hey everyone. this message is sort of “out of desperation”; people around the country have been protesting in their own way, but the effects of an organized movement has always been exponentially more (as far as I imagine)
the problem now is that Iranian people mostly use telegram and it needs a phone number to register (which is an identity insecurity against the government) and fake phone numbers barely work on the other hand.
here’s precisely what I’m looking for:
a method to gather people together, enabling them (as well as the host themselves) to stay anonymous and securely communicate and move the uprising further.
thank you all for your time; and fuck dictatorships.
It’s kind of hard to setup secure communication when the government constantly tries to sever all Internet connection. If all Internet connections are down, the only remaining option is to setup secure messenger servers in-nation, and server owner are at risk for doing so.
The only app I can think of that might be useful in case of a total Internet blackout is Briar. Briar works over Tor when Internet is accessible, and would work over local wifi network or bluetooth connection when Internet is not accessible.
If you and communication peers can access censorship circumvention tools, I recommend using Signal. Signal’s security is well-known, and has features like “self-destruct message” that may be desirable for protesters.
Signal does requires a phone number, but you can choose not to use it to identify your account. You can setup username to let others communicate with you on Signal, they won’t see your phone number if you set things properly.
There are also other messengers like Matrix, XMPP and SimpleX. These three are all federated messenger, meaning you can use self-hosted servers instead of the official servers, providing possibilities to work even with international Internet connection severed (server owner’s security still needs to be considered). Or you may join a public server (XMPP server list), which likely needs censorship circumvention tools to work.
Note that on SimpleX it’s required to disable voice/video call and link preview feature to make sure it doesn’t leak your IP.
Telegram messenger is pretty insecure, please refrain from using it. Aside from the phone number problem and non-E2EE (no end-to-end encryption means Telegram server owner and intruders that breached the servers can just read whatever any account has sent), they also have a problem that allows network middleman to track Telegram users (even though they won’t know which Telegram user is that), which they refuse to address.
Wish you success in your fight against oppressive forces.
+1 for Signal. I use Signal on my desktop (through Tor) without a smartphone. The FOSS project signal-cli allows you to register with a landline number without using the mobile app at all. The number can of course can be any landline you have access to long enough to receive the voice verification code - e.g. a public phone in a hotel lobby. With the right precautions this ought to make the user very hard to identify.
I heard that many people were using delta.chat in Iran during the internet shutdown. Because delta.chat is federated, it can be installed in NIN – please read this topic Question about using Delta Chat with Iran email serivces - #3 by hpk - Delta Chat --, so it can work during a internet shutdown and if NIN is reachable.
DeltaChat would work fine using any email services that supports SMTP/IMAP, but note that by filtering the email service providers can find out who’s using DeltaChat with their service, and block if needed.
Also, who’s talking to who, when did you sent the message and how big your message was are clear to see in the eyes of email service providers and censors if you use DeltaChat. If you need to protect against that, at the very least use an email service provider that’s out of reach of Iran government.