On passing through the immigration control at the airport in Tehran, she was asked by the officers if she has a Facebook account. When she said “no”, the officers pulled up a laptop and searched for her name on Facebook. They found her account and noted down the names of her Facebook friends.

This is very disturbing. For once, it means that the Iranian authorities are paying very close attention to what’s going on Facebook and Twitter (which, in my opinion, also explains why they decided not to take those web-sites down entirely — they are useful tools of intelligence gathering).

… we have to be fully prepared to be quizzed about any online trace that we have left

… this reveals that some of the spontaneous online activism we witnessed in the last few weeks — with Americans re-tweeting the posts published by those in Tehran — may eventually have very dire consequences, as Iranians would need to explain how exactly they are connected to foreigners that follow them on Twitter

We’ll hear more of this. Karl, chalk one up for opacity.

Via Carl Nordlund and the fabulous SOCNET list. I love you guys.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Iran has one of the world’s most advanced surveillance networks. Using a system installed last year (and built, in part, by Nokia and Siemens), the government routes all digital traffic in the country through a single choke point. Through “deep packet inspection,” the regime achieves omniscience — it has the technical capability to monitor every e-mail, tweet, blog post, and possibly even every phone call placed in Iran. Compare that with East Germany, in which the Stasi managed to tap, at most, about 100,000 phone lines — a gargantuan task that required 2,000 full-time technicians to monitor the calls. The Stasi’s work force comprised 100,000 officers, and estimates put its network of citizen informants at half a million. In the digital age, Iran can monitor its citizens with a far smaller security apparatus. They can listen in on everything anyone says — and shut down anything inconvenient — with the flip of a switch.

…

Other than trying to shut down many parts of the Web, we don’t know what, precisely, Iranian security forces have done in response to the online protest movement. It’s unclear whether they’ve actually planted disinformation online or tried to trace images and videos back to their original posters. But the uncertainty itself breeds fear. Several times over the last couple weeks, rumors have flooded the Web that the government had already gotten wise to Twitter and was actively seeding the movement with fake news. It was a stark example of how the psychological repression characteristic of authoritarian regimes — the constant fear, the inability to trust anyone — finds particularly fertile ground online.

…

On Wednesday, a reader alerted the Lede to an Iranian government Web site called Gerdab.ir, where authorities had posted pictures of protesters and were asking citizens for help in identifying the activists. That’s right — the regime is now using crowd-sourcing, one of the most-hyped aspects of Web 2.0 organizing, against its opponents. If you think about it, that’s no surprise. Who said that only the good guys get to use the power of the Web to their advantage?

Important stuff to think about. Read Darin Barney — this connects to what he writes about in The Network Society:

In the network society, power and powerlessness are a function of access to networks and control over flows. Access to significant networks is an important threshold of inclusion and exclusion, a condition of power and powerlessness…. Control over access to these networks becomes a crucial mechanism of power and domination.

Anonymous blogging is important. But we need more because it won’t help if the whole network is down. Which brings me to Foulab and other hardware hacker spaces, which I got interested in because of Beth‘s involvement with a similar group in Seattle. Then I watched her talk at Berkman: User, Hacker, Builder, Thief: Creativity and Consumerism in a Digital Age. Beyond being fun to hang out at (Liam and I did a Pico Cricket workshop, and I did an intro to basic electronics and Arduino) I think they’re part of Plan B. Could you build an alternate network? Or do we go back to radio? Forgive my ignorance here — just trying to figure this stuff out.

And policy. And just a plain old basic understanding how things work. How do our networks operate? Who controls them? How? Knowing this is essential.

Jonathan Torgovnik’s photographs of children born of rape during the Rwandan genocide. By Mia Fineman, Slate Magazine
Powerful article about a photo series, focusing on the children of rape in Rwanda. The mothers photographed had been raped by Hutu militamen during the genocide, and the photographer interviewed them away from their children, then photographed the two together. A powerful reminder of consequences of war that continue a generation after a conflict ends.

I read the article and looked through the photos and testimonies. This part confused me:

(The subjects’ names have been changed to protect their identities. While the women want the world to know what happened to them, they hope to protect themselves and their children from the censure of their own communities.)

What about their faces? These photos are online for everyone to see. The book is on Amazon.com. Doesn’t this assume that Rwandans cannot access this article and these images? Or that they have no friends or relatives in other countries with better access?

I know that there are issues with connectivity Rwanda (starting with unreliable electricity). I know there’s a language barrier. I know that digital literacy is low. But I also know that the number of Internet users and shared access points (telecentres, libraries, internet cafes, etc.) is growing. Since 2000, the number of Internet users in Rwanda has grown from 5,000 to 100,000.

After working with telecentre.org, meeting folks from across the continent, and visiting grassroots telecentres, I see what’s possible and never ever assume that what I post online won’t be seen by all.

We are connected. Ethan and Paul Barera both attended the World Summit on the Information Society in Tunis in 2005. Since 2004, Paul’s been running the Nyamata telecentre, in Rwanda’s Bugesera District — one of areas hardest hit by the genocide (out of a population of 62,000, only 2,000 survived, mostly women and children). Paul provides a range of community services, from IT literacy training for adults and kids to computer maintenance and repair. In April 2008 he ran a three-day workshop for women survivors, focusing on how to create and manage a business and access microfinancing.

We are connected. Changing names is not enough to protect these women and their children. When we produce content like this we have to assume that everyone can see it. Including these children, soon young adults, some of whom may read that their mothers love and cherish them, despite the circumstances of their conception. Others whom may read “I never loved this child” — so disturbing.

Ushahidi (“testimony” in Swahili) is an experimental web platform that crowdsources crisis information. People can submit reports via text messaging using a mobile phone, email, or the web. Looks like it can be deployed (sorry, geek speak) for a specific crisis. It was most recently use to track events in Gaza and was also used in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Users can submit or track by category: riot, looting, sexual assault… (reads like humanity’s list of shame). The results are aggregated onto a map. They can also upload photos and post links to videos and news stories.

The project is free and open source, with developers from Kenya, Ghana, South Africa, Malawi, Netherlands, and the United States. If you’re a developer and would like to participate you can join here.

And on top of everything, the design of their site rocks ;)

Related: Blogging for Good Governance

Picking tomatoes in Immokalee, Florida, December 2007

Want to do some hands-on organizing? Dig Paolo Freire‘s philosophy? Then you will love the way these folks operate. Interns will work alongside farmworkers and allies organizing around the Coalition of Immokalee Workers‘ Campaign for Fair Food.  Applications are due December 15th. More information on the Student-Farmworker Alliance website.

The report was prepared for the Science and Human Rights Program of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. You can download it from Skye’s blog.

The article gives a great overview, but it does not provide any practical links. So here they are:

• Anonymous Blogging Guide: A step-by-step way to protecting your privacy and your safety
• Blog for a Cause: How to use blogs as advocacy tools for political and social change (in English, Spanish, Arabic)

Beyond using blogs, people are also using cell phones (see FrontlineSMS and Mobile Active) and Twitter for similar types of work (see Andy Carvin’s Can Twitter Save Lives?, Ethan Zuckerman’s Never thought of using it that way…, and the KM4Dev’s community’s Twitter knowledgebase).

Let me know if you come across any other ideas or resources. These technologies can also be used in other sectors. Environmental activists, for example, can use them to alert authorities and mobilize people to combat illegal logging or poaching.

PS. You can also use Twitter to take care of your plants while you’re away saving the world. Check out Botanicalls.com.