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POPSForeign Policy: Iran's Terrifying Facebook Police
Second, it means, as far as authorities are concerned, our online and offline identities are closely tied and we have to be fully prepared to be quizzed about any online trace that we have left (I can easily see us being asked our Facebook and Twitter handles in immigration forms; one of the forms I regularly fill flying back to the US has recently added a field for email address). Third, this reveals that some of the spontaneous online activism we witnessed in the last few weeks - with Americans re-tweeting the posts published by those in Tehran - may eventually have very dire consequences, as Iranians would need to explain how exactly they are connected to foreigners that follow them on Twitter (believe me, I've observed enough bureaucratic stupidity in Eastern Europe to know that even some of the officials who follow Twitter activity on a daily basis may not know how it works). I am curious if there have been other reports of foreigners being asked about their social media ac
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POPSNeda Agha Soltan ~ The Face of Iranian Resistance The name "Neda" can be heard several times on the video clip, presumably by her father. It has been reported that he can be heard saying (in Farsi) "Neda, don't be afraid. Neda, don't be afraid. Neda, stay with me. Neda stay with me!" At 19:05 June 20th Place: Karegar Ave., at the corner crossing Khosravi St. and Salehi st. A young woman who was standing aside with her father watching the protests was shot by a basij member hiding on the rooftop of a civilian house. He had clear shot at the girl and could not miss her. However, he aimed straight her heart. I am a doctor, so I rushed to try to save her. But the impact of the gunshot was so fierce that the bullet had blasted inside the victim’s chest, and she died in less than 2 minutes. The protests were going on about 1 kilometers away in the main street and some of the protesting crowd were running from tear gas used among them Please let the world know
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POPSThink you're anonymous online? Don't count on it
More: That might not sound like a big deal until one considers an example: "First, we can immediately find his political orientation based on his strong opinions about Power and Terror: Noam Chomsky in Our Times and Fahrenheit 9/11. Strong guesses about his religious views can be made based on his ratings on Jesus of Nazareth and The Gospel of John. He did not like Super Size Me at all; perhaps this implies something about his physical size? Both items that we found with predominantly gay themes, Bent and Queer as folk were rated one star out of five. He is a cultish follower of Mystery Science Theater 3000. This is far from all we found about this one person, but having made our point, we will spare the reader further lurid details."…Back in 2000, a Carnegie Mellon researcher took a look at 1990 US census data and concluded that 87 percent of all Americans could be uniquely identified based on only three items: ZIP code, gender, and date of birth.
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POPSConfess your sins anonymously, via Twitter.com I have no idea what to say about this ... except that I doubt I'll be able to keep myself from periodically reading the posts on this account. I haven't posted anything myself, yet, but I'm thinking about it.