[LINK] why filters are sometimes funny

[Jan Whitaker]

This is a headline of an article on theverge.com:

Iranian leader's fatwa against anti-filtering tools censored by its 
internet filter

http://www.theverge.com/2012/5/12/3016201/iran-internet-filtering-fatwa-ayatollah-khomeini


Iran's attempts at censoring digital communications have come under 
<http://www.theverge.com/2012/3/20/2887183/obama-iran-internet>global 
scrutiny in recent months, and now the country's supreme leader 
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has issued a fatwa outlawing anti-filtering 
tools that help citizens access blocked material on the internet. 
However, in an ironic twist, less than 30 hours after being published 
the religious edict itself was blocked to those trying to access it 
inside the country. Because the filtering software uses fairly 
simplistic keyword tools to detect pages which should be banned, it's 
likely that the occurrence of the word "anti-filtering" was enough to 
place the site onto the blacklist.

It's the latest in the country's attempts to create a "safe" 
internet, which blocks content that could present a threat to the 
government in a style similar to China's firewall. 
<http://www.theverge.com/2012/2/13/2795337/iran-blocks-google-services-gmail-youtube-confirmation>Google 
has already confirmed that its encrypted services are unavailable to 
Iranians, a move which also 
<http://www.theverge.com/2012/2/10/2789075/iran-blocking-https-google-encrypted-internet>prevents 
the use of many proxies.