The Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and his government are trying and limit its citizens rights through censorship and blocking, but the Iranians are fighting back; not with violence, but with technology.

Iranians are blogging on FaceBook, sending messages of their protest on Twitter, and Mahmoud Ahadinejad is trying to shut them down. His success is only minimal however; the output of these troubled Iran citizens has increased since the presidential election and the ensuing mass censorship attempt.

Just recently, on Twitter, links and news of peaceful protests coupled with photos have become the most popular searches on Twitter, according to a recent statistic.

Since protesting out in the open can often have deadly effects, some have made Twitter their virtual protest base. One of these silent protesters is Mir Hussein Moussavi. One feed advocating him (Moussavi1388) has almost 7000 fans, and regularly updates news and urging to keep up the fight.

While Twitter isn’t the only medium these e-protests seek safety through, (Mr. Moussavi’s FaceBook page has 50,000 fans) it would be safe to say it is their weapon of choice.

Twitter is fully aware of the home it is supplying for these rebels… and completely supports them! Twitter is actually delaying schedules maintenance due to the Iranian election. They realize the power they have to make this election the most fair it can be.

The Twitter feed “StopAhmadi” is a radical one against the entrenched leader. They post photos and blogs about Moussavi’s cause and keep the public informed of injustices.

Another feed “PersianKiwi” is attempting to bypass any blocks that Iran could place on Twitter by hosting the page on Google. They fully acknowledge that Iran would block separate pages, and are blatantly trying to bypass this.

While users of Twitter are just using it to post protest messages and the like, some are going on the offensive. One such instance (DDOSIran) actually tried to topple the government for a short time by having everyone visit the government’s sites. Too much traffic will shut down a site, and this is what they aimed for.

The account was deleted after it did what it was trying to, and when questioned, Twitter admitted to nothing to do with the deletion of the account.

As the election drew closer, text message services were shut down, and access to Twitter and FaceBook became blocked, and the protesters knew this was a government act. Some have found ways around this injustice.

Many Iranians have been finding ways to avoid the Big Brother government from snooping; the most popular being a proxy server.

Some Americans are even stepping in to help out. Austin Heap, of San Francisco is hosting his own private proxies in hopes that the Iranians can surf freely. At any point in time, one of these proxies is allowing 750 people free Internet access.

Global Internet Freedom Consortium, an organization tied to the banned movement of Chinese Falun Gong which taught ways to get around Internet censorship, reported a triple increase in their traffic, and much of it coming from Iran.

With so many ways of getting around government censorship, it has become a game of whack-a-mole: the government blocks one thing, and another pops up that the people found.

Be Sociable, Share!

•