[liberationtech] Many VPNs and Psiphon are currently blocked in Iran right now

[Brian Conley]

In-line

>>
>> Amin,
>>
>> Do Iranians ever attempt checking the mobile versions of these sites? In
my experience even in low bandwidth environments, if you are patient, the
mobile sites work much better.
>
> Unfortunately, TOR is famous as a slow tool in Iran! I haven't checked
with users inside the country about the mobile version. I'll hope it works
better than the desktop version.

Right, but let's not waste our time on people who don't want to help
themselves or check for themselves and only believe rumors. Sure tor works
slowly, but as Nathan pointed out, we have hard evidence that Iranians are
using Tor:

"From the Tor metrics site (and as Nima said), there seems to be about
>>>> 25,000 active Tor sessions per day from Iran, via direct access (not
>>>> using a bridge):
>>>>
https://metrics.torproject.org/users.html?graph=userstats-relay-country&start=2013-11-24&end=2014-02-22&country=ir&events=off#userstats-relay-country
>>>>
>>>> We receive many emails each day from users in Iran, and it is
>>>> definitely working for a good number of them. "

I prefer to believe facts and metrics, because users tend to repeat rumors
and often don't understand what they should expect from the technology.

Of course I don't intend to suggest we should just ignore uninformed users.
What I do suggest is that to work in solidarity we need to have agreed
parameters. That means we provide guidelines and we expect people to be
willing to try certain things as the process. It also means we have to
listen to users and it must be a conversation. Just as we should not tell
users "you must use this or we won't help you" users shouldn't say "we
won't be bothered to test X because we already know it doesn't work."

This is a constant problem in activist spaces. We don't all have to work
together, but if we are going to work together we have to agree to
parameters. I am very interested in trying to assist Iranians and others to
improve their connectivity, but that involves testing and gathering user
experience data. It would be great to have some idea who these 25,000 daily
connections to your are and what they are doing differently.

>>
>> Perhaps this is a combination of lack of awareness and lack of patience.
I understand Iranian youth and folks only concerned with general internet
use may lack patience, but activists journalists and civil society members
should be taught practical steps and be encouraged to recognize the
internet is not magic, therefore sometimes patience is a necessity. There
are such varying responses any the usability of tor and other products
inside Iran it seems likely there is a dearth of practical knowledge and an
excess of user error.
>
> Based on my experience, journalists and activists don't care about their
security because there are lot of myths that the government can monitor
everything and they cannot do anything! Unfortunately, there is lack of
knowledge in Iran and cyber activists need to be trained. BTW, general
users don't care about security and the important thing for them is access.
I thing Nariman talked about general users.

Sure, and for 25,000 users apparently Tor works at least some of the time.
We need to understand why tor(and other products) work for these
individuals & why it doesn't work for others. This is the only way we can
effectively educate folks and adapt to such constantly changing
circumstances.

Let's keep talking about this.

>
> Cheers,
>
> A
>>
>> 
>>
>> On Feb 22, 2014 11:04 AM, "Amin Sabeti" <aminsabeti at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> The important point that we must not forget is the first priority for
users in Iran is access. It means users would like to check their FB &
Twitter accounts. Therefore, TOR is not feasible solution for them because
they have not high speed internet connection.
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>>
>>> A
>>>
>>>
>>> On 22 February 2014 03:21, Nathan of Guardian <
nathan at guardianproject.info> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>>>> Hash: SHA1
>>>>
>>>> On 02/21/2014 09:54 PM, Nima Fatemi wrote:
>>>> > Nariman Gharib:
>>>> >>> so if anybody can help me to tell me which these tools in below
>>>> >>> are safe it would be great.
>>>> > I've double checked that Tor works just fine in Iran. This is for
>>>> > both vanilla (normal Tor Browser Bundle) and Pluggable Transports
>>>> > Bundle (including but not limited to obfsproxy).
>>>> >
>>>> > Android users can use Orbot to access Tor network.
>>>> >
>>>> > I believe we have the necessary tools, what we certainly need here
>>>> > is to educate ppl on how to use it safely.
>>>>
>>>> Yes, my question is why Nariman didn't have Orbot on his list in the
>>>> first place? Perhaps people don't consider Tor to be a VPN, or don't
>>>> know it is available on Android?
>>>>
>>>> - From the Tor metrics site (and as Nima said), there seems to be about
>>>> 25,000 active Tor sessions per day from Iran, via direct access (not
>>>> using a bridge):
>>>>
https://metrics.torproject.org/users.html?graph=userstats-relay-country&start=2013-11-24&end=2014-02-22&country=ir&events=off#userstats-relay-country
>>>>
>>>> We receive many emails each day from users in Iran, and it is
>>>> definitely working for a good number of them. I know that with Google
>>>> Play Store, Iranian users can search for Orbot, but when they try to
>>>> download it, it is blocked with a 403 Forbidden error by a filter on
>>>> the Iranian side. We do however offer direct downloads of our software
>>>> (see the support link below)
>>>>
>>>> Maybe we need to create a version of this tutorial that can be
>>>> published in Farsi on a site people visit?
>>>>
>>>> https://guardianproject.info/howto/browsefreely/
>>>>
>>>> We've also recently created a simple support message that could be
>>>> sent out, to help people debug issues they might be having access
>>>> downloads, configuring the software and so on:
>>>>
>>>>
https://dev.guardianproject.info/projects/support/wiki/Orbot_Auto_Response
>>>>
>>>> As for the other solutions, the only one that looks trustworthy is
>>>> Shadowsocks, though it is just a SOCK5 proxy system, which means it is
>>>> limited to the amount of proxy server IPs you can setup and host.
>>>>
>>>> +n
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
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