Currently Iran is just the result of what happens if conservative fundamentals got ahold of the government of a country.
Yeah the nuclear bomb makers and holocaust deniers have to be stopped, but let's show some care and understanding for innocent people under their rule first.
Do people earn their humanity by their proximity to Standard American Ideals? What about those who are very much unlike Americans? Do you they deserve to get nuked back to the $EPOCH?
Yeah, but he also adds: "Currently Iran is just the result of what happens if conservative fundamentals got ahold of the government of a country."
Well, not all can be explained by "conservative fundamentals getting ahold of the government". This amounts to "their people are really like us, it's their government that's bad".
There EXIST people/populations/countries that are conservative/unlike Americans in general, and have every right to live however the f* they want to.
Western media turn a blind eye to millions of Iranian/whatever people that WANT to live like they do, and RESPECT their country's ideals, and instead celebrate a few hundred idiots with tweeter accounts and blogs that want to live like westerners and are totally unrepresentative of the general population -- a lot of them sponsored by foreign countries (at least with lectures, sponsorships etc).
What exactly is specifically bad about the Iranian government that other countries have not already did, including the US? US has: the death penalty (including teens), segregation until, what, the 60s (!!!), 500% more black people in jail than white, one of the largest prison populations in the world, hollier than thou attitude, tons of fundamentalists and bible yielders, tons of wars around the globe to secure oil and resources, huge corrupted multinationals, some 20% of the population below the poverty line, on of the lamest popular cultures worldwide, PIPA, SOPA, the Patriot Act, detention and/or murder of foreign nationals without trial, etc...
> What exactly is specifically bad about the Iranian government that other countries have not already did, including the US?
Did you notice that Libya, Tunisia and Egypt already had a popular revolution, and that Syria is still having one? Would you have said, 12 months ago, that the majority of Tunisians, Egyptians and Libyans WANT to live like they do, and RESPECT their country's ideals?
If not, why not? and why is Iran different?
If so -- then, 12 months later, when you have proof positive that it wasn't the case 12 months earlier -- why do you think Iran is different (except in the sense that the popular green revolution has not succeeded)
The problem here is that all those countries are going to wind up with the same exact problems that started all this (no jobs, no real freedom, corrupt government, etc).
"""Did you notice that Libya, Tunisia and Egypt already had a popular revolution, and that Syria is still having one? Would you have said, 12 months ago, that the majority of Tunisians, Egyptians and Libyans WANT to live like they do, and RESPECT their country's ideals?"""
Not only I noticed, but I live near those parts of the world, have friends there, and know that what you seem to believe about those countries has nothing to do with the reality.
The popular revolutions did not happen because they wanted to be more like americans, or because they rejected islam or whatever.
The western media just overplayed some guys on twitter and similar figures that have little to do with the actual struggle, as if they represent the will of the people. The western governments also overplay their people there, like politicians with 10% of the vote and such. Students, another group that was also overplayed, was a tiny minority in those revolting.
And yet, people draw conclusions and pretend to know all about the politics and tensions of those areas from news articles spoon fed to them. This is similar to some foreign news source showing, say, Glenn Beck and assuring his audience that "all americans think like that".
There have been power struggles and political antagonisms for thousands of years, in all parts of the world. When one happens to happen to a country that the us doesn't like, it doesn't mean that the people doing it suddenly decided to adopt a different way of living. It just means that they don't like dictators (or even that they just don't like their current dictator), period.
Also, while the revolts in Egypt and Tunisia where genuine, the revolts in Libya where mostly BS, as the population could care less about Khadaffi's rule. Unlike the other revolts, this only succeeded because of heavy backing, military and otherwise, from the west, interested in the oil.
And it's not like things are going to turn for the better there (or even in Egypt and Tunisia, if the interested foreign powers are going to have their way), most probaly they will turn into something like Iraq, substituting a dictatorship with livable conditions and stability to a nightmare of civil war, ethnic cleansing, foreign exploitation, and EVEN MORE islamic fundamendalism etc...
Thanks for your answer. I can't speak for other people, but that's what I thought (that is, they don't like the current regime, they're not trying to become american or anything). And I also agree that it is more likely that Tunisia and Egypt will end up like Iraq than like a western country.
But you answered my rhetorical setup, and not my actual question: Why do you believe Iran is different than Syria, Egypt and Tunisia in this respect? (although it can be debated, I'll accept that Libya wouldn't have happened the way it did without western support, and by support I mean "strong coaxing, military aid, and monetary aid")
On the one hand yeah America has its share of dirty laundry, no doubt about it. On the other hand, civil unrest in Iran is not just a couple hundred kids who want to live like westerners.
When people talk about Iran it's more about the things that are, by any definition, wrong, than their traditional or religious choice. You simply cannot, in any modern society, discriminate against someone because it happens to be a woman, or throw stone at someone until they die because you didn't like his opinion. You can defend ideals, you cannot defend barbarism. Some of the things these people do (and others in various parts of the world) are uncivilized in any society.
Us Anglo-Americans are in no moral position to judge Iranians (or anyone else really), since our governments are the cause of so many of their misfortunes. (Imagine if China one day did similar to the US; how far would we regress in terms of hard-won civil rights?) And we're still threatening and dominating them.
You simply cannot, in any modern society, discriminate against someone because it happens to be a woman, or throw stone at someone until they die because you didn't like his opinion.
And yet the US is the strongest ally of the worst offenders in this regard, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Women can't vote or drive in Saudi Arabia; heck, they can't even go out alone, and can't go out with a male who is not a blood relative or husband. And oh, even when they go out in a car, they can't sit in the front.
When people talk about Iran it's more about the things that are, by any definition, wrong
Why? It's not by the definition of wrong of those Iranians. Where does that objective standard come from?
Don't get me wrong, I'm all of helping (in not very intrusive ways) the westernized Iranians steer their country in their direction, but that's just because I like those ideals and notion of right and wrong, not because they're somehow objectively right.
> Why? It's not by the definition of wrong of those Iranians. Where does that objective standard come from?
That's a large debate on its own (read up on John Stuart Mill for instance) but essentially you're arguing for a philosophy called relativism, the end of which is that there's nothing objectively right...
On the other hand that would mean that the U.S. is justified in however they treat Iran, since they're nothing objectively wrong either. Sometimes you really can't have your cake and eat too.
While I'd say I am in fact a moral relativist, I'd also say I'm not exactly arguing for it. As far as I can see, relativism is the agnosticism of morality - in the lack of evidence for an objective moral code, the only reasonable, logical position is relativism.
On the other hand, I'm rather ignorant about the subject, so my opinion isn't to be taken very seriously.
On the other hand that would mean that the U.S. is justified in however they treat Iran, since they're nothing objectively wrong either. Sometimes you really can't have your cake and eat too.
Sure, but I can still dislike it, which in practice means the same (essentially nothing, since my influence is zero ;)
"""When people talk about Iran it's more about the things that are, by any definition, wrong, than their traditional or religious choice. """
Actually, people weren't talking that much about Iran before --it's just because it happens to be the current target, so western media plays Iran a lot.
It's also for the same reason why people DON'T talk about Saudi Arabia, which is 10 times worse in those aspects than Iran --but since it's an ally, it doesn't get played unfavorably much, if at all.
Now, what are things that are "by any definition wrong"? Who gives the definition? Let's see your examples:
"""You simply cannot, in any modern society, discriminate against someone because it happens to be a woman, or throw stone at someone until they die because you didn't like his opinion."""
In the US 50 years ago there was prevalent racism against black people (heck, there were hotels/restaurants etc not accepting them as customers).
Was that civilized? No. So, would another country be justified to say, bomb the US and topple the government to pass laws to change that? I say, no, the people of the US would have to do it themselves (as they eventually did). So, why should it be different for any other country?
And who says that all countries should get to the same level of "civilization" at the same time?
For example, besides abolishing slavery earlier, tons of countries had women voting much earlier than the US did. And tons of countries have abolished the death penalty already.
You say "you simply cannot, in any modern society throw (a) stone at someone until they die because you didn't like his opinion".
And I say, that in modern societies like the one I live, you simply cannot execute anyone AT ALL, whatever he said or did. It's unacceptable. When is the US going to come around to this one? And how is stoning worse than the (horrible) electric chair or the (disgusting) gas chamber?
Still, americans have the right to do those things (to one another), if that's what their society wants and believes in. People are not justified to call them "evil" because of that, nor to try to topple their government. The same should hold true for any practice of any SOVEREIGN nation.
I don't even care if they are cannibals in country X, let them do what the f... they want. No one should dictate how other societies should live.
While I agree with much of the sentiment expressed in your post, I must take issue with:
Still, americans have the right to do those things (to one another), if that's what their society wants and believes in. People are not justified to call them "evil" because of that, nor to try to topple their government. The same should hold true for any practice of any SOVEREIGN nation.
Can a society really be said to 'want and believe in' something if the society isn't structured to allow for a reasonable form of self-government? We shouldn't be looking to protect sovereign nations. We should be looking to protect sovereign peoples. If a group is truly sovereign and self-governing, then their choices should be respected. Not incidentally, the requirements for a sovereign, self-governing people align closely with principles of human rights.
I find it difficult to conclude that countries like Iran(rampant electoral fraud), North Korea(dictatorship) and Saudi Arabia are home to sovereign peoples. Sovereign nations, sure. But a border seems like a poor substitute to the collective wills of a people. And it's far from clear that these countries' actions are the expression of that will.
I suppose a rebuke to this point would be to question whether any nation is truly governed by a sovereign people, or if this is merely another form of Western projection? But I think that would be a difficult argument.
"""I suppose a rebuke to this point would be to question whether any nation is truly governed by a sovereign people, or if this is merely another form of Western projection?"""
Exactly that.
Also: even if there is "rampant electoral fraud" how do we know this?
I don't think mainstream western reports on the matter are to be trusted, in the same way as reports on Iraq's WMD weren't to be trusted (and they also appeared on places like the NYT).
Also, wasn't the Bush/Florida thing also "electoral fraud"?
And furthermore, I find the whole representation/voting thing a travesty as it currently is done, mainly allowing just two parties (Reps and Dems) that are much alike, and presenting huge barriers to entry. I also remember a list of murdered presidents/candidates (Kennedy?), major police interference in politics (McCarthyism), Watergate, etc.
Why not directly analogous representation/seats to the overall numbers of votes a party got US-wide? Why not ban political advertising of any kind (which favors the one with more spending budget), and only let the influence of each party's program/ideas to determine voter turnout? Why not force free TV time for every party/candidate with more than x% on the previous vote? Why not disallow lobbying altogether (if you want influence for matter X, get it through public->voting->representation) not through Washington corridors).
So, for one, the issue "sovereign people's" vs "sovereign societies" is a muddled one. So, who get's to decide which is which?
Second, I'd say that even in the blatantly obvious case of non sovereign people, one doesn't get to intervene in a sovereign nation. If the people want their government/dictator toppled, they can do it themselves. If another nation doesn't like it, they can stop doing business with the dictators, etc, but why should they invade or anything?
By invading you don't "bring democracy", you bring your idea of democracy (which might not be what the locals would have chosen given the chance), and your influence over local politics. Not to mention that you also de-stabilize the society to supporters of your action or not (like it happened in Iraq and elsewhere) --and when a country is being bombed, enemies of the one's bombing is not the same as friends of the dictator. If you kill my brother in order to get to Saddam, for example, I'd hate you, even if I was against Saddam in the first place. Which complicates things a lot.
And all of these without taking "national interests, natural resources" of the intervening country on consideration. Which, because those can always be a factor, and if often the deciding one, should make us even more suspect re: intervention on sovereign countries.
I say, as long as they don't go invading any other sovereign country, let them fix their mess for themselves.
I also take offense to the "they build/have the bomb" line, when it comes from countries that ALREADY have the bomb. But do people believe this is something more than the moralizing country defending their monopoly on nuclear terror? And why should we trust one that, say, already dropped two of those on civilians? I'm all for EVERYBODY disarming their bombs.
This is coarse-grained propaganda, if I ever saw one!
As a commenter on Boing Boing says:
"""Yeah IMO stories like this one are useful in preparing the public's psych & emotions for the upcoming US "let's display bi-partisan foreign policy" demonstration...in other words, for Obama & his Secdef Gates' planned attack on Iran.
Any secret special US Forces ops going on right now? Or are your "journalists" doing their "patriotic duty" by looking away, to enable another War?
How do you distinguish between those Iranians it's OK for the USA to attack or maim or kill and those who aren't? Are only employees and civil servants of the State of Iran and those who actively oppose US control/diktaat over Iranian domestic policy "fair game"? Or is it only those Iranians who happen to live in Iran ? Or those opposed to the views of "freedom-loving" Iranians living in foreign exile?
I think the USA/Western media should STFU about Iran, and and instead direct their efforts at getting NATO and the US Armed Forces to immediately stop killing Asians.
This would show their humanitarianism, if not their usefulness...."""
Designed to let the viewer with the impression that those blogs support toppling the government, changing their way of life etc. It basically uses the notion of having a blog as axiomatically meaning that.
Have you read a lot of those actual blogs, not just the selected few celebrated in our media?
> Have you read a lot of those actual blogs, not just the selected few celebrated in our media?
I read books about Iran, watch Iranian cinema, and in a few days I'm hopefully getting my visa, so I couldn't care less about comments on boingboing or propaganda in American media, as my subject of interest exceeds their international affairs. But I know what's your point (from the previous post), and we probably share a common view on that, I was just a bit surprised you put a label on activism that they're idiots, just because mainstream media selectively presents only information targetted at idiots. And the video was just to illustrate the numbers of online activity from Iranians, nothing else.
While I agree with you, your last paragraph is just non sense. What's specifically bad? Honestly, if you ask this question you're shouting out that you have no idea what today's iran (or most of the muslim countries) are like.
Quite frankly, visit iran and see for yourself. A word of advice though: if you happen to be a woman, I would recommend taking my word for granted instead. Just my advice.
"""While I agree with you, your last paragraph is just non sense. What's specifically bad? Honestly, if you ask this question you're shouting out that you have no idea what today's iran (or most of the muslim countries) are like."""
You don't get to judge Iran as "bad in general" by your standards, though.
You only get to judge Iran as "bad for you", by your standards.
If you want to judge Iran as "bad in general", you'd have to also show that the people of Iran don't want to live like they do.
Because if they DO want to live like they do (which I assure you it's the case in general), then there's nothing bad about Iran. They just live in a way that you happen to disagree with.
They never came to tell you how to live YOUR life, though.
"Because if they DO want to live like they do (which I assure you it's the case in general), then there's nothing bad about Iran. They just live in a way that you happen to disagree with.
They never came to tell you how to live YOUR life, though."
We're not telling them how to live their lives. But if their government has a law in place requiring the Hijab, would you not agree that individual citizens don't have the liberty of choosing how they want to live their life either? (Note: I'm not saying that America should invade and spread Western ideals, but I do take issue with the notion that people want to live a certain way if there are laws in place forcing them to live that way.)
I'm sorry, if I'm Iranian myself does your reply still applies? Just wondering.
I'm tired of this political correctness, it's so 90's. But it will take more than a couple of downvotes to shut me up.
This "everybody has the right to their way of living" is getting old and stupid.
Have you ever visited Iran? I find it interesting that when I talk about this subject with people from muslim countries, they understand me very well and mostly agree with me, while most westerns prefer to paint everything with fairy-tale colors and say that they are 'tolerant' to every culture.
Anyway, your comment is almost semantically null. Why wouldn't it be obvious that anyone's judgement has whatever credibility you want to give it? Furthermore, By assuming that everything is subjective you're basically stating that you won't dare to stand for any opinion of yours.
"""I'm sorry, if I'm Iranian myself does your reply still applies? Just wondering."""
Yeah, it totally still applies. You can find dissents in any country.
And, btw, you are not. Here's an older comment of yours on HN: """I'm from a country way more developed than iran in technological/scientific terms""".
"""This "everybody has the right to their way of living" is getting old and stupid.""""
Really? Sorry, but I don't find the "let's demonize them, force them to our own way of living, and basically use it as a pretext for invading their country and steering their natural resources / political personnel our way" any more modern or wiser...
"""Have you ever visited Iran?"""
No, but I have visited other countries in the region of which the same are said.
"""I find it interesting that when I talk about this subject with people from muslim countries, they understand me very well and mostly agree with me"""
You are probably talking to the wrong persons from those countries. Maybe mainly people that immigrated because they wanted to live differently, i.e huge selection bias?
"""Anyway, your comment is almost semantically null. Why wouldn't it be obvious that anyone's judgement has whatever credibility you want to give it? Furthermore, By assuming that everything is subjective you're basically stating that you won't dare to stand for any opinion of yours""".
I haven't said that "everything is subjective". I said that I respect the right of societies to live how they like over the right of any outsider to force them otherwise, especially if the outsider is a big mean war machine.
In re: objective/subjective etc, I said that you don't liking how people in Iran live just means Iran is subjectively bad for you. I added that if the majority of Iranians didn't like how they live, then Iran would be objectively bad.
I'm not stating I am Iranian (I'm not) just trying to point out that you jump into quick conclusions about others' judgements on Iran. And that you would most likely not do it if you knew in advance that the person you're talking to is an iranian citizen.
""" Really? Sorry, but I don't find the "let's demonize them, force them to our own way of living, and basically use it as a pretext for invading their country and steering their natural resources / political personnel our way" any more modern or wiser... """
1. For the record I do think 'their way of living' is rather barbarian. Not that all of them would choose to live the way they do if they had the choice. But stoning a women to death because of showing a leg is a rather barbarian thing to do, just my opinion I guess.
But where did I call to 'force our own way of living' or 'invading their country'? I don't recall I defended that.
""" You are probably talking to the wrong persons from those countries. Maybe mainly people that immigrated because they wanted to live differently, i.e huge selection bias? """
Maybe that's the case, I won't deny that. But heck, that they had to run away from their country for such reasons, doesn't that tell a bigger story per se? I recall you saying that they have the right to live their lives the way they want. But then you point out people that didn't haven't that right. I'm starting to get confused about your opinion, no irony nor sarcasm intended.
"objective/subjective etc, I said that you don't liking how people in Iran live just means Iran is subjectively bad for you. I added that if the majority of Iranians didn't like how they live, then Iran would be objectively bad."
Which is pretty obviously the case. Don't expect very informative surveys where saying "I'm not religious anymore" might be enough to get you killed.
"""Maybe that's the case, I won't deny that. But heck, that they had to run away from their country for such reasons, doesn't that tell a bigger story per se? """
Well, didn't lots of Americans leave the states in the sixties to go to Canada to avoid the draft?
"""I recall you saying that they have the right to live their lives the way they want. But then you point out people that didn't haven't that right. I'm starting to get confused about your opinion, no irony nor sarcasm intended."""
I'm talking majority here. As I said, you can find dissents in any country, if you look hard enough. That doesn't mean you have to change the majority of the society to fit them. It's not like millions of Iranians are struggling to get out of the country. OTOH, after the invasion to bring "democracy", tons of Afghanis and Iraqis ARE.
"""I added that if the majority of Iranians didn't like how they live, then Iran would be objectively bad." Which is pretty obviously the case."""
Rather far from obvious. Western media showcases only the examples that fit that pattern, and westerners have the natural tendency to think "but of course, that's only natural, that's exactly what Iranians would be thinking".
For example:
"""Don't expect very informative surveys where saying "I'm not religious anymore" might be enough to get you killed."""
Well, hundreds of millions of people worldwide ARE religious, and wouldn't have it any other way. And not because they would be killed if they stated otherwise.
Take the Bible Belt for example.
Is there any doubt that the majority of the people there IS both religious AND conservative?
Now, there are also atheists in those parts, and you can find a ton of blogs saying "oh, my fellow Utah/Adelaine/Tulsa/... citizens are bigots and stupid" or such. And you can talk to a lot of folks from there that made it to New York or San Francisco or whereever, and they will badmouth their states and their governors.
The existence of the above does not mean that you'd be correct to say that the Bible Belt majority are atheists and progressive folk.
I have also some doubts about the "get you killed/stoned" thing. I used to get so angry at those stories, you know, them stoning a woman, hangings, etc, and think "those guys should be nuked for doing that".
But then I found out that a lot of those stories are BS, perpetuated as the media sees fit, and are representative of some local barbaric act in some village etc and not the state in general. Like, say, the lynching of some black folks, back in the 20's in the South.
A case in point is the story of this woman in Iran, it circulated a year ago I think, that was to be hanged. All the headlines made it sound like she was to be executed just because she had an extra-marital affair. Only if you read the whole article though, you'd find out that she also conspired with her lover to murder her husband. And even when they admit to this in the article, they bury it under suspicion and irony, as if Iranian justice is de facto faulty.
On May 15, 2006 Sakineh pleaded guilty for having an "illicit relationship outside marriage". If a person pleads guilty to adultery under Islamic law, the sentence may be either death by stoning or 100 lashes. The court handed down a punishment of 100 lashes, her son watched the whipping.
Ashtiani had allegedly committed adultery with the man (Isa Taheri) who murdered her husband. Taheri was found guilty of murder and sentenced to death. Under Islamic law, murder must be absolved by diyya (blood money given to victim's family) or qisas (retributive execution); Ashtiani's children chose to accept diyya. Taheri was sentenced to 10 years' imprisonment. According to some sources, he is now no longer in prison, although Iranian officials deny this.
In September 2006 her case was brought up again, where she was tried for murdering her husband as well as committing adultery. She was found guilty of murder (qatl-e-amnd) and sentenced to death by hanging.
= = = = =
Now, I'm against the death penalty altogether, but it makes you wonder how reports of such cases are represented in our media.
And how often they are used to justify war/invasion etc, something that inevitably leads to hundreds of thousands more misery, destruction, death etc that some dozen such cases.
For the 2nd part, yeah, for the first part Iran's the only place you hear glib talk about how we should bomb it to prove how tough we are in presidential debates.
I haven't been keeping up with the GOP speeches (I assume you're referring to the GOP nominees), but all I've been able to come up with is Santorum mentioning Iranian nuclear sites, and only if they weren't open for inspectors rather than some sort of display of machismo. Are there others I've missed?
At a couple of the debates, basically everyone except Paul was competing as far as how badly they wanted to bomb Iran. I'm hoping that they weren't serious and were just cynically talking about killing lots of people in order to get a good soundbite for the rubes, but it's scary any way you interpret it. It's like these people are totally disconnected from the fact that they're talking about war.
EDIT: Here's an account of the exchange I was thinking of, Paul made the extremely controversial statement that he wasn't in favor of starting a war, and they all piled on him immediately. The fox news guy said he "jumped the shark" by not advocating immediate war.
I think the author's point was that Iran is a sophisticated industrial society ("not a backwater") and the people have a wide range of views ("not North Korea").
I would like to see this answered as well. The OP's point makes no sense to me. Is North Korea inherently filled with evil people, or what? Every country is full of innocent, misguided, and often oppressed people. Why is there justification to bomb anyone? At most, bombing might be a necessary evil, but no country's residents "deserve it".
In the context as a whole it looks different for me. But does it really matter?
offtopic: from the fluctuation of upvotes/downvotes on my few last comments in the last few hours, I see some people treat hn like reddit - downvoting based on opinion. Not that I care about those 3 karma points, just sayin'.
"Yeah the nuclear bomb makers and holocaust deniers have to be stopped, but let's show some care and understanding for innocent people under their rule first."
The context is condemning people who think of Iran as "something that we should bomb", without considering the human factor.
Your comment is just very bizarre to be honest. I can only interpret it as a complete non sequitur.
offtopic: In my experience, fluctuations in voting indicate that people are experience a significant amount of confusion when reading your post.
Maybe, but you can easily assume that the ones who can 'stop' (bomb makers and holocaust deniers have to be stopped,) aren't hn readers but govs. Other thing is, a lot of people aren't aware that such embargos not only hurt the regime economically, but directly affect the safety of those innocent citizens for decades. Misunderstood or not, the case is still valid.
ot: it was not about this particular comment exactly, but whatever. I just don't use downvote here to express I don't agree with someone. let's leave it alone, doesn't matter.
Am I being paranoid or did "A View Inside Iran" link get deleted from Hacker News?
edit: Yes, I was being way too paranoid. The article only has 3 upvotes and isn't on the first three pages, which surprised me, but I suppose more technologically interesting articles such as this one may be more appreciated here.
The article confuses me: it seems to be conflating the RSA algorithm (which I could easily believe might be used to encrypt military GPS) with the RSA company (a division of EMC which was hacked and had its SecurID product compromised recently).
Am I missing something, or is the author just confused? Why would having "broken into EMC's RSA servers" be at all related to being "in pursuit of a cryptanalytic attack against RSA"?
I was a little confused also, I am under the impression that he is mentioning 2 points.
1) Attack on RSA to attempt to see if RSA has some attack on the RSA algorithm hidden.
2) Using an attack on SecurID to attempt to get more information from a Lockheed Martin or other breach.
Yes, it was widely reported that Lockheed was a target after SecurID was breached. Whether or not anything useful was extracted from Lockheed's systems, and whether or not any Lockheed data was involved in spoofing the drone, is pure speculation. It seems equally plausible that Iran had an inside man at a defense contractor. After all, history has shown how relatively inexpensive and effective double agents are to state actors.
All these complex and sophisticated attacks seem like too much work. It looks like the author either omits a step from the attack where the SecurID compromise allowed someone access to flight control systems or that RSA has a master key/method for breaking any RSA encrypted data.
I think the drone ran out of fuel. The flight control system prevented a stall by trading altitude for speed. Some emergency collision code attempted to avoid a ground impact at the last second making for a soft landing.
Something as simple as bad weather forecasting causing the drone to fly into a headwind during both inbound and outbound could easily account for the fuel drying up.
Right - no one wants to consider this null hypothesis. Not exciting enough, I suppose. Actually spoofing GPS - which would involve masking the actual GPS signal and producing the precise nanosecond differentials from a simulated fleet of satellites needed to give a false location, seems highly unbelievable.
GPS jamming is possible, which may have led to a loss of nav (although I would have thought there may be some inertial guidance), but either way, the guidance-and-control system probably just leveled off for a smooth crash landing. (hence the way the iranians not-so-cleverly hid the underside of the UAV in anti-american propoganda posters)
>Actually spoofing GPS - which would involve masking the actual GPS signal and producing the precise nanosecond differentials from a simulated fleet of satellites needed to give a false location, seems highly unbelievable.
Literally the plot of the James Bond movie Tomorrow Never Dies.
There were stories floating around* that Lockheed had a remote intrusion problem linked to the securid compromise, and that perhaps US contractor companies were the real target behind the RSA hack.
That would draw a nice line between securid and secret data found on gps satellites manufactured by lockheed.
Red key means un-encrypted key. The opposite would be black.
Usually, the key does not need to be exposed. It would be stored in a very hard to break container with some sort of self destruct mechanism. Communication with the box never involve the key itself. And to top it all, the key changes often.
Additionally, protocols usually use the Diffie-Hellman algorithm (or something like it) to generate very short lived secret session keys.
I would go and say (out of my ass) that recent military drones would have 2 or 3 different backup systems for everything, including positionning.
The wiki article on GPS encryption seems to say that stealing the key for one satellite is possible (720 gigabytes), but the master key at 26 terabytes seems slightly harder to sneak out in an email or USB key. Of course I'm a wiki expert on this, so someone with actual knowledge could probably be more informative.
Those are just the sizes of the pseudorandom sequences produced by a PRNG. They'll be defined by structures much smaller than that. However, that's not the bit that needs stealing, and doesn't even strictly need to be secret.
It's pretty rash for the article to suggest that the RSA algorithm might have been broken. If the key really has been stolen, it seems far more likely that it was breached due to crap IT security than a recently-discovered bombshell weakness in the RSA algorithm.
For example, the RSA corporation's SecurID service (not to be confused with the RSA algorithm) was compromised due to a spear-phishing attack containing an Excel spreadsheet with a Flash exploit. Then Lockheed Martin was breached because they use SecurID[1]. Lockheed Martin happens to make GPS satellites[2], so they might have a copy of the key...
This is completely speculative (in particular, Lockheed Martin claims no data was stolen and I know nothing about how GPS works). But in the past, there have been way more exploits due to insecure systems than to weak crypto (especially well-established crypto like RSA).
> in particular, Lockheed Martin claims no data was stolen
If you had something particularly secret stolen you're not going to air it publicly. Agree with everything else though - even if this hypothesising is true it'll be down to a stolen key.
red key is from the older PPS-SM system which hasn't been used in new hardware since 2006. GPS M-Code isn't even meant to be fully operational until 2016. Which suggests he actually means SAASM.
How much certainty is there that the Iranians actually spoofed the GPS signal?
How much evidence is there to overturn the null hypothesis (being that the GPS signal was either jammed, or the plane simply crash-landed inside Iran)
It's unlikely that the drone relies exclusively on GPS. If the designers believe the red key to be axiomatically secure, it's not an unreasonable assumption for them to say "We'll believe GPS while it's present. Only if it's not present will we fall back to inertial navigation" (or whatever). Obviously, a spoofed signal would be hugely problematic for that system.
And yes, Occam's Razor does point to a crash-landing rather than a hack, but a GPS crack isn't unlikely enough to be completely discounted.
I find this fascinating. However, I think a sale to China would have greater impact than breaking military crypto.
More interesting is that this drone was flown illegally into sovereign airspace and no one seems to mention that. Imagine if China flew a drone over LA.
As for Iran being a target for military action, history has shown that any country that it sanctions economically is always attacked.
The GPS military signal is protected by virtue of being CDMA-modulated by a long, pseudorandom sequence (the output of a keyed, secret PRNG). Because of the spread-spectrum nature of CDMA, it would be impractical to record the signal without having the key in the first place. And if you did have the key, why go through the trouble of recording and replaying the signal when you could directly spoof it?
One thing I've never understood all along is how Iran managed to capture the drone intact. Was it guided into a runway landing somehow? Or else how did they not crash it?
The (alleged) story is that Iran spoofed the GPS signal to make the drone believe it was approaching its friendly landing strip, when in fact it was approaching an iranian field of the same orientation/altitude...
This is being downvoted, but I am serious. In the pictures you can see the wings have been crudely reattached to the body using a white tape to cover up the supposed break. Hence it seems possible that the plane crashed, but not from an altitude that would do major damage.
I have some conjecture based on some prior knowledge/connections..
First the info:
Phil Zimmermann has a company working on Secure VOIP. I was contacted past 18 months ago to build the android mobile client. Project never lifted off due to some large distraction and the excuses I was given never matched up to reality.
I submit because of Phil's connections to other RSA inventors and break-ins that occurred in the past 24 months that the distraction was a major hole was found in RSA or the process to secure it. The RSA inventors are consultants/board members of the the secure VOIP firm(Phil Zimmermann's firm).
At this time its only conjecture and there are no concrete facts out in the open to fully confirm it. However, there are some analysis out there such as the authors that point to a major breach of RSA in the last 24 months that highlights new RSA holes in either the RSA itself or the process in securing RSA keys.
A "RSA hole", as far as I am aware, would be "somebody found a fast way to factor numbers". There wouldn't exactly be a fix for that except to move to another trap door function.
When politicians sing about "bomb Iran" these are the innocent people they are talking about killing
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6v6kF8i-mbw
http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2012/01/a-view-inside-ira...
Before 1970 you would not be able to identify pictures of iran from parts of the usa
http://www.pagef30.com/2009/04/iran-in-1970s-before-islamic-...
Currently Iran is just the result of what happens if conservative fundamentals got ahold of the government of a country.
Yeah the nuclear bomb makers and holocaust deniers have to be stopped, but let's show some care and understanding for innocent people under their rule first.