[liberationtech] Help users in Iran reach the internet

[Jacob Appelbaum]

On 02/10/2012 06:13 PM, Enrique Piraces wrote:
> Thanks Jake, I'll pass this around. Am I right to think that the EC2
> instances discussed in the thread could be the best way for less tech
> people to help? I can see that getting some traction.
> 

We're working on EC2 instances that users will be able to spin up
without any technical knowledge required.

> For all, and please excuse if this was already posted, any advice we
> should be sending to contacts in-country?

Good luck with your revolution? :)

> 
> Thanks, @epiraces
> 
> -----Original Message----- From:
> liberationtech-bounces at lists.stanford.edu
> [mailto:liberationtech-bounces at lists.stanford.edu] On Behalf Of Jacob
> Appelbaum Sent: Friday, February 10, 2012 6:45 AM To:
> liberationtech at lists.stanford.edu Subject: [liberationtech] Help
> users in Iran reach the internet
> 
> Hi Libtech,
> 
> I just wrote this email to the Tor-talk list and I think it's
> important for this list to see this ASAP:
> 
> Here's my original email as a page: 
> https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-talk/2012-February/023070.html
>
>  Here's the original email for discussion:
> 
> In the last 48 hours a major campaign of filtering has started in
> Iran - it started slow and now appears to be that nearly all SSL/TLS
> traffic is blocked on a few major Iranian ISPs. Details are rather
> rough but we're working on some solutions - we've long had an ace up
> our sleeves for this exact moment in the arms race but it's perhaps
> come while the User Interface edges are a bit rough still.
> 
> Here's the deal - we need people to run Tor bridges but a special
> kind of Tor bridge, one that does a kind of traffic camouflaging - we
> call it an obfuscated bridge. It's not easy to set up just yet
> because we were not ready to deploy this for everyone yet; it lacks a
> lot of analysis and it might even only last for a few days at the
> rate the arms race is progressing, if you could call it progress.
> 
> There are highly technical instructions here: 
> https://www.torproject.org/projects/obfsproxy-instructions.html.en
> 
> Currently if you run such a bridge, you'll either need to manually
> tell us (via email to tor-assistants at torproject.org ) about it or
> you'll need to share these bridges with people you want to help
> directly. It's a pain and we're working on it.
> 
> Here's a bug report where we're working around the clock to get
> stuff going in a user friendly manner: 
> https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/5009#comment:17
> 
> This kind of help is not for the technically faint of heart but it's 
> absolutely needed for people in Iran, right now. It's likely that
> more than ~50,000 - ~60,000 Tor users may drop offline.
> 
> Watch this graph for an idea of the censorship impact of directly 
> connecting Tor users: 
> https://metrics.torproject.org/users.html?graph=direct-users&start=2011-11-12&end=2012-05-10&country=ir&events=on&dpi=72#direct-users
>
>  Here's the same graph but for Tor bridge users in Iran: 
> https://metrics.torproject.org/users.html?graph=bridge-users&start=2011-11-12&end=2012-05-10&country=ir&dpi=72#bridge-users
>
>  We're working on easy to use client software and if you're in Iran
> or need one desperately, please email help at rt.torproject.org. We'll
> try to get you a working obfsproxy bridge address and working client
> software.
> 
> All the best, Jacob _______________________________________________ 
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