By August 6, 2009, Heap had made the following statement to the BBC regarding Haystack: “It’s completely secure for the user so the government can’t snoop on them.By the next day, Heap was big news, hyped in the BBC as “being on the front lines” of the “Twitter revolution.”.When I woke up this morning, I had received more than 300 e-mails from volunteers trying to contribute and lighting the path forward for a movement that is both new and old.” On June 16, 2009, a virtually unknown Austin Heap announced his intentions on, stating that after 24 hours of offering relays to Iranians (whom he apparently found via Twitter), he was “receiving more than 2,000 simultaneous connections per second from Iran.No one was capable of speaking to the tool’s security or efficacy, and yet, a number of journalists did anyway. The truth is that, until this week, no one–neither the media nor the circumvention community–could actually vouch for Haystack one way or the other, because none of them actually saw a copy. So what of the media’s role? Haystack has been billed by the media since last summer as a wonder tool, a silver bullet for the Iranians who need desperately to evade censorship. Thus, I think that the calling out that has happened over the course of the past week–by Evgeny, Danny, and others, on private e-mail lists, and on Twitter, and in the media–is more than fair. As far as I’m aware, until very recently, he remained mostly unresponsive to such questions. A number of people attempted to contact the tool’s creator, Austin Heap, to clarify some of the statements made in media reports. Since last summer, plenty of people have raised questions about the media’s reporting on Haystack, and by extension, about the tool itself. What I don’t think has been raised loudly enough is an objection to the manner in which the media handled the nascent tool. Though Evgeny’s voice has perhaps been the loudest, it is also worth noting the important roles played by Danny O’Brien (and possibly others) in bringing this situation to light.Įnough has been said at this point–much of which I agree with–about the tool itself, as well as its founders. If you haven’t been following the controversy surrounding Haystack, you should probably check out this article by Evgeny Morozov for Foreign Policy’s Net Effect blog, which explains the security and ideological objections some folks are making to the tool. The tool, it was promised, was “encrypted at such a level it would take thousands of years to figure out what you’re saying.” As it turns out, it only takes may only take a couple of hours. Last summer, a circumvention tool was born, out of opportunity and a desire to help the Iranian people, who suffer from a rather pervasive form of Internet censorship.
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