Iran’s religious clerics in Qom and members of the Assembly of Experts, headed by Ayatollah [Ali Akbar Hashemi] Rafsanjani, are mulling the formation of an alternative collective leadership to replace that of the supreme leader, sources in Qom told Al Arabiya on condition of anonymity.

These reports come on the heels of arrests and killings of protesters that most of us have seen splashed across our Twitter and Facebook status feeds, and it is these recent events that are being credited as the impetus of for the re-consideration of Iran’s governmental structure.

Though the death of the iconic Neda and others like her may have played a part, it is likely that the imprisonment of five family members of Rafsanjani may have played a much more directly influencing factor. Rafsanjani is considered, according to Al Arabiya, to be one of Iran’s most powerful man as the head of Assembly of Experts (the group of clerics responsible for the appointment and dismissal of the Supreme Leader) and the head of the Expediency Council (the group that arbitrates disputes between the parliament and the Guardian Council).

This is exactly what the movement’s calls for reform now entail.  The change of heart by Rafsanjani and the clerics may not have come at a better time, as ABC News reports along with other organizations that the recent rounds of brutality against protestors has demoralized the movements, and rallies have had much lower attendance today in Tehran:

The crackdown on protestors promised Saturday by the Iranian government appears to have worked, with few people on the streets of Tehran today, though there was violence overnight.

But as rallies failed to materialize, a female protestor reached by ABC News by telephone in Tehran complained about the lack of leadership.

Asked whether she is disappointed that the streets were so quiet, the female protestor, who did not give her name, said “yes.”

“Of course it is! It’s really sad. People getting killed, people doing everything in their power to go against the regime after 30 years and we don’t have the support here. We don’t have proper leadership,” she said.

Iran’s Voice is Heard: Clerics Consider Alternative to ‘Supreme Leader’ is a post from: The Inquisitr

The fellow’s name is Hamed, and he described how he came into possession of the video, and the speed at which it propagated across the web.

Listen!

“I was collecting information on my Yahoo 360 blog, as it wasn’t blocked in Iran. At the same time one of my friends on Facebook wrote ‘My wife just came home, and someone was killed next to her.’ I reported this on my weblog, but as I was not sure, I removed it some minutes later.”

“I called to one of my friends who was at the same location and ask him what was going on over there. He said ‘nothing.’ I said ‘Are you sure?’ He said ‘I will go out and report to you.’ I didn’t get anything from him. I called to one of my other friends in Tehran on his landline, and he answered me and said that friend went to the roof of his home and said there was smoke.”

“Just at this time, another friend a wrote to me a girl is killed next to me right now. He asked me is it possible to publish through you the video that I took next to me right now. I said, ‘absolutely.’ He emailed it to me. I was ready to send it to CNN and BBC. I published it to CNN and sent it two times to BBC. I sent it to YouTube and to Facebook. Five minutes later, it started to get several email and messages, and published everywhere.”

Hamed is protecting the identity of the one who took the movie.

Interview with the YouTube User Behind Neda’s Video [#neda] is a post from: The Inquisitr

As the reality sets in that what’s now being called the New Revolution and the Sea of Green shows no sign of receding, more in depth analysis seems to be coming out.  The tail end of last week showed a bit of partisan bickering while both the US left and right seemed to be looking for ways to use this against their political opponents. Interestingly, now it is a site called The Bipartisan Report that looks to throw a little cold water on the exuberance Americans are seeing in the pursuit for Iranian freedom.

Tom Regan writes there:

Come on people. Mousavi is certainly more “liberal” in terms of his opponent (that certainly the way we want to see it in the west), but Obama (the real one) is absolutely correct when he says there will be little difference between the two. We all know why – the president doesn’t get to call all the shots in Iran. Mousavi, a former premier under the mullahs, for heaven’s sake, is a saavy politician and he is probably correct in thinking the election was stolen. But Mousavi is not Iran’s Obama – he is Iran’s John Kerry. He talks a great game, but he’s been part of the political establishment for a long time.

Tom is a former blogger for NPR, and has a long history writing about Iran, but I think it’s his experience here that’s jading the larger picture the rest of us are seeing.

It’s a protest that’s no longer about a re-count, a President, or about hatred for the West and an institutional Jewish Israel.

Following the declaration last week by Mir-Hossein Moussavi’s office that the election had been fixed, Iranian filmmaker and current president of the Asian Film Academy Mohsen Makhmalbaf was named the official spokesman of now jailed presidential candidate.  He recently penned an editorial that was printed in the UK Guardian entitled “I speak for Mousavi. And Iran,” which purported to do just as the title dictated:

Before the revolution, Mousavi was a religious intellectual and an artist, who supported radical change but did not support the mullahs. After the revolution, when all religious intellectuals and even leftists backed Khomeini, he served as prime minister for eight years. The economy was stable, and he did not order the killings of opponents, or become corrupt.

In order to neutralize his power, the position of prime minister was eliminated from the constitution and he was pushed out of politics. So Mousavi returned to the world of artists because in a country where there are no real political parties, artists can act as a party. The artists supported Khatami and now they support Mousavi.

Previously, he was revolutionary, because everyone inside the system was a revolutionary. But now he’s a reformer. Now he knows Gandhi – before he knew only Che Guevara. If we gain power through aggression we would have to keep it through aggression. That is why we’re having a green revolution, defined by peace and democracy.

What we’re seeing emerge in Iran is a desire for a new political system, one perhaps less based in theocracy, and one more rooted in democracy. The desire is to have a system less governed by corruption and connection, and rooted in personal freedom. It’s no longer simply about one candidate, one election or one set of reform goals.

Honestly, for most of us, that’s what it was all about in the first place.  I had a conversation last night with a politically conservative friend of mine who expressed confusion as to why Americans of all political stripe and without an ounce of dissent are supporting Iranians when they were so divided over whether to support Iraqis and their pursuit for freedom.

I argued, after a bit of thought, that I think the difference here is that the rallying cry didn’t come from someone who was an American partisan of any stripe.

“If a conservative goes to war, he’s an imperialist hawk,” I said.  “If a liberal goes to war, he’s a meddling bleeding heart”

“Freedom is only okay depending on how its achieved?” he asked.

“There are easy ways to turn the process of freedom into an argument when it comes from someone with other agendas,” I responded. “When it comes from someone who’s crying out “Let me be free,” it’s hard to argue with that.”

Continued Protest in Iran Signal Shift in Goals [#iranElection] is a post from: The Inquisitr

I’ll get back to that tidbit in a moment, though. Many of us in the blogosphere as well as those reporting in the mainstream media have focused on the role that Twitter has played in facilitating communication within Iran for the now seemingly millions of protestors calling for a recount and fair election. When you examine what some are saying, like Harvard senior researcher Ethan Zuckerman, Twitter isn’t what Iranians are using, primarily, to talk to other Iranians:

“Social media is not at all a prime mover of what is happening on the ground,” says Ethan Zuckerman, a senior researcher at Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society…

“The people I know mainly tell me they hear about these protests from friends or by SMS,” [Trita Parsi, president of the National Iranian American Council] says.

So exactly why is Twitter getting all the attention it’s getting right now?  The public perception, which is incidentally the same perception apparently shared by the US State Department, is that the status microblogging service is facilitating the revolution, there. I think Matthew DeVries best expressed that sentiment in a thread on Friendfeed about the State Department’s acknowlegement of Twitter:

[Evan Williams] is now sitting there thinking “This is the finger I use to turn on and off the revolution of the second biggest country in the middle east, and it’s the same finger I use to scratch my ass” – Matthew DeVries

If that sentiment isn’t correct, what is the proper sentiment?  Ryan Tate at Valleywag has a theory:

While Twitter might not be drawing large crowds to marches, it is unquestionably useful for publishing news in an atmosphere of suppression. This disproportionately benefits foreign news organizations and the American digerati, so it’s no wonder these elites are the ones most loudly trumpeting Twitter as a crucial instrument of communication on the Iran situation.

Still, these benefactors would do well to remind their readers that, with regard to Twitter and actual Iranians in Iran, the medium has not yet become the message.

That’s one angle to take, I suppose.  The truth is that the days of it being primarily “media elite” as the only users of Twitter, as Ryan puts it, are long past. Most Twitter users use Twitter as it was intended – as a way to communicate with their close friends. That means, for most people, when news is important, it finds them.

And news did find most of us on Twitter, regardless of media blackout or other governmentally imposed technological limitations. Twitter (and as the numbers telling us now – Facebook) was the conduit by which news found us.

What Was That About 4chan You Were Saying?

I happened upon a SlashDot thread earlier this evening that was incredibly illuminating.  The conversations taking place on that thread were, as is common on the site, a lot more interesting than what the article was about.

The original article was an examination of early 90’s science fiction’s view of cyberwar juxtaposed with the reality of what is going on now.  The threads that emerged below that painted a much more nuanced picture of what’s going on within the various tight-knit communities outside what is traditionally considered the “Web 2.0” bubble.

For instance, it appears that news discovery and discussion community Fark is playing an intregral role in the creation and dissemination of proxy servers to those in Iran who are looking to regain Internet access:

Re: Fark
Threads on Fark have reached over 20K posts. People are setting up proxy servers to allow outgoing Twitter messages (bypassing Iranian firewall filters), with several people giving out do-it-yourself proxy kits. There is an active Go Green campaign and protests planned in many cities. Posting of relevant Twitter messages to keep everyone informed.

Even more surprising is that 4chan is doing a lot of the same stuff, with an added flair one might imagine is more their style.

Not to mention 4chan, but…
Those mischievous denizens over at 4chan have apparently managed to throw up over 9000 proxies and waged a very effective series of denial of service attacks against the Iranian government. Somebody send those guys some Redbull and Cheetos!

any story about this that doesn’t mention Fark…
Anyone that writes a story about this that doesn’t mention Fark specifically needs to do a bit more research on the subject. Tats(uma) obviously gets quite a bit of credit, but he wasn’t the only person there keeping up with the tweets. Fark (and oddly, 4chan) became major filters for finding the real data for the first several days. I’m amazed at the people who still don’t know there’s effectively a civil war going on in Iran, since CNN and other mainstream media didn’t really start reporting on it until yesterday.

It’s interesting to note this because these types of communities are generally known for their chaotic style and wild antics, that on when they occasionally spill out into the real world are generally portrayed in a somewhat negative light.

It is these sorts of actually helpful actions by Fark, 4chan, and members of their community who’ve sparked up projects outside of those communities that are acting as ambassadors to the people of Iran, and having an unmitigated effect on how Americans are percieved in that country.

Re:Listen…
There have already been messages from Iranians acknowledging the support they’re getting from Americans and expressing their surprise and gratitude, even while acknowledging a lack of coverage by US media. If the Iranian people understand that the American people are their friends, they will be considerably less likely to view America as an enemy and considerably more likely to oppose an anti-American viewpoint by their own government.

This is more about Americans bonding with Iranians than it is about the US government bonding with the Iranian government.

We’re Not Just Diminishing the Role of Heritage Media, but Government Itself

In a way, it is this wider picture of social media that really turned on the lightbulb for me. Those of us in the field of journalism, in the blogosphere, and in social media punditry world have been focused on the role of Twitter in changing the paradigm of Heritage Media news outlets like CNN through crowd-sourced news gathering.

There have been a lot of salient things said to that affect, and you may hear one or two more salient thoughts from me before I’m talked out on the topic, but what dawned on me is that governments and traditional media have for a long time acted as a hard and fast barrier between the peoples of countries on opposite sides of the world.

Despite language barriers and technological difficulties – or perhaps because they existed – two countries that for decades have been imagining the worst of one another came together in solidarity for the cause of freedom.

When I say they came together, I don’t mean it in a “I’ll change my profile icon green for a few days” sort of way, but in a “let’s mobilize our community to provide tactical and strategic support for your community” sort of way.

This is the stuff that we have traditionally relegated to all of our respective shadow governments and intelligence organizations in the past, and a quick perusal throughout modern history shows the monumental fail after monumental fail that typically results in.

It’s no longer the case that we as citizens must yell and scream at our governments to make an overt public statement of support – we can do that for ourselves in a way they’ll hear.  We don’t have to call our congressmen and ask for them to lobby the intelligence sub-committee to increase funding to the program being used to develop better technology to aid distressed and oppressed people – we can simply wrap it up in a .rar file and send it to them.

That’s what’s happening now, and it’s simply impressive to watch.

The Diminishing Role of Government in the Social Media Age [#iranElection] is a post from: The Inquisitr

In the case of what continues to be the top trending topic today on Twitter, #IranElection, there are those with a vested interest in utilizing the popularity of a trending topic to do worse than move a few more units of their suspicious product. Those with political skin in the game have been found to be impersonating credible, on the ground Iranian Twitterers to spread disinformation intended to harm the cause of the political dissidents, according to a post from Twitspam this evening.

Twitspam is a blog that tracks all sorts of malicious and spammy users of Twitter, and they’ve compiled a list suspicious and malicious Twitter users attempting to exploit the #IranElection hashtag.

Block Now

Obvious Disinfo

• http://twitter.com/Persian_Guy (Using fake RT to spread disinfo)
• http://twitter.com/serv_ (posing fake RTs; disinfo)
• http://twitter.com/TruePersian1 (Was preaching violence & destruction in all caps; now updates are protected)
• http://twitter.com/twitrevolution (Suggesting violence towards police and blocking of roads; such actions are likely arrestable. Either provocateur or someone really violent)

Trolls and SPAM

• http://twitter.com/louis_friend (Tweets are obviously fake, includes obscene links such as the infamous Goatse pics)
• http://twitter.com/jamal1986 (all links are to infamous Goatse pic)NEW!
• http://twitter.com/hoobastank_band (all links are to infamous Goatse pic and is faking RTs) NEW!
• http://twitter.com/WorldNewsUpdate (all links are to infamous Goatse pic) NEW!
• http://twitter.com/atcatsf (all links are to infamous Goatse pic) NEW!
• http://twitter.com/falseprophetakb (Nazi symbolism; claims Mohammad is a “false prophet” hence the username, and name is “HowardStern”)
• http://twitter.com/IRFORREAL (fake url for unrelated site)
• http://twitter.com/ohaitere (Alternating between a false report of Mousavi death and SPAM about iPhones)
• http://twitter.com/jfcrow (few tweets, all appear to be random keywords)
• http://twitter.com/Karmuk (Retweeting same message over and over)
• http://twitter.com/mikehiavelli (Same tweets over and over)
• http://twitter.com/globalmeeting (Same tweets over and over)

Suspected

• http://twitter.com/FreeMediaNews (Some tweets are fake reports)
• http://twitter.com/IRElec (Using entrapment techniques that are well known)
• http://twitter.com/lisamforeman (Possibly fake Guardian.co.uk account)
• http://twitter.com/AJE_Producer (Possibly fake Al’ Jazerra Account)

To Watch

• http://twitter.com/amoo_miki (Was following many people with no updates; only just started posting)
• http://twitter.com/AnonymousInIran (Was an Anonymous Posting Proxy with ANYONE able to post through it; now banned in Iran)
• http://twitter.com/rccccr (was following users with Iran election tweets, still no posts)
• http://twitter.com/BrothersinAbrah (a single hashtag post only)
• http://twitter.com/_SuperGreen_ (No updates so far)
• http://twitter.com/ghb78 (Following seems to be random, followers likely auto-refollow)

Suspended or removed:

• http://twitter.com/IranisFree (Had link to a website that crashes IE)
• http://twitter.com/am12976
• http://twitter.com/iranianfree2k9
• http://twitter.com/rWhZEV (Fake Iran Election headlines)

Conspiracy Theories (Not necessarily purposeful disinfo)

• http://twitter.com/persiantiki
• http://twitter.com/chartingstocks (Writing fake articles on the Iranian Election Twitters)
• http://twitter.com/obamaspy

Twitspam Identifies Purveyors of Disinformation [#iranElection] is a post from: The Inquisitr

Several people on the streets of cities of Iran are still able to get access to outside communications and are tweeting and blogging in real time from inside Iran

Here’s the twitter stream from someone inside Iran. I won’t link directly to the profile here because the person is actually risking arrest by sending information out to the rest of the world. (psst: look at the photo)

Iran News On Twitter from Inside Iran

What is a President without a Country? – #Iranelection RT

Tomorrow march is in memory of those killed by Government – Mousavi will lead Sea of Green – #Iranelection RT

news – Mousavi & Khatami have delivered joint letter to Ministry of Justice demanding release of protestors – #Iranelection

ordinary ppl in Iran have no reliable info – gov is trying to break all communication routes – #Iranelection

Sea of Green will continue tomorrow and every day until election is declared void – #Iranelection

chanting ‘my brother – my martyr – I will claim your vote for you!’ – #Iranelection

Today again we were hundreds of thousands of Sea of Green – #Iranelection

Today and every day all protestors were peaceful – #Iranelection

Gov spreading false rumours on twitter that protestors are causing violence – this is NOT true – #Iranelection

Confirmed Mousavi – Friday Sea of Green will march to Friday Prayers in Tehran – #Iranelection

Poignant.

Iran News on Twitter: Blogged Live from Inside Iran #Iranelection is a post from: The Inquisitr

I think it’s an important story to take to the public, which is why I’ve asked Duncan Riley if I could post here at Inquisitr, rather than just my personal blog. I feel these stories deserve to be presented to a wider audience, and thankfully Duncan has obliged my request.

Over the last few days, though, everywhere I go, I keep seeing pleas that look like this one I saw on a CNN blog post:

TexGent
June 16th, 2009 2:42 pm ET

People have been begging CNN to immediately quit reporting with usernames from Twitter. As reported in this piece, individuals are being arrested and questioned due to exposure – intentional or otherwise.

There was someone above in a comment who posted a twitter name in their post. Moderator, please remove immediately and insure that their safety is protected b not being stupid about what is said.

As many have said the Iranian govt is watching twitter and the news sites and are shutting down those whose names are being broadcast and disseminated out there.

Users have been asked to remove the tweeter’s username from ReTweets to protect their identity.

Can someone please explain to me how this is supposed to work?

How is it that the Iranian government going to find out the personal identity of a Twitter user?  Has Twitter suddenly started including GPS meta data in their API? Have @biz and @ev started sending out IP address data for users when asked for it by election stealing foreign presidents?

Meanwhile, if lists of reputable purveyors of on-the-ground information stop getting published, how am I, a news consumer, short of spending all day watching the twitter public timeline, going to learn what’s a credible news tip and what’s not? There aren’t great hard-coded methods of determining trust within Twitter, so the best method we have is by looking at the Twitter ID of the tweet originator, and scanning it for the tell-tale signs we know to look for in a disreputable account.

To that end, if Iran really wanted to know who was using Twitter from within the country, they certainly wouldn’t need to read the comments on my blog or on CNN.  All they’d need to do is set up one or two honey-pot proxy servers, or just grab Twitter cookie files from the browser whenever a user tries to go to the site and hits the national firewall.

Finding published sources of reputable Twitter posters in blog comments is the least efficient method they could choose to find their identities.

Where Did This Idea Come From?
From the best I can determine, Cory Doctorow was the first to popularize this idea.  Cory is one of the founders of the uber-popular blog Boing Boing, and fairly well respected in privacy and IT circles.

He made a blog post the other day he titled the “Cyberwar guide for Iran elections,” in which he said:

5. Don’t blow their cover! If you discover a genuine source, please don’t publicise their name or location on a website. These bloggers are in REAL danger. Spread the word discretely through your own networks but don’t signpost them to the security forces. People are dying there, for real, please keep that in mind…

I understand the importance of not releasing a location of a source.  Telling the Iranian government through a public announcement of where a dissident may be can be tantamount to putting their life in danger.  Generally, though, the present location of any given Twitter user can’t be found through simply revealing their Twitter ID.

Certainly, I, like I hope most people, will use their judgment in determining what information is personally identifiable. Until someone explains to me the method Iran is using to divine personally identifiable information out of Twitter IDs, I’ll continue to publish Twitter names when appropriate – it’s the best way I know of to help keep the signal visible amongst the cacophony of noise we all are having to wade through.

Twitter IDs Aren’t Personally Identifiable Info [#IranElection] is a post from: The Inquisitr