I know a remote worker in Iran, went dark for a few days this week. Apparently they can’t call the UK, no internet, ended up relaying messages via a friend in Brazil via sat phone.
Comment on A woman tried to call her mom in Iran. A robotic voice answered the phone
mfed1122@discuss.tchncs.de 1 day ago
I’ll be very interested to some day figure out what the explanation for this is. It’s extremely bizarre and very creepy. Also, it’s crazy that Internet access can just be whisked away so easily by the government. I guess satellite is just about the only way around that.
FellowEnt@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
Deestan@lemmy.world 1 day ago
During the invasion of Berlin in 1945, the overwhelmed German command trying to map out the Russian advance had to resort to just calling businesses or homes of people living in areas they were uncertain about.
If most people in a district did not pick up the phone, or someone did pick up and swore in Russian, they marked it on the map as invaded.
Different worlds of course, but the point is that civilian phones have intelligence value.
It could bake sense as a super creepy tactical choice by Iran to deny intelligence gathering from abroad.
Hoimo@ani.social 1 day ago
The more obvious choice would be to make everyone go dark, instead of setting up nationwide voice mail to pretend everyone is alive. But maybe this way they can keep everyone’s communications open while also fooling most of these intelligence gathering methods (someone answered, in the right language, mark it as active).
Natanael@infosec.pub 1 day ago
Or they’re trying to figure out who’s trying to stay connected with who