Posted on 04/15/2026 9:20:38 PM PDT by Governor Dinwiddie
Files hidden in satellite TV broadcasts keep information flowing.
On 8 January 2026, the Iranian government imposed a near-total communications shutdown. It was the country’s first full information blackout: For weeks, the internet was off across all provinces while services including the government-run intranet, VPNs, text messaging, mobile calls, and even landlines were severely throttled. It was an unprecedented lockdown that left more than 90 million people cut off not only from the world, but from one another.
Since then, connectivity has never fully returned. Following U.S. and Israeli airstrikes in late February, Iran again imposed near-total restrictions, and people inside the country again saw global information flows dry up.
The original January shutdown came amid nationwide protests over the deepening economic crisis and political repression, in which millions of people chanted antigovernment slogans in the streets. While Iranian protests have become frequent in recent years, this was one of the most significant uprisings since the Islamic Revolution in 1979. The government responded quickly and brutally. One report put the death toll at more than 7,000 confirmed deaths and more than 11,000 under investigation. Many sources believe the death toll could exceed 30,000.
Thirteen days into the January shutdown, we at NetFreedom Pioneers (NFP) turned to a system we had built for exactly this kind of moment—one that sends files over ordinary satellite TV signals. During the national information vacuum, our technology, called Toosheh, delivered real-time updates into Iran, offering a lifeline to millions starved of trusted information.
How Iran Censors the Internet I joined NetFreedom Pioneers, a nonprofit focused on anticensorship technology, in 2014. Censorship in Iran was a defining feature of my youth in the 1990s. After the Islamic Revolution, most Iranians began to lead double lives—one at home, where they could drink …
(Excerpt) Read more at spectrum.ieee.org ...
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However, operating the service is costly: NetFreedom Pioneers pays tens of thousands of dollars a month for satellite bandwidth. We had received funding from the U.S. State Department, but in August of 2025, that funding ended, forcing us to suspend services in Iran.Was that USAID money? If so, it's a shame that the otherwise laudable efforts to stop the fraud hit this worthy effort.
If I remember it well, some guys were working on a system that used common lighting to send signals. The electric current was shut down and turned on in such short time periods that our eyes could not perceive it. But the on-off cycle was like binary code. A sensor would perceive the on-off sequence and translate it to some recognizable digital format. This concept was considered
when there wasn’t a large network of communication devices as there are now. But it could be dusted off and tried again. Wouldn’t be surprised if carrier pigeons, runners, or mirrors are being used.
IMHO
I learned my lesson years ago when someone I knew said he was going to run his cable signal to his bedroom over zipcord. I laughed and said it wouldn't work. "You need 75 ohm coax" blah blah blah.
I was wrong. He sent his cable signal over lamp zip cord and it worked.
Information is like heat. It always finds a way out.
If they only want to send quick signals they could embed a QR code into a tv broadcast. Phones could decipher that to short messages. They could shut that down with an EF-111 flight over the area. (is that old tech now or are they still flying?) Meanwhile, i hear there’s throat slitting masked Iranians targeting IRGC crazies.
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