Net-savvy Iranians
The media here are making much of the young, net-savvy Iranians using social networking sites to get the news out. Most people believe the Iranian presidential election to have been rigged, most outside journalists have had to leave Iran, but the Iranians are said to be twitter-ing and facebook-ing away about what is going on. And don’t we just love it, because it is the Iranian regime that is threatened by the net?
So good. Freedom of information really does work in favour of democracy! Our governments should be financing research to keep information free, and to protect those who publish it – software to keep government snoopers out of our e-conversations, and to provide security and privacy. The Great Firewall of China, the Australian plans for ISP-level filtering, plans to keep logs of all e-mail exchanges – these are toys that would have made Big Brother green with envy.
Underlines my point!
