- Kit Klarenberg: Beware Psiphon, CIA tech tool to assist, fuel global protests Archived Message
Posted by sashimi
on November 20, 2022, 7:30 pm
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19 November 2022 (quote) Ever since foreign-backed riots broke out in Iran in mid-September, Western news outlets have frequently drawn attention to the role of Psiphon, a free, open-source smartphone application and computer program that allows users to circumvent restrictions on websites and online resources in helping troublemakers organize and coordinate their activities, and send and receive messages to and from the outside world. In the process, Psiphon has received untold amounts of highly-influential free advertising, and some Iranians - along with residents of West Asia more widely - will no doubt have been encouraged to download the software. However, not a single mainstream source has hitherto acknowledged the spectral origins of Psiphon, let alone the malign aims it serves, and sinister purposes to which it can be put by its sponsors in the American intelligence community. Psiphon was launched in 2009. Avowedly intended to support anti-government elements in countries the company considers "enemies of the internet", the resource employs a combination of secure communication and obfuscation technologies, including VPNs, web proxies, and secure shell protocols (SSH), which allows users to effectively set up their own private servers that their own government cannot monitor. Over Psiphon's lifetime, it has been funded and distributed by a variety of spook-adjacent organizations. For example, it was for several years promoted by ASL19, which was founded by an Iranian expat Ali Bangi in 2013 to capitalize on the vast US funding flowing for "internet freedom" initiatives in the wake of the Arab Spring. A June 2011 New York Times probe into Washington's "internet freedom" push concluded that all these endeavors serve to "deploy 'shadow' internet and mobile phone systems dissidents can use to communicate outside the reach of governments in countries like Iran, Syria and Libya." ... With Bangi and ASL19 out of the picture, in 2019, Psiphon began receiving millions from the Open Technology Fund, created seven years earlier by Radio Free Asia (RFA), which in turn was founded by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in 1948 after it was officially authorized to engage in "black operations", including propaganda, economic warfare, sabotage, subversion, and "assistance to underground resistance movements." In 2007, the CIA website ranked RFA and other "psychological warfare" initiatives such as Radio Free Europe and Voice of America among "the longest-running and most successful covert action campaigns" it ever mounted. Today, RFA is an asset of the US Agency for Global Media, which is funded by the US Congress to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars every year. Its CEO has acknowledged that the organization's priorities "reflect US national security interests." OTF was one of the several initiatives that spun out of Washington's aforementioned "internet freedom" push. Individuals intimately involved in making this desire a reality are under no illusion as to the true raison d'etre they are serving. In February 2015, Jillian York, an OTF advisory board member, stated she "fundamentally" believed "internet freedom" was "at heart an agenda of regime change." ... Another core Psiphon strength from the perspective of Western power is that it funnels all user data to and through centralized servers owned by the company itself. While individuals' activities on the network might be shielded from the prying eyes of their own government, Psiphon can track what sites they are visiting and their communications in real-time. This allows foreign actors to keep an unblinking eye trained on protesters and protest movements, and to respond accordingly. (/quote) -- Cont'd at https://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2022/11/18/692977/Beware-Psiphon-CIA-tech-tool-assist-fuel-global-protests |
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