Emails obtained by The Daily Beast show that Facebook executives took unusual steps to protect the identity of protest leaders during the Egypt uprising. Mike Giglio on how the social media giant scrambled to keep pace with Egypt's revolution.
As unlikely protests swept across Egypt on January 25, an administrator from the Facebook page that was helping to drive the uprisings emailed a top official of the social network, asking for help.
Related story on The Daily Beast: Facebook Chat Gets Hijacked
The popular page had sounded the call for the protests 10 days earlier. It then became an online staging ground for the budding movement, beaming a constant barrage of news and updates to the walls of its 400,000-plus fans, along with impassioned pleas for people to join.
Protests swelled into the night. The We Are All Khaled Said administrator worried that the Mubarak regime, clued in to the page's importance,...
As unlikely protests swept across Egypt on January 25, an administrator from the Facebook page that was helping to drive the uprisings emailed a top official of the social network, asking for help.
Related story on The Daily Beast: Facebook Chat Gets Hijacked
The popular page had sounded the call for the protests 10 days earlier. It then became an online staging ground for the budding movement, beaming a constant barrage of news and updates to the walls of its 400,000-plus fans, along with impassioned pleas for people to join.
Protests swelled into the night. The We Are All Khaled Said administrator worried that the Mubarak regime, clued in to the page's importance,...
- 2/25/2011
- by Mike Giglio
- The Daily Beast
In 2009, Iran was in turmoil, and the Islamic Republic was blocking and monitoring sites used by opposition groups—until a team led by American It specialist Austin Heap built a program, Haystack, and touted it as a secure and anonymous Web portal for Iranians. The Guardian lauded it, and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton personally praised Heap. The Us government even gave him rare permission to export his cryptological software to Iran. Among an elite group of beta testers—and many more unauthorized users—Haystack was a godsend.
Then in Sept. 2010, security experts discovered a problem: Iranian authorities, the very ones Haystack was supposed to circumvent and shield against, were exploiting massive holes in the encryption scheme to snoop on dissidents.
Jacob Appelbaum, a security expert affiliated with WikiLeaks and the Tor Project, Danny O'Brien of the Committee to Protect Journalists and Evgeny Morozov of Foreign Policy sounded the initial alarms.
Then in Sept. 2010, security experts discovered a problem: Iranian authorities, the very ones Haystack was supposed to circumvent and shield against, were exploiting massive holes in the encryption scheme to snoop on dissidents.
Jacob Appelbaum, a security expert affiliated with WikiLeaks and the Tor Project, Danny O'Brien of the Committee to Protect Journalists and Evgeny Morozov of Foreign Policy sounded the initial alarms.
- 9/20/2010
- by Neal Ungerleider
- Fast Company
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