Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who has written about the efficacy of samizdat in undermining the Soviet Union, sees a similar dynamic at work here. “The freedom of communication and the nature of it,” he has said, “is a huge strategic asset for the United States.”
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These three stories are all inter-related and based on this first one below. The more I read this, the more I keep thinking that someone is reading Feral Jundi and taking the hint. lol. There are all sorts of things we could be doing with these technologies, and it is great to see some innovation in that department. I especially like the Humari project, because that is flipping cool. Facebook is already accessible on a mobile platform, but to actually create a social network for mobile for the Pakistani market? That is neat.
Why are these stories in PMC 2.0? Because not only is the freedom of communication and the nature of it an excellent strategic asset for the US, it is an excellent strategic asset for companies. I recommend the reader to go back through all of the PMC 2.0 and social networking related posts that I have made in the past, and evaluate for yourself on the validity of this concept. The future is coming and everyone will have mobile smart phones and everyone will be using social networking sites. Is your company ready for that?-Matt
Edit: 12/14/2009- Check out this paper written at the Heritage Foundation about Public Diplomacy 2.0.
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Social Networks as Foreign Policy
12/12/2009
From the 9th Annual Year in Ideas
In August, after the suppression of Iran’s pro-democracy protests, officials in Tehran accused Western governments of using online social networks like Twitter and Facebook to help execute a “soft coup.” The accusation wasn’t entirely off-base. In Iran and elsewhere, this year showed the growing importance of social networks to U.S. foreign policy.
Long before the protests in Iran started, the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which oversees U.S. civilian international broadcasting, had in place software to counter censorship in countries like Iran, so people could better access the blogosphere. And the State Department financially supports agencies that make it easier for Iranians and others to surf the Web. After the protests began, the State Department asked Twitter to reschedule a maintenance outage so the activists could continue to spread the word about their movement.
The United States has long disseminated information to people living under repressive regimes — think of Radio Free Europe. The difference here is that the content of the information isn’t the important thing; the emphasis is on supporting the technical infrastructure and then letting the people decide for themselves what to say. Communication itself erodes despots’ authority. “The very existence of social networks is a net good,” says Alec Ross, a senior adviser on innovation to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Outside of Iran, the State Department recently underwrote the establishment of Pakistan’s first mobile-phone-based social network, Humari Awaz (“Our Voice”). More than eight million text messages were sent over it in a little over two weeks. And Ross recently traveled to Mexico with the Twitter chairman Jack Dorsey and other technology executives to help build an electronic system for anonymously reporting drug crimes, which they say they hope will undermine narcotics kingpins.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who has written about the efficacy of samizdat in undermining the Soviet Union, sees a similar dynamic at work here. “The freedom of communication and the nature of it,” he has said, “is a huge strategic asset for the United States.”
Story here.
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Iranian protesters avoid censorship with Navy technology
June 26, 2009
Eli Lake
Iranians seeking to share videos and other eyewitness accounts of the demonstrations that have roiled their country since disputed elections two weeks ago are using an Internet encryption program originally developed by and for the U.S. Navy.
Designed a decade ago to secure Internet communications between U.S. ships at sea, The Onion Router, or TOR, has become one of the most important proxies in Iran for gaining access to Web sites such as Twitter, YouTube and Facebook.
The system of proxy servers that disguise a user’s Internet traffic is now operated by a nonprofit, the Tor Project, that is independent from the U.S. government and military and is used all over the world.
According to the Tor Project, connections to TOR have gone up by 600 percent since mass protests erupted after the June 12 vote, which gave a purported landslide victory to incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
“Over the past two weeks, we have seen a doubling to tripling of new client connections,” Andrew Lewman, executive director of the Tor Project, told The Washington Times Thursday. “We are up to a thousand new clients a day.”
Tehran was relatively quiet on Thursday, but opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi vowed not to back down and Iranians found novel ways to continue their protests combining high and low technology.
An Iranian who asked not to be named to avoid government retribution told The Times that Iranians are writing protest slogans on their paper money. Mass e-mails have been sent out telling people approached by the authorities to say they got the money from someone else, he said.
Among the slogans the Iranian saw scrawled over the image of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of the 1979 Islamic Revolution: “What happened to our vote, dictator?” “Death to the coup d’etat guard.” “Supreme leader equals Shah.” “The government cheats, the supreme leader approves.”
Iran, a country of 70 million people, has more than 20 million Internet users – the highest percentage in the region outside Israel – and a well-developed blogosphere.
For Iranian Internet users, TOR allows them to visit government-banned Web sites and avoid detection by the authorities. The Tor Project does this by routing Web requests among several different computer servers all over the world. While there are other proxy servers that “anonymize” Web surfing, TOR is considered the best product available on the Internet.
“There are plenty of programs political dissidents can use to route their Internet traffic through third parties and escape censorship and avoid monitoring,” said Noah Shachtman, the editor of Wired.com’s national security blog, Danger Room. “But TOR is different because it is an encrypted network of node after node, each one unlocking encryption to the next node. And because of this, it is all but impossible for governments to track Web sites a TOR user is visiting. TOR is a great way to give Ahmadinejad’s Web censors headaches.”
Since the mass demonstrations began, the Iranian government has tried to denigrate the protests as being instigated by the CIA and other foreign intelligence agencies – a charge that President Obama and other foreign leaders have repeatedly denied.
While U.S. officials and Iran specialists say that the demonstrations are homegrown and reflect pent-up Iranian frustration with the lack of liberty in their country, the U.S. government has in the past invested in communications technology to help Iranians organize and improve their access to the West.
In 2007, the State Department spent $31 million to promote democracy in Iran. An addiional $60 million was appropriated for the program in 2008, but much of it has not yet been spent, former State Department officials said.
Some Iran specialists have criticized the program, noting that it was used by the Iranian government to taint recipients as agents of the West.
David Denehy, the Iran democracy program coordinator for the State Department from 2005 to 2007, said, “Our goal was to promote freedom of speech for Iranians to communicate with each other and the outside world. We funded and supported innovative technologies to allow them to do this via the Internet, cell phones and other media.”
Mr. Denehy added, however, that Iran’s democracy movement is being directed by Iranians.
“What we are witnessing now is the Iranian people utilizing these new technologies and that is on their own accord,” he said. “They have done it themselves. I hope the projects we funded have been helpful to them, but this is an Iranian-led movement.”
Another agency in the U.S. government that has provided seed money to help Iranians avoid Internet censorship is the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), the body that oversees the Voice of America (VOA) and Radio Farda, a Farsi-language radio station that stepped up shortwave broadcasts recently to counteract Iranian government efforts to jam the signal.
Ken Berman, acting director of engineering for the BBG, said he oversees a three-person anti-censorship team that focuses on China and Iran. He declined to provide the exact budget for the project, saying only that it was “under $5 million” a year.
“We have realized that Iran has a growing audience of young activist Internet users and we have repurposed our tools to work in Farsi and make it available to Iranians,” he said. “We open up the channels so the Iranian blogosphere is more accessible to Iranians in Iran.”
Mr. Berman said that one project his group funded was to design the Firefox Web browser to embed the TOR proxy system.
The anti-censorship operation has also benefited VOA, whose “traffic has gone up exponentially” since the unrest began in Iran, he said.
Mr. Berman said that this is not U.S. “meddling” in Iranian affairs.
“All we are doing is providing an open channel so Iranians can get information coming in and out,” he said.
Suad Jafarzadeh contributed to this report.
Story here.
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Islamabad, Pakistan
October 29, 2009
At a town hall today with students at Government College in Lahore, Pakistan, Secretary Clinton announced support from the United States for the first Pakistani mobile phone-based social network, Humari Awaz (“Our Voice”), which will be available using the free SMS shortcode 7111.
95 million Pakistanis use mobile phones, far more than the number of computer and internet users in the country.
Humari Awaz will be available on all five mobile phone networks. The platform will leverage SMS technology and enable Pakistanis to build mobile-based networks around shared interests, themes and subjects.
In addition to linking friends and families, the network will also help a range of other users – from farmers and resellers who want to share market prices, to businesses that wish to communicate with their staff on the road, to news outlets that want to share information with targeted groups.
Humari Awaz participants also have the option to identify themselves or remain anonymous.
U.S. support for the program will cover the costs of the first 24 million Humari Awaz messages.
Humari Awaz demonstrates Secretary Clinton’s continued support for using new technologies to create social networks that facilitate more people-to-people interactions.
To learn more about how to use Humari Awaz, SMS “HELP” or “MADAD” to 7111.
Story here.