Here’s Tamir’s call for action https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7419994...
I’m almost afraid to ask but how are you and everyone else?
On the other hand, I'm currently serving in the police force (Which all able bodied men of age have to do and serve in one of the three armed forces of my country) and the bigger question since the start of the protests has been "What to do if I was put in a position against people?"
Thankfully that hasn't happened yet but still there is a feeling of being stuck between a rock and a hard place.
a) protests can and will be crushed by the government forces and people will be ultimately defeated;
b) people have no means to force government to enable back freedoms;
c) control is much easier with no internet available.
Russia is on the same path by providing white-list only internet access "during Ukrainian attacks" and a bit longer every time until ultimately internet will become whitelist only.
Also as we have seen specifically in russia, there is no shortage of senior software developers and network engineers truly putting in their best work to block VPNs better and deeper.
Thus Iran's (and russia's) internet blackout may indeed become permanent.
Update: obviously in this comment I am looking at this from the standpoint of an oppressive government.
I mean, North Korea does manage to produce rockets and nuclear warheads. They aren't exporting technology, though.
This is only a drawback if you think about your country's future.
Which oppressive regimes do not.
Thus it is an advantage, not a drawback.
Those who are commuting daily to lay down flight paths for russian missiles to kill Ukrainians - those have unrestricted internet access.
Especially now that China is taking an ever increasing share of the global information streams. Given the increased panicked the US had about tiktok. Showing the result of the western sponsored genocide in Gaza. They had to enforce ownership handover of tiktok US to a group of US based entities.
So i wouldn't be surprised US internet sphere will shrink over time now that China can go on the offensive in the cyber-realm.. The components are already in place just pull the switch so cloudflare has to regulate who gets in and who gets out.
Hell, look at Twitter/X. It got acquired by a mental guy who was screaming about government propaganda and censorship (while doing Nazi salutes). Do you really think that if there was any government mandate to do anything like what the Russians are doing, he wouldn't have exposed it as "SEE, I TOLD YOU BIG GUBIMNT BAD!!" ?
It's interesting you focus on "the west" when we have solid proof about e.g. Russian interference in many an election and protest via social media. From paid propagandist (e.g. Tim Pool) to the Internet Research Agency. The only factual information we have about anything remotely similar from "the west" was that research about Facebook activity in the Central African Republic being roughly 40/40/20 split between Russians, French, and actual locals. And even that isn't comparable because the French online campaign was mostly combatting Russian disinformation propaganda, not trying to bring about a coup or stoking tensions to get to a civil war.
> Showing the result of the western sponsored genocide in Gaza
The genocide in Gaza is not "sponsored" by the "west". US, maybe.
Well, Hamas was for decades sponsored by entire West via UNRWA while their "from the river to the sea" slogan is as clearly expressed intent to commit genocide as one can wish for.
Spain is blocking whole blocks of internet during football matches.
UK is making you "show your ID card" to jerk off.
But every such country likes pointing fingers at others, "hey, our censorship is not bad, they have more of it!".
edit: considering the downvotes, HN is not bothered by our censorship either
There are no ID cards in the UK, so you actually have to get a special jerking off loicense.
Fast forward less than ten years, and here we are.
Not physical cards, but a digital ID system is on the way :(
No there isn't : https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c3385zrrx73o
If you are going to post shit like that, at least get your fucking facts right.
Namely that you are three weeks out of date sushine.
The idea has been dropped: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c3385zrrx73o
The article you linked to is about the dropped plan to require ID for permission to work in the UK.
The parent commenter is referring to age verification for accessing adult content using "highly effective age-assurance systems" (such as photo ID cards, biometrics, etc.) under the Online Safety Act 2023, which is still very much in effect.
To which I say, the people of the UK are not stupid and know what a VPN is.
Its not rocket-science to bypass the ID check requirement.
> "Philippe Gomes, the former president of New Caledonia's government, told POLITICO the decision aimed to stop protesters from "organizing reunions and protests" through the app."
[0] https://www.politico.eu/article/french-tiktok-ban-new-caledo...
This is the only example I'm aware of (are there others?) of a Western government effecting internet censorship to suppress protests. (Though the article also mentions Macron considering (but rejecting) the same idea in France, to suppress protests following a police shooting. See also[1])
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36599726 ("Macron floats social media cuts during riots", 105 comments)
edit: There was also an incident in San Francisco way back in 2011,
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2879546 ("San Francisco Subway Muzzles Cell Service During Protest", 113 comments)
No, to stop the spread of targeted disinformation by foreign actors stoking those protests to turn into riots. (and if you need any proof, check out the protestors with Azeri flags, in New Caledonia. Azerbaijan's tinpot dictator hates France because France supported Armenia, so he's been trying various ways to undermine France because he's that fragile: https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/17/new-ca... )
In the Netherlands GOVERNMENT=THE PEOPLE to a rather problematic degree (if only you knew how bad things really are).
If you want to start an argument "the Netherlands is just like Iran" I challenge it with 20 political parties in Parliament. Including a pro Kremlin party lol.
What about Russia blocking sites?
As of late 2025 and early 2026, Russia has blocked numerous foreign communication, social media, and information services, restricting platforms like WhatsApp, Telegram (partially), Signal, Viber, FaceTime, Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. Many independent news, VPN services, and foreign websites (e.g., Chess.com) are also inaccessible
If we consider russia bad for doing those blocks above, then we should consider EU being bad when they do it for us.
Of course we should not ban anything in the West.
the end result is well... not good:
So, misteriously (suspicions of bribery abound) now they block full blocks of internet preventively, bringing down innocent and paying customers with them. From Law Enforcement to privatized Minority Report.
Thats what people dislike. If you are a private entity and loose money to piracy, use the legal framework to solve it. Don’t override it with lobbying
But EU countries should be a bastion of freedom, free speech, free access to information, democracy, human rights, rights to this, rights to that... Why do we, the EU countries have to use the same playbook? Yes, banning the whole internet is in one way worse and in other easier, than just banning a list of sites where people can find a way around it, but again, the difference is just in the quantity, the censorship factor is the same. The government gets scared people will see some other propaganda from the other side, and censors it... and even that is done very selectively (daily mail is still accessible from over here, so are fox news and cnn)
With spain it's even worse, because it's not even the government doing it, but the government giving the right of censorship to a private company which clearly abuses that right and the government tolerates this... no court orders, no judges, no way to complain, no fair use, no nothing, a private company decides and the government gives them a blank stamped paper to aprove that.
Yes, i know iran has it much worse, but there's nothing we can do about it here, assuming the internet is banned for iranians and they can't read this or comment here. But EU is doing the same, and we've been tolerating it for years... a site here, a site there,... not everything, but censorship is still censorship, no matter how many sites are censored, and there are people from EU here that should argue against censorship, even if it's just a few sites and not all of them.
You are joking: a 'coup'? The protest movement was so large, the government's attempt to crush it killed 30,000 people in 48 hours.
https://time.com/7357635/more-than-30000-killed-in-iran-say-...
Perhaps, you prefer Arabia, UAE or Israel's internet and find it more to your liking
that's without even talking about killing 30,000-40,000 citizens for wanting their rights
> It subsidize basic needs of its poorer citizens, such as fuel, bread, housing, education and healthcare.
I'd start with supplying basic needs like water and electricity.
The actual subsidizing is for the IRGC which steals whatever they can get their hands on so they can be counted on to mass slaughter the people
Hold on, am I living in the wrong Iran?
You mean the internet?
(i don't want to make it overly political, but once again the historical materialist offshots of the revolutionary groups are the only ones who understood the betrayal and called a boycott of this referendum. Please listen to marxists when they're in a coup, they are so used to betrayal they'll see it comming)
lmao
Ofc not, b/c techbros gonna techbro. "Why can't we just <insert some technical BS>?"
Socialists, Liberals, and Techbros, that's HN.
Everything is the same and comparable never mind how hyperbolic. Doubt it? be showered with cherry picked micro facts that on the surface are similar.
This rests on the fact that in order to establish a big picture you have to take small facts and agree on the big picture, and that leap from small and verifiable to large and analytic is the place you can inject faith and emotion
The UK is doing some shitty stuff and a man was arrested for wearing a “Plasticine Action” t-shirt a few weeks ago, “Palestine Action” being a proscribed group in the UK, and showing support being an offence. When the mistake was realised he was released after a few hours with an apology.
These things are objectively terrible, shouldn’t be happening. The UK government is under popular and legal pressure to un-proscribe the group as hundreds (thousands?) have been arrested and charged.
But it is not the same as someone being ‘disappeared’ in South American dictatorships, where they would be taken and denied process for years if not killed outright. Yet people here drew that comparison. He was arrested for inconvenient speech! It’s the same! And then I came under fire for defending the actions of the UK, having done nothing of the sort.
It’s really weird to watch.
About 2 decades ago I read an article about how bureucracies don't even allow for humor any more, e.g. even clearly joking about having a bomb in the airport is now taboo. Something about rigid inhumane inflexible rules, in my vague memory of that article.
Where airport security has to examine babies for terrorist motives, because it's written in the rules, fuck human reasoning!
Heh in my own estimation arresting supporters of Palestine Action for peacefully protesting is already too close to Iranian autocracy ideal and too far from a "democratic country" ideal which the UK used to be...
It’s awful that they’re arresting people with “Palestine Action” t-shirts too. It’s just not the same thing as actually disappearing people.
That's the point of this thread, no? Things can be bad in different ways and to different degrees.
If I say I don't like the way you just spoke about my sister and punch you in the gut, that's a pretty shitty thing to do.
If I say I don't like the way you just spoke about my sister and cut your throat then bury your body in the forest, I would like to think we can agree that's worse.
The important point is, if the erosion of civil liberties continues, these governments are losing their high ground. They must stop.
As in the Cold War, I would give an allowance for the West to still be preferable (modulo strict rights record) if they actually muster some sort of power to confront tyranny. But if the rulers only want cheap rhetoric wins, no.
If South American dictatorships could have their way with less blood and less noise, don't you think they would prefer that?
I'm reminded of a tragicomic recent admission from Nate Silver of 538 fame. He said Disney almost never interfered in their editorial process, as if that was a good thing. What that really meant, after all, was that Disney was perfectly willing to interfere in their editorial process, but almost never felt the need to. (As you would expect. I mean, why would Disney care about political polling?)
Could it similarly be that the UK government is perfectly willing to engage in brutal political suppression, but rarely has a need to? In that case maybe people are right to sound the alarm even though we haven't reached South American dictatorship levels yet.
It still stinks through and through of course.
I think it's likely they will get still more scared that they won't, and ramp up the brutality accordingly.
The path forward is clear: Reform gets into power, builds their own paramilitary "immigration enforcement" groups a la ICE, and you get the occasional summary execution in the streets, along with arrests based on UKs unmatched surveillance system.
And even if the man was wearing a proper "Palestine Action" shirt that'd still be pretty concerning. It is an insane stretch to say that wearing a shirt represents a matter for police action. How far the world has moved on from when the UK could be considered a forward-thinking bastion of liberalism.
Whatever is happening in SA might be as bad, I suppose, but I don't speak Spanish or have any family connection there so I'm not going to look it up. Although if they're genocidal then they should stop too, should that need to be said.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Africa's_genocide_case_a...
If you’re not aware of the history of people being disappeared by states such as Chile under Pinochet, or more broadly what it means for a state to disappear someone, that’s kinda on you.
Either way these are not equivalent actions.
Yes, it’s suppression of free speech in a chilling manner. I hate it. No, it’s not the same as suppressing that speech by taking someone and holding them in a secret prison for years and/or killing them.
Sure. Though in the UK I give you Julian Assange - 5 years in BellMarsh, mostly in total isolation as if he was some major threat.
I'm honestly not trying to defend any action by any state in this thread, I'm not trying to say that the UK is better than any other state. I'm not trying to make any point at all beyond using a specific example in agreeing with the comments above mine that "Everything is the same and comparable never mind how hyperbolic."
But it seems to be construed as if I am, no matter how much I agree that the actions we're talking about are terrible. People come back and tell me the UK is bad and I should feel bad for defending it. I know right! And if I was I would!
I must admit I find the whole thing very frustrating.
It's a mistake to take things like trial by jury, open justice ( not secret courts ), non-arbitrary detention, even regular elections for granted.
I totally agree with you that the UK is not Iran and there is too much hyperbole - but at the same time the current government is trying to criminalise legitimate protest, cancelling elections and trying to remove trial by jury for a substantial set of things ( the ultimate protection against an authoritarian state ).
As an example, it's very telling that the government ensured that in all the Assange legal proceedings it never went before a jury.
The current government creating all these precedents, in the shadow of the prospect of a potential Reform government is something I think we should all be concerned about.
The idea that the state can deprive you of your freedom for a sentence likely to be less than 3 years without the chance to be tried before you peers, is worrying.
Note is was six months before Nov 2024, it's 12 months now and they are looking to extend to 3 years! ( or more - given the word: likely ).
Juries are not an administrative inconvenience or process inefficiency.
The current legal reform seems to be operating on the assumption that the defendent is guilty - rather thana resumption of innocence.
Better to let the guilty to go free, than imprison the innocent.
I have relatives in the UK, right now. And after this conversation I'm now more concerned for them than I was this morning, and I can make some educated guesses about why ol' mate didn't want to talk to you about Pinochet, who Wikipedia suggests died 20 years ago. Sounds like something is going on in the UK right now.
I mean, seriously, I have left-wing family members who might be travelling to the UK this year. Is there some sort of guide to what political t-shirts will get them arrested?
You’re not being asked to feel better about the UK! If you didn’t know about this stuff and you feel worse about the UK, good, you probably should!
But you are being asked to see a difference in degree between:
Someone speaks out about human rights abuses and murder sanctioned by the state, and is arrested, then later released with an apology.
Someone speaks out about human rights abuses and murder sanctioned by the state, and is arrested, their arrest is denied by the state and they turn up several years later in a mass grave.
> I mean, seriously, I have left-wing family members who might be travelling to the UK this year. Is there some sort of guide to what political t-shirts will get them arrested?
“Palestine Action” is currently a proscribed organisation. They are proscribed because some of them are alleged to have fucked with some fighter jets and done some other illegal direct action stuff.
So currently it’s illegal to show support for that specific group.
There are open court challenges to the whole situation, and many hundreds of people are awaiting trial for continuing to show support to the group after the proscription. The whole thing is a shitshow.
But you can (AFAICT) support Palestine and Palestinian people as much as you like, you’re just not allowed to wave “Palestine Action” flags or t-shirts around.
I can't do anything about iran, i don't live there, neither does anyone else commenting here it seems... but many of us do live in EU, and are bothered by EU doing the same thing as iran, even if it's on a smaller scale (for now). You can't support censorship at home and then act outraged when someone else just implements more of it... even though some do, as long as the censored things are the things they personally don't like.
To be fair, i'm more worried about UK, since it's a "test ground" to see how things work before the bad thing are implemented elsewhere, but either way, in my small country we have a saying, that "people should first sweep infront of their own doorways", and yeah, EU and our censorship is my doorway in this case.
TLDR: if we're bothered by internet censorship, we should first stop at 'at home'.
Sure EU has some fkn horrible sides to it, such as the anonymous vote to get big stuff through when a majority should be enough as democracy depicts, but currently 2 states out of all EU states can block the big decisions...
You also don’t live in the United States, or in Israel or Palestine but folks tend to forget that it seems.
But you can do something anyway which is to be aware of the atrocities committed by Iran’s regime, make sure your government is aware of your opinion, you can protest outside the Iranian embassy in your country, help Iranian dissidents, help Iranians find sneaky ways to get internet access, &c.
I’m not expecting anyone to do those things but I find this “I don’t live there” argument continue to creep up whenever it comes to Iran but it never enters conversation when it comes to specific other countries.
> TLDR: if we're bothered by internet censorship, we should first stop at 'at home'.
Sure but you don’t have to focus on one issue at a time. Honestly resorting Internet access in Iran is probably more important than whatever rules and things the EU is implementing because in Iran people are actually dying and you can always change the EU rules back through democratic processes.
On the other hand, there are many people from EU here who need to hear it, that EU is doing the same as iran... censoring websites and more (IDs, chat control,...). Yes, maybe not at the same level, less sites are censored here, but censorship is still censorship, and the trend is going towards more control and more censorship.
United states, israel (and palestine), etc. are different. Are we bothered by what israel is doing in palestine? Yes! (some of us). Can we actually do something about it? Sure... the germans can tell their government to stop selling weapons to israel [0], we can implement sanctions, tarrifs, etc. This is something that we can do "at home", something that can make some change. We did that for russia, we did that for iran, north korea etc (at various times and various levels), but we did something. We didn't really do that (at least not at scale) for isreal. US is doing that to us (EU) with tarrifs every two weeks, but we didn't really properly respond, even under the threat of an invasion on greenland.
Yes, restricted internet in iran is bad, but we can't stop it. Sadly, changing back EU rules is similarly hard to do, which again, is something that should be fixed, by us, at home.
[0] https://www.dw.com/en/war-in-gaza-germany-supplies-30-of-isr...
(Just a reminder that the above is what I responded to)
> But what can you do for iran?
You can encourage your governments to take action against Iran as well. Further sanctions, diplomatic pressure, providing support to the Iranian people, &c. In my case as an American I am encouraging my government to take the toughest action possible to stop Iran. Much of the blood of dead Palestinians can be placed at their feet too since they arm and support Hezbollah and Hamas who are doing what they can to keep killing people and keep the conflict active.
Just because you personally don't know what can be done doesn't mean something can't be done, and at a minimum you can encourage your government to continue to do the things it's already doing. You don't have to know what can be done, you can leave that up to others while demanding that the Iranian regime halt its indiscriminate mass murder of Iranian civilians before they make the number of people killed in Gaza look like a warmup.
Not living in Iran doesn't mean you (an EU citizen I presume) can't do anything about the actions of that regime. It's simply not a valid argument.
Lets make this clear: "Spain" is not blocking, some ISP companies which have many users ask the judge for permission to block IP ranges because they are streaming football matches. The judge agrees (they don't seem to know how Cloudflare works), so the ISPs are the ones that are blocking their own users to access sites behind Cloudflare. As they have millions of users, the block feels huge, but it is not issued by the government.
I am not a customer of those ISP, so my internet isn't disrupted at all during football matches. Some services, like annas-archive and torrent sites, are intermittently blocked, but you can easily avoid the blocks just by switching DNS server to 1.1.1.1 or 8.8.8.8.
Yes, technically "Spain" is not blocking. ISPs are. It is however the armed agents of "Spain", who will come and violently lock you in a tiny room if you refuse to do as you're told. If you try to resist hard enough, they will simply execute you on the spot.
As I said, my ISP doesn't do this block. Are they defying the Spain government mandate? Are they facing penalties or prison? This is a private thing that Movistar /O2, mainly, is doing, to protect their football stream. Thes is like saying that the US government forces Disney to enforce tneir IP protection.
Your last paragraph is a shame. Execute people on the spot, what the fuck are you even talking about? Spain don't even punish people torrenting or piracing unless you are profiting from it (e.g. selling pirate streams).
You can see right here https://www.poderjudicial.es/search/AN/openDocument/766326fb...
> Are they defying the Spain government mandate?
Nobody has claimed that this is a government mandate, it isn't. It's a court order, coming from the judiciary. While Americans might consider the judiciary to be a branch of the government, in Spain it is considered entirely separate.
> Execute people on the spot, what the fuck are you even talking about?
The police will absolutely kill you if you try to forcefully resist them when they come to arrest you for violating a court order. This is not unique to Spain, but is more of a universal principle.
In "normal" filtering situations, we can connect to most VPNs and do our stuff. When blackouts like these happen, EVERYTHING is blocked. It gets almost impossible to connect to a VPN. They have advanced tech that detects and blocks all VPNS and proxies. The internet speed is also now at crawling speed so you really can't upload download anything.
Also, in each blackout, people find ways to work around the censorship. And each time, they detect them and patch them. We have almost ran out of ways to prevent the censorship now.
All other platforms (instant messengers, social media, news) are massively unpopular for being horrid to use at best, and government spyware at worst.
To slow down the immediate damage the government has rolled back a few of the recent restrictions, hence why I can access HN. Among Google and a handful of other basic websites. But they are obviously experimenting and trying to figure out how much censorship they can get away with. There is talk of a planned "whitelisting" of the country's internet. Where almost all but a few big important services are blocked completely. This would have the bonus effect of making circumvention using VPNs and other methods even more difficult than it already is.
I wish you all the best. Stay safe my friend.
Can anyone recommend a good book, video course or other material to learn more about these topics?
The way that I see it, its not just a technical problem anymore. It's about making the methods as diverse as possible and to some extent messing up the network for everyone. In other words, we should increase the cost and the collateral damage of widespread censorship. As an anecdotal data point, the network was quite tightly controlled / monitored around 2023 in Iran and nothing worked reliably. Eventually people (ab)used the network (for example the tls fragments method) to the extent that most of the useful and unrelated websites (e.g., anything behind cloudflare, most of the Hetzner IPv4 addresses, and more) stopped working or were blocked. This was an unacceptably high collateral damage for the censors (?), so they "eased" some of the restrictions. Vless and Trojan were the same at that time and didn't work or were blocked very quickly, but they started working ~reliably again until very recently.
Here's an overview. Be warned, the conclusion is:
> We enumerate the requirements that a censorship-resistant system must satisfy to successfully mimic another protocol and conclude that “unobservability by imitation” is a fundamentally flawed approach.
Plus, the elites economic prosperity is also linked to their not being protests and for the toppling of govt to not occur and they might be willing to offset some losses to keep the average population in check
Which sucks for the average iranian but we saw how their protests were cracked down with 20-30 THOUSAND people killed and Iran hiding bodies etc.
I have heard that all shops are either shut down or running at the most minimum capacity. Economic prosperity just isn't a question now in Iran.
1. The government of Iran is an oppressive, immoral dictatorship.
2. Foreign intervention to try to remove it would likely result in worse outcomes, not better.
Invading Iran would be difficult, but totally destroying IRGC and military (as long as they side with the former) wouldn't be that hard. Dropping communications equipment and weapons to Iranian opposition groups wouldn't be hard either.
They can do unconditional blocking at any moment and suddenly you can experience Internet blackout. [1]
The censorship from GFW is ever evolving. See the endless cat-and-mouse games yourself. [2][3]
[1] https://github.com/net4people/bbs/issues/511
[2] https://github.com/net4people/bbs/issues?q=is%3Aissue+state%...
Now, if you’re doing something unrelated that the administration doesn’t like, you can expect VPN use to be included in the long list of charges.
That's the standard procedure. But polices in developed areas usually treat them like antragsdelikte(no trial without a complaint).
This can be overriden to use "Starlink positioning" where the terminal ignores GPS signals and dtermines its position based on Starlink satellite signals. I think this is what is used in Ukraine where GPS is mostly jammed/spoofed to hell even far from the front.
The GPS positioning is the default as it is likely more user friendly/has quicker lock in normal circumstances.
Another venue of attack could be the Starlink WiFi AP included in the terminals- you could track that down.
So in general:
* switch the terminal to Starlink positioning
* disable the Starkink terminal WiFi AP and conect by ethernet or connect an AP via ethernet with a new SSID and different MAC address
And it should be good to go.
While that gives some ideas of how widespread the jamming is, it won't give accurate information about the range (air traffic avoids areas with jamming) of the interference or any information from places where there is no commercial air traffic (war zones, etc).
Definitely much easier to jam. Much higher orbits for gnss satellites, much lower signal intensity.
Also, starlink uses phased arrays with beamforming, effectively creating an electronically steerable directional antenna. It is harder to jam two directional antennas talking to each other, as your jammers are on the sides, where the lobes of the antenna radiation pattern are smaller.
Still, we're talking about signals coming from space, so maybe it is just enough to sprinkle more jammers in an urban setting.. I'm curious as well.
The components needed to build jammers and EW systems have been heavily commodified for a decade now (hell, your phone's power brick, car, and TV all have dual use components for these kinds of applications), and most regional powers have been working on compound semiconductors and offensive electronic warfare for almost a generation now.
Iran was reported to have mobile units with a fairly short range that constantly roamed around, only hitting 2 of the 3 bands (Ku/Ka). They're also reported to have received mobile Russian military units capable of jamming all 3 (X/Ku/Ka) over a much wider area. (I'm not actually clear the extent to which X band is associated with either Starlink or Starshield. Starshield also reportedly operates to at least some extent in parts of the S band. [0])
So the technology clearly exists but it doesn't seem to be something you can trivially throw together in your basement. That's quite unlike (for example) a cell phone jammer which a hobbyist can cheaply and easily assemble at home. I assume the extreme directional specificity of the antennas plays a large part in that.
[0] https://www.npr.org/2025/10/17/nx-s1-5575254/spacex-starshie...
but even with his, i still feel angry when i want to check something on google/ins...when i dont have a realiable VPN. i remeber when we start working on golang dev, and because its under google domain so many sub sites is blocked including golang ones, its very time consuming for chinese devs to develop golang projects, you have to figure out the VPN/goproxy... stuff..
They have limited service because they can't afford anything better, and the USA prevents installing additional undersea cables, but only a small number of sites are blocked by Cuba itself, such as a few Spanish language news sites run by Cuban-Americans.
Many more sites are unavailable in Cuba because their USA owners refuse access to Cuba, but that's not Cuba's fault.
Firstly the protesters will be able to communicate in private.
And secondly, Iranians will continue to be reminded of the freedoms most other Muslims enjoy: As in free speech and free trade.
One of the reasons the Berlin wall fell was that East Europeans saw on TV that how prosperous Western Europe became.
The citizens of Iran, in turn, are free to leave the country as they wish. In fact, the official policy is that if you don't like it here, then you are are supposed to move out.
Granted that can't possibly cover the entire area of the country.
Trade was a big factor though. As the collective quality of life in the East was deteriorating, efforts were made by authorities to save the dire situation by opening trade and some degree of freedom of movement with the West. As this plan failed economically, a side effect was that it only became common knowledge across society how big the gap in quality of life really was.
The idea that free internet access will magically change the situation for Iranians on it's own is naive.
I am usually pretty isolationist in my thinking but I really wish the US would have already invaded.
Millions of young Persians who are absolutely no different than you or I. It is now or never. If the regime can put down this uprising it is going to be hard to form another uprising for a long long time.
After many years of heavy censorship on 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, there are a lot of accounts on Chinese BBS who say all the footage "AI generated".
At the same time, I can see Apple caving to Iran governement - or China's - and restrict this feature to countries where it is legal.
Imagine if all the conveniences of the internet were taken from you. Not that you'd never had them, but that you'd come to rely on them and then they were gone. Feels like some palpable oppression to me. And it has nothing to do with your political views. Everyone will feel the squeeze and nobody is gonna be dismissive about it.
It's a desperate attempt, that really shows how cornered the administration is.
Any power that fears information, has to have a highly fine grained, high level control of information to maintain power. This is absolutely difficult, in a country as culturally diverse and with a long history as Iran.
Right now the internet access is widening and some areas are already back to normal internet — but it hasn't been stable over the past week. https://radar.cloudflare.com/traffic/ir
https://polymarket.com/event/khamenei-out-as-supreme-leader-...
"In addition to the central bank, it seems as though regular Iranians are seeking the perceived safety of cryptocurrencies as unrest disrupts the country and the economy collapses."
https://www.coindesk.com/business/2026/01/21/iran-s-central-...
Like the right to not wear scarf? Seems they had the good luck with that one.
Let me remind you that many civilians died, including two children. Don't take my word for it:
The following quote can be attributed to Lama Fakih, Middle East and North Africa Director at Human Rights Watch:
“Customary international humanitarian law prohibits the use of booby traps – objects that civilians are likely to be attracted to or are associated with normal civilian daily use – precisely to avoid putting civilians at grave risk and produce the devastating scenes that continue to unfold across Lebanon today. The use of an explosive device whose exact location could not be reliably known would be unlawfully indiscriminate, using a means of attack that could not be directed at a specific military target and as a result would strike military targets and civilians without distinction. A prompt and impartial investigation into the attacks should be urgently conducted.”
Given the denied environment the Iranian people see themselves in. I believe its worth mentioning asynchronous networks[1].
For example, they could use NNCP[2] in sneakernet style op[3].
Couriers could even layer steganography techniques on top on the NNCP data going in and out on USB drives. This can all be done now, and doesn't require new circumvention research or tools.
NNCPNET[4] is now active which provides email over NNCP and therefore can be done completely without internet. Once a courier gets to a location that isn't as denied, they can route it over the internet via a NNCP relay. Both for getting information out, and getting data back in.
For those wanting to get information to new agencies, you should consider SecureDrop. Here[5] is a list of securedrop locations.
Like all operations, please consider your OPSEC.
Good luck
[1] www.complete.org/asynchronous-communications/
[2] www.complete.org/NNCP/
[3] www.complete.org/dead-usb-drives-are-fine-building-a-reliable-sneakernet/
[4] www.complete.org/nncpnet-email-network/
[5] https://docs.securedrop.org/en/stable/source/source.html
I am hoping more tools will be built on top of it, with good tolerance for asynchronous/offline networks, particularly for communication and social. We may need it soon elsewhere.
Mail over NNCP works well as you mentioned because mail is already asynchronous. Maybe Delta Chat over NNCP is worth a try.
> Astroturfing much?
I have been involved in antiregime activities for years. You can easily find many posts of mine evangelizing the cause in the oddest places e.g.: https://www.themotte.org/post/2196/culture-war-roundup-for-t...
> I just want the regime to change
I run one of the biggest defense forums where I post about it a lot: https://www.reddit.com/r/CredibleDefense/comments/1q09y6q/ac...
You could try to bifurcate into allied and non allied, but even that would be flawed, especially in countries like the USA where it becomes a first amendment right to try to ban such connectivity. It’s very hard to kill the Internet in terms of connecting peers - that’s kind of the point of its design.
Is the idea to unblock their internet if they let everyone use the internet and not just the elite? It won't work. Their elites will find workarounds and they'll leave the internet completely blocked apart from that.
While you're at it, you can try explaining Ukranians why it's fine that Russia is invading them because America is bad.
Because I guess you're not interested in my own personal experience of witnessing said people get killed either. Or not exiting my home because I feared for my life. But you seem to have a loose definition of "unconfirmed" [1] so I won't dwell on that. Here's all I have to say:
> When the Israeli government claims that Iran needs to be toppled to protect the Iranian people, while they simultaneously commit genocide in Palestine, I have to stop and think about their real motives.
The Iranian government is evil.
The Israeli government is evil.
Both are, believe it or not, true. Conservative ruling systems often dislike other conservative ruling systems.
> Trump wants to bring democracy to Iran
_Iranians_ want to bring democracy to Iran. And as one of them, I sincerely don't give a shit about what Trump or Israel or anyone else outside of this fucking country wants.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/03/technology/israel-hamas-i...
Interestingly, during the last internet blackout in Iran, a lot of the pro Scottish independence X accounts went quiet too:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_influence_operations_i...
I'm sure many Iranians are deeply concerned about that cause.
The Scottish independence movement is a very strong, grass roots campaign that has been building for many decades ( pre-web never mind pre-twitter ), with the Scottish ambivalence to the Union having deep cultural roots.
What keeps Gaza and the wider actions of the current Israel government in the news is the constant killings and injustices. If they didn't want to be in the news perhaps they could stop killing people.
Next you will be telling me Minnesota is only in the news due to Russia bots - and nothing to do with the killing of civilians on the streets.
I am saying that there is evidence that the amount of media (and I am including X/Twitter and other social media) attention given to various causes around the world is actively manipulated. This is in response to a comment querying the perceived disparity in media coverage of events. Not that these events are or are not occurring or a more 'worthy' cause than one another.
I very much understand the history around Scottish independence, but unfortunately it will take me a lot of convincing to genuinely believe that twitter accounts in Iran sharing news that Balmoral castle has been taken over by protestors [1] are well meaning.
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20260117184736/https://www.teleg...
If you don't believe Iranian tweets are a major factor in Scottish independence - then why mention it?
And while I agree there is a lot of media manipulation attempts out there - I'd argue, if you take your Iran/Israel issue as an example - do you truely believe that Iran is outgunning Israel in this regard??
In terms of coverage - did this incident gget much coverage? https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20260125-israeli-forces-ki...
In the 848 days since Oct 2023, 1109 people have been killed within the occupied terrorities by Israeli government forces or settlers.
That's more than 1 a day. Are you arguing that has disproportionate coverage?
I'd argue it hardly gets a mention.
With that said, I would argue there is a huge difference between those you have mentioned in how they deal with protests.
To make my point clearer, I have an idea for you: In each of the countries you mentioned, go to the capital with a sign "I am against this regime, I want change" and see what happens.
Nice try, but no. The main difference will be how much coverage your arrest will receive, depending on who arrests you and who covers the story.
[1] https://edition.cnn.com/2025/04/12/politics/trump-krebs-khal...
[2] https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2024-04-26/ty-article-opinio...
0.03% of Iranians vs 3% of Gazans.
I think we can all agree that Iran shouldn't be massacring its own nationals even if as the government claims they are foreign-influenced, but don't use this as a platform to push an agenda that harms even your own cause.
It’s 30k in a week - all civilians vs 60k in 2 years - in a mixture of civilians and combatants.
>0.03% of Iranians vs 3% of Gazans.
"One death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic"
Sure, they all had moms and dads and to their families they were likely important and missed but there is a World of difference to the people left behind between some activist no one knows getting murdered by the state and their own families and acquaintances getting mowed down while they themselves are living precariously.
This moral absolutism is relativism in disguise.
edit: sorry, I shouldn't have replied to a political post however egregious. I will not engage further.
The Israeli's demand was returning the hostages and the bodies of the people Hamas murdered. Hamas refused to do that for a year and a half.
lmao, every. single. time.
Given the direct comparison and language of the parent comment, it's hard for me not to see an implied agenda here: Iran's regime is bad, they're islamists, just like Hamas, therefore Israel should be excused for having turned Gaza into a parking lot, or something along these lines. Our commitment to human rights should be strong enough to reject this sort of thinking and condemn every single one of these civilian deaths.
George Floyd got a lot because he was a borderline case, an innocent man shot by police for some, a criminal who got what he deserved for others. That creates tension. That creates arguments. "local cop shoots innocent 80-year-old woman carrying groceries" is a story for a day at best, then the cop gets punished and we move on.
Gaza is the same. You have one side complaining about human rights abuses, and the pro-Israel side supporting Israle to the death. In Iran, there's no such tension, we all agree that this is bad, shrug and move on.
[1] (funnily enough, this was cited today on HN in an entirely unrelated article) https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage...
She said, "well, how would I know about it if it's not on the news?"
I said, "well, it was on the news." And then I went looking for articles about it. And y'know, I realized that unless you actually went looking, you probably wouldn't find those articles, even though they're only a few weeks old.
What is super disappointing about this is that when the US does take action against the Iranian regime again, the reasoning is not going to be legible to most Americans. I don't really understand how this was erased so quickly. That meme about Columbia's campus being totally protest-free was pretty much on point. It's startling to see a large portion of the population being manipulated so thoroughly into being rabid about one thing and totally blind to another at the same time. Is having consistent values no longer a value?
> Weeks after it was exposed that Hamas’ so-called “Gaza Health Ministry” has been circulating false casualty figures, much of the media are still reporting them without a hint of skepticism.
> In April, research by Salo Aizenberg, a board member of HonestReporting, revealed that thousands of previously “identified” deaths — including more than 1,000 children allegedly killed in Israeli airstrikes — had quietly disappeared from Hamas’ own tallies.
> Aizenberg’s findings echoed a December report by the Henry Jackson Society, which documented how Hamas had systematically inflated civilian casualty numbers to suggest that Israel targets non-combatants.
Also noted, re: the two sources cited:
* In November 2024, Honest Reporting Canada's assistant director, Robert Walker, was criminally charged with 17 counts of mischief for allegedly vandalizing several properties in a Toronto neighborhood by spray painting anti-Palestinian graffiti.
~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HonestReporting
and
* (Henry Jackson Society) Co-founder Matthew Jamison, who now works for YouGov, wrote in 2017 that he was ashamed of his involvement, having never imagined the Henry Jackson Society "would become a far-right, deeply anti-Muslim racist ... propaganda outfit to smear other cultures, religions and ethnic groups". He claimed that "The HJS for many years has relentlessly demonised Muslims and Islam".
Anything coming from Hamas is certainly not trustworthy, but according to the ICJ, there were quite a few more indications that Israel did this. Just the blocking of food alone is proof of targeting non combatants.
This goes both ways and applies to all conflicts, but somehow we always cherry-pick the source that is not aligned with western interests as the "untrustworthy".
I "cherry-pick" sources that do not spread lies. That excludes Hamas, as well as the circle around Netanjahu. The ICJ seems more interested in truth and you may criticize how that went for them, or are they anti western in your book?
I don't claim the bias was deliberate. The point is that we have internalized having to conform with the narrative of western (elite) interests, which in this case is to exert control on the region, resources and trade routes.
I think this comment is misguided enough / detached from reality enough to rightfully be flagged to death for being trite and not contributing anything to the discussion.
Iranians lost internet than 3 weeks ago. They are as aware now as they ever will be about how things are going outside their borders.
This is factually incorrect. Top 10 majority-Muslim countries, sorted by population:
Indonesia, Pakistan, Egypt, Turkey, Algeria, Sudan, Iraq, Afghanistan, Morocco, Saudi Arabia
Now, the majority of those have problems with seeds in Western Imperialism, but the point is (a) the majority of those have problems (b) Iran's problems also have seeds in US interventions.
The gap between how peaceful and educated most people are, and how bad governments are, is a phenomenon almost unique here. Figuring out how to bridge that gap is the major challenge. The trick would be establishing a collective caliphate -- where the caliph isn't an individual but an institution -- and which spans the Muslim world.
Which coutries are those?
UAE directly finances the sanguinary RSF in Sudan and CTS in Yemen, Saudi Arabia/Qatar has financed institutions behind the expansion of the Muslim Brotherhood/Salafism in the worlld and Turkey has a shaky economy with a large underbelly as well as engaging in their own brand of imperialism abroad.
The rhetoric that Sweden, Germany, UK and France are Muslim countries is exclusivley used by very far-right standing people to fearmonger and hate against immigrants. What would it even mean for these countries to be Muslim? Germany has literally a party with "Christian" in their name in the government. You still hear the bells of Christian churches everywhere.
It's one thing to accuse someone of not replying to the "strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says", and another thing to accuse someone of "hate", which is a very serious accusation that requires proof beyond a shadow of a doubt, especially in the EU where strong anti libel laws apply.
>" Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."
If you had a strong plausible interpretation you'd have given one.
Instead of being disconnected from each other and obsessed with technology perhaps they will now form pleasant relationships and have joyful interactions rather than being obsessed with TikTok.
You do understand what’s happening in Iran, right? Hard to take your comment seriously.
Even with ublock Origin, these corporations will build a profile on me. Not so in Iran, where people can live without the watchful eye of Google looking at everything they do.
I'm sorry but how tone-deaf can someone be? Over 12.000 people have been killed in the protests with some reports going up to 30.000 since then and here you are happy about the fact that Google cannot profile them anymore. Protesters are beeing shot on-masse in the streets and families from outside the country have no ideas if their brothers and sisters are even still alive. Have some decency.