June 16th, 2009 / 12:10 am André —
I wonder if it's real or not? My first instinct is it's fake (either Western or from the president's rival) but that might just be because of the medium… Twitter is like 50% imposter.
This entry also seems suspect:
"Hello, I'm Hamid living in Tehran, just got back onto Twitter. The governent canceled my old account."
I suppose they could have cancelled his account via other means (getting his password/login some other way), but did Twitter help them do it? Seems suspicious. And what was the old account? I guess revealing that information might make it easier for them to discover him? This is crazy if it's real, though. It definitely could be.
June 15th, 2009 / 8:10 pm André —
June 16th, 2009 / 12:42 am thomas p levy —
"Who is going to lead Iran into the 12 century?"
June 15th, 2009 / 8:42 pm thomas p levy —
June 15th, 2009 / 9:07 pm Matthew Simmons —
Yeah, likely fake. I've been sifting through some of the #iranelection stuff, though. I think at some point Iran shut down internet usage entirely. Here's something from an article from a magazine for "security professionals" about it:
Political unrest resulting from the presidential election in Iran has escalated to a cyberwar between the Iranian government and activists, according to security experts monitoring the situation.
In response to the election, supporters of pro-reform candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi launched distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks against Tehran government websites and used Twitter to encourage others to do the same. Mousavi proponents are challenging Friday's presidential election that incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad claims to have won.
Following the intial DDoS and Twitter posts, the Iranian government, which is led by Ahmadinejad, shut down internet usage in Iran to block citizens' access to information, Richard Stiennon, chief research analyst of consultancy IT-Harvest, who has been following the situation on his blog, told SCMagazineUS.com on Monday.
Specifically, at 3 p.m. EST on Saturday, political activists initiated DDoS attacks against Iranian government websites, using Twitter and Facebook to share sites where users could download tools to participate in the attacks, Ariel Silverstone, an independent security consultant, told SCMagazineUS.com on Monday. He has been following the cyberwar on his blog.
June 16th, 2009 / 1:07 am Matthew Simmons —
Also, Twitter had planned a service interruption tonight, and because so many Iranian's are using Twitter to facilitate the spreading of information—and using it as an outlet for their outrage—they are postponing it.
In the words of Eli Sanders (a Seattle journalist I like quite a bit): "Good for them, and an amazing reminder of how America is, in fact, interfering in Iranian politics. Not with spies or coup plots but with simple, democratizing technology."
June 16th, 2009 / 2:05 am Nathan (Nate) Tyree —
there has been a rumour that twitter is impervious to the Iranian Gov't attempts to kill the internet. Most sites are blocked, but people war dialing can still access twitter. It may be bogus, though.
June 15th, 2009 / 10:05 pm Nathan (Nate) Tyree —
June 16th, 2009 / 2:09 am Ken Baumann —
Yeah, this is all very exciting. Hope no more are hurt.
June 15th, 2009 / 10:09 pm Ken Baumann —
June 16th, 2009 / 2:14 am André —
That's really intense. Thanks for calling attention to this regardless, I don't know when I would have found out otherwise. It's so easy to look at the "trending topics" and just assume every one is inane and annoying.
June 15th, 2009 / 10:14 pm André —
A flickr photo stream of pictures e-mailed from Iran.
I saw an image from the protests early in the day and I've been thinking about it since. It's a young Iranian man in a yellow shirt with a bandana over his face. Holding up a victory sign with his left hand. Here it is:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/fhashemi/3623864524/
I think this is the same guy:
Same underwear. And look how he's wearing it, too. Low jeans, high Calvin Klein underwear. The belt. The bandana and the victory sign and the taking to the streets are defiant enough. But the emblematically Western attire? Tough kid.
June 16th, 2009 / 12:15 am Matthew Simmons —