Many of you know how Haystack was born — there was, and still is, a dire need to provide those in Iran with a safe way of getting online and securely communicating. Since the elections, the Iranian government has demonstrated time and again that it’s willing to ‘crank up’ its filtering of the Internet with little reason beyond stopping those who wish to communicate on popular social networks.

This kind of ‘thought control’ (sorry, I went there) is not unique to Iran. Just last week, another popular anti-censorship tool called Tor was blocked in China. There are countries all over the world experiencing varying degrees of government-imposed censorship.

In Australia, the Labor Party introduced a policy of mandatory Internet filtering. They did so partially under the guise of protecting children, but when the blacklist was leaked on WikiLeaks, it was quickly shown to block many completely benign sites. This is just another example, but those who enjoy and appreciate being able to communicate freely online need to also be aware of how quickly that freedom can be taken away.

I, and the rest of the Haystack team, agree and that’s why we’ve formed the Censorship Research Center — a San Francisco-based non-profit. The CRC seeks to do three key things: research the ways censorship is being performed, educate people about the impact of censorship by providing outreach programs and finally, when necessary, building the software tools that will enable people to get around Internet censorship.

Getting to just this point has been neither easy nor fast. The amount of resources — legal, organizational, and technical — required to make this happen has been astounding and we’re just getting started. The goal: to protect bloggers and journalists, students and professors, anyone who wants to get involved. To do this, we need to guard all aspects of social media and our links to them.

Most of us never have to stop and think, “What will happen if I blog this? Am I safe?” But what if you had to.