Stealth signals are bypassing Iran’s internet blackout

> Satellite TV uses a file system called an MPEG transport stream that allows multiple audio, video, or data layers to be packaged into a single stream file.

Interesting read but that part really made me question my own sanity. It’s probably just lost in translation.

Excepts the internet blackout has nothing to do with censorship at all. This is just Iran protecting itself from cyber attacks, if they had kept Internet running, they would have been completely pwned.

None of the people I know inside Iran actually use this Toosheh[1] thing. And I mean zero, nada, none. Not one. Most are unaware of its existence. This sounds something that sounded cool pre-Starlink era that received funds and favors from western governments and NGOs and did not result in anything useful (not surprising that they get international press too despite being a total failure.) Realistically, a download-only solution does not solve a problem. Persian video content that people watch are delivered via DVB Satellite TV video channels. With Internet, what people want is to communicate and therefore need realtime access and data upload capability to contact others and use web services, not download a new offline copy of Wikipedia everyday! In practice, Iranians inside Iran end up mostly using VPNs and tunnels of various sorts. Often some variant of shadowsocks with SNI spoofing, which stop working in a full blackout. What will be left during a full blackout is people who have government-sanctioned SIM cards with full Internet access (known as "white SIMs") to propagandize on social networks in favor of the reigme when everyone else is disconnected and, a tiny set of people who have acquired Starlink terminals.

The same set of people behind that project were supposedly given additional resources to smuggle Starlinks inside, and in the Persian community on Twitter, there's an ongoing meme mocking where those Starlinks actually went and given to whom, never to get an answer...

[1]: TLDR: data archive within DVB-S video stream

So its just embeding some files in a satalite tv broadcast stream?

I dont think that helps that much. If you have satalite tv going in, you already have video coming in, are arbitrary files really that much more useful?

The thing people really want internet communication for is 2 way coms. Getting info on the situation on the ground out and allowing different groups inside Iran to coordinate. I fail to see how this helps with that.

The claim of 30,000 dead in the crackdown is dubious. It originates from a doctor turned fashion blogger turned independent journalist called Deepa Parent[1] and doesn't have any other evidence to support it. (The Dresden fire bombing required tons of munitions and the toll was 25,000).[2]

Now having said that, given the nature of the Iranian theocracy, they are quite capable of such acts. Remember that they have hanged homosexuals from cranes,[3] and executed rape victims.[4] But 30,000 in two days [5] is an extraordinary claim which requires more evidence, certainly more than circular references tracing back to just one source.

[1] https://thegrayzone.com/2026/02/01/guardian-iranian-death-to...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Dresden

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahmoud_Asgari_and_Ayaz_Marhon...

[4] https://www.timesnownews.com/lifestyle/people/crime-against-...

[5] https://www.iranintl.com/en/202601255198

Edit: added [5]

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>NFP’s solution was to add redundancy, similar in principle to a data-storage technique called RAID (redundant array of independent disks). Instead of sending each piece of data once, we send extra information that allows missing or corrupted packets to be reconstructed.

A bit disappointing TBH if that is their solution. Seems like everything is trying to pigeon hole everyone into the proof of work scenario. If we have more power/energy then we will beat you in everything security, coding and censorship circumvention.