Fuck Nokia and Siemens

[Jaron]

Dumb faggot.

[DGuller]

Well, then, sorry about relying on WSJ reporting. Won't happen again. 

Damn right you should be sorry.

[CountDeMoney]

This kind of moral equivalency is why regimes like Iran are allowed to fester for so long. For me, it's a moral issue - and I am not going to buy their products any more.

You actually seem shocked that a German company would do that.

If it makes you feel better, we arrested a Siemens tech for theft the other day.

[Jaron]

I bet every time he reads Siemens , Marcin drools a little bit.

[jimmy olsen]

This kind of moral equivalency is why regimes like Iran are allowed to fester for so long. For me, it's a moral issue - and I am not going to buy their products any more.

You actually seem shocked that a German company would do that.

If it makes you feel better, we arrested a Siemens tech for theft the other day.

What was he stealing?

[CountDeMoney]

What was he stealing?

A wallet out of a woman's purse.  Busted right on camera.

[citizen k]

Iran Uses Tech Tools To Censor Dissent

http://www.npr.org/templates/player/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=105775075&m=105776619

[dps]

What was he stealing?

A wallet out of a woman's purse.  Busted right on camera.

Well, apparantly selling high-tech equipment to evil totalitarian regimes isn't all that profitable, if they have to send out their employees to lift people's wallets.

[citizen k]

The Challenges To Turning Off The Internet In Iran

by Martin Kaste


All Things Considered, June 17, 2009 · Opposition groups in Iran have been using the Internet and social media tools such as Twitter and Facebook to protest the recent re-election of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. While the government has cracked down on dissent in the streets, it's having a harder time quieting electronic dissent.

Which raises the question: Why doesn't the Iranian government just turn off the Internet?

Answer: That's easier said than done.

If you wanted to try to control the Internet, you'd need access to a major gateway, a place like the 4545 Building at the University of Washington in Seattle. Down in the sub-basement, bundles of fiber optic cables connect the university's network to the outside world. Daniel Schwalbe, the university's senior security engineer, says those cables represent the university's main electronic hub. If the university wanted to censor students' access to the Internet, he says, this is where it would happen.

Not that it would be easy.

"It's next to impossible to do that reliably," Schwalbe says. "We can put some blocks in; we could block Facebook.com. And I would say that in less than a day they would have access to Facebook again because they would figure out a way around that."

The Way Around

For example, students could connect through proxies — friendly computers on the outside that relay the information. Still, the university would enjoy a kind of chokehold on the Internet. It could make things harder for students by constantly updating the list of blocked Web sites and by dipping into the flow of information coming through the building where Schwalbe works. Not that the University of Washington would want to do that. But the government of Iran does, and it has the means.

Jonathan Zittrain, co-founder of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School, says Iran — like a university campus — pipes the Internet into the country through a central, controlled gateway. That allows the government to block Web sites and do other kinds of filtering.

But, like resourceful American students in search of Facebook, many Iranians can get around blocks, using proxies and other methods. Complicating matters for the authorities, Zittrain says, is the fact that social networking services tend to be decentralized.

For instance, many people read Twitter posts without ever visiting Twitter.com, because they use the third-party services that have grown up around Twitter. "If the government blocks Twitter.com, the people using these alternatives don't even realize there's been a block," Zittrain says.

What The Government Can Do

The government can still gum up the works. Twitterers can be anonymous, which makes their information hard to authenticate. The opposition has warned of disinformation "tweets," presumably posted by government supporters.

The Iranian opposition also has fewer options in its cat-and-mouse game with the censors because U.S. sanctions have kept some American companies from offering services like instant messaging in Iran. Still, persistent Internet users usually find the information they want; the only sure way to block them is to pull the plug on the whole Internet.

And Danny O'Brien of the Electronic Frontier Foundation says he doubts the Iranian government wants to do that.

"It's like closing down an essential utility in order to control your populace," O'Brien says. "And that's not a decision you can take lightly."

These days, the Internet is so integrated into industry, government — life itself — that even in Iran, shutting it down is the political equivalent of going nuclear.

[BuddhaRhubarb]

Summary for everyone else: Nokia & Siemens sold that same equipment to every other country(organization/business) who offered to give them money for said products. They really don't get to make a call on how these things are implemented.

Are these kinds of equipment useful for evil regimes? Yes? Can they be used for non evil purposes? Yes.

That's a really really shitty excuse. If I run a gun-selling shop, only because I also sell guns to law-abiding citizens does not alleviate my responsibility for knowingly selling guns to a maniacal killer. They do not have to do business with Iran - they chose to - and they could have reasonably expected what use this technology will be put to.

Your shitty argument could actually very well be used to defend selling enriched uranium to Iran or North Korea as well - after all, nuclear energy can be used for "non evil purposes", too.

It's not my shitty argument. it's theirs. I'm not culpable for Billion dollar corporations doing business with whoever the fuck they want (any of them old enough also did business with the Nazis like every other multi-national) Evil (by their very nature) Corporations doing business with Evil govs without giving a shit what their product is used for? Exactly how the world works.

Don't buy their products. It's all you can do. like pissing into a hurricane.

[Zanza]

You actually seem shocked that a German company would do that.

Siemens did a lot of shady deals in the last decade, but this does not even rank. I mean they wanted to sell an entire high-tech nuclear enrichment factory to China a couple of years ago. I think they didn't get an export approval for that though.

[citizen k]

You actually seem shocked that a German company would do that.

Siemens did a lot of shady deals in the last decade, but this does not even rank.

Listen to the NPR broadcast
http://www.npr.org/templates/player/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=105775075&m=105776619

[Zanza]

The obvious solution would be to offer a SSL encrypted version of Twitter or Facebook. That would make deep packet inspection extremely costly for the Iranian government. Of course, they would probably just block the necessary ports for that.

Listen to the NPR broadcast
http://www.npr.org/templates/player/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=105775075&m=105776619

Not much new information in that. The author says he was right in the first place. What else could he say?

[citizen k]

The obvious solution would be to offer a SSL encrypted version of Twitter or Facebook. That would make deep packet inspection extremely costly for the Iranian government. Of course, they would probably just block the necessary ports for that.

Listen to the NPR broadcast
http://www.npr.org/templates/player/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=105775075&m=105776619

Not much new information in that. The author says he was right in the first place. What else could he say?

He also said its becoming more standard in networking equipment as well.

[CountDeMoney]

Listen to the NPR broadcast

Sorry, but NPR broadcasts make me want to cut off my own nuts and teabag myself.