"Haystack's story makes for great Hollywood material..." →
“I like Hollywood as much as the next guy — and yet something just doesn’t feel right about Haystack. What really bothers me is that one cannot download and examine their software; as far as the Internet is concerned, Haystack doesn’t exist. In fact, Heap says that it is only distributed to trusted contacts inside Iran; putting it online would create a situation where the government could easily get hold of it as well and then reverse-engineer it or ban it or find a way to track its users.”
“So, in essence, the outside public — including Iranians — are asked to believe that a) Haystack software exists, b) Haystack software works, c) Haystack software rocks, and d) the Iranian government doesn’t yet have a copy of it, nor do they know that Haystack rocks & works. (And who could fault them for not reading Newsweek? I certainly can’t). For someone with my Eastern European sensibilities, that’s a lot of stuff to believe in. Even Santa — we call him Ded Moroz — appears more plausible in comparison.”
