Joho the Blog » iran

Hoder in for 19.5

davidw — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 00:39:58 +0000

It’s hard to muster any enthusiasm for Iran’s sentencing Hossein Derakhshan â€” “Hoder” â€” to “only” 19.5 years in jail instead of executing him, as they had threatened.

Maybe the Canadian government can do something for Hoder since he holds dual Iranian-Canadian citizenship. I don’t want to have to wait until I’m almost 80 to hear that he’s free.

Accountable bloggers and journalists

davidw — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 18:33:00 +0000

[Note 1.5 hrs after posting this: Ethan Zuckerman has just put up a superb post on this topic. I suggest you read that instead of this.]

Jillian York of the Berkman Center explains the current confusion about the NY Times’ rather casual suggestion (in a blog post) , based on an accusation in a tweet from Omid Habibinia, that Hossein Derakhshan (aka Hoder) has been an agent for the Iranian government, basically ratting out pro-democracy bloggers. The NY Times has now gone meta on the accusation, saying it only reported it because it’s a sign of the discord and distrust, etc., etc. But it’s still a dangerous charge to propagate. Jillian wants to know why we’re blaming the NY Times blogger and not Habibinia.

I’ve got enough blame in my backpack for both. But I do think that since the NY Times trades on its credibility, it has a greater responsibility. When the NY Times reports a rumor, it not only amplifies the rumor, it inevitably adds credibility to it. That’s just the way it is, and, it’s also how the NY Times wants it.

(I wish I could track down the article I read today about the difficult the human brain has in unlearning bad info even after it’s been shown to be bad. The article talked about the increase in the belief that Iraq had WMDs after it was shown that it did not.)

[Tags: iran nytimes journalism media hoder ]

Isenberg on the WSJ on Iran on Nokia

davidw — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 09:41:37 +0000

David Isenberg questions the veracity of the Wall Street Journal’s report about Iran using Nokia equipment to do deep packet inspection. Interesting on its own and also as yet another example of smart bloggers raising journalism’s bar.

[Tags: iran david_isenberg citizen_media journalism media ]

Google: Make security the default (Now with Iranian tweets)

davidw — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 18:14:59 +0000

Chris Soghoian has posted an open letter to Google, asking it to make encryption the default. This is in line with the talk he gave recently at the Berkman Center.

[Update later that day: Two hours after releasing the letter, Google agreed to try setting encryption as the default for a subset of users, as a trial. If it works out, they'll consider expanding it.]

Also, Jonathan Zittrain has posted about why the Iranians have problems blocking Twitter. [Tags: google security iran twitter ]

The YouTube election … in Iran

davidw — Sat, 30 May 2009 19:57:40 +0000

Hamid Tehrani at GlobalVoices posts about how Iranian candidates for the presidency are using YouTube…including controversies about jokes and ad hoc footage…

[Tags: iran youtube e-democracy ]