Wednesday, June 17, 2009

The Revolution will not be tweeted


Ultimately, the Revolution will not be tweeted.

That's because even though much has been made of the use of Twitter -- and Facebook -- as a means of communication and organization in the ongoing Iranian election uprising, it's Twitter's same ubiquitous and open nature that can allow the Empire to strike back. Or the theocracy of goons, as the case may be.

IN OTHER WORDS, if I'm looking in and the American media is looking in, you know that the Iranian government is looking in, too. And it is, as reported on MSNBC:
Social media’s short messages aren’t as comprehensive as an Associated Press report, and the photos aren’t magazine quality. And while much of the material could not be independently verified, at least it was real-time — for many incidents, it was the only news available.

Tuesday afternoon, messages from people claiming to be witnesses to the demonstrations flowed into Twitter at the rate of hundreds a minute. Posts would flood in, only to slow to a trickle for a minute or two as Iranian censors sought to stanch the flow of information. Then posts would resume in a torrent as users found ways around the censorship.


(snip)

One Twitter user called the communications battle “cyberwarfare at its best,” and there were unconfirmed reports that Iranian security forces were fighting back by creating their own Twitter accounts to spread their version of events.
I'D BE SURPRISED if public relations -- to put it mildly -- were the only use Iranian security forces were making of Twitter and Facebook.

If ordinary Iranians can spread information via tweets, the government likewise can spread misinformation the same way. It can tweet to meet at such and so place for a demonstration, thus leading people into an ambush and making evil use of sites such as
Anonymous in Iran to disguise its efforts.

The site says it's screening out tweets from Iranian government IP addresses, but do you really think the Ahmadinejad regime is dumb enough to be using official IP addresses?

If the Iranians want to throw themselves a proper revolution -- or run a proper resistance -- I imagine they're just going to have to do it the old-fashioned way. They'll have to organize in cells, devise a proper code for secret communications via open sources . . . then hit the bloody bastards where they ain't expecting it.

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