iran

Clinton speech pushes for Internet freedom

With freedom--both in the real world and online--much in the news lately, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton delivered a speech in Washington, D.C., yesterday that cautioned nations that try to block the Internet and other vital services as a way of stifling their citizens.

In her address at George Washington University on Internet freedom, Clinton pointed out that Egypt's efforts to control the protests of its citizens by cutting their lines of communication ultimately failed. Instead, people continued to protest, the government turned the Internet back on, and in the end, former President Hosni Mubarak was forced to … Read more

Google launching Chrome, Earth, Picasa in Iran

Google is for the first time launching Chrome, Google Earth, and Picasa for users in Iran, according to the company's official blog.

The U.S. government recently lifted some of the restrictions prohibiting software downloads to Iran. Now, the search giant is looking to get its downloadable products into the hands of Iranian citizens while at the same time blocking access to the Iranian government.

"We're committed to full compliance with U.S. export controls and sanctions programs and, as a condition of our export licenses from the Treasury Department, we will continue to block IP addresses … Read more

RIM BlackPad today?

  Links from Monday's episode of Loaded: Research in Motion venturing off to the tablet world Stuxnet corrupted Iran's first nuclear power plant iPhone 4 on sale in China Ping, Apple's social music service, gets an update

Expert: Stuxnet was built to sabotage Iran nuclear plant

An industrial control security researcher in Germany who has analyzed the Stuxnet computer worm is speculating that it may have been created to sabotage a nuclear plant in Iran.

The worm, which targeted computers running Siemens software used in industrial control systems, appeared in July and was later found to have code that could be used to control plant operations remotely. Stuxnet spreads by exploiting three holes in Windows, one of which has been patched.

The high number of infections in Iran and the fact that the opening of the Bushehr nuclear plant there has been delayed led Ralph Langner … Read more

Google report shows where its content is blocked

In the wake of Google's censorship battles with China and other nations, the search giant has launched a new tool to reveal which governments are blocking its services or requesting information on its users.

The company's new Transparency Report breaks down the information into two sections.

The Government Requests page offers an interactive map where you can see the number of requests by each government asking Google to remove certain content from its search page, Gmail, YouTube, and other services. Google even reveals how many of those requests it's actually complied with. This page also details the … Read more

Anti-censorship tool for Iranians withdrawn, security concerns cited

The developer of a software tool to help Iranians get around their government's Internet restrictions has withdrawn the program in response to questions about its security.

Haystack said it had halted further testing of the program in Iran while it conducts a review. "If you have a copy of the test program, please refrain from using it," it said in a post on its Web site.

Haystack, which runs on Windows (2000 and up), OS X (10.4 and up), and most Linux distributions, appears to the user as a normal HTTP proxy. It claims to "… Read more

New Iran threat: Slow-moving humanoid robots

How many nuclear centrifuges does Iran have? That's academic. Always showing off its tech might, the Islamic republic now has a bipedal robot that can walk around like a person, albeit at sub-human speeds. It's the latest volley in the humanoid arms race pushing us all toward the Singularity.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad showed off the terrifying humanoid at an event over the weekend marking Iranian industrial prowess. A state-run newspaper report said the automaton is designed for work in "sensitive jobs" but did not elaborate.

Dubbed Surena II after an ancient Persian warrior, the bot could … Read more

Gmail blocked in Iran ahead of protests?

Gmail appeared to be unavailable to some users in Iran on Wednesday, possibly as part of a government crackdown designed to suppress anti-regime demonstrations scheduled for Thursday.

Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that the Iranian government said it would shut down Gmail and replace it with a national e-mail system. CNN reported that government officials were believed responsible for blocked text messages and sluggish Internet speeds in Tehran for days.

Gmail users in Iran reported to Google that they were having trouble getting to the service, Google said in a statement later on Wednesday.

"We can confirm … Read more

Buzz Out Loud Podcast 1129: Is Google finally too big?

Google is in talks to buy Yelp and it may finally be pushing the line over what's too big. Sure, a lot of you thought it was too big already, but now it's just getting ridiculous--although, I didn't like that it lost its court case in France over indexing books. We also touch on the Twitter hijacking and new 3D Blu-ray standards.

Subscribe with iTunes (audio) Subscribe with iTunes (video) Subscribe with RSS (audio) Subscribe with RSS (video) EPISODE 1129

Twitter hijacked by ‘Iranian Cyber Army’ http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10418140-93.html http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-10418270-36.html… Read more