Hi Nariman, I also don't want to waste your time, so I'll also get straight to the point.
1. It's awesome that you're helping people in Iran regain access to the Internet, because I think this should be a universal right. 2. I know very little about the situation in Iran, don't speak or read the language and am probably badly informed (so I appreciate the info you relayed). 3. You're basically saying that your website is acting as a portal for people to regain access to the Internet. If that's so, you really should not give them a false sense of security: https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=secure.filtershekanha.com Currently, this SSL configuration is easily circumvented, allowing to man-in-the-middle all of your visitors. (Please message me off-list if I can help you fix your webserver configuration.) 4. You seem to currently recommend closed-source adware supported single-hop VPN clients as a workaround. This most likely means that - the companies providing these VPNs can perfectly tell what the users using them are doing, may also log it, and are thus susceptible to traffic and log recovery by means of governmental interventions and hacking - you can't really tell what this software does and where it and the servers it connects to may send all the traffic to (in addition to the intended locations) - you can't really tell whether the sites you access through these VPNs are really the sites you want to access - the ads allow the advertisement networks (and anyone who can convince them to share this information) to track precisely what the users are doing That is to say, while those tools may seem to provide a great way to overcome the censorship, using them may very well play into the hands of "security forces", enabling them to keep track of what activists (or just anyone with a non-official opinion) are doing, and to build files on them. People in other countries have been displaced, incarcerated, tortured and even killed due to exactly these mistakes (recommendation and use of bad censorship circumvention tools) in the past. I really hope this is not going to happen this time around. 5. I fully understand that recommending against something is of no use if no alternative is provided. I think Tor makes a great alternative if people care about both circumventing censorship and remaining anonymous (if used as documented). Yes, it does slow things down. But if you compare to the previous paragraph then it might be worth this? There may be other options, possibly including single and multi hop VPNs which are just not as bad as the ones currently in use. If you are willing to consider other options, I bet the contributors to this mailing list will be happy to provide more suggestions. Alster -- 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 [email protected].
