Col. Sima Vaknin-Gil is the chief military censor. In the following conversation, she answers questions in the wake of what has been dubbed the “censorship scandal” – the banning of an affair from publication for an extended period of time.

Israel’s defense establishment had at last decided to withdraw its support of a months-long blanket gag order on a security-related affair, Haaretz learned Wednesday, with the names of those involved in the case and the charges leveled against them to be possibly released as soon as Thursday.

Sima Vaknin-Gil, according to Pulitzer Prize winner Judith Miller, the censorship in Israel resembles that in Iran. Is this true?

“Judith Miller is not an Israeli correspondent, she is not familiar with the censorship here and does not conduct any work related it. When she writes something that is incorrect, all I can do is merely chuckle or feel sorry. But when an Israeli newspaper takes this and turns it into a headline; and blackens parts of the article that of course did not even pass through our [censorship] because it was written and published abroad; and chooses to blacken parts because it knows some of them have been banned from publication by court order; and then it is presented as if that is censorship of the press and the media; all of that falls somewhere between being annoying and being harmful. Not for me personally, or for people in the censor’s office, but harmful mainly to the State of Israel. We come off as a third-world country and anyone who works with the censor knows that is not true. Israeli journalists don’t think we are draconian – because we aren’t.”

That refers to the censor who, as you always stress, censors only things that are connected to, or directly threaten, state security.

“More so, there is a legal test that obliges us daily and makes it extremely difficult when one wants to censor something. That is the test of near certainty which is a very high threshold. Only when you think that you have reached this threshold are you permitted to remove information from an article.”

But this test is not valid when talking about a gag order…

Go to Haaretz.

Free Iran:  Although the EU’s deliberations about promoting open access to information in Iran is a positive step, without pressuring the regime such calls for open access would simply fall on deaf ears.  The EU should kick out their satellite channels from Western satellites that carry them and make it far more difficult for them to buy communication gears from Western companies.  There is a lot that the EU could do unilaterally.

BRUSSELS—Iran must stop jamming satellite broadcasting and censoring the Internet, the European Union said Monday, but the bloc stopped short of threatening any action if Tehran doesn’t agree to it.

EU foreign ministers said in a statement that Iran must “put an end to this electronic interference immediately.”

British Foreign Secretary David Miliband said that banning broadcasts such as the British Broadcasting Corp. and Germany’s Deutsche Welle highlights the authorities’ fear “of their people hearing the truth about what’s happening in their own country.

“It says a lot about the trust the Iranian government has in its own people,” he said. “They’re not willing to hear them hear independent news. I think it’s very important that they open up the airwaves as soon as possible.”

The EU said it wants to take up the issue before the International Telecommunications Union.

“The interesting thing is that Iran wants to expand its satellite channels network around the world — that’s why the ITU is the best place to talk about that,” German Deputy Foreign Minister Werner Hoyer said. “It is important that we show European solidarity and I think we can get that.”

Also see:

BBC:  EU pressures Iran to end jamming

RFE:  EU Foreign Ministers Call On Iran To End Broadcast Jamming

Go to WSJ.

Free Iran:  A great example of individual initiative.

Austin Heap, the programmer from California, explains how he created Haystack, the software that broke the grip of Iran’s censors after the disputed 2009 election.

If you imagined a computer hacker with the know-how to topple governments, you might well picture someone who looks a lot like Austin Heap. He’s a 26-year-old programmer from San Francisco with long wavy hair, wearing jeans, T-shirt and aviator sunglasses the morning we meet. He is also the creator of a piece of software called Haystack, which was a key technology used by Iranians to disseminate information outside the country in the protests that followed the disputed election result in June 2009, when President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad unconvincingly triumphed against three challengers.

The Iranian government already filtered its citizens’ email and Skype conversations, but in the aftermath of the election, such censorship was increased in an attempt to identify dissidents who were using the web to organise and communicate with each other and with the outside world.

A tech wunderkind originally from Ohio, Heap developed Haystack to open up social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook, giving voices on the streets a platform, and people in the west a window into a closed-down state. He’s now the executive director of the Censorship Research Centre in San Francisco, a non-profit organisation founded with his colleague Daniel Colascione to provide anti-censorship education, outreach, and technology for free to those who need it most.

What is Haystack and how does it work?

Haystack is a piece of software that someone in Iran runs on his or her computer. It does two things: first, it encrypts all of the data; second it hides that data inside normal traffic so it looks like you’re visiting innocuous sites. Daniel and I developed Haystack by looking at how the regime was using technology to filter the internet, and figured out the best strategy to get around it. Go to Guardian.

.

Stop the regime from jamming international satellites

.

Free Iran:  Providing access to satellite TV (and the internet) in Iran is one of the most critical steps the West could take to help Iran’s democratic movement.  If the West can’t stop the regime from jamming these satellite channels, then how could it stop its nuclear drive?  Sanctions should be tied to issues that help the Iranian people – not just to the regime’s nuclear drive.   If  implemented, sanctioning the regime for jamming satellite channels would be a huge step forward.

LA Times:  Europeans call for action against Islamic Republic for jamming of international satellites

British Foreign Secretary David Miliband and his French and German counterparts think it’s high time for Europe to step up measures against Iran for its alleged jamming of foreign channels such as BBC Persian and Deutsche Welle, which are broadcast by satellite into the Islamic Republic.

“Iran has been regularly jamming the broadcasting by satellite of a number of foreign televisions and radio stations . . . since December 2009, a repetition of its practice in the run-up to the disputed elections earlier that year,” Miliband, along with counterparts Bernard Kouchner of France and Guido Westerwelle of Germany wrote in a recent letter to the EU’s foreign policy chief, Baroness Catherine Ashton.

“The objective was clearly to prevent the people of Iran from freely exercising their right to information,” read the letter. “We cannot remain silent. It seems to us to be essential that the European Union should make known in the strongest possible terms its condemnation of such unacceptable actions.”

The three powers suggest that a declaration condemning Iran for its alleged electronic interference be adopted at the next meeting of EU foreign ministers, scheduled to be held in Brussels on Monday.

Aside from condemnation and demanding that Iranian authorities stop tampering with international satellites, the ministers call for a number of other actions, including figuring out how to un-jam the blocked satellites and pulling the plug on exports of technologies the Iranian authorities are believed to use for censorship purposes.

The French daily Le Figaro reported that potential sanctions could include stopping companies such as Germany’s Siemens or Finland’s Nokia from delivering technologies to Tehran that allow the interception of cellphone and e-mail conversations.

On Tuesday, Iranian lawyer and Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi blasted Nokia Siemens Networks, a subsidiary of Siemens and Nokia, saying the company supplied Iran with software used to suppress dissent in the Islamic Republic.

“Unfortunately, a certain number of firms support the Iranian regime in its repression and censorship,” Agence France-Presse quoted her as saying on France Culture radio. “It’s clearly the case with Siemens and Nokia when they send the Iranian state software and technology that it can use to monitor mobile telephone calls and text messages,” she said.

Another suggestion is to boot Iranian programs from Eutelsat, the leading French satellite operator which is said to have been specifically affected by the Iranian jamming. Eutelsat carries more than 70 foreign radio and TV programs, including some from the Iranian government.

“Another measure of retaliation would be to request that Eutelsat blocks in response to the interference of Iran in international channels, IRIB’s programs (Iranian state television), which it oversees the distribution of in Europe” a diplomat familiar with the matter told Le Figaro.

Iran’s Arabic-language channel, Al-Alam, and the English-language Press TV, would be affected, Le Figaro’s report said.

The jamming violates the principles of the International Union of Telecommunications, to which Iran is a party.

Also see:

NYT:  Iran’s Opposition Seeks More Help in Cyberwar With Government

In recent months the government slowed the Internet to a crawl, so that users were unable to perform the simplest operations, like opening Gmail or Yahoo accounts. It has become impossible to post a video, and opposition Web sites have been blocked. The government has also jammed opposition and news satellite channels, including Persian-language Voice of America television and BBC Persian, which were watched by millions.

The government has jailed many cyberexperts in recent months, charging some with “waging war against God,” potentially a capital crime, for sending political e-mail messages. This month Parliament announced a $500 million budget for cyberwarfare, the Fars news agency recently reported.

The opposition tried to fight back with software designed to circumvent the restrictions, but that became a losing battle after Internet service was slowed.

Opposition leaders say they would like to have access to Internet hardware — any products made by Cisco Systems, for example, are subject to sanctions — and high-speed satellite Internet service, which experts say is generally harder to jam than broadcasts. That service is available from the American company Hughes Global Services, in Europe and the Middle East, and could be used by Iranians. But Payam Herischi, senior director at Hughes, said that the company was reluctant to allow its satellites to provide service to Iran until sanctions are lifted.

“This is not about the opposition Green Movement in Iran now,” said Mr. Khoini, a visiting scholar at Stanford. “This is about democracy and the fact that when people have access to information, they can make wise choices. No one, even the current leaders of the opposition, can hijack the movement like the way the Islamists did in the 1979 revolution if people can have access to free information.”

BW:  U.S. Licenses Firm to Boost Iran Internet Access, Clinton Says

The U.S. issued a license to a company to boost Internet access for Iranians, though the government in Tehran will likely attempt to block U.S. efforts, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said.

“We’re doing a lot, let me just put it at that, because we think it is in the interests of American values and American strategic concerns to make sure that people have a chance to know what is going on outside of Iran,” Clinton said in an interview with Bloomberg TV in Moscow today.

Clinton didn’t name the company or elaborate on what it would do to expand Iranians’ access to the Internet.

The Internet became the most important tool for opposition candidates in Iran’s June 12 presidential election as the government restricted their access to the airwaves and closed their newspapers.

Before the election, opposition campaigns circumvented government disruption of the Internet by relying on proxy servers that disguise a user’s location. They also turned to mobile-phone text messages and social-networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

MSNBC:  For cyberwarriors, murky terrain

The fight for free access to information is being played out to an ever greater extent on the Internet. The emerging general trend is that a growing number of countries are attemptimg to tighten their control of the Net, but at the same time, increasingly inventive netizens demonstrate mutual solidarity by mobilizing when necessary.

The Internet: a space for information-sharing and mobilizing

In authoritarian countries in which the traditional media are state-controlled, the Internet offers a unique space for discussion and information-sharing, and has become an ever more important engine for protest and mobilization. The Internet is the crucible in which repressed civil societies can revive and develop.

The new media, and particularly social networks, have given populations’ collaborative tools with which they can change the social order. Young people have taken them by storm. Facebook has become the rallying point for activists prevented from demonstrating in the streets. One simple video on YouTube – Neda in Iran or the Saffron march of the monks in Burma – can help to expose government abuses to the entire world. One simple USB flashdrive can be all it takes to disseminate news – as in Cuba, where they have become the local “samizdats.”

Here, economic interest are intertwined with the need to defend free circulation of information. In some countries, it is companies that have obtained better access to the Internet and to the new media, sometimes with positive consequences for the rest of the population.As a barrier to trade,Web censorship should be included on the agenda of the WorldTrade Organization. Several of latter’s members, including China and Vietnam, should to be required to open their Internet networks before being invited to join the global village of international commerce…

Takeover

Yet times have changed since the Internet and the new media were the exclusive province of dissidents and opponents. The leaders of certain countries have been taken aback by a proliferation of new technologies and even more by the emergence of a new form of public debate. They had to suddenly cope with the fact that “Colored Revolutions” had become “Twitter Revolutions.” The vast potential of cyberspace can no longer be reserved for dissenting voices. Censoring political and social content with the latest technological tools by arresting and harassing netizens, using omnipresent surveillance and ID registration which compromise surfer anonymity – repressive governments are acting on their threats. In 2009, some sixty countries experienced a form of Web censorship, which is twice as many as in 2008. The World WideWeb is being progressively devoured by the implementation of national Intranets whose content is “approved” by the authorities. UzNet, Chinternet, TurkmenNet…It does not matter to those governments if more and more Internet users are going to become victims of a digital segregation. Web 2.0 is colliding with Control 2.0.

The Enemies of the Internet 2010

The “Enemies of the Internet” list drawn up again this year by Reporters Without Borders presents the worst violators of freedom of expression on the Net: Saudi Arabia, Burma, China, North Korea, Cuba, Egypt, Iran, Uzbekistan, Syria, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, and Vietnam.

Also see:

More governments are censoring the Internet

Go to Reporters Without Borders.

Free Iran:  This is how I feel when it comes to Iran.  Why so damn little coverage?  The future of the Islamic world is at stake!!!!

IND: (By Lilli Parvin)  As this administration continues to boldly deny the factual proof of hundreds of videos and pictures depicting the brutalities inflicted on its own people, and continues to use random rhetoric to answer horrendous abuses of human rights, international laws, and even its own constitution—it continues to lose its credibility more than ever before…..

It was supposed to be a public show of Iranian unity during day marking the 30-year anniversary of the takeover of the U.S. embassy in Tehran by Islamic revolutionaries.

But not only did anti-government demonstrators, many of them dressed in green scarves and headbands,  hijack the state-sponsored event. They also managed to steal the media’s attention media, much to the displeasure of the authorities, who blamed the Western media for distorting the facts.

On the other hand, Iran’s official media, also appeared to play fast and loose with reality.

Iran’s official Islamic Republic News Agency, or IRNA, lashed out at foreign media outlets in a commentary, accusing them of fomenting violence and promoting anti-government demonstrators by airing “phony stories and images” from Wednesday’s rallies in Tehran.

Journalists working for foreign media outlets also came under fire.The Agence France Presse news agency reported that one of its Iranian reporters, Farhad Pouladi, was taken into custody by Iranian security forces while on his way to cover the rallies. Go to LA Times.

Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guard Corps, already an economic, political and military power, is quietly pushing into a new domain: the media.  The Guards “want to dominate the flow of information and be the ones telling the world what’s going on in Iran,” says Omid Memarian, a dissident journalist who now lives in the U.S. and who did his military service with the Guards.

In September, two Fars News Agency photographers, Javad Moghimi, 24 years old, and Hossein Salmanzadeh, 34, fled to Turkey and requested asylum. Their account of the Guards’ presence at Fars offers insight into the force’s media connections.

“We were insiders defying orders to not cover opposition gatherings. They considered what we did treason,” says Mr. Moghimi, whose picture of a demonstration in Tehran made the cover of Time magazine in June. Go to WSJ.

Iranian authorities have reinforced controls on major domestic media following the upheaval over contested presidential election results in June 2009. One month after the disputed vote, nearly forty journalists remained in Iranian prisons.  Yet Iran’s media landscape, like many aspects of the theocratic regime, is riddled with contradictions. The flow of information into and within Iran has genuinely improved over the last decade; since 2000, Iran’s leaders have oscillated between tightening and loosening restrictions on the country’s domestic news media. Go to MSNBC.