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

[Collin Anderson]

On Sun, Feb 23, 2014 at 9:43 AM, Nathan of Guardian <
nathan at guardianproject.info> wrote:

> That is the reason I promote Tor. It is 100% free, run by volunteers,
> doesn't require a credit card or registered account, and has group of
> Farsi-literate community support staff (like Nima) ready to help. I don't
> see it as an activist tool by any means, i see it as something you can
> trust and rely upon that wont leave user out to dry the minute the govt
> filters their IP.
>

I appreciated the humor on alternatives, although it took me a moment.
About Mobitex, that was not the only network available at that time. Quite
a bit of the emergency response fell onto the pager network, whose
insecurity really shined through when Wikileaks dumped half a million
messages publicly in eight years later. However, at the time, that was all
that was available and need outpaced ideal security. Sorry, perhaps overly
distorted your metaphor.

Anyway, it's important to point out that the Iranian government does not
seem to filter the directory authorities' IPs, nor the public relay list.
Tor working as comfortably as it does is the product of calculation or
omission, rather than blocking resistance. (I feel confident that the
Supreme Council of Cyberspace is not going to learn this here for the first
time.)

On Sun, Feb 23, 2014 at 11:37 AM, Andrew Lewman <liberationtech at lewman.us>
 wrote:
>
> Thanks for the sample data Collin. Is this throttling true for bridged
> tor connections and the pluggable transports bundle?


My comparative measurement was unfair without more comparison! This is an
absolutely legitimate question that I will try to answer more thoroughly at
some point in the near term.

-- 
*Collin David Anderson*
averysmallbird.com | @cda | Washington, D.C.
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