#iranelection cyberwar guide for beginners
The purpose of this guide is to help you participate constructively in the Iranian election protests through twitter.
- Do NOT publicise proxy IP’s over twitter, and especially not using the #iranelection hashtag. Security forces are monitoring this hashtag, and the moment they identify a proxy IP they will block it in Iran. If you are creating new proxies for the Iranian bloggers, DM them to @stopAhmadi or @iran09 and they will distributed them discretely to bloggers in Iran.
- Hashtags, the only two legitimate hashtags being used by bloggers in Iran are #iranelection and #gr88, other hashtag ideas run the risk of diluting the conversation.
- Keep you bull$hit filter up! Security forces are now setting up twitter accounts to spread disinformation by posing as Iranian protesters. Please don’t retweet impetuosly, try to confirm information with reliable sources before retweeting. The legitimate sources are not hard to find and follow.
- Help cover the bloggers: change your twitter settings so that your location is TEHRAN and your time zone is GMT +3.30. Security forces are hunting for bloggers using location and timezone searches. If we all become ‘Iranians’ it becomes much harder to find them.
- Don’t blow their cover! If you discover a genuine source, please don’t publicise their name or location on a website. These bloggers are in REAL danger. Spread the word discretely through your own networks but don’t signpost them to the security forces. People are dying there, for real, please keep that in mind.
- Denial of Service attacks. If you don’t know what you are doing, stay out of this game. Only target those sites the legitimate Iranian bloggers are designating. Be aware that these attacks can have detrimental effects to the network the protesters are relying on. Keep monitoring their traffic to note when you should turn the taps on or off.
- Do spread the (legitimate) word, it works! When the bloggers asked for twitter maintenance to be postponed using the #nomaintenance tag, it had the desired effect. As long as we spread good information, provide moral support to the protesters, and take our lead from the legitimate bloggers, we can make a constructive contribution.
Please remember that this is about the future of the Iranian people, while it might be exciting to get caught up in the flow of participating in a new meme, do not lose sight of what this is really about.
Categories: Crowdsourcing, Culture, Iran, Networks, Technology, Twitter #gr88, #iranelection, blogger, cyberwar, Iran, protest, revolution
Thanks, very helpful.
Can we post your guide on our blogs? we’d include the link to your site. we will tweet this link….great work here
Great blog and very timely advice. Hope you don’t mind if I link to it from Facebook etc.
Great article. I want to translate it into german and post it on my Blog. is it OK?
If everyone is “Iranian” now , how do we tell who is really tweeting from Iran? I see competing values of solidarity vs news.
So another tip, if you are expressing solidarity by changing your location/timezone, ok, but please don’t lie about facts-on-the-ground. That will not help.
Thanks Esko, great advices and perfect timing. Let’s keep helping them and showing the world the power of Web Partecipation.
Democracy is to accept that Ahmadinejad may have won over the rich city elite’s favorite candidate
Great advice, I’ve written a post linking to this page. Hope it helps.
Note the link to @StopAhmadi should be http://twitter.com/StopAhmadi
Very useful blog with the kind of practical advice we need. Its great that people can use their internet skills to help support democracy rather than just to send spam or try to push some mlm scheme. I’ll tweet this link.
Thanks for the comments, and yes, please feel free to link to here or translate in other languages. If this site guide gets attacked and taken down by Iranian authorities, you have my permission to repost the full contents of this post (a citation would be appreciated) on your blogs.
I’m sorry, I will be offline for several hours now and will be unable to respond to comments for a while.
Esko
As an Iranian on the streets of Tehran, I would like to thank you for your efforts, your sincere motives, and your support.
The people of Iran won’t forget their true friends.
Thank you for the great post.
Spanish translation of this original text at:
http://tr.im/oEiT
#iranelection http://bit.ly/MrgKm
Good job Esko.
Thank you dude!
We won’t forget our friends!
Just posted this to a civic news site I use… linked it back to this site.
This is a great post. One thing, shouldn’t Americans be encouraged to stop tweeting nonsense on #iranelection? It seems to be inundated with well-meaning but unhelpful tweets. Can Iranians find the information they need with the tens of thousands of erroneous tweets? I say this knowing that those tweets are all encouraging and nice.
I second Todd Peterson. What if Ahmadinejad really won the election? He has lots of supporters too, Iran is a big country, it’s not just the universities of Tehran who have a voice. The Ayatollah ordered a recount of the votes, that’s a step forward, it’s no use starting a war and losing lives for something you’re not sure to be right on.
thanks for your help
we really appreciate
Another VERY important point to consider.
Do not believe all posts just because they say that they are from Iran. I read a lot of stuff last night (UK time) that was in direct contradatition to what the BBC was (and still is) reporting.
Remember that disinformation can come from both sides. And from 15 year old kids having a laugh.
Todd: No, democracy involves fair, monitored elections, with a vote count that’s untampered with. There’s plenty of evidence that the vote count in this election may have been rigged in many ways: victory was announced for Ahmadinejad long before enough, if any, votes could have been tallied; thousands of mobile voting stations were used, where anything could have been done to the votes; illiterate voters asking the government people who were running the voting stations, how to vote; no independent monitoring of the vote–not even by Iranians; shutdown of communications out of, into, and inside Iran, including cutting off cellphones, texting services, etc. starting the day before the election, and continuing even now, to prevent followers of Mousavi from communicating with each other to rally the vote; and so on. When there are so many strong indications that the vote may have been rigged, democracy won’t have taken place if bogus election results were accepted. This is why people are protesting–if it had been provable that the supposed vote count was accurate, we wouldn’t be seeing this level of protest.
Democracy, among other things, demands that when an election may have been stolen, that the people try to do something about it, insted of rolling over and accepting it.
Todd and sanjuro:
Read this list of reasons why the Iranian election may have been rigged, and then tell us that you still think the will of the majority of voters has triumphed (yet) in this election:
http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1904645_1904644,00.html
thanks for this. Good advice. Spread it.
thank you very much!
I think this is the most helpful info I have gotten. thank you
“Democracy, among other things, demands that when an election may have been stolen, that the people try to do something about it, insted of rolling over and accepting it.”
So true. And the reason the people of Iran deserve everyone’s support. Also the reason we in American should be ashamed for accepting sketchy election results with barely whimper.
great to know that there are people like you giving this kind of information thanks
Thank you guys… We Iranians appreciate your help…
You can’t write DM to people not following you.
Victor Serge’s 1926 publication ‘What Everyone Should Know About State Repression ‘ is still useful regarding tactics of provocation, harassment etc.
http://snurl.com/k881j #iranelection
Interesting how ‘new’ activism can benefit from ‘old’ knowledge.
Good value reprint available from AK Press
http://www.akpress.com/2005/items/whateveryradicalshouldknowaboutstate
great article – thanks for sharing!
You can’t write DM to people not following you. how can one forward information to the people who need them?
reports of erroneous information relate to sources supposedly at the scene. @persiankiwi appears to be a prominent figure in all of this, with frequent eyewitness reports from the streets of Tehran, yet location software puts this person as hours and hours away from Tehran. Granted, the software may not be perfect, but other twitterers seem to show up where they claim to be. I am with iran all the way, but more damage stands to be done by the herd mentality taking over, and people blindly accepting what they read. Do the real iran a favour, and read tweets critically.
and I am admittedly fairly new to twitter. what does DM mean?
Most reports indicate some votes were ordered to be recounted. Not all. Unacceptable to Moussavi.
German translation of the text here: http://tinyurl.com/l2pcyl
Tank you
It’s not about the loss. It’s what came after that has people rioting.
Great post. I dont understand the proxy stuff. would appreciate more info in order to help more. Can anyone set up proxy server?
@bkdsystm:
DM means direct message.
You can DM someone that’s following you, using the link in the right-hand bar under ‘actions’. Only the receiver can read your message.
More twitter words at http://www.twittonary.com/
Accepting that Ahmadinejad could have actually won is not accepting democracy. It is being totally naive and misinformed. Mousavi is not only the rich elite’s favorite. He is not only favored by the middle class but also most of those who live under the poverty line, thanks to Ahamdinejad’s less than dismal management of the economy.
One with a free mind and only basic information about Iran would never believe that Ahmadinejad could win a landslide victory.
I just translated this into German: http://markus-schlegel.com/weblog/iranelection-cyberwar-guidelines-fuer-anfaenger
I was not really sure with point #6 and what do you mean with “Spread the word discretely through your own networks but don’t signpost them to the security forces” exactly?
Hey… trust me, ahmadinejad did not win. There is a reason why several hundred thousands were on the street against him while no one is there to respond. Second of all, Big cities is 70 percent of the voting public. You are right, Ahmadinejad has the support from the poor, in the outside of the major cities, but when a big turnout happens, usually it’s because of change, not to keep the same. Ahmadinejad lost!
what if we signed up for a new twitter account that you could log into would that help? I have a few emails i could use.
wish we could do more. PEACE… Y
Wonderful Howto for helping Iranian! Keep it up your greate work!
I took the liberty to reproduce your post in my blog.
http://dearmisterlewis.blogspot.com/2009/06/iranelection-cyberwar-guide-for.html
Your site is on CNN right now.
#5 sucks! “Don’t blow their cover! If you discover a genuine source, please don’t publicise their name or location on a website. These bloggers are in REAL danger. Spread the word discretely through your own networks but don’t signpost them to the security forces. People are dying there, for real, please keep that in mind.”
it completely removes verifiability and undermines the truth of the messages. more rumors spread around. I don’t think it;s a good idea. it also helps gov’t fake id’s to spread their messages and their voices sound legitimate
@sara
I figure he refers to real data and not their screen names.