Iran's resistance keeps up cat-and-mouse Web game

With their paths through the Internet increasingly blocked by government filters, Nooshin and her fellow Iranian opposition-supporters say their information on planned protests now comes in emails. They say they don't know who sends them.

Internet messages have been circulating about possible rallies on February 11, when Iran marks the 31st anniversary of the Islamic revolution. But the climate in the Islamic Republic is much harder than before last year's post-election protests. Last June, social media sites were hailed in the West as promising opposition supporters an anonymous rallying ground -- especially when they were accessed via proxy servers that could mask participants' actions and whereabouts. For determined Iranians now, they are a high-risk tactic in a strategic game with the authorities, amid reports of mounting Internet disruption. Almost 32 percent of Iranians use the Internet and nearly 59 percent have a cellphone subscription, according to 2008 estimates from the International Telecommunications Union.