Twitter being used as a ‘political weapon’ in Iran
By Asavin Wattanajantra in Editorial
Posted in Iran, hacking, politics on
At the ENISA / Reuters event I attended this morning, there was a very interesting talk with BT chief security technology officer Bruce Schneier and International Security Forum (ISF) president Howard Schmidt that surprisingly switched from business security and into the presidential events in Iran that have been taking place.
Schneier said that the events were very interesting when it came to IT and IT security because it was the “coming of age” for citizen journalists.
The real journalists were under house arrest and not able to report, and the information that was coming out was from people - mostly through Twitter, as the Iran government forgot about it when trying to block things for the election.
Schneier said: “We’re seeing stories and images coming out that are unable to be blocked by the government, and the only thing they can do at this point is to ‘take down’ the internet. It’s possible and governments have done that.”
“Hackers around the world are helping,” he added. “If you have a Twitter account we’re all being asked to change our location to Iran and change our timezone, because that makes it harder for the police to find the real twitterers.”
Schneier also said that people around the world were setting up proxy servers to allow Iranian information to come out, and that there was even a proposal to use the Opera browser and turn it into a massive anonymous network to help the Iranian citizen journalists.
He continued: “The anonymity tools that many Western governments are trying to get rid of are saving lives in Iran. It is the first time that people in other countries don’t just protest in their own capitals - they actually do something.”
Schneier said it was very interesting to see computer security, networks and hacking used in this way.
Howard Schmidt argued the point further by highlighting the fact that mobile devices were being used to get the word out. He said that this anonymity allowed people to use the internet as a real vehicle to create change.
Schneier highlighted the Cyberwar Guide for Iran Elections guide for beginners as a useful starting point, if you wanted to get involved, and mentioned the fact that people were getting involved in denial of service attacks against the Iranian government.
Schneier said: “This is interesting. A lot of what people think as cyber war is kids playing politics - you see this in Pakistan, the Arab states, China. They are not just fooling around - this is serious stuff. We can actually have international politics being affected by these actions.
“I think this is a first. I think this shows the power of social media in a way nothing ever has before,” he adds.
Author Timothy Garton Ash also makes similar points in an article written for the Guardian.
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Loading ...Pingback by - June 22, 2009 on 3:34 pm
[…] However, at least there are still ways to be anonymous and organise demonstrations without being tracked - as the events in Iran and the use of Twitter shows. […]
Pingback by - June 26, 2009 on 4:05 pm
[…] networking to see up a news story progress to such a degree. I’ve written before on the power of social networking when it came to events in Iran, I’ve used Tweetdeck to pick on the odd news story, and I’m in charge of looking after […]
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