Twitter, a Censor's International Nightmare

When you hear the BBC's world editor saying something like this: “The days when regimes can control the flow of information are over,” you know you are living in interesting times.

That's what Jon Williams told The New York Times on Tuesday when one of the world's most trusted news websites informed that its Persian-language TV channel was receiving five videos a minute from regular Iranian citizens trying to break their regime's news block-out.

You almost can see the Iranian censors going mad trying to stick their fingers into a news dam that has been leaking like a World War I submarine amid the unbearable pressure of hundreds of thousands of defiant pro-reform demonstrators who have proven to be as apt to resisting the regime's electoral shenanigans as to beating the censors at the game of Internet whack-a-mole.

If the pen was mightier than the sword, the Internet is wearing a mighty bullet-proof vest in this Iranian revolution. And the US is helping it to be even harder to penetrate.

The New York Times:

On Monday afternoon, a 27-year-old State Department official, Jared Cohen, e-mailed the social-networking site Twitter with an unusual request: delay scheduled maintenance of its global network, which would have cut off service while Iranians were using Twitter to swap information and inform the outside world about the mushrooming protests around Tehran.

The request, made to a Twitter co-founder, Jack Dorsey, is yet another new-media milestone: the recognition by the United States government that an Internet blogging service that did not exist four years ago has the potential to change history in an ancient Islamic country.

“This was just a call to say: ‘It appears Twitter is playing an important role at a crucial time in Iran. Could you keep it going?’ ” said P.J. Crowley, the assistant secretary of state for public affairs.

Twitter complied with the request, saying in a blog post on Monday that it put off the upgrade until late Tuesday afternoon — 1:30 a.m. Wednesday in Tehran — because its partners recognized “the role Twitter is currently playing as an important communication tool in Iran.” The network was working normally again by Tuesday evening.

The State Department said its request did not amount to meddling. Mr. Cohen, they noted, did not contact Twitter until three days after the vote was held and well after the protests had begun.

The move is part of the Obama administration's new approach that freedom of expression does play a powerful role in bringing democracy to despotic regimes.

The episode demonstrates the extent to which the administration views social networking as a new arrow in its diplomatic quiver. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton talks regularly about the power of e-diplomacy, particularly in places where the mass media are repressed.

Mr. Cohen, a Stanford University graduate who is the youngest member of the State Department’s policy planning staff, has been working with Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and other services to harness their reach for diplomatic initiatives in Iraq and elsewhere.

And we applaud these efforts. Not long ago, Twitter sounded just like another chirping in today's information jungle. Little did we know it would end up roaring in the ears of censors the world over.