months to replace Microsoft Corp.’s Windows. The development, which couldn’t be independently confirmed, was attributed to Reza Taghipour, Iran’s communication minister.

Iran’s national Internet will be “a genuinely halal network, aimed at Muslims on an ethical and moral level,” Ali Aghamohammadi, Iran’s head of economic affairs, said recently according to a state-run news service. Halal means compliant with Islamic law.

Encouraging shoots of change in Egypt

A welcome development:

A judge fined former President Hosni Mubarak and two officials about $91 million Saturday for cutting cellphone and Internet services during the protests this winter that forced Mubarak to step down.

It was the first court ruling against Mubarak since he was ousted Feb. 11.

Egyptian state television reported late Saturday that an administrative court fined Mubarak about $33.6 million, former Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif about $6.7 million, and former Interior Minister Habib Adli about $50.4 million.

The three were found guilty of “causing damage to the national economy,” state television reported, and ordered to pay the fines to the Egyptian treasury.

Political analyst Nabil Abdel Fattah said the ruling was a watershed for activists and academics who struggled to express themselves and organize online under the Mubarak regime.

“It protects organizing networks in virtual space,” he said, and signals that under Egypt’s transitional military government, “you must respect the freedom of speech and communications. Any authoritarian constraints are refused.”

A friendly chat with Facebook head and Chinese leader

Jews fearful of other Jews not saluting Zionist flag nightly

Here’s yet another tale of dissenting Jewish opinion being quashed by a Zionist establishment that simply won’t tolerate any criticism of glorious Israel:

For the second time in just six months, the City University of New York has become embroiled in scandal over the politics of the Israel-Palestine conflict. This week, the CUNY board of trustees blocked an attempt by one of its member colleges to award an honorary degree to the celebrated playwright Tony Kushner, who is also a prominent Jewish critic of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians.

A request by John Jay College to award Kushner an honorary degree was tabled on Monday night after one CUNY board member criticized — and, Kushner argues, distorted — the playwright’s past statements on Israel. That effectively killed the honor, at least for this year, because the board isn’t scheduled to meet again until after graduation in June.

In an interview today, Kushner told me he is asking for an apology after the “unprecedented and pretty ugly experience.” He also blasted the board for indulging in “McCarthyite nonsense.” Kushner sent a strongly worded letter to the CUNY board outlining his views on Israel and asking why he was not given a chance to respond at the meeting Monday night.

My book news for those who still like to read anything longer than an article

My first book, the best-selling My Israel Question, has just been released as an e-book and is available via the Kindle, iBook and other formats. The title is currently being updated and translated into Arabic and Indonesian and will be released in various nations over the coming 12 months. My second book, The Blogging Revolution, is also being updated, in light of the Arab revolutions, and will be released in Australia, India and globally later this year.

Just how many Western “security” firms helping repressive regimes?

In my book The Blogging Revolution I document a range of companies that sell equipment and software to dictatorships to help them monitor mobile phone calls, text messages and web traffic. I’m currently updating the book in light of the recent Arab revolutions – it’ll be released in Australia and a new overseas edition later in the year – and this topic keeps on appearing.

The UK Guardian has now discovered this:

A British company offered to sell a program to the Egyptian security services that experts say could infect computers, hack into web-based email and communications tools such as Skype and even take control of other groups’ systems remotely, according to documents seen by the Guardian.

Two Egyptian human rights activists found the documents amid hundreds of batons and torture equipment when they broke into the headquarters of the regime’s State Security Investigations service (SSI) last month.

One of the papers, in English and headed Finfisher Proposal: Commercial Offer, contained an offer dated 29 June 2010 to provide “FinSpy” software, hardware, installation and training to the SSI for €287,000 (£255,000). The name on the invoice, dated Tuesday 29 June 2010, was Gamma International UK Limited.

Other documents, written in Arabic and marked “ultimately confidential”, state that after being offered a “free trial version” of Gamma’s Finfisher software to test its ability to hack into email accounts, the SSI concluded it was “a high-level security system” that could get into email accounts of Hotmail, Gmail and Yahoo, as well as allowing “full control” of the computers of “targeted elements”. It went on to describe the software’s “success in breaking through personal accounts on Skype network, which is considered the most secure method of communication used by members of the elements of the harmful activity because it is encrypted”.

The find throws a spotlight on western companies that provide software to security services and agents of oppressive regimes to spy on, censor and block the websites with which activists communicate. Last month a report by OpenNet Initiative said nine countries across the Middle East and North Africa used US and Canadian technology to impede access to online content, including sites with political, social and religious material.

Mostafa Hussein, a Cairo blogger and physician who took the documents, said they formed important evidence against the SSI’s activities. “This proposal was sent to a department well known for torture, for abuse of human rights, for spying on political campaigners. This company, Gamma, should be exposed as collaborators in the crimes of trying to invade our privacy and arrest activists.”

Hussein posted the documents online and passed a copy to the Guardian.

A Gamma International website called “Finfisher IT Intrusion” describes its software as allowing “remote monitoring and infection” that can provide “full access to stored information with the ability to take control of the target”. It is advertised as capable of “capturing encrypted data and communications” and allowing a “government agency to remotely infect target systems”.

The documents found in the SSI HQ, one dated 1 January 2011, said that the proposal from Gamma International had come via a subsidiary company, Modern Communications System. Following a “free” five-month trial, SSI described the software as like “planting a comprehensive spying system in the location where the targeted computer exists”. The software could record voice and audio calls, movements through video and audio where the computer was located, and hack into all the computers in the same network.

American firms happy to assist with Arab dictatorships

Middle East brutality brought to you by good old capitalism:

As Middle East regimes try to stifle dissent by censoring the Internet, the U.S. faces an uncomfortable reality: American companies provide much of the technology used to block websites.

McAfee Inc., acquired last month by Intel Corp., has provided content-filtering software used by Internet-service providers in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, according to interviews with buyers and a regional reseller. Blue Coat Systems Inc. of Sunnyvale, Calif., has sold hardware and technology in Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar that has been used in conjunction with McAfee’s Web-filtering software and sometimes to block websites on its own, according to interviews with people working at or with ISPs in the region.

A regulator in Bahrain, which uses McAfee’s SmartFilter product, says the government is planning to switch soon to technology from U.S.-based Palo Alto Networks Inc. It promises to give Bahrain more blocking options and make it harder for people to circumvent censoring.

Netsweeper Inc. of Canada has landed deals in the UAE, Qatar and Yemen, according to a company document.

Websense Inc. of San Diego, Calif., has a policy that states it “does not sell to governments or Internet Service Providers (ISPs) that are engaged in government-imposed censorship.” But it has sold its Web-filtering technology in Yemen, where it has been used to block online tools that let people disguise their identities from government monitors, according to Harvard University and University of Toronto researchers.

Websense’s general counsel said in a 2009 statement about the incident: “On rare occasion things can slip through the cracks.”

Internet freedom globally isn’t coming and never was

Brilliant (the animation, that is, and I partially agree with the message, too, something I’m contemplating as I’m currently updating my second book, The Blogging Revolution, for an Australian and international publisher. Just how influential is the internet during the current Arab revolutions?):

Iranian web war is run by Tehran’s insecure minority

A cyber-army of terrifying intent:

Iranian hackers working for the powerful Revolutionary Guard’s paramilitary Basij group have launched attacks on websites of the “enemies,” a state-owned newspaper reported Monday in a rare acknowledgment from Iran that it’s involved in cyber warfare.

The report followed an announcement in January that Iran had formed its first cyber police unit in an attempt by authorities to gain an edge in the digital world.

The Internet has also been a key outlet for Iran’s opposition since the 2009 disputed presidential election. In addition, Iran has been trying to boost its web defenses after the Stuxnet computer worm made its way into computers involved with the country’s controversial nuclear program.

Gen. Ali Fazli, acting commander of the Basij, was quoted by state-owned IRAN paper as saying Iran’s cyber army is made up of university teachers, students and clerics. He said its attacks were a retaliation for similar attacks on Iran, according to the semi-official Mehr news agency. There were no further details about the possible targets or the time of the attacks.

Perth Writer’s Festival, here I come

This will be fun. I’m about to head across to Perth in Western Australia for the Perth Writer’s Festival.

My events:

Sat 5 Mar, 2.00PM

The invasion of Gaza in 2008 provoked worldwide condemnation and questions aboutIsrael’s right to exist. Some asked why other nations acting unjustly don’t face debate about the validity of their sovereignty. Raimond Gaita and Antony Loewenstein discuss the issue.

Sat 5 Mar, 8.00PM

With the growing global influence of the Asia and Pacific region, the resurgence of religious fundamentalism, bigotry, widening inequality and Facebook, Google and Wikileaks, do we have to rethink how democracy will work in the coming century? How do the 19th and 20th century ideals of democracy hold up? Tariq Ali, Ken Crispin, John Keane and Antony Loewenstein share their thoughts on the future of democracy.

Mon 7 Mar, 9.30AM

What capacity is there for information exchange in repressive regimes? Chinese author Yan Lianke has had his novels banned in his home country while freelance journalist and author Antony Loewenstein has looked at these questions in the Middle East. They discuss freedom of expression and the ways restrictive controls can be overcome.

If you’re in Perth and want to avoid the searing heat, you know you want to hear discussions about Wikileaks, democracy and war criminals (not necessarily in that order).

They aren’t Facebook/Twitter revolutions, repeat after me