back to article Iran's plan to UNPLUG the INTERWEBS back from the dead

Iran's plans to unplug consumers from the internet – replacing the network with an insular walled-garden intranet restricted to the Islamic republic – are unlikely to come to anything. A story about a supposed alternative 'clean' alternative network has been doing the rounds, alleging that the repressive state was building a …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Paris Hilton

    LEAD THE WAY IRAN

    YOU KNOW PEOPLE ACT LIKE CENSORSHIP IS A BAD THING I FOR ONE WOULD APPRECIATE A GOVERNMENT THAT PROTECTS ME FROM SMUT

    1. Khaptain Silver badge

      Re: LEAD THE WAY IRAN

      Then go and live in Iran.

    2. Jediben
      Holmes

      Re: LEAD THE WAY IRAN

      Newt, is that you?

    3. David 45

      Re: LEAD THE WAY IRAN

      I sincerely hope that the comment from "Big Dumb Guy 555" is not indicative of his name and was meant as sarcasm or cynicism! No upper case and some decent grammar wouldn't go far amiss either.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: LEAD THE WAY IRAN

        Didn't you know? Caps Lock is cruise control for cool.

    4. Kiumars_Irani
      Megaphone

      Re: LEAD THE WAY IRAN

      A few years ago Bill Gate admitted that 90% of the traffic of internet is pornography. And I can say 90% of the remaining 10% is political bias. Internet has become a brain washing tool like TV and other media.

      1. Intractable Potsherd
        Stop

        @ Kiumars_Irani

        "A few years ago Bill Gate guessed (without citing any evidence at all) that 90% of the traffic of internet is pornography. And I believe (without citing any evidence at all, either) that 90% of the remaining 10% is political bias (but I'm not going to be any more specific). Internet has become a brain washing tool like TV and other media." There, fixed that for you.

        Your comment comes across as being from one of the Iranian clerics that might think controlling people's access to information is a good thing (your name doesn't detract from that theory, either). Seriously, what other form of information access has such a broad range of political opinion easily available to anyone. I can, without making any real effort, find opinions from the far right, the far left, Islamics, Hindus, Greens, Scientologists, atheists, and many, many others. There is absolutely no political bias at all because - and here is the clincher - *the internet is not censored*. The loons that want to impose censorship on it (in whatever country, and for whatever reason) are declaring that they are afraid to let people find out different points of view.

        Oh, and please explain how access to pornography is "brainwashing".

        1. Kiumars_Irani
          Megaphone

          Re: @ Kiumars_Irani

          @Intractable Potsherd

          RE: *the internet is not censored*.and There is absolutely no political bias at all because - and here is the clincher - *the internet is not censored*.

          Our comments are moderated here which means I cannot freely express my opinion; isn’t this censorship? Can I say whatever I want? No! Who are you kidding?

          As for pornography; I ask the people who use the internet make the judgment.

    5. Semaj
      Trollface

      Re: LEAD THE WAY IRAN

      <-- I think you meant to use this icon.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Spending time, money and effort to actively promote ignorance. Bunch of twats.

  3. Juiceman

    Freenet

    Hopefully the Freenetproject folks get right-to-left text support finished soon. Something tells me Iranians will be a large userbase soon.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Freenet

      What good would Freenet do, there is an air gap between their Intranet and the Internet.

      All this would do is cause some people to put up hidden satellite dishes to connect to the regular Internet from other countries, but this would be a significant minority, and would be subject to other countries having sympathy for them by setting up free satellite access for Iranians.

  4. Spoonsinger
    Windows

    I like persia,

    No idea where Iran came from, (and too bored to google it).

    1. Kiumars_Irani
      Megaphone

      Re: I like persia,

      The name of the country has always been Iran, the history of the name Iran goes back at least 3000 years and is mentioned in the carvings of the Bisooton (Kermanshah). Persia is the name that Greeks gave to Iran based on the name of the ruling monarchy (Pars.ha). But Persians (or Pars.ha) did not last long and many other Iranian empires came and went after them. I am Iranian, not Persian.

  5. Armando 123

    Wait a minute

    Are you saying that an extremist regime with religious-fervor zealotry is denying that they want to censor everything although many independent news agencies are showing proof that they are? Shocking!

    And is this Iran or Louisiana?

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Thank $deity nothing like that would ever happen in the West!

  7. Pisnaz
    Joke

    I thought we had this with RFC 1149

    "In addition, the US is reportedly looking to develop technology for a "shadow internet" or "internet in a suitcase" that will enable the creation of an independent connection to the international internet from inside a repressed country, maintaining internet access even if the local government pulls the plug. "

    All you need to get portable is a couple of pigeons and such, though latency is a bitch.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_over_Avian_Carriers

  8. FrankAlphaXII

    North Koreans did it already

    North Korea already has a system like this setup and (supposedly) running. They call it Kwangmyong, which means "Bright" roughly, but it has pretty much everything the Iranians are going for and it apparently works. And they can keep everything under the watchful eye of the cops and spies.

    Given Iran's close knit relationship with the DPRK, I wouldnt say its anywhere near as impossible or difficult as people are making it out to be. Nor will it be easy to get around if they indeed do it. The way that the DPRK set their system up is that its completely cut off from external TCP/IP so even if someone had the balls to attempt to circumvent it, they wouldnt get very far.

    Iran's a country that's had full access in the past though, so it would probably pose more of a challenge to completely cut it off, not impossible or even that hard but still more difficult.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Any independent confirmation?

    Admittedly Mr. Ahmadinejad is a bit like a bearded and taller version of Sarkozy, and thus liable to come up with the stupidest and most outrageous of ideas, but I do wonder if there is any independent confirmation of what has been reported in this article.

    I haven't been to Iran for a few years now but this is not really their style (yes, it might be difficult to believe for those who have never been in the region), and I became very suspicious about what Western NGOs, such as Reporters Without Borders, say about "repressive" (but non-Western) governments' censorship policies after I read a scathing report by Amnesty International strongly condemning Saudi Arabia's blocking of human rights content on the web, and in particular Amnesty's. The problem wasn't so much that I read that right on Amnesty International's website from deep within Saudi Arabia, but that when I wrote to them to make them aware of this inaccuracy not only they didn't see fit to rectify, I didn't even receive the courtesy of a reply. So much for those NGOs, seeing what you want to see and talking bollocks the rest of the time :(

    Now, I have neither sympathy nor animosity towards any countries or institutions, but this article seems to rely almost entirely on (denied) rumours from a single non-neutral source.

    In my experience, the only content you couldn't readily access from Iran was that which is being blocked from outside Iran as a result of the various "sanctions" from the US/EU/UN, such as online shopping, academic websites, and things like Google Code (which I stopped using since).

    In the meanwhile and a bit closer to home, what is the latest on the Interception Modernisation Programme? Of course it's not censorship (for that we already have Cleanfeed)... we just want to see what you might be looking at.

    Glass houses, etc...

  10. ForthIsNotDead

    Simple to do?

    I guess all they really have to do is run their own DNS servers which only sync with DNS servers inside the Iranian border, then you're set.

    They get the DNS infrastructure set up, then mandate all Iranian ISPs to connect to the new DNS servers.

    Firewalls would prevent access to external DNS systems at the IP address level.

    So yeah, I'd say easily doable within 5 months, though give it a year to get the bugs out.

    The governments of the world will of course condemn it, whilst standing back and watching with great interest, thinking "Hmmmm...."

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