Iran blocking 30 million from email & Web ahead of election

http://worldnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/02/22/10479229-iran-blocking-30-million-from-email-web-ahead-of-election

With parliamentary elections scheduled for next week, Iran has begun blocking Internet services, Web security experts say, adding to concerns that a “clean Internet” that government leaders hope to create will shut off Iranians from the rest of the online world.

The Tor Network, which provides free software for anonymous use of the Internet, reported that on Feb. 9, Tehran began filtering keywords and throttling or shutting down access to sites that use a form of security called Secure Socket Layers, or SSL. The protocol, which encrypts data being sent back and forth between servers and users, is used by such popular sites as Gmail and Facebook. Web addresses protected by SSL begin “https,” instead of “http.”

Activists in repressive countries often use Tor services to get around such restrictions, and before Feb. 9, Iranians were the second-largest users of Tor. But because Iran targeted the core SSL protocol, “Tor stopped working too,” the organization said.

The action is blocking email and some Web access for as many as 30 million Iranians who use SSL-protected sites,reported CBR Systems & Network Security, a European technology organization.

Iran, which will hold parliamentary elections on March 2, has referred to Google and other search engines as “spying tools,” and it has throttled access to foreign web servers previously at politically sensitive times. The free-expression activist group Reporters Without Borders has branded Iran as an “enemy of the Internet.”

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watch around that date for obvious reason..march 2..they might give this election a real “colour” if you know what I mean..

“Activists in repressive countries often use Tor services to get around such restrictions, and before Feb. 9, Iranians were the second-largest users of Tor. But because Iran targeted the core SSL protocol, “Tor stopped working too,” the organization said.”

cut off..that easily

401

~ by seeker401 on February 25, 2012.