The US government is currently testing a system in Iran and China that allows people in countries with repressive regimes to access unfiltered internet. The technology behind it so far as I can tell is not all that complex. It’s called feed over email, and it basically works by sending information to people via email. To use this method, you of course need an email account which the government cannot control. For example, someone in Iran would need a Gmail account instead of an IranianNationalist account*.
Still, this technology seems more or less useless for anything that falls under the umbrella of web 2.0. Sure, you can read blogs and listen to podcasts by having them sent to your inbox, but feed over email does not incorporate anything to allow users unfiltered access to social networks or anything on which users post their own content. As has been the case recently, it’s the user-created content that makes all the difference. That became apparent when Twitter was used as the primary means of publicizing the political riots in Iran earlier this year, or when China blocked Twitter in hopes that the rest of the world wouldn’t find out about ethnic riots.
To be fair, feed over email is definitely a start. After all, to get people to take to the streets and fight for themselves, they need to first have information compelling them to do so. Feed over email delivers that information. But after that, there is no way to be certain that those videos uploaded to YouTube about government abuses are going to actually reach anybody.
(Info via Reuters)
*IranianNationalist may or may not be a real website.
