Morozov, Haystack & Me

How Haystack Works

In recent days there has been a great bruhaha over Haystack, the anti-censorship software aimed to help Iranians inside of Iran.

On September 2, 2010, Evgeny Morozov, a journalist colleague of mine, and online columnist for Foreign Policy magazine, wrote a thought-provoking piece about Haystack. In it, he called into question how Haystack works and argued that in fact, Haystack may be dangerous to Iranians, given that no one knows precisely how Haystack works except its two creators Austin Heap and Dan Colascione. 

I’m afraid that what this has now turned into is people feeling personally attacked rather than discussing the merits of Haystack.

In gChats in recent days, I told Heap that Morozov raises a lot of good points concerning Haystack and indeed, Heap has responded to the charges on his blog. In fact, the two have since been in direct contact by email.

But Morozov isn’t the first to bring up these points. In fact, his questions are ones that have been raised months earlier privately by other smart tech folks that I know and respect, like Danny O’Brien (Center to Project Journalists, former EFF, Jacob Appelbaum (Tor) and Ethan Zuckerman (Berkman Center, Harvard ; Global Voices).

Essentially their question to Heap has been: why should people trust Haystack, when you won’t open up how it works? 

Heap has responded by essentially saying: no one should trust Haystack any more than you trust Psiphon, Freegate, Tor, or any other web anonymizer. 

In short, this is a question that has plagued Haystack since its inception. 

And frankly, this is a larger problem with reporters like me reporting on highly technical issues that we fundamentally don’t understand. I am not a cryptographer, nor a network engineer. That being said, I was present at one of the earliest demonstrations of Haystack held in San Francisco in the summer of 2009. Other programmers in the room, many of whom work for major Silicon Valley corporations, expressed no concern that this was an unbelievable or ridiculous project.

Now, when I’ve spoken with Heap, and reported on Haystack, I’m essentially taking Heap’s word that Haystack does what he says it does. I have no means of proving that it doesn’t, nor that it does. Even when Heap has demonstrated the software for me, I have no real means of confirming his claims.

The best I can do, as a journalist, is to try to temper my interest and enthusiasm for a project like Haystack with other voices. I’ve reported on the project a few times for PRI’s The World, for my forthcoming book, “The Internet of Elsewhere,” and most recently for Popular Science magazine. 

In two pieces for The World, I countered Heap’s claims with skepticism raised by Ali Reza Eshraghi, an Iranian journalist living in Washington DC, who said in my July 9 2009 report:

“I am not 100 percent sure that by using all these technologies, all of these softwares, that means that ok, I can be safe and secure in Internet. But yes, it will definitely be helpful for me, but also they are also trying to find out, you know, again new softwares, new technology, how to monitor again the browsers?”

More recently on April 13, 2010, I included comments from Prof. Nader Entessar of the University of South Alabama who said this about Haystack

“We shouldn’t look at it in terms of a major tool, even a very effective tool to pressure Iran to change its policies, let’s say in the nuclear arena or other areas.”

Now, in addition, I need to come clean about a personal connection that I’ve had to Haystack since its inception. 

In getting involved in this discussion and presumably having read a lot of what has been written about Haystack in the press so far, Morozov came across a piece that I penned for Popular Science magazine earlier this year. 

In a private email, Morozov wrote to me: “I feel that I need to ask you the following: what’s your relationship – if any – to Babak Siavoshy? If there is relationship, why wasn’t it pointed anywhere in the piece as a potential conflict of interest?”

Morozov is completely correct. I should have come forward a lot sooner regarding my personal connection to Haystack and sincerely apologize for not doing so earlier and in a more transparent way. 

Babak Siavoshy, Haystack’s managing director, is my first cousin and in fact I introduced him and Austin Heap back in the summer of 2009. I also introduced Heap to my first-cousin-once-removed, Karim Sadjadpour, who is a well-known Iran analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Sadjadpour is also a member of CRC’s Board of Advisors. 

I definitely should have made this connection more public and probably even refrained from reporting directly on Haystack without disclosing this connection, or perhaps even refrained reporting on Haystack at all.

I have no excuse for not disclosing this potential conflict of interest earlier other than to say that I somehow justified it to myself that a member of my extended family, who was on the board of this organization that I was reporting about, whom I didn’t ever interview, was far enough away that it was ok. 

But upon further reflection, Morozov is completely right, I should have made this more clear to my listeners, readers, and editors for not coming forward sooner. I promise that such an oversight and mistake will never happen again. This potential conflict of interest, or even appearance of a conflict of interest, is something that violates journalistic ethics that I hold dear.

All of this said, I would like to close by making two final points:

1) Heap’s blog post, in which he criticized Morozov for not having spoken with him directly, was also spot on. I think that much of Morozov’s questions and concerns about Haystack could have been addressed directly to Heap rather than just being a blanket shot across the bow of Haystack. If I am at fault for not disclosing my connection to Siavoshy, Sadjadpour and Haystack, then Morozov is also at fault for not contacting directly Heap initially to address his questions about the project.

2) I have great respect both for Morozov and Heap, and consider them both as peers and also as friends. I’ve met socially with both of them multiple times on separate occasions and they are both very intelligent and nice guys.

While I am very interested in Haystack and its goals, I also think that Morozov has provided thoughtful skepticism that has influenced my own thinking about the role of technology and the Internet in promoting democracy around the world. When I first began work on my book, “The Internet of Elsewhere,” I initially had thought that I would write something about the “liberating effects of a wired world.” But both Zuckerman and Morozov have provided me with a healthy dose of skepticism.

I look forward to reading Morozov’s forthcoming book about the role of the Internet and democracy, which is due to come out later this year.

As I wrote on my blog back in May

As much as I love the Internet, it is no more capable of causing revolution than the telegraph was, as Tom Standage showed in his great book, The Victorian Internet.

The fact of the matter is that for all the talk of ‘Twitter Revolution’ in Iran — the status quo has been preserved. Khamenei is still doing his thing and Ahmedinejad is still doing his. There’s no evidence to suggest that the Islamic Republic is in danger of collapse anytime soon.

I generally agree with Evgeny, although I may not be as cynical as he is. The bottom line though, is that I feel like Fox Mulder on the X-Files: I want to believe that the Internet helps to build democracies, but as of now, I simply cannot.

How to get free 3G mobile Internet in Germany

Step one: Order a new free SIM card from NetzClub, a new MVNO from O2. Select the “Handy Internet Flat” option. The catch is they provide you with free Internet in exchange for text advertising.

Step two: Buy an O2 Surfstick. I bought mine directly from their website for €34 shipped. It’s unlocked. It comes with an O2 SIM card, and five free days of 3G access — otherwise it’s prepaid €3.50 per day (midnight to midnight).

Step three: Download the O2 Surfstick software.

Step four: Put the NetzClub SIM into the Surfstick. When you launch the Mobile Partner Manager software, leave the O2 default configuration there and click “Connect.” Boom. You’re online at 3G speeds. Based on a Speedtest.net test from my apartment here in Bonn, I get 2.5 Mbps download speed.

Bonus step: Use your Mac to share the WiFi connection with your friends using these instructions.

NB: According to Phone Guide Germany, NetzClub has a monthly limit of 200MB per month, although on the website I can’t find where that limit actually is. But I haven’t given NetzClub any credit card info so far. That said, I’ve only downloaded about 30MB.

No, the Internet does not help build democracies

I don’t know if Barrett Sheridan wrote his Newsweek piece, “The Internet Helps Build Democracies” in response to or independent of Evgeny Morozov’s recent piece in Foreign Policy (Think Again: The Internet ; May/June 2010).

Still, it sort of amazes me that this techno-utopianism (or as Evgeny puts it, “iPod liberalism“) still persists, at least amongst smart, internationally-minded journalists like Barrett Sheridan. I mean, I get why popular opinion might come to this conclusion, and maybe even some well-intentioned policymakers. But seriously, Barrett, is this what you’re arguing? I’m sure Barrett is a good guy, and based on his LinkedIn profile he also seems like an intelligent guy (even if he did go to Stanford ; Go Bears!). But I can’t understand how he can seriously believe that the Internet can “build” democracies.

Let’s take this point by point, shall we?

Obama, meanwhile, has made Internet freedom a centerpiece of his foreign policy, and in a speech in Beijing late last year hailed “access to information” as a “universal right.”

While it is true that the State Department is making quite a splash with its 21st Century Statecraft initiative, I’m not sure that their approach is quite as simple as it might appear.

Alec Ross, one of the architects of the 21st Century Statecraft initiative himself has said:

While these examples from Iran are compelling to many around the globe, it’s important to make clear that just as these networks were used to organize — as well as to galvanize the outside world — they were also monitored and manipulated by government forces. The same openness that allowed sympathizers in, also let in those that sought to end the dissent and punish the dissenters.

So we clearly can’t take a sort of kumbaya approach to connection technologies. They can and are being used by our enemies, like al-Qaeda, and by authoritarian regimes. But I think that this, more than anything else, makes the case for our own aggressive engagement on global networks. We need to raise our own game. We can’t curl into the fetal position because bad guys are becoming smarter about how to use technology. It just creates an imperative for us to be smarter ourselves.

In other words, they’re well aware of the potential dangers that these tools create for dissidents and that they don’t believe that they suddenly can create “revolution” in places where we might want there to be. What Barrett is arguing strikes me as pretty freakin’ kumbaya.

He goes on: For instance, the use of Twitter by protesting youths in Moldova last year to create a flash mob in the capital city of Chisinau illustrated just how powerful an organizing and communicating tool the Internet is, even when limits are placed on it.

It’s been fairly well documented that this “Twitter Revolution” was a myth.

The short version, as Ethan Zuckerman put it: “My take on it at this point is that Twitter probably wasn’t all that important in organizing the demonstrations. Where I think they were enormously important is helping people, particularly people in the Moldovan Diaspora, keep up with the events in real time.”

Same logic goes for Iran, by the way.

To the techno–utopians, [cutting off the Internet in Burma] was a splash of ice-cold water to the face, suggesting that the government in power virtually always holds the trump card. But in one way the junta’s extreme reaction actually revealed the futility of its censorship. Their choice was a binary one: accept that the Web cannot be controlled, or eliminate it altogether.

First off, Burma is a country of 48 million people that has only about 100,000 Internet users, according to the CIA Factbook. That’s about 0.25 percent of the population. Presumably those that do have access to the Internet are mostly within the cadre of the junta anyway. Regardless, Burma hasn’t been offline since 2007. In fact, two weeks after it cut off the Internet — that same junta restored the existing limited access.

There isn’t a binary choice of accepting that the Web cannot be controlled, or eliminate it altogether. Lots of authoritarian regimes ranging from China to Cuba to Iran have done precisely that. While Iran has about 35 percent Internet penetration, it’s shown that it will use online tools to intimidate, arrest, and exile online dissidents and activists. Heck, Supreme Leader Khamenei is on Twitter. Millions of regular people in China and Iran are using the Internet every single day. They just experience a much more filtered, surveilled and censored Web than we do.

As Tim Wu and Jack Goldsmith wrote in their book Who Controls The Internet? back in 2006:

What we have seen, time and time again, is that physical coercion by government – the hallmark of a traditional legal system – remains far more important than anyone expected. This may sound crude and ugly and even depressing. Yet at a fundamental level, it’s the most important thing missing from most predictions of where globalization will lead, and the most significant gap in predictions about the future shape of the Internet.

Barrett also writes that the Internet is, “in many places, less than 10 years old.” That’s just blantantly wrong, at least in many of the countries that he cites. The Internet first came to Russia in 1990, to China in 1994, to Cuba in 1991, and to Iran in 1993. To be fair, the Internet was introduced in Burma in 2000.

As much as I love the Internet, it is no more capable of causing revolution than the telegraph was, as Tom Standage showed in his great book, The Victorian Internet.

The fact of the matter is that for all the talk of Twitter Revolution in Iran — the status quo has been preserved. Khamenei is still doing his thing and Ahmedinejad is still doing his. There’s no evidence to suggest that the Islamic Republic is in danger of collapse anytime soon.

I generally agree with Evgeny, although I may not be as cynical as he is. The bottom line though, is that I feel like Fox Mulder on the X-Files: I want to believe that the Internet helps to build democracies, but as of now, I simply cannot.

Cyrus on: PRI’s The World (April 13, 2010)

Dear Friends,

My piece on the release of Haystack, the new anti-filtering software for use in Iran will be on today’s show.

It will be available on any of these stations (and their Internet streams):

NYC – 3 pm Eastern – WNYC – 820 AM – www.wnyc.org
Washington, DC – 8 pm Eastern – WAMU – 88.5 FM – www.wamu.org
Los Angeles – 12 pm Pacific – KPCC – 89.3 FM – www.kpcc.opg
Boston – 4 pm Eastern – WGBH – 89.7 FM – www.wgbh.org
San Francisco – 2 pm Pacific – KQED – 88.5 FM – www.kqed.org

You can also likely find it on your local public radio station, and The World’s site later in the day and also on my site if you miss the broadcast.

Also, don’t forget about The World’s Tech Podcast, hosted by my boss, Clark Boyd. It comes out every Friday.

Lemme know if you hear it!

[audio:http://cyrusfarivar.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/041320107.mp3]

Omid Reza Mirsayafi died one year ago

On March 18, 2009, Omid Reza Mirsayafi died in a Tehran prison.

I reported on it at the time for PRI’s The World.

[audio:http://cyrusfarivar.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/0319097.mp3]

Sadly, Mirsayafi’s reputation will now live on as becoming the first blogger in the world to die while in custody. Unfortunately the Islamic Republic of Iran has not only this “honor” of allowing an imprisoned blogger to die, but also is the first country in the world to jail a blogger — Sina Motalebi in 2003.

Details of Mirsayafi’s death are sketchy at best, even a year after his death. Iranian authorities maintain that he committed suicide after being allowed to overdose on sedatives. His family does not believe this theory, and Reporters Without Borders is calling for a new investigation.

Mirsayafi’s death remains a stark reminder as to the level of physical (and possibly lethal) power that authoritarian regimes like the Islamic Republic of Iran retain.

As much as I want to believe that Mirsayafi’s blog and others like his can speak truth to power in Iran, and that the “Twitter Revolution” may bring about regime change, the fact of the matter is that the status quo has been preserved. Ahmadinejad is still in power. Khamenei’s office is still twittering.

Through this tragic example, as well as countless others, the Iranian government has shown that it is willing to beat, intimidate, jail, exile, and even let their own citizens die — and there’s not much that blogs, Twitter, or any other online tool can do to change that.

Cyrus on: TVO’s Search Engine (March 16, 2010)

I had the honor of being interviewed by Jesse Brown on his TVO show, “Search Engine“, to provide an update on the Treasury Department’s new rules regarding American tech companies exporting stuff to Iran (and Cuba and Sudan).

The interview that I recorded with Austin Heap was recorded on March 8, 2010 and was conducted by Jason Margolis for a piece that aired later that day.

[audio:http://cyrusfarivar.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/800823_48k.mp3]

Here’s some related links, including the March 8, 2010 text from the Federal Register, the original text regarding license exemptions, and SourceForge’s freaking out about those laws in January 2010.

Audio is here.

Cyrus on: PRI’s The World (February 11, 2010)

Dear Friends,

My piece on watching the 22nd of Bahman protests with Austin Heap, Roozbeh Pournader and Behrang Barzin live from Parisoma will be on today’s show.

It will be available on any of these stations (and their Internet streams):

NYC – 3 pm Eastern – WNYC – 820 AM – www.wnyc.org
Washington, DC – 8 pm Eastern – WAMU – 88.5 FM – www.wamu.org
Los Angeles – 12 pm Pacific – KPCC – 89.3 FM – www.kpcc.opg
Boston – 4 pm Eastern – WGBH – 89.7 FM – www.wgbh.org
San Francisco – 2 pm Pacific – KQED – 88.5 FM – www.kqed.org

You can also likely find it on your local public radio station, and The World’s site later in the day and also on my site if you miss the broadcast.

Also, don’t forget about The World’s Tech Podcast, hosted by my boss, Clark Boyd. It comes out every Friday.

Lemme know if you hear it!

[audio:http://cyrusfarivar.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/021120102a.mp3]

Cyrus on: PRI’s The World (Jan. 13, 2010)

Dear Friends,

I’ve been informed that my piece on Google’s new policy towards China will be airing today.

It will be available on any of these stations (and their Internet streams):

NYC – 3 pm Eastern – WNYC – 820 AM – www.wnyc.org
Washington, DC – 8 pm Eastern – WAMU – 88.5 FM – www.wamu.org
Los Angeles – 12 pm Pacific – KPCC – 89.3 FM – www.kpcc.opg
Boston – 4 pm Eastern – WGBH – 89.7 FM – www.wgbh.org
San Francisco – 2 pm Pacific – KQED – 88.5 FM – www.kqed.org

You can also likely find it on your local public radio station, and The World’s site later in the day and also on my site if you miss the broadcast.

Also, don’t forget about The World’s Tech Podcast, hosted by my boss, Clark Boyd. It comes out every Friday.

Lemme know if you hear it!

[audio:http://cyrusfarivar.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/011320105.mp3]

VOA’s new app for Iranian iPhone users is a bit silly

I’m a few days behind on this one, but FP Passport has a link to a new announcement for a new application that “will allow users in Iran to download and send content to [Voice of America]’s Persian News Network with their iPhones.”

I don’t really have much to add beyond what David Kenner aptly wrote:

I’m sure that this initiative was begun with the best of intentions. However, there’s only one problem — oh, who am I kidding, there are a whole slew of problems. To begin with, a normal iPhone won’t work in Iran: AT&T, the only carrier for the iPhone, doesn’t provide service in the country. The very wealthy have been able to get their hands on “unlocked” iPhones, which can be used with any carrier in Iran. However, the number of these phones in Iran are few and far between. But even for those with unlocked iPhones, there is no data network in Iran that would allow them to connect to the Internet.

Our intrepid Iranian friend, therefore, would also have to be in an area where he could pick up a wireless connection with his iPhone. At that point, of course, he could also send his video and pictures using more old-fashioned technology — for example, a laptop.

To be fair, though, I did use my unlocked iPhone when I was in Iran in March 2008. I also was able to use an Internet connection on my phone with Irancell — however, the only web page that I could consistently load was nytimes.com