I just wanted to quickly add my strong support for the notion that having a variety of tools is essential to this fight. Lantern's up and running in Iran and China right now, for example, but that could change at any moment, and users need alternatives. China dropped the hammer on us on Dec 12th I believe it was, and while it only took a few days to implement a fix, it took about a month to have that ready to deploy at scale. Planning for those inevitable events as tool developers and swapping more notes about what we're seeing in the field and what's unblocked when would likely be beneficial.
The need for a variety of tools was abundantly clear to me in conversations with Manoto1, the most popular satellite TV station in Iran, in the past few days. They talked about how they had helped spread circumvention tech (Psiphon) to everyday Iranians who otherwise would just be cut off from vital information sources. These are distinctly users who are not technically savvy and who are particularly low risk -- users for which Psiphon is extremely appropriate. Providing for these users is incredibly important and that importance should not be lost in these debates, as Collin and others have alluded to. Psiphon has clearly done an amazing public service for millions of Iranians. I must say that I only just learned of this thread, and I started reading fully expecting far more of a bloodbath. I'm impressed with the overall collaborative tone (albeit with some hiccups =), and to me both that spirit as well as actual collaboration at the information-exchange and code levels are vitally important to our success. I think that's happening naturally as we all get to know each other better over time, and I just wanted to re-iterate that at Lantern we're strong proponents of taking that further. See some of you at RightsCon! -Adam On Tue, Feb 25, 2014 at 4:49 PM, Nathan of Guardian <nat...@guardianproject.info> wrote: > On 02/25/2014 03:41 PM, Adam Pritchard wrote: >> One >> might not want to suggest that one is unblockable. > > "One does not simply suggest, that one is unblockable..." > > I was more referring to my own personal experience working within the > Tor community, and their human+organizational response to increased > throttling and filtering by Iran in the past, than a specific technical > capability. I do also feel the work that Tor has been helping push, > promote and fund on obfuscated transports is extremely important, as is > their community/volunteer approach to building a sustainable bridge and > obfuscated bridge hosting capacity. > > Again, these are not specific technical features, but more the process > by which I have seen Tor respond to adversity. > > Obviously, with the numbers you are sharing for Psiphon (3 million users > is outstanding!), you know what you are doing, and have a great system > to respond to these events, as well. Keep doing what you are doing!! > > +n > -- > Liberationtech is public & archives are searchable on Google. Violations of > list guidelines will get you moderated: > https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech. Unsubscribe, > change to digest, or change password by emailing moderator at > compa...@stanford.edu. -- -- Adam pgp A998 2B6E EF1C 373E 723F A813 045D A255 901A FD89 -- Liberationtech is public & archives are searchable on Google. Violations of list guidelines will get you moderated: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech. Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password by emailing moderator at compa...@stanford.edu.
