Protests in Iran: State-run live TV hacked by protesters | Hacker News Reader

Protests in Iran: State-run live TV hacked by protesters

bbc.co.uk

Apart from the usual "this is something important that is happening" (which is not quite HN "intellectual curiosity" territory, what is striking is the use of what I assume is a V for Vendetta mask - with Red and Green daubing.

How culture spreads is ... fascinating.

That is like ...nothing, then you have like no idea how omnipresent this type of pop culture is (for good or for worse). Of course iranians watch these types of movies and of course an iranian hacker would be aware of the mask symbolism

These masks are also made by the Chinese in the billions and available in any "Bazar" for very cheap so they're a cheap way to obscure your identity :)

Not saying this is the case here (for TV this is probably well considered and it's not the standard Chinese mask which is the 'smiling' version) but there might be more than one explanation especially for seeing them on the street during protests.

Maybe that was the intention but it doesn't really look like a Guy Fawkes mask at all though, other than being a white face mask. Eyebrows and eye cut-outs are different, it has a full beard, it's not a v-shaped face, etc.

The genesis may have been “V for Vendetta” but I believe Anonymous used a similar mask and it’s possible the hacker/s are aware of that.

Anonymous, and many other unrelated protesters, used the V for Vendetta mask when protesting against Scientology not just as a symbol but rather because of the cult..er church well known tactics of harassing anyone who opposes them. They usually followed protesters until they put the mask off so they or their car license plate could be photographed easing the identification.

The red and green is just the Iranian flag though. What culture were you thinking of? Suiseiseki?

Don't know about CIA conspiracies but I'm sure Saudi Arabians will protest Hijab mandates one day. Freedom is amazing and every human craves it at some level.

Please don't take HN threads on generic flamewar tangents. This one went straight to hell, which is the opposite of what we're going for here.

Religious flamewar is particularly hellish and particularly avoidable. Let's avoid it.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33141230.

Freedom is amazing , true. But I am afraid you could be over optimistic saying that everyone craves it. Unfortunately many people have short-term goals that are more important for them than freedom…

The freedom to get naked in the streets yeah? Thanks but no thanks.

You’re correct that our goals and culture that promotes purity and piety is more important than what the secular West defines as “freedom”

Ah yes, the typical astounding secular definition of freedom, equating it with nakedness and vices. I’ll tell you something, the vast majority of the Saudis are proud of the Hijab and their Islamic faith that promotes purity and decency. We don’t want the western definition of “freedom” thank you very much, we’ve seen where it leads

You posted dozens of flamewar comments in this thread. That's extreme, and you have a history of doing it and ignoring our requests to stop. I've therefore banned this account as well as some others. Please don't create accounts to break HN's rules with. Religious flamewars are not what this site is for.

Frankly, all the other commenters who jumped straight into the pit of hell with you are more responsible than you are, but we can't have people abusing HN this egregiously.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

It leads to people showing the hair in their heads, that is the normal way in our species. Including the majority of the muslim population and the majority of the human population.

If you think this is the same as being naked in public or that women's hair is impure, well... You live in a very sad place and deserve compassion. It really sucks to be you, but your pain is self-inflicted.

Enjoying the feminine grace and beauty is one of the greatest pleasures of being alive. Imagine yourself sit in a caffee three months from now watching by the first time an endless stream of smiling happy, "naked" women. If this image don't puts a smile in your heart, then something terrible must had happened to you

How does GP's statement have anything to do with "nakedness" and "vices". Those appear to be your words, dude.

Besides, the woman that was killed in custody that started this whole mess in Iran was hardly "naked", quite far from it.

It's not the west's fault that people lack so much self-control they can't handle anything but a hijab. In my opinion that speaks incredibly poorly, if anything that means folks shold spend more time looking inward than foolishly crying out for divine protection

Moralism is far more responsible for a society's ills than "decadence" ever will be

The slippery slope is real. And as far as we're concerned, taking the Hijab away is one very obvious step in that direction. Just look at history.

I'm not defending the Iranian regime by the way.

You're straw manning to assume that the Hijab's only reason is lack of self control. It's one part of many things that we have in Islam to preserve morality and purity. For example, both men and women are ordered to lower their gaze.

I'm not moralizing here. I'm defending my religion and land from the assumption of the secular west that they're here to liberate us from "oppression".

Are those the same "protesters" who hacked the Iranian nuclear program with Stuxnet by any chance?

Doubt it. The NSA would have way better production value than that, lol.

Given the recent split between the USA and Saudi Arabia over crude oil production targets, I wouldn't be surprised to see similar hacking of Saudi news feeds by 'domestic protestors' and a new US State Department focus on 'human rights and democratic reforms in the repressive Saudi dictatorship' coming up pretty quickly.

This would be a radical shift from US behavior during the Arab Spring, when the USA gave a wink and a nod to Saudi tanks rolling into Bahrain to crush the pro-democracy protests there.

[edit] Here's a story about Saudi Arabia, hijabs, and death threats to women (2016). Let the revolutions begin!

https://tribune.com.pk/story/1251171/saudis-call-execution-w...

> "A woman in Saudi Arabia has sparked outrage after posting a photo of herself on Twitter without an abaya or hijab, and is now facing calls for her execution."

This is a very simplistic view of the tensions in the region, which have been ongoing for decades. Just as the US has reason to retaliate against Saudi Arabia, many other places could also have reasons to push the ruling family out of power and gain influence.

It also fails to account for the autonomy of the people there. Is it really so hard to believe that they are rebelling against authoritarianism?

Even if there is an interest to empower the people to oust the regime, wouldn't it be fomenting on already existing unhappiness?

Interestingly, the same can be said of unrest anywhere- undoubtedly the agendas of several states will always align with weakening their competitors/adversaries.

When you consider the things everyday people care about and strive for, it can be argued that any party interested in destabilizing another nation would play to those aspirations in such a way as to further their control- this is true of almost everywhere, it is not exclusive to any one people or any one institution, and it can be seen in every region. In any given place, if you take a close look, there are varying levels of influence from foreign powers- often with the goal to secure economic goals or obtain natural resources.

> This is a very simplistic view of the tensions in the region

That is a very simplistic, and correct view of how the US manipulates such tensions.

There are many of us international HNers, whose countries suffered multiple US backed coups or color revolutions, and even worse, whose grassroots popular movements were co-opted and subverted by the US.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solidarity_(Polish_trade_union...

So much that even the 'people's movement', Solidarity in Poland, that was the 'trade union' movement that overthrow their government, was CIA funded and organized. The same thing has been a staple of daily life in Middle East since 1960s, when CIA decided to fund and use Islamist groups.

As someone from one of those countries, I'm well aware.

I'm not saying the US, and/or proxies of the agendas of the powerful who stand to gain from exploitation and meddling, aren't involved. I would expect they are very much involved, and I would be very skeptical of any claim they aren't.

What I'm saying is simply that despite this, people in those places could conceivably be independently fed up- and their dissatisfaction with their regimes stands on its own and is valid. There is a lot of nuance and a lot of different intersecting motivations and interests at play.

I just think, in my personal opinion, that those things people fight and risk dying for (freedom from persecution, personal safety, to be able to put food on the table, to care for family, etc) aren't only happening because of outside factors and political reasons, these are human concerns. People in Iran, Saudi Arabia, anywhere else, aren't just pawns susceptible to propagands- they understand there are all sorts of players trying to gain dominance over their lives. A lot of people in the US have these broad ideas about people in entire regions, as though they're monoliths- like people in Iran/Saudi Arabia were content and would have been obedient if not for foreign involvement, which I think is simplistic and I disagree with this assumption.

People in an uprising and nations in upheaval are especially vulnerable to external groups swooping in to manipulate the situation to their interests- this much is true, and it can also be true that people would have been rising up regardless. How this plays out over time is yet to be seen but unfortunately the most likely scenario is some other despot will step in to further their personal agenda at the expense of the people, whether they align with US interests or otherwise... like anywhere else, those in power will fight to maintain and gain power and control, no matter the human cost and devastation- this is true everywhere.

> How this plays out over time

How this plays out over time is either of the two: 1) The protests fail, either due to the momentum fading or the government suppressing 2) The protests succeed, and the country gets a US backed government. Along with all the privatization, removal of labor protections and social welfare, decline in life standards.

Unfortunately, there hasnt been any case of the protesters somehow being able to avert that while still succeeding. Because such protests and movements need organization to succeed. And if there wasnt an indigenous, powerful source of such organization present in the country for a long time, the organization will be coming from those who are backed by the US.

A US backed government would mean hell for both Saudis and Iranis - Saudi Arabia has VERY extensive social programs that literally guarantee everyone's comfort, life and education. Iran does not have those, but it still has enough such programs and the traditional cultural relations and social fabric is still alive. Those tend to get destroyed in the first wave of privatizations and 'free marketization'.

Saudis not always acquiescing to US pleas/demands historically hasn’t ever regime change ops. They have Long history of cooperation likely, arms deals, key to keeping dollar for their market, keep up starving slaughtering Yemen, where as Iran has been one of baddies since 1979

That was so until the US establishment came up with the idea of breaking up Saudi Arabia recently.

I agree but what you’re missing from threat modeling is relative capability of actors. And yes not there’s degrees of of organic discontent which is key to amplifying or muting etc. they’ll have intelligence and adapt vectors. For example the girl was killed is a fact. The trick is building narrative and this is where likely lies of omission or exaggeration or semantics come in in e.g. girl is dead, it’s evil repressive regimes fault, we demand justice. Not perfect science for sure

[edit]

You're absolutely right it's been going on for decades, but I think looking into that history is also telling. In 1953 Iran was a relatively secular and democratic nation that had generally positive, though flagging, relations with the West. Then their leader decided to reduce US/UK control over his country's oil assets. So of course we had to bring democracy to them. But since they already had a democracy, autocracy would have to do instead. [1]

We staged a coup, overthrew their democracy, and installed an extremely unpopular puppet dictator and monarch. 26 years later in 1979 there was another revolution, except this one was carried out by the people of Iran, and not the CIA. The puppet (still ruling from 1953 interestingly) was overthrown, and in his place an Islamic theocracy was created. And since then it's invariably been headed by leaders that, for some reason, haven't been especially fond of the West - and frequently imply we're up to shenanigans. That scenario continues to this day.

Ultimately I no longer really believe that we deserve the benefit of the doubt when it comes to black ops types scenarios. We've turned what should be a sort of last resort act of subterfuge into what increasingly seems to be a front-line approach to international relations. The most bizarre part is that these shenanigans never even really seem to achieve anything. Iran just being one example of going black ops to undermine one enemy, only to create one 10x more deadly, dangerous, and hostile than the former.

All we really seem to be achieving is the fast-tracking of WW3.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9ta...

[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_Revolution

The fact that the US orchestrated a coup in 1953 proves that the US is also orchestrating this coup today? That's the argument?

It obviously means there's reason to be suspicious. It took 60 years for the US to admit its role in the 1953 coup.

Reason to be suspicious, sure. Just not reason to draw that conclusion firmly.

I agree. I am sure that the hack boosted the morale of many protestors. It is tragic but us normals have no way of determine the degree to which it was inside job. Who is going to trust the CIA, etc if they deny it?

Especially when there are US agencies posting videos like this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VA4e0NqyYMw

Ya, we can't really know, but I think it's fair to say that powerful though the CIA is, they can't synthesize these kinds of protests from nothing. So, even if the CIA did hack these TV stations to aid the protesters, it's something that could just as easily have been done organically too, so I'm not sure it really matters whether they did or didn't.

There’s a theory that 1979 started as a British plot to retaliate against the Shah for nationalizing the oil industry.

No, GP is a legit comment. Everything you say about Iran is also true of Saudi Arabia (in the sense of the ruling regime being autocratic and oppressive) but it's expedient for the establishment in the US to condemn one regime and support the other.

> Even if there is an interest to empower the people to oust the regime, wouldn't it be fomenting on already existing unhappiness?

Out of all the nations on Earth, perhaps a majority of them have some kind of discontent among the population. Then, with this blank cheque being given, the nations with the most powerful intel agencies can empower the ones they want into full-blown protests.

The conspiracy theory that Russia influenced the two recent American presidential elections naturally come to mind. If that was the case—and I don’t doubt that they might have invested a small pittance into FB ads—then they were surely just building on existing unhappiness, as Trump supporters are too numerous to all be sleeper agents of the waning super power that is Russia.

The basic deal between the US and SA is, in exchange for supplying the global oil market, the US will overlook SA's dictatorship, human rights abuses, and involvement in 9/11, and will supply them with weapons. If SA stops upholding its side of the deal, I would expect the Arab Spring would suddenly find its way to SA. Or, perhaps first, the US would support a coup against MBS to replace him with a more compliant member of the House of Said.

People read too much into the recent production target cuts. An important thing to consider is that OPEC+ has been failing to meet their targets by about the same amount for several months now, and most experts seem to believe they lack capacity, not the will to produce.

https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/commodities/opec-mi...

Perhaps. But these things are not signs of that since the American government has hated the Iranian government for a long time.

It would be much more suspicious if the US govt. started to support the Iranian govt. all of a sudden.

You don't think they'd try to change a government they've hated for a long time? I would also find a sudden 180 on Iran suspicious, but also would not be surprised if any Iranian opposition group had US support.

I would think that they would, yes. And it is a day that ends with “y” so it is as likely that they are doing it now as it was five years ago.

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