[ISN] US set to hike aid aimed at Iranians

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2009/07/26/us_to_increase_funding_for_hackivists_aiding_iranians/

By Farah Stockman
Boston Globe Staff
July 26, 2009

WASHINGTON - The Obama administration is poised to dramatically increase 
funding aimed at helping Iranian activists circumvent government 
controls on the Internet, according to Congressional aides, marking a 
new wave of US support for Web-based dissent at a time when the Iranian 
regime has clamped down on street protests.

The funding, which is set to double from $15 million in 2009 to $30 
million next year for Iran and other countries that block free speech on 
the Internet, puts the US government in an unlikely alliance with 
counterculture computer activists - some of them in the Boston area - 
who have launched spirited volunteer efforts to help Iranian reformers.

“You are engaging in cyberwarfare, on the side of the good guys,’’ said 
Rob Faris of Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society, 
which received State Department funds in 2007 to study the Internet’s 
impact on democracy and currently has a grant to look into what kinds of 
people are trying to get around government Internet filters.

The new funds, part of a budget proposal that Congress is slated to 
approve, could be a windfall for nonprofit organizations that provide 
Iranians with ways to view websites blocked by the regime, for software 
developers who train dissidents on how to e-mail in ways that cannot be 
traced, and for Iranian activists living outside the country who have 
launched Web-based forums on strategic protests, democracy, and 
human-rights violations.

But the funding increase has raised eyebrows on Capitol Hill, where some 
in Congress question whether the effort is consistent with Obama’s 
stated goals of engaging, rather than antagonizing, the Iranian regime. 
Iran, which has repeatedly accused the United States of trying to 
engineer a revolution inside its borders, cracked down on street 
demonstrators protesting the results of a June 12 election that kept 
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in power. The proposal for additional US 
money for Internet activities predated the unrest.

[...]


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