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Riz Khan

Iran’s internet revolution

Protesters outwit online censorship to oppose the disputed election result.

Watch part two 

On Friday, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, issued a strong warning to leaders of mass protests against last week’s disputed presidential election that they would be responsible for any bloodshed.

But the tens of thousands of people marching in the streets of Iran are just a fraction of those taking to the internet to protest.

As the Iranian government seeks to crack down on the online networks of protesters who question the nation’s election results, both inside and outside the country, they have still managed to stay one step ahead.

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The government’s tight control of the internet has spawned a generation who are adept circumventing cyber roadblocks.

Access to networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter and the photography site Flickr have been blocked in Iran, where the government has also been accused of blocking text-messaging, launching denial of service attacks and spreading misinformation to protest communities online.

But internet users have been able to get around those roadblocks by the thousands, on internet proxies – web servers set up in other countries that allow Iranians to hide their computer’s internet protocol address from censors within the country.


On Monday, Riz is joined by Ethan Zuckerman, research fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University and the co-founder of Global Voices, a non-profit organisation that highlights grassroots citizen media around the world.

This episode of the Riz Khan show aired on Monday, June 22, 2009.