In Iran, cyber-activism without the middle-man

Anthony Papillion says he just wants to give Iranians a voice, but the word on Twitter these days is that he's not to be trusted.

The owner of a medical records software business in the tiny town of Miami Oklahoma, he's on the forefront of a new wave of Internet activism, fuelled by social media sites like Twitter, which are giving Iranian citizens and supporters of the government protests there new ways of involving themselves in the political struggle.

YouTube, Facebook and Twitter have led the mainstream media's coverage of the events in Iran this week. They've let Iranians and supporters of the protesters share information, even within the centrally controlled Internet service in Iran and connected people like Papillon to a country on the other side of the world.

Twitter is being credited with pushing the mainstream media to pay more attention to protests in Tehran by supporters of presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi, who was declared the loser in last week's election. And while the vast majority of people send Twitter messages with the popular tag #iranelections from outside of Iran, some voices inside the country are getting around government censorship.

Papillon's foray into Iranian activism started late Saturday, when he spent the night putting up a proxy server on his home Web site. Proxy servers are Web sites that let people visit parts of the Internet that would normally be blocked to them. Teenagers use this kind of technology to skirt filters at the local library. In Iran, where Internet access is centrally controlled, by the state-owned Data communication Company of Iran, and YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook all seem to be blocked, proxy servers have become a critical conduit for information.

Some times, however, the activists are driving the censorship all by themselves. That's what Papillon eventually discovered first-hand.

Hours after he set up his proxy server on Sunday, it was attacked with a DOS attack and then apparently blocked from within Iran. So then he set up another server that he hoped Iranians would use to anonymously post Twitter messages to the outside world.

Because he was worried that the account might be used to spread false information, he told visitors that he would be logging IP (Internet Protocol) addresses in order to block untrustworthy sources.

That completely backfired. Soon, Twitter was ablaze with messages warning people not to use his site. People who follow him on Twitter are now warned not to pass along any of his information. That type of message gets repeated and passed on over and over again. A typical message: "Iranians! Whatever you do, DO NOT USE @AnonymousInIran to anontweet. They're tracking user locations. It's a trap"

Although his AnonymousInIran page lists his Oklahoma phone number, Papillon says he's not upset about being called an agent of the state. He says that he understands that people's lives are at stake. "The reason I’m not reacting very strongly to this is because during something like this it's OK to be wrong," he said. "I would rather them totally destroy the service than.... [have] anybody get hurt. I understand the paranoia."

The IDG News Service is a Network World affiliate.