A flood of uncensored news and information is being made available to the people of Iran thanks to Canadian technology, and the authorities in Tehran are furious about it.
Through the use of cutting-edge Internet tools developed at the University of Toronto's Citizen Lab, developers at Psiphon Inc. have been able to break through the firewalls of Iranian government censorship, and let people inside Iran get a true picture of what's going on following disputed presidential elections.
Authorities in Iran strictly monitor and filter western news and social media websites using firewalls to block Iranians' access to sites such as the BBC, YouTube and Twitter. But the Psiphon software allows citizens to bypass the blockades.
Psiphon CEO Rafal Rohozinski told CTV.ca Friday the software "creates tiny little bypasses, holes in firewalls, by creating new directions in domain addresses."
He explained that when an Iranian hungry for news coverage comes across a blocked website a pop-up redirects them to an unfiltered version.
"We advertise to Iranians if you want to see BBC, let's say, click here."
To get the word out, he said, his project spreads information about how to access the system through social networks such as Twitter.
Rohozinski said the objective is to overwhelm Iranian authorities with so many domains that the only way to block them all would be to shut down the entire Internet, which would be entirely impractical.
"Iran is highly dependant on Internet access, for business, for academia. One of the things when the troubles started, they could have shut down Internet. But it would have incurred too much pain," said Rohozinski.
He called the technology "human rights software" and said it was part of an "ethical mission" to extend the same rights and press freedoms we enjoy here in Canada to citizens in countries where political information is inaccessible.
The software is uniquely Canadian, developed at the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto. And the beauty of it, Rohozinski said, is its usability.
"It's easy, it's brainless," he said.
Rohozinski said the response has been overwhelming, that users were being added at the rate of about one per minute.
Some 18,000 Iranians have used the service, he said.
Iranian authorities have been so alarmed they called in Canadian diplomats to express their displeasure at how Canadian technology might be helping to destabilize Iran.
At that Rohozinski chuckled "I can only imagine how confused Canadian diplomats might be in hearing that Psiphon might be fermenting insurrection. "
Psiphon software was designated one of the "Best and Brightest Ideas of 2008" by Esquire Magazine, and was the winner of the 2008 Netxplorateur Award at the French Senate.
