{"id":1096,"date":"2009-06-22T04:27:56","date_gmt":"2009-06-22T09:27:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=1096"},"modified":"2010-07-19T00:29:31","modified_gmt":"2010-07-19T05:29:31","slug":"dispatches-from-the-cyberfront","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=1096","title":{"rendered":"Dispatches from the Iranian cyberfront"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve spent the last seventeen hours living inside a cyberpunk novel.  A libertarian cyberpunk novel.  It&#8217;s been a weird and awesome experience.<\/p>\n<p>Within an hour after I received a <a href=\"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=1092\">plea for help<\/a> from Iran,  a regular commenter on this blog recruited me into a hacker network that has been forming to support the democratic Iranian revolutionaries by providing them with proxy servers, Tor anonymizers, and any other technologies needed<br \/>\nfor them to communicate over channels the Iranian regime cannot censor or control.<\/p>\n<p>I know this network has contacts on the ground among the revolutionaries.  I don&#8217;t know who they<br \/>\nare, and don&#8217;t want to know.  Most of the other network members are just names on an IRC channel. But we&#8217;re putting together a stealth network at amazing speed. Nothing matters as much as the courage and determination of the Iranians on the ground, but we aim to make a difference in our own way and we have the tools to do it.<\/p>\n<p>This disorganization has only been forming for a very short time. It doesn&#8217;t really have leaders. It didn&#8217;t have even a name when I joined it, though I&#8217;ve given it one that looks like it might stick. Until and unless somebody else steps up to the job, I&#8217;m our public contact.<\/p>\n<p>This role carries a non-zero risk that I will be targeted for assassination, or interrogation followed by execution, by agents of the Iranian regime &#8211; we&#8217;ve had more than one death threat against core members already.  I take this risk with eyes open because we need somebody to be public, and I know I&#8217;ve already been a jihadi target since 2006; at least I can keep some other poor bastard out of the line of fire.  I now expect to remain continuously armed for the duration of the Iranian crisis.<\/p>\n<p>Rostam, this is how I&#8217;m answering your plea.  We&#8217;ll do what we can for your people.  For freedom.<\/p>\n<p>To learn more about NedaNet and how you can help, go <a href=\"http:\/\/nedanet.org\/\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>UPDATE:  Actual death threat received.  I have taken appropriate precautions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve spent the last seventeen hours living inside a cyberpunk novel. A libertarian cyberpunk novel. It&#8217;s been a weird and awesome experience. Within an hour after I received a plea for help from Iran, a regular commenter on this blog recruited me into a hacker network that has been forming to support the democratic Iranian&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=1096\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Dispatches from the Iranian cyberfront<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1096","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-technology","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1096","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1096"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1096\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2320,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1096\/revisions\/2320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1096"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1096"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1096"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}