He casually mentioned in his blog that he was based out of New York. The guards at the border also found a Newsweek magazine addressed to his residence in New York. The rule is Canadians can stay in the U.S. for six months without much in the way of documentation or visas or anything.
Hossein Derakhshan, also known as “Hoder” and a native of Tehran, now lives in Toronto and blogs about technology, pop culture and his old home of Iran. He’s developed an online reputation as an online journalist, web designer and what eWeek quoted from the blogosphere as “one of the great pioneers of international blogging and freedom of speech online.”
The Committee to Protect Bloggers posted on their own blog last week on the matter, calling the charge “trumped up.” The Committee to Protect Bloggers is an international organization interested in civil liberties, particularly freedom of speech relating to the blogosphere. In some cases, they help bloggers in countries where speech isn’t looked on so much as free.
He said in his own blog they researched him pretty thoroughly after they determined he’d been back to Iran since 2000. His blog said, “One of them, a very sharp guy in fact, started to read every single post on my blog. And it didn’t take long until he shocked me: ‘So you live in New York, right? That’s what you’ve written in your [blog].”
John Stith is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business.
