On one hand I don't want to ruin this thread with what is a common topic of disagreement; at the same time your kind offer provides a unique opportunity.
There is a fairly, if not pervasive let's call it vocal technical sentiment that blockchain and related crypto technologies, in some form, are government/oppression-proof; that it provides financial and communication paths and channels that are so firm they withstand attempts by government to shut them down and infiltrate. And that therefore they would "solve a lot of problems" in an oppressive / troubled society.
I come from a country that suffered a civil war, and I've always felt that was naive... Blockchain feels like a complex stack with myriad potential points of failure and accidental reveal for a normal citizen. More to the point, I feel many people are underestimating just how totalitarian and ruthless a government CAN get - a) in locking down through technological means by owning and monitoring infra and coming down immediately to anybody downloading/using/sending software/hardware/protocol/tokens/packets/dns/whatever that is even remotely suspicious, and b) their ability and willingness to apply violence quickly and mercilessly on mere suspicion, happily just as an example and upon a potentially innocent person, and therefore its quick and chilling effect on populace. Or to put it other way - there are places on this Earth where I would not personally dare install some software or send some data, and I'm reasonably technically competent; the risk and impact are just too high.
What's your and your friends' perspective? Are there bullet-proof / safe technological means? What's the risk ratio and success for subverting government whether via blockchain or VPN or Signal etc?
> many people are underestimating just how totalitarian and ruthless a government CAN get
Well said. I read your comment and I know immediately that it comes from first hand experience :(
I'm not aware of any technological solution to censorship by a government that's persistent enough and has firm control on everything. Unfortunately, there is also no way to overthrow a government that's ready to kill citizens, not without foreign aid.
Iranian government has the ability to inspect all packages. Of course the contents of the ones that are encrypted cannot be read, but they can do lots of analyses based on everything else and aggressively block anything they don't trust. When they are at this level, no network technology can have a large impact, because if it does, they just shut down everything like they did before.
Technologies like Starlink are harder to control, but the equipment has to be imported and doing that in scale with all the control they have is not feasible.
IMO they don't in the big picture. I agree with the points made in the adjacent comment (reality), but if you look at the frequency in which these protests happen, it's increasing and with each occurrence they are gaining wider support. Not only that, but in the recent protests, even smaller cities with more conservative population are now joining the fight. They wanted reform initially, now they have become more radical in nature. It's only a matter of time.
Or, I don't know, maybe it's because of the numerous memory safety issues we encounter. Perhaps we should use a borrow checker in our revolution compiler ;)
One is the government's violence. They shoot people with rifles, arrest them and kill them in the prison, do everything they can to scare people off.
Another is government's total control over communication. In 2009 they shut down the internet and SMS for a week. They did that again recently. When people cannot communicate, they can't organize.
Another is a lack of leadership. The government has successfully removed (killed or imprisoned) anyone people trusted. Intolerance plagues cooperation of opposition groups. Maybe that's because of the history of Iran, maybe part of that is fueled by the government (it maintains an army of supporters in cyber space, spreading misinformation, hatred, and everything else they can do to prevent a large scale movement, some times masquerading as opposition)
Unfortunately, when dealing with an authoritarian government, there is not much that can be done. In Iran, the government invests heavily on censorship infrastructure.
The country's entire internet traffic passes through an organization controlled by the government.
The telecom companies were sold to the military (we have two military branches, one is made to support the government, to to defend the country) and they control all communication, shutting down the service when necessary. They can even shut down specific regions when a riot is happening there.
The government sends EM noise in urban regions to block satellite TVs. This cannot be done easily to block something like Starlink due to spread spectrum modulation, but as the government controls official import gateways, there is no simple way to buy the equipment. Also, anyone with such a connection should take extreme measures to stay under radar. For most of them it's not easy for a normal person to even know they are revealing their identity, as many domestic service providers (food delivery, ride hailing, etc) have servers inside Iran and should cooperate with the government to share user data with them.
I wonder if something as simple as a Garmin inReach would still work?
Super low bandwith (literally just text messages) but it goes direct to iridium satellites. Plans arent super cheap but I imagine you could afford one for example if you really needed it.
I'm no longer living in Iran for a few years, so this is based on my close friends' observations, not mine.
People are doing their best and the riots are intensifying. But the riot police is using warfare to scatter them and when it does not work, they fire directly into the crowd, killing and wounding many. People have no way to fight back.
Sanctions are a serious problem for a SWE who lives in Iran. It's almost impossible to work for a foreign company. 40+ years of 40%+ inflation has hurt the economy so bad that more and more people are going down the Maslow's hierarchy. Lots of internet services (youtube, facebook, twitter, telegram, to name a few) are blocked by the government. Many others block requests from Iran because of sanctions. You cannot download java from the official source, you can guess the rest. Any paid service is out of question, as the country is shut off from international money transfer. Even after migrating to a western country, I still cannot work for any of the big American companies, until I become a PR of this new country. While I was working in another country, banks were afraid of opening an account for me and eventually gave me an account with no internet banking and no credit card.
I've been checking out HN for many years. It's the only remaining social network of like minded people, that has managed to stay clean of what infects others.
When I was in Iran (and while it's just a few years ago, things were much better at that time), I would go hiking, camping, biking, played tennis, much like what I do now.
>While I was working in another country, banks were afraid of opening an account for me and eventually gave me an account with no internet banking and no credit card.
This is something that gets to me about sanctions. It seems they prevent everyday citizens just wanting to work and live from doing so, while the government elites still get to enjoy themselves because they can easily find ways to circumvent it. What's then the point?
That may be the intention, but that's not the reality of sanctioned countries. Iran, North Korea, Cuba et al are still rolling with their old rich leaders in pleasure, but an agonizing populace. It's really sad-- some countries are just unlucky :(
We can argue that it's not even the intention. If a government shoots civilians, there is little hope to overthrow them by riots alone. Things can change if police, army and riot police start to disobey order. Also when there is foreign aid to arm people.
FWIW, I believe that sanctions serve to
1- Limit the reach of a regime's activity overseas. Iran's government was supporting several militant groups in the middle-east. Sanctions also had a huge effect on the country's nuclear program.
2- Force them to negotiate. That actually worked with Iran (but Trump reversed it)
