Glenn Reynolds blogs about a happy ending to the story of imprisoned Iranian blogger Sina Motallebi. This is very good news. The icing on the cake (the cake being release from prison) is that he credits blogs for playing key role in the events.
OJR [The Online Journalism Review]: So why do you think they let you go?
Motallebi: They didn’t expect the pressure from Webloggers and foreign media in my case. They think I’m an individual [freelance] journalist and not affiliated with any political party, I’m not an insider. So they think that when they arrested me, there wouldn’t be strong pressure to release me… I think they found the cost of arresting me more than they thought before.
There will probably be much written and made of this (quite rightly). What caught my attention was this bit from the ‘post-release’ interview with Sina Motallebi.
At newspapers, an editor can change your article. They’re [ed. Iranian authorities] afraid of Weblogs because in Iran we don’t have the experience of an [open] society. We have a [closed] society. Weblogs are a good experience, where everyone can explain their ideas. And the government is very afraid of them.
…
Socially in Iran, we haven’t experienced a [free] society where everyone can express their ideas. We don’t experience the freedom of expression that much. But Weblogs give the opportunity to Iranians to speak freely and share their ideas, their views, and even the details of their personal lives.
Freedom of expression was also important for people talking about their personal life, especially for girls and women. That’s the reason you see many Iranian females blogging now. Under Islamic rules, many things are prohibited for young people. Each week many Iranian youngsters are arrested only for going to a party or walking with a friend of the opposite sex. So normally, they can’t even talk about their personal life. But online with their fake names, or in some cases their real names, they can mention their personal lives and experience freedom of speech.
The Bloggers of the World Unite!
Aargh! Typing this almost hurt and the instinctive reaction is one of: Over my dead body…but you get the drift.
“You have nothing to lose but your links!”
>>But online with their fake names, or in some cases their real names, they can mention their personal lives and experience freedom of speech.<< Anonymous speech is the key to freedom of speech. Once you can communicate anonymously, it becomes much easier to organize against fascism effectively. This is why stuff like USA Patriot, the NSA, TIA, etc. is so scary. In the past, fascists could never know for sure if/when/where resistance was organizing against them. Once something akin to a Digital Panopticon is constructed, the opportunity exists for fascism to achieve a permanent victory. The Iranian government may currently lack the resources to track down anonymous bloggers in their country. Rest assured the NSA can -- and the technology needed to break anonymity seems to be getting cheaper and better faster than readily available anonymous communication. The problem of anonymous communication is Hard(tm). It's made harder by the billions of dollars being spent by governments to defeat it in the name of "national security." If we could find a cheap way to ensure unbreakable on-line anonymity, much would have been accomplished.