Civil Society Watch

January 5, 2012
January 5, 2012
Categories

How do you sanitize the Internet?

Board member Fred Petrossians, writing for Global Voices discusses rumors and plans for total control of the internet by the Iranian state:
Iranian authorities see the internet as a real battleground and consider citizen media and social networking as tools of “soft war”. Over several years they claim to have blocked and filtered millions of websites and blogs. Now several bloggers have reported that Iran's Corporate Computer Systems say the goal is for Iran to be entirely cut off from the World Wide Web once the country launches its own national internet network.
(More here...)
Do you like it?
Read more
November 22, 2011
November 22, 2011
Categories

UN Calls for Access for Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Iran

Originally published by United4Iran. The UN General Assembly’s Third Committee today adopted a resolution (PDF) calling on the Iranian Government to allow unfettered access to the country by the UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in Iran, Dr. Ahmed Shaheed, to investigate violations taking place in the country. The resolution also calls on Iran to release all arbitrarily detained individuals held for exercising their right to peaceful assembly and expression, including leading opposition figures, Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi.
Do you like it?
Read more
September 27, 2011
September 27, 2011
Categories

Remembering Wangari Maathai, I Will Be a Hummingbird

“I have always believed that, no matter how dark the cloud, there is always a thin, silver lining, and that is what we must look for.” – Prof. Wangari MaathaiArseh Sevom remembers the Nobel Prize winning activist, Prof. Wangari Maathai who died recently of ovarian cancer.For many of us, she is a hero, someone who is not daunted by even the largest of problems. As one of our staff says, "It’s tough to imagine Prof. Maathai being no more. True, she never looked like she was 71 and I have seen people much younger than her be consumed by that affliction. But still, there are people that you don’t ever wish to think of as mortal. For me, Maathai was one such person."Maathai was the founder of the Green Belt Movement. She began the movement in 1977 in order to respond to environmental degradation. It all began with the planting of trees.Read more
Do you like it?
Read more
September 7, 2011
September 7, 2011
Categories

Was Your Gmail Account Safe?

More than 300,000 Iranians have had their Gmail accounts compromised. From the report by the investigative firm Fox-IT, the security firm hired to investigate the stolen DigiNotar security certificates, it is clear that as early as July 28, the company was aware that falsified security certificates were in use in Iran. This is one month earlier than the first public notice, which was made by a Google Chrome user in Iran. (Read more background information.)The report, Operation Black Tulip (pdf), states:
They used both known hacker tools as well as software and scripts developed specifically for this task. Some of the software gives an amateurish impression, while some scripts, on the other hand, are very advanced. In at least one script, fingerprints from the hacker are left on purpose, which were also found in the Comodo breach investigation of March 2011.
Read more
Do you like it?
Read more
September 6, 2011
September 6, 2011
Categories

Cultural Censorship in Iran

The Small Media Foundation has published the report, Cultural Censorship in Iran: Iranian Culture in a State of Emergency. This report looks at government pressure on and censorship of publishing, music, theater, and film, demonstrating an increase since the disputed 2009 presidential elections.The findings of the authors, Mostafa Khalaji, Bronwen Robertson, and Maryam Aghdami, show the efforts of the regime to make the barriers towards public culture even higher by pulling previously approved books off the shelves, controlling funding and licenses for films, denying musicians and theater groups access to their audience, and other acts of suppression.The publishing industry has been especially hard hit. The independent writer's organization, The Forum of Iranian Writers, is being supplanted by the deceptively named, Pen Association of Iran, a government-sponsored organization. The regime financially supports like-minded authors and publishers and purchases mass quantities of their books. In that way they can claim that the number of books published remains high. Bookstores are being shut down at an alarming rate.Read more...
Do you like it?
Read more
September 5, 2011
September 5, 2011
Categories

Protests in Iran spurred by Disappearing Lake

Update: Radio Farda reports that the Parliament in Iran has budget up to $900 million to address the problem.Six months ago, environmental activists in Iran starting sounding the alarm about the state of Lake Orumiyeh (Urmia). Many began posting about Lake Orumiyeh on Facebook. They urged others to take notice: Lake Orumiyeh, the third largest salt water lake in the world, was drying up. This environmental catastrophe was not receiving the attention needed to force action from the government.Protests about the state of the lake have moved from Facebook to the streets, where they are occuring on a regular basis. Several dozen people have been arrested in Northwestern Iran protesting the government's inability to ensure the long-term survival of the lake, which is drying up as a result of drought and the man-made diversion of rivers that once flowed into the lake.Read more
Do you like it?
Read more
September 2, 2011
September 2, 2011
Categories

Man in Middle Attacks Dangerous in Iran – Part 2

به زبان فارسیUPDATE: Google and Mozilla have revoked more than 200 security certificates as a result of a hack into the accounts of certificate authority, DigiNotar.WARNING: Tor, Yahoo, and Mozilla were among the targets.WHAT THIS MEANS: If you are in using Tor software downloaded after July 9, it might be compromised. Users of confirmed versions of Tor should not have been effected. (Read more on the Tor Blog.) If you have not checked the signature of Tor to ensure that it is authentic, now is the time to do so. Instructions are here.MORE THAN 200 SECURITY CERTIFICATES STOLENA few days ago, Arseh Sevom reported on compromised security for users in Iran. It was reported that a security certificate was stolen and was in used in Iran. This certificate was used to access secure communication between users in Iran and Google.Read more...
Do you like it?
Read more
August 30, 2011
August 30, 2011
Categories

Man in the Middle: Google Becomes Dangerous in Iran

It all began with a simple message. An Iranian internet user was trying to connect to Google using the Chrome browser. Strangely enough, his browser flashed a message telling him that the security certificate he was using to access Google was not theirs. The user went to Google’s help forums to follow up on this and an investigation followed which uncovered a secretive, but highly explosive plot: a security firm in the Netherlands, DigiNotar, had seemingly provided a certificate to “someone” in Iran that allowed access to all secure traffic over Google within Iran.Security bloggers are reporting that the site may have been hacked earlier, in 2009. Screenshots of hacked pages are being shared via the internet. The links to those pages were available as recently as the morning (in Europe) of August 30th.Read more...
Do you like it?
Read more
123456789101112131415161718