TEHRAN - Financial and trade sanctions imposed on Iran may have failed to bring
the regime to its knees, but they have hamstrung efforts by dissidents to
spread their message on the Internet because the latest technology and payment
methods are barred.
The Green Movement, which grew out of opposition to President Mahmud
Ahmadinejad's re-election last June, has had some success in using the Internet
as a battleground at a time when foreign and domestic media have been banned
from reporting from inside Iran.
While web access is severely limited, many in the movement believe that video
of opposition protests gets to the outside world
within hours thanks to sympathizers who work in government offices where the
Internet is unrestricted.
The impact stemming from home Internet use has been limited given that,
according to official statistics, 70% of Iranians do not have Internet access
and high-speed Internet is limited to 2% of the country's users.
In addition, the Internet infrastructure is weak and connecting to any network
is expensive. Internet distribution is completely government-owned and is
subject to one of the most advanced filtering systems in the world.
In September 2005, the chief executive of the Iranian company Delta Global,
Rahim Azimi, said in an interview that his company had won a government
contract worth US$7 million to provide technology that would filter at least
nine million websites.
Rahim told ISNA, a semi-official Iranian news agency, that many service
providers in Iran were using American and European filtering software such as
Smartfilter, Websense and Webwasher.
Some Internet service providers, ISPs, have told their customers off the record
that filtering is carried out by the government-owned Telecommunications of
Iran Company (TIC) and the ISPs have no role in the matter.
The use of this method of filtering results in the quick blocking of
newly-launched websites and the ineffectiveness of proxy servers that are
commonly used to bypass filtering.
One new organization, Nedanet, aims to help people inside Iran use proxy
servers. Software called Haystack, now under development and aimed at Iranians,
is intended to fool censors by obfuscating web content.
Many experts following the filtering situation in Iran believe government
methods used for web control and cracking down on dissidents have drastically
changed.
Morgan Sennhauser, the Nedanet project coordinator, has published reports
containing details of efforts made by the Iranian government to counter hacking
activities and says the Iranian government's measures have been surprisingly
successful and they have even surpassed the Chinese government's in censorship
terms.
Iranian police chief Brigadier General Ismail Ahmadi-Moqqadam recently warned
the opposition that not only are their text messages being monitored, but their
personal e-mails too. He even threatened Internet users that relying on proxy
servers and anti-filtering software would not help them hide their identities
from the police.
While many believe such statements to be bluffs aimed at instilling fear in
citizens, the wave of arrests and the persecution of Internet activists in
recent months shows that the Iranian government sees the Internet as one of its
main security challenges.
In one recent court hearing for five protesters, the main charges were
uploading videos of protests on the Internet and contacting anti-government
groups abroad by e-mail.
Some Iranians believe the government spends large amounts of money employing
foreign hackers to shut down opposition websites. During the recent
presidential campaign almost all websites belonging to the opposition came
under anonymous cyber-attack - and, after the election, these websites were
blocked.
The Green Movement has managed to strengthen its online presence despite these
restrictions. While the Iranian government reduces the speed of the Internet on
days when there are demonstrations to obstruct the flow of information from
inside the country, within hours of street protests a large number of videos
are uploaded to the web.
Dissidents think their supporters in government offices with unrestricted web
access help get the pictures out.
Aside from internal obstacles, restrictions by international Internet companies
are also frustrating Iranian web users. The majority of these restrictions were
imposed after the international community, and in particular the United States,
imposed harsh sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program, which some
suspect is being used to develop a nuclear bomb.
Although these sanctions are mostly aimed at putting pressure on the Tehran
government, ordinary Internet users trying to evade state censorship are the
ones who suffer. The majority of websites providing software, either free or
paid-for, prohibit Iranians from downloading.
On December 29, 2009, the official Google weblog published an entry written in
support of the Green Movement and its uploading of amateur videos of opposition
protests on YouTube. However, Google Inc does not allow Iranians to download
its Google Chrome, Google Talk, Google Code or Picasa software, all of which
are extremely popular among the Green Movement's members.
A large number of security applications, such as tunneling or secure shell
software, which create protected links between two points, are inaccessible to
Iranians.
Also, United States financial institutions are barred from dealing with Iran
and that cuts off many routes. Foreign companies have blocked almost all access
to online shopping and financial transactions from Iran. If anyone in Iran buys
software from abroad using a foreign account, their Internet address will
reveal their location and the bank account will be frozen.
Websites selling Internet domains and hosting services will not provide
services to Iranians and Internet phone company Skype, which would provide
Iranian dissidents with a safe means of communication via its messenger, does
not allow Iranian Internet addresses or let Iranians buy credit.
Even a large open source software resource recently changed its rules to stop
Iranians from using it.
Without these restrictions, dissidents would find it easier to communicate and
create websites but the Internet does not distinguish between an ordinary
citizen and a member of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, so all are
barred.
The administration, however, can easily bypass the restrictions and government
organizations have gained access to the most advanced computer technologies.
The Iranian government's agents, stationed in countries that that are not under
sanctions, assist it in meeting its Internet demands, though it tries to
minimize reliance on facilities abroad.
The Washington Times on December 18 reported that the Barack Obama
administration had lifted some of its Internet sanctions on Iranians. The
report said the decision was aimed at alleviating the concerns of Internet
companies reluctant to offer services to the people of countries that are under
sanctions.
How this will benefit Internet users is unclear but a recent study found that
downloading the most commonly used Internet software such as Google Chat and
Yahoo Messenger is still forbidden to Iranians.
While United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in a speech in January,
criticized Iran for its strict Internet censorship and filtering, she failed to
acknowledge that the Tehran government can thank the US for sanctions that have
to some extent helped gag its opposition in cyberspace.
Mania Tehrani is pseudonym of an Iranian social journalist based in
Tehran.
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