By ,
Published January 14, 2015
A San Francisco cyberactivist wants your unwanted USB thumb drives — to help the cause of freedom in Iran.
Austin Heap, one of the leading Western hackers who helped Iranian dissidents and protesters get their videos and reports to the outside world following last month's disputed presidential election, has written a software program to get around Tehran's Internet filters.
Now, he says, he needs to get it to people in Iran — and one of the best ways to do so is via those ubiquitous "thumb drives."
"I get the tiny 128mb versions all the time at tech conferences, and now I've learned they're actually useful," Heap posted on his blog.
Heap's software, called Haystack, will supposedly let Iranians anonymously get access to the full Internet. Iranians can't download it directly, but they can pass around thumb drives on which the software is loaded.
"We have a version of Haystack that is very easy for users to run — they just stick in a drive (say a USB stick) and it essentially boots directly into Firefox with Haystack running in the background," he told FOXNews.com via e-mail. "Poof: Twitter & Facebook work again inside Iran securely and anonymously over Haystack's network."
He wouldn't provide any information on how he was planning to actually get the thumb drives into the country.
"For security reasons, I obviously can't discuss distribution methods," Heap wrote.
• Click here to learn how to donate an unused USB thumb drive to the Haystack project.
https://www.foxnews.com/story/wanted-unused-usb-thumb-drives-for-iran