
Iranians Are Using Satellite TV to Beam in Banned Internet - jonbaer
http://www.wired.com/2016/04/ingenious-way-iranians-using-satellite-tv-beam-banned-data/
======
rmason
The Mullah's like the Soviets before them will find that once they lose the
ability to block the truth their expiration date is only a matter of time.

The Soviets were brought down by the humble FAX machine. When the United Auto
Workers reached out to Lech Walesa of the Solidarity union and said what is
your biggest problem he reportedly answered secure communication. So the union
sent him hundreds of FAX machines and that is how Solidarity was able to
coordinate their protests and share information.

What these guys in California are doing with their satellite channel and
accompanying software is important. Now they need to enable the former leaders
of the green revolution with a mesh network in each city in Iran. The answer
once again could come out of Detroit where they're the world's leaders. All
they would need is the funding, doubt it will come from the Feds but maybe
from the UAW once again?

[https://www.alliedmedia.org/dctp/digitalstewards](https://www.alliedmedia.org/dctp/digitalstewards)

~~~
mehrdada
That's wishful thinking. I can't say much about the Soviets, but the regime in
Iran, or at least a chunk of the people in power, understands how to balance
their power and freedom (critically the "freedom to get rich", despite, and
often because of massive corruption) and the perception and hope of freedom in
the wider society and they adapt well to new circumstances. They are much more
sophisticated than you portray them to be in your comment. If they weren't as
good in adapting, they would have been gone many times by now.

Source: personal [unfortunate] experience of having been born and lived there
for a the first couple decades of my life.

P.S. Also note that a lot of (and I'd say the majority of young) even non-
technical people know how to circumvent internet censorship and are regularly
on Facebook and social media, so it's not exactly a social revolution
happening just today. In fact, I see this type of system without direct user
choice of the content, just another form of centralized, controlled, media,
which is a step down from normal internet over some sort of proxy/VPN (albeit
slow). (I don't want to detract from the technical contribution; just putting
it in perspective of the existing available techniques in wide use over
there.)

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brownbat
> And Yahsat’s satellite hovers over the Middle East, making it harder for the
> Iranian government to jam the satellite’s signal as it’s broadcast directly
> down to Iranian dishes.

Are some angles harder to block than others? Or do they just mean that
satellites are hard to block in general?

~~~
Hyperborian
> Are some angles harder to block than others?

As a matter of fact, yes.

Satellite dishes have, by their very nature, a narrow "beam width" of
reception. That's so that they can pick up the weak signals coming from
satellites (which, having limited sources of power out in space, can't produce
as strong a signal as terrestrial broadcasts), and it's why they have to be
carefully pointed in order to receive that signal.

In order to jam a signal and prevent someone from receiving it, you have to
overpower it by aiming a signal of your own on the same frequency at their
antenna. Since satellite dishes have such narrow reception beams, though, that
means in order to jam them you need to get your signal out in front of the
dish, so you can aim it directly in. If the dishes are pointed to the side, at
a satellite near the horizon, that's not so hard to do. You just need to get
your jamming transmitter up on a tower in the way and Bob's your uncle.

If those dishes are pointed straight up, on the other hand... well, there's
not much you can do without a capable space program. Iran is not exactly known
for their extensive space program. :)

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hendersoon
Nice to see an example of the CIA slush fund financing something other than
sending arms to "freedom fighters".

This sort of thing is how they _should_ be spending that money.

~~~
Aelinsaar
The problem is that American defense contractors don't get a slice of this
pie, while exporting arms for whatever reasons = $$$. There is also the
political pressure from some such leading luminaries as John "I can't feel my
feet!" McCain to throw weapons at every problem.

I agree though, this is pretty clever. It's not quite the RoK building a giant
bank of speakers on the DPRK border, but it's probably more effective.

~~~
hendersoon
Cost is only $100k per year and it's technically run by private citizens so
completely deniable from a diplomatic standpoint. It really is brilliant.

~~~
Aelinsaar
I want to believe that this is the kind of thinking that's rewarded, but...

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nandhp
This is similar to Outernet/Lantern
([https://outernet.is/](https://outernet.is/)), though Toosheh has the neat
feature of being able to reuse existing satellite receivers, which is
obviously very useful here. They also seem to have a much larger bandwidth
budget (1GB per hour with Toosheh vs 1GB per day with Outernet).

~~~
godzillabrennus
Outernet was download only free bandwidth last I checked.

Met the founder at TechWeek in Chicago and liked the idea. Backed it by buying
a shirt.

~~~
adamfisk
Unlike Outernet, this is also actually deployed in the field and works at
scale.

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tudorw
This is a great idea, could we move the top 100 viewed internet videos of they
day into a daily satellite packet and take the pressure of the pipes, nice :)

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amazon_not
You'd think they could come up with a more efficient way of broadcasting
content than just rebroadcasting the same content over and over again hourly.

A more interesting approach would be to use a data carousel with erasure
codes. That way you could tune in anytime and be done once you've collected
enough blocks to reassemble the wanted files. You could even vary the
allocated bitrate for each file, starting with a higher bitrate to get early
birds fast access and then lowering the bitrate as more and more people
already completed their download, but still allowing stragglers to catch up.

Since this is just a curated collection of content, it has very little to do
with the Internet, unlike the title suggests. At the very least they should
add some level of interactivity, so that users could vote on content to be
sent and/or submit content for broadcasting like other similar satellite data
casting systems already in use.

~~~
djaychela
And what would be the channel for that feedback? Surely any such system would
risk detection of the user, particularly for a non-technical user who may make
a mistake in the (needed) security/privacy software/access needed for such a
back channel?

As for a more complex data transmission scheme, do all satellite receivers
support it?

~~~
amazon_not
> And what would be the channel for that feedback? Surely any such system
> would risk detection of the user, particularly for a non-technical user who
> may make a mistake in the (needed) security/privacy software/access needed
> for such a back channel?

How about using that nifty Tor browser they keep rebroadcasting to access a
hidden service website to vote and issue requests? Hidden services cannot by
definition be accessed without Tor and are thus more secure from prying eyes,
even when used by non-technical users.

> As for a more complex data transmission scheme, do all satellite receivers
> support it?

The satellite receivers just store the transport stream. The data is extracted
by parsing the transport stream with a Windows program. You can implement
whatever scheme you like with software.

~~~
mehdiyahya
For now, there have been regular surveys to get feedback from users. The idea
of using Tor to get more detailed feedback is a good one. Thank you.

~~~
amazon_not
You are welcome. Just do it in a secure way and don't store any information.
Make submitting and voting completely anonymous. Don't require logins and
don't log anything to protect your users. Use plain HTML and don't use
JavaScript.

Even if the above makes the voting easy to rig, it's more important to ensure
anonymity than perfectly accurate voting results. And even with biased voting
data you can figure out what the users are interested in. If nothing else it
will help you cull content, as lack of interest is also a good indicator.

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alfiedotwtf
The elephant in the room is that the State Department is behind Toosheh
funding

~~~
zymhan
Ah, I was wondering how they could afford their own Satellite TV channel...

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roywiggins
Sounds like Teletext 2.0- The BBC Micro could even get software over Teletext
for a while, and that was the 80s!

~~~
amazon_not
Pretty much. Only difference is that data isn't sent between scan lines but
embedded in the transport stream.

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wtbob
> a video game that includes lessons on Iranian constitutional rights

It's been noted regarding the Soviet satellites that only a tyrannical
government needs to shoot to keep people _in_ ; one might likewise argue that
only a tyranny tries to stop its people from learning their rights under that
government's constitution.

Before we get too full of ourselves, we might consider what a public school
makes of teaching the First, Second, Ninth and Tenth Amendments …

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akx
So how exactly is Toosheh getting this satellite to beam their content?

~~~
malekpour
Years ago I was using [http://www.skygrabber.com](http://www.skygrabber.com)
and similar apps to get free internet. I remember I got OpenOffice, JDK, .NET
SDK and terabytes of random data while I had no internet access whatsoever.

~~~
mehdiyahya
Skygrabber works with DVB cards and are used to receive from satellite data
streams. Toosheh works with the existing TV satellite receivers. The data is
not sent through the TV channel stream instead of the conventional data
streams.

------
furyg3
> low and expensive—a gigabyte of data costs around $1 in a country where many
> people make only hundreds of dollars a month.

"Hundreds" is ambiguous, let's conservatively say it's $200. So half a percent
of your income went to a plan with 1GB of data. Here in Holland the average
(gross) wages was €3073 in 2012 (most recent numbers I can find), and in 2012
€50/month for a plan with 1GB internet was pretty normal. So the Dutch are
playing 3-4 times as much of their relative income for data, excluding the
fact that they probably pay higher taxes and that 'hundreds' probably means
more than $200.

~~~
clishem
Respectfully, but there were no bandwidth caps in the Netherlands in 2012 [1].
Furthermore, € 50 is an exessive amount of money to be paying for only
internet, even in 2012. Perhaps you have mobile internet in mind?

[1]: [http://www.oecd.org/internet/broadband/BB-
Portal_5i_13July_F...](http://www.oecd.org/internet/broadband/BB-
Portal_5i_13July_Final.xls).

~~~
furyg3
Sorry, I was assuming they were talking about mobile internet (in many
developing countries this is the primary internet source).

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xufi
Now only if you could do this in China without getting around the Great wall.
I take it Iranians have it a tad easier

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ape4
Would complete if individual users could request videos somehow.

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infocollector
Why aren't the Chinese doing this?

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agumonkey
How many alternative networks are made (be it satellite, mesh network, ham) ?

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pmarreck
Is there any way that I as a Westerner can help this process along?

~~~
_wmd
Move to the US and pay taxes

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kw71
F You Wired.

"Here's the thing with ad blockers."

I'm not using any ad blocker! I'm not letting you run scripts in my browser.
Why do you need to run scripts to show a static magazine article, with ads or
not?

You aren't getting my dollar, but you would have gotten some impressions ($$$)
and I would have read the article if you didn't act like a retard with your
website.

~~~
spikej
Seriously, just stick this in front of most sites/articles:
[http://www.readability.com/m?url=](http://www.readability.com/m?url=)

And here it is in bookmarklet form
javascript:void(window.location.href='[http://www.readability.com/m?url='+window.location.href](http://www.readability.com/m?url='+window.location.href))

~~~
enraged_camel
I get a "Readability was unable to parse this page" error when I plug in the
submitted Wired article.

------
chris_wot
I can see the Iranian government super gluing all the USB ports on all the
receivers. Sigh.

~~~
malekpour
Government has no control over receivers since those are already banned and
people buy them from underground market. Selling, buying or installing
receivers are all illegal and punishable. Having said that, majority of
Iranians are watching satellite TVs.

~~~
nissehulth
You can't really hide a satellite dish, seems to me it would be easy to find
houses with illegal equipment?

~~~
malekpour
We are talking about millions of dishes. This is where law ridicules itself
and impossible to enforce. There are some police raids once a while, but not
effective.

[http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-news-from-
elsewhere-27920659](http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-news-from-
elsewhere-27920659)

~~~
danharaj
Selectively enforced laws are more useful to the government than laws that are
consistently enforced.

~~~
azernik
But not useful for their original purpose (in this case, suppressing satellite
TV usage). Just useful as general leverage against targeted people, which the
Iranian government is not short of anyway.

~~~
ptaipale
The actual purpose is not to supress satellite TV usage but to keep the
population in sufficient fear of powers-that-be. You can do many things, just
don't stick your head out.

