An idealistic young San Francisco developer (with photogenic long hair and a gift for talking to the press) is inspired to create software to help those living under repressive regimes to get around internet censorship. He tests it first in Iran, with plans to roll it out around the world.
“It’s the perfect narrative that people wanted to believe,” says Mehdi Yahyanejad, the creator of a successful Persian language Website who reviewed the software, known as Haystack.
Alas, the software – the brainchild of 26-year-old Austin Heap – did not deliver as advertised, and could actually have put its users at risk (though Mr Yahyanejad points out that using censorship-circumventing technology is not in itself illegal in Iran).
After an escalating war of words online (Evgeny Morozov first took issue with Haystack here and here, with Mr Heap responding here), the project has unravelled (this is our report today.) For the US state department, which has put great store in the internet tools to support what it calls 21st Century Statecraft, the resignation letter of Haystack’s lead developer will not make pretty reading.
This is what Daniel Colascione had to say about his relationship with Mr Heap, and his anguished explanation of Haystack’s failure:
“We met online, after the [Iranian] election. After that otherwise-normal day in June 2009, Austin Heap and I went on to found the Censorship Research Center. We have traveled, laughed, drank, worked, celebrated, and commiserated together. I have been involved in this project longer than anyone else; before there was a Censorship Research Center, I coined the name “Haystack”. I feel as if I know Austin better than many people know their own brothers. He is fundamentally a good man. That’s why this is such a difficult decision, and why I waited so long to make it.
“It is with trepidation and regret that I say that I cannot, in good conscience, continue associating myself with the CRC. Effective immediately, I am cutting all ties.
“I would like to stress that I am not resigning in shame over the much-maligned test program. It is as bad as Appelbaum [developer Jacob Applebaum, who criticised the software after an independent test this weekend] makes it out to be. But I maintain that it was a diagnostic tool never intended for dissemination, never mind hype. I did have a solid, reasonable design, and described it in our brief overture of transparency. _That_ is what Haystack would have been. It would have worked!
“What I am resigning over is the inability of my organization to operate effectively, maturely, and responsibly. We have been disgraced. I am resigning over dismissing pointed criticism as nonsense. I am resigning over hype trumping security. I am resigning over being misled, and over others being misled in my name.
“I am as shocked and as angered as anyone, if not more so: for me, it was a matter of trust between friends. I genuinely felt like we were changing the world for the better. I still believe that for a while, we really were. Austin and I quit full-time jobs in the middle of a depression to further develop this dream. We stayed up late hours to prepared [sic] drafts. We shared full access to the same machines. We had a shared purpose. Nobody can argue that we didn’t begin with the best of intentions. The hype and imprudence squandered that original goodwill.
“I announced several days ago that I would resume an active role in the CRC. I reconnected with Babak and Austin in the hope that I could put the work I had already completed into a finished product, and I hoped that I could heal the CRC’s image through openness and transparency. My colleagues and friends welcomed me with praise, great eagerness and open arms. But it just couldn’t work.
“I finally realize, despite myself, that the damage is irreparable. I can’t fathom some of what I’m seen and what I’ve learned. Even if the organization were to do its best to make amends, I have no confidence that the bounty would last. “There was plenty of error on my part too, of course. I should never have allowed that damned “test” program to be distributed at all, and should never have added diagnostics to it; running it once in a controlled environment was a risk — arguably an acceptable one at the time. Multiplying that risk by users and by uses was what made it a catastrophe. I should have stuck my head out of the code and more strenuously objected to the hype.
“I would like to emphasize that my friend and long-time colleague, Babak Siavoshy, is utterly blameless. Although he is one of the most intelligent and professional men I know, his ignorance of the technical details involved made him unable to independently track our progress. He truly believed. For my part, although judgment of character is not my strongest skill, I should have known better.
“I should have resigned immediately when I began to feel a certain ineffable wrongness — that action would have either ended things or produced lasting change. Instead, I allowed the situation to fester. I should have had the courage to ensure we did things right or not at all.
“I regret that we exposed anyone to undue risk, and that we deprived citizens of the effective anti-censorship tool that might have been. I regret standing silently while I listened to empty promises — and I especially regret that this whole ordeal has scarred the anti-censorship landscape so badly that it may be years before anything grows there again.
“I only ask that everyone, please, let bygones be bygones. There will be no more Censorship Research Center. No more Haystack. No more hype. We’re all wiser now in one way or another. Analyze if you must, but acknowledge that it’s over now. Let’s mitigate any remaining damage, then, please, move on.
Sadly,
Daniel Colascione”
We have not yet received a response from Mr Heap, but will carry it here if and when we do.
