On March 12 that is the World Day against Cyber Censorship, Reporters without Borders published a new list of Internet Enemies, including Iran, Cuba, China, Burma, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Vietnam.
RSF’s annual online rally is intended to draw attention to the ways that governments around the world are deterring and censoring free speech online. You can see the March 12 special page here and read the full report on Iran below.
Domain name: .ir
Population: 76,923,300
Internet users: 28, 200,000
Average cost of a one-hour cybercafé connection: 3 to 4 U.S. dollars
Average monthly salary: about 560 U.S. dollars
Number of imprisoned netizens: 11
Iran has intensified online crackdowns and surveillance again this year, particularly in periods of unrest and demonstrations, during which the authorities have resorted to causing Internet slowdowns and disconnections, or jamming telephone lines. The regime has also continued to demonise the new media, accusing them of serving foreign interests. Several netizens have been sentenced to death.
Toughening and broadening Internet censorship
In January 2011, the authorities finished setting up the first Iranian cyberpolice to strengthen their control of the Internet. On 20 May 2010, Ebrahim Jabari, an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commander, officially confirmed the creation of an Iranian "Cyber Army" which has already cracked down on online networks deemed "destructive," and arrested hundreds of netizens.
Internet service providers were already leasing bandwidth to the Telecommunications Company of Iran (TCI), controlled by the Revolutionary Guards, who are responsible for ordering the blocking of websites. Although the authorities boast that they have blocked hundreds of thousands of websites, it is certain that thousands of them and millions of associated pages are now inaccessible in Iran. Under Ahmadinejad's administration, the censorship of news sites covering politics and human rights has been considerably tightened.
Filtering software developed in Iran is used in these blocking efforts. Censorship criteria are formulated by the Committee in Charge of Determining Unauthorised Websites (CCDUW). In January 2010, the authorities had issued a "list of Internet offences" drawn up by a "committee of experts" which was already implementing a genuine Net filtering system. This "list" is an inventory of banned websites. Targeted are contents "contrary to the morals of society," "to religious values" and "to security and social peace," "hostile towards government officials and institutions" or which "facilitate the commission of a crime," including circumventing censorship or bypassing filtering systems. It is forbidden "to sell filter circumvention software" in the country. This list supplements the law enacted by the Iranian Parliament over a year ago which imposes sanctions of up to several years in prison. At least two netizens have been arrested for using censorship-circumventing software.
The "committee of experts" includes members from several government branches and the judicial wing, representatives of the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, the Ministry of National Security and Teheran's Public Prosecutor.
Iran's censors combine URL blocking with keyword filtering to ensure optimal censorship and act promptly in the event of breaking news. The Reuters press agency and Yahoo! websites have allegedly been censored since the Tunisia and Egypt uprisings. Google is also said to be partially blocked and some links to foreign news sites supposedly have been replaced by official sources.
A system for censoring conservative sites has been set up which reveals internal divisions in the leadership. In October 2010, several news portals were blocked, including those of the three influential Grand Ayatollahs – Ayatollahs Saanei (saanei.org), Bayat Zanjani (bayatzanjani.net) and Dastgheib (dastgheib.ir) – inaccessible since 3 October 2010.
In February 2010, the Gmail messaging service was suspended. According to the authorities, a national messaging service will soon be launched. Several websites such as Radio Zamaneh and Twitter have been the target of cyberattacks. Blog platforms like blogfa.com are not totally blocked, but those run by individuals are. Participative photo- or video-exchange websites are among those targeted by censors: Flickr, Photobucket and YouTube are blocked.
The regime's propaganda and tampering against Internet and social networks
Iran's government seems to be launching a real war against social networks which has been intensifying since the latter's presumed role in the disputed re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The authorities are shamelessly advancing the theory that it was a plot.
In September 2010, a state-owned Iranian TV station declared that Facebook and Twitter were the country's hidden enemies used by Western secret services to recruit new members and collect information. Facebook and Twitter are accused of being implicated in a "psychological and propaganda war." At the end of 2008, the Revolutionary Guards announced their plan to create 10,000 blogs to support Iran's paramilitary militia, the basij, and to promote the regime's ideology. Several websites and blogs were created to disseminate propaganda and infiltrate social networks, which they used mainly to spread messages to incite hatred.
Through the agency of its Cyber Army, the government itself repeatedly initiated politically motivated cyberattacks on various opposition or news sites such as Jaras, Kalameh, Balatarin, etc. In the morning of 14 February 2010, a day of demonstrations, Fararu.com and the sitesahamnews.org, which have close ties to opposition leader Mehdi Karoubi, were hacked, as was the supposedly secure Voice of America (VOA) website. Hackers claiming to be members of the Cyber Army managed to post messages on the page in Farsi, calling for an end "to U.S. meddling in the Muslim world" and labelling the media as a "spying tool for the United States."
The regime is also spying on cyberdissidents and attempting to infiltrate social networks, blocking various profiles on Facebook. On 18 December 2009, the Iranian Cyber Army succeeded in hacking Twitter. The website displayed the following message: "This site has been hacked by the Iranian Cyber Army": iranian.cyber.army@gmail.com". In January 2010, the Chinese search engine Baidu was also the target of cyberattacks, probably to counter the Chinese netizens' support of the Iranian people. Lastly, the regime launched a call for online collaboration and denunciation with the website Gerdab ("vortex"), spearheaded by the Organised Crime Surveillance Centre.
Ever since its creation in March 2009, the Organised Crime Surveillance Centre, established by the Revolutionary Guards, has played an active role in tracking down and arresting netizens. In March 2009, the Centre officially announced the dismantling of a "malevolent" online network and the arrests of several moderators of incriminated websites. A few days later, "confessions" of those arrested, together with their photos, were posted online, notably by the Gerdab website. The accused were allegedly forced to admit to the existence of websites which were critical of Islam and Iran's incumbent government, and to their intention of "corrupting" Iranian youth by publicising pornographic sites. They also had to confess to participating in a plot supported by the Americans and the Israelis.
Some of the regime's opponents have created their own "Green Cyber Army," which sometimes adopts the regime's methods. For example, some activists have attacked the Basij militia's website, moghavemat.ir, as well as sites created by individuals or Iranian agencies close to the government, such as Farsnews. In 2010, this Green Cyber Army also posted photos of people suspected of being government agents.
Slowing down the network and censuring SMS's
Under normal circumstances, bandwidth speed is slow. By order of the Ministry of Communications and Internet Technology, households and cybercafés are prohibited from having high-speed access, which is limited to speeds of 520 kb/s. Individual connection speed is slow in Iran and limited to 128 kb/s. This technical obstacle limits Internet users' ability to upload and download photos and videos. According to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), Iran's Internet penetration rate is the sixth highest in the region. However, its slow connections place the country 15th in a regional ranking of countries with Internet access. Worse still, according to Speedtest.net, Iran placed 176th (in terms of connection speed) in a 185-country survey.
In periods of social unrest, speed is intentionally made even slower. Following Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's disputed re-election, the regime intentionally jammed all means of communication. Two days prior to the presidential polls, the authorities had already cut the SMS network and slowed down Internet speed. In June and July 2010, they systematically shut down mobile telephone networks in the centre of Iran's major cities during the demonstrations, and decreased Internet network even more.
As of 10 February, after several calls had been posted on the Internet for a demonstration to coincide with the Islamic Revolution's anniversary on 14 February, bandwidth speed was slowed down sharply in several of the country's major cities. As they have done with the approach of every opposition event or potential demonstration, the authorities intensified censorship of all media likely to relay the call for demonstrations on Monday 14 February 2011. Independent news websites, or those deemed to have close ties to the opposition, such as Jaras, Kalameh, or Balatarin – one of the opposition movement's online bastions – and Gooya.com, one of the most popular news portals, have been blocked. Two news websites, fararu.com and sahamnews.org (the latter having close ties to opposition leader Mehdi Karoubi), were made inaccessible for several hours after being attacked by hackers. Access to Gmail, Google Reader and Yahoo ! was made more difficult in several regions of the country. The term Bahman, which corresponds to the 11th month of the Iranian calendar, was added to the blacklist of filtered keywords. Bloggers were ordered to withdraw any photos of the demonstrations from their websites. Cell phones and SMS's were also jammed. The same scenario reoccurred during the demonstrations on 20 February.
Anti-netizen repression is escalating: Record penalties, the world's youngest imprisoned blogger and death sentences
Authorities rely on Iran's Press Law, Penal Code and the Cyber Crime Act of 2009 to prosecute Internet users. Article 18 of the latter provides for prison terms of up to two years and a fine for anyone found guilty of "disseminating false information likely to agitate public opinion." By virtue of Articles 500 and 514 of the Penal Code, "anyone who somehow insults the founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Khomeini, or the Supreme Leader of the country should be sentenced to imprisonment from six months to two years" (Art. 514) and "anyone who undertakes any form of propaganda against the state will be sentenced to between three months and one year in prison" (Art. 500). Again this year, netizens – and especially the regime's opponents and advocates for women's rights – have been the target of countless arrests, summons and threats on the part of the authorities. The government has created numerous VPNs (virtual private networks) in order to gather information on dissidents. Seven netizens are still behind bars in the country.
On 16 February 2011, in response to recent demonstrations, Mohammad Hussein Khoshvaght, webmaster of fararu.com, and Gholam Ali Dehgan, webmaster of aftabnews.ir, were arrested by officials of the Ministry of Intelligence and National Security, and later released.
On 22 September 2010, Noushin Ahmadi Khorasani, Editor-in-Chief of the Feminist Schoolwebsite, was summoned and interrogated by the Fifth Chamber of the Tehran Revolutionary Court located inside Evin prison, before being released on bail. On 8 June 2010, blogger, journalist and women's rights activist Jila Bani Yaghoob was sentenced by the 26th Chamber of the Tehran Revolutionary Court to one year in prison and a 30-year ban on working as a journalist because of her opinions. Various "feminist" websites have been blocked, including we-change.org, roozmaregiha2.blogfa.com and pargas1.blogfa.com.
Hossein Derakhshan, an Irano-Canadian blogger, was given the harshest prison term ever meted out to a netizen in Iran: 19 and one-half years in prison, a five-year ban on engaging in political and media-related activities, and a fine of about 42,280 U.S. dollars. The netizen appealed his sentence, but is still waiting for a new trial. This excessive sentence was followed, in January 2010, by the conviction of blogger Navid Khanjani, a young student, who received a 12-year prison term. The Revolutionary Guards arrested netizen and human rights activist Hossien Ronaghi Maleki on 13 December 2010 during an "operation to dismantle a counter-revolutionary network." He was charged with developing and using anti-filtering software, and of assisting and hosting websites and blogs actively involved in defending human rights. This netizen, now gravely ill and deprived of medical care, was sentenced to 15 years behind bars.
The Iranian regime is now using the pornography pretext to definitively muzzle dissident voices and tighten its iron grip on information in the country. Second only to China in the number of people it has executed, Iran sentenced to death two Internet website administrators in December 2010, Saeed Malekpour and Vahid Asghari, for "agitating against the regime" and "insulting the sanctity of Islam." The verdicts were sent to the Supreme Court for confirmation. Close to 70 people have already been executed in Iran since early 2011.
It has intensified repression by sentencing to death – for the first time this year – individuals with dual nationalities, while the international community is forced to stand by, being unable to intervene.
Saeed Malekpour, a 35-year-old web designer, is a Canadian national. He has lived in Canada since 2004. In 2008, he was arrested in Iran while visiting his dying father and sentenced to death for having created pornographic websites. The cybernaut allegedly created a programme enabling the user to upload photos, but which was used without his knowledge to post pornographic images. Vahid Asghari has also been held since 2008. Like many prisoners, he was kept in solitary for seven months and tortured to make him admit that he had organised a pornographic network which blasphemed Islam. The two netizens were actually managing several news and opposition websites.
This year, Iranian authorities have unfortunately outdone themselves by incarcerating Navid Mohebbi, who was 18 at the time – the world's youngest blogger behind bars. This netizen, editor of the blog called “The writings of Navid Mohebbi” and women's rights activist in Iran, was arrested in his home on 18 September 2010 by eight Ministry of Intelligence agents. Beaten at the time of his arrest, he has been held in a cell with regular inmates ever since. The authorities accused the blogger of “activities contrary to national security" and "insulting the Islam Republic's founder and current leader" by means of “foreign media.” He was also charged with being a member of the "One Million Signatures movement to petition for changes in laws that discriminate against women." The Revolutionary Court in the city of Amoi (in northern Iran) had sentenced him to three years in prison, but he was freed on parole on 25 December 2010.
Reactions of the international community
The European Union recently recalled that the sanctions against Iran cannot be limited to penalising nuclear proliferation, but must also target against human rights violations. Scottish Conservative Struan Stevenson recently called for the EU "to impose tougher sanctions on the clerical regime for its flagrant human rights violations."
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently praised "the courage of the Iranian people," who refuse to abandon their right to free speech.
Despite all the risks, the Iranian blogosphere remains one of the most active in the world. It can count on the attention and support of bloggers around the globe, who, even in the middle of the 2009 protests, were relaying photos of the repression and launching support groups on Twitter via hashtag #CN4Iran. Iranian cybernauts do not fear censorship and have learned to use such circumvention tools as the Farsi versions of UltraReach, FreeGate and Nassim – software developed by the Global Internet Freedom Consortium in the United States and originally intended for Chinese netizens. The recent events in Egypt and Tunisia have revitalised Internet mobilisation in Iran, but also to closer scrutiny on the part of censors. The Iranian Internet is once again navigating a turbulent period.
Arash Shaygan
One may boldly assert that the Internet in Iran has never been in such a state as it is currently. Last year, after the protests and demonstrations by the Green Movement, widespread filtering took place in Cyber Space, due to the Iranian Government's fear that people would use the Internet against the regime. This took the form of blocking many social networking sites and weblogs.
With the street protests of the 25th of Bahman (February 14th), it's said that this state of affairs is once again being repeated. The slowing down of Internet speeds was the first expected outcome. In fact, in the days leading up to the 22nd of Bahman (February 11th), this affected a broad range of Iranian Internet users, and continues up till now.
The Iranian Government's next move was to block VPN (Virtual Private Network) ports, in order to limit Internet users from using these tools as much as possible. But, it didn't stop there. One day after the 25th of Bahman (February 14th), The Committee on Filtering blocked all sites that were displaying Valentine's Day related content. In the meantime, even several IT related sites were blocked. After this, many Internet users reported that they were having trouble getting into Gmail and couldn't view their email accounts and/or enter G Talk (Google Talk). In the days leading up to the 1st of Esfand (February 20th), Safhe-e Filtering (صفحه فیلترینگ) [The Filter Page) was the most viewed Iranian website. The traffic to this site reached such a large volume that it became inaccessible at times.
Attacks upon various sites were carried out by different groups. Early on the 25th of Bahman (February 14th), Government linked groups began their attack on sites such as Balatarin. The range of these attacks also extended to several other sites. However, on the other side of the coin, groups from around the world carried out attacks on Government websites and extremist media that support the regime, and were successful in disrupting their service. (Read: Anonymous' extensive attack against Government Sites)
The Iranian Government's oppressive measures in Cyber Space reached such an extent that even Google Reader was blocked. However, the filtering of Google Reader was not something that could be easily circumvented. Several months ago, this service was blocked for less than a day. After several hours, it was once again accessible for Internet users. This time, however, according to reports, the filtering of this service in Iran was at the behest of a public prosecutor.
Google Reader is a service that enables users to follow RSS feeds from multiple news sites and weblogs, and to view them without restrictions. During times of unrest, this service, alongside social networks, enabled people to access information. With the blocking of this service, however, one of the simplest ways of retrieving information has been eliminated, and a new method must be found to replace it.
Despite being several days after these events; there still are reports that people in Iran are having problems accessing the Internet. We hope that the Internet in Iran will return to its normal state after this time has passed (although the normal state of the Internet in Iran is highly filtered), and, at the very least, Internet users will have open access to Google Reader. We'll keep you updated on any further developments.
Amin Sabeti
On this third investigative seasonal report on the situation of filtering in Iran, we will have a look at censorship in the last fall (2010). We can name the this season as "the season that even a lot of pro-governments experience begin blocked." (Read the 1st seasonal report: Spring, the Season to Kill Blogosphere, and the 2nd one: Summer, Organized Filtering Season)
This time we've done statistical analysis as well.
September- October 2010
September 29: Ars Technica was blocked just because of publishing some articles about Stuxnet that has targeted Iran's nuclear facilities.
October 2: the official website of Ayatollah Dastgheyb, the opponent of the government in Shiraz and a member of Assembly of Experts was blocked. Moreover, "Eslahat News"; the news network of the united movement of student activists and "Ghalamneveshteha Blog" belonging to Saeede Montazeri (Ayatollah Montazeri's Daughter) were blocked.
October 3: The official websites of Grand Ayatollahs Bayat Zanjani and Sanei -the two
government opponents in Qom- were filtered. At the same time, the Persian Wikipedia was blocked, however after some hours the authorities lifted it.
October 4: "Taghir" (Change) was filtered again soon after restarting its activities. (this website was filtered last year due the aftermath election events.)
October 5: the deputy of Telecommunication Infrastructure Company announced the possibility of implementing Access layer instead of Gateway in order to block websites. In case of realization it'd a fundamental change in filtering policy.
October 6: The head of Developing IT and Digital Media Center of Cultural Ministry announced that 99 % of filtering websites are done because they were requested by public reports.
October 8: According to the declaration of the head of Developing IT and Digital Media Center of Cultural Ministry filtering page has 3 million visitors per day.
October 13: Tarane Alidousti's – cinema actress – blog was filtered due to posting some notes in support of Asqar Farhadi. Farhadi –Berlinale award winner – had criticized policies of Cultural Ministry in the Ceremony of House of Cinema.
October 19: Mohammad Khatami, former president's official website that was reflecting his latest views and activities was filtered.
October 20: The filtering of Mohammad Khatami's official website was lifted after 24 hours.
October 21: "Tahavvolkhahi" was filtered for the third time during a year. Also in the same day, Ayatollah Sanei announced a new address for his website so that the users can access the information.
October 23: The Cultural Minister declared that decision making and implementation of filtering websites and weblogs are under the responsibilities of country's chief prosecutor and claimed that his ministry has only one vote in this procedure. Moreover, in a gathering titled "Society and New Media; opportunities and challenges" which mainly focused on satellite, Pedram Alvandi regarded filtering as a main challenge of Internet in Iran.
October 25: the IMBD (International Movie Database) was filtered.
October 27: Opensubtitles website which was a source for downloading subtitles in Persian was filtered.
November 2010
November 6: "Baran" website – the website of Baran Institute that belongs to Mohammad Khatami- was filtered.
November 10: "Goftare No" website was filtered. This website was registered at Cultural Ministry.
November 13: Ehsan Shariati's – the son of Dr. Ali Shariati, a muslim thinker- blog was filtered.
November 14: The filtering of Friendfeed, the social network which is very popular among Iranian users, was lifted. However, it was blocked again in less than 24 hours.
November 15: The official website of Habibollah Peyman, the leader of Islamic Socialist political party, (Jonbesh Moslamanan Mobarez) was filtered after some hours of starting its activity.
November 18: The official website of Hooshang Golshiri Foundation was filtered. Moreover, the official website of Ahmad Shamlu -famous Iranian poet – was filtered in the same day.
November 21: The Domain of the Persianblog was filtered and as a result some of its hosted blogs faced with problems.
November 30: The second website of Ayatollah Montazeri – after having the first official website blocked on 13th of June 2010 – was filtered. Also, Persian Script forum which was active in the field of Coding and IT was filtered with unclear reasons.
December 2010
December 4: The managers of three blogging service: Blogfa, Mihanblog and Blogsky protested about the structure and situation of Internet filtering in Iran.
December 9: Ayatollah Vahid Khorasani's fans weblog which was active in Blogfa service was filtered. This weblog has been reflecting the speeches and views of Ayatollah Vahid Khorasani.
December 12: Hossein Ghadiany's (a hardliner pro-government) Blog was filtered due to posting an open letter to the head of judiciary of Iran. Republishing this letter in other weblogs and websites had led to their filtering as well as an example Mashregh News can be mentioned.
December 13: The "Feminist School" for the 20th time was blocked. Also scribd website was filtered in the same day. This website contains achieves like e-books in different languages.
December 17: Download.com website that is a globally known center for downloading various types of software was filtered.
December 18: Shargh Newspaper's official website following the arrest of its chief Editor, manager and some of its journalists, was filtered.
December 19: Mashregh News' filtering was lifted after 6 days. However in this date the "Hemmat online website" which belongs to pro-fundamentalisms and was close to Rahim Mashaie was filtered.
December 20: Aljazeera news agency and the Server of Wikipedia pictures were filtered. In addition, Google FeedProxy which is a part of Feed Burner for creating Standard RSS, was filtered.
December 21: Paper.li website that helps a user's tweets be published in a newspaper format was filtered. Moreover, the weblog of Mohammad Darvish was filtered. His blog is the oldest and most famous blog in this field. In addition the Feminist School website which was accessible under a new domain was filtered for the 21st time.
A look at the margins of Fall 2010
- Some users reported that the circumvention tools and proxies weren't working properly.
-There are reports about so many advertisements on the filtering page (Peyvandha.ir) which shows this page has a commercial function as well.
-Some pages in Wikipedia – such as the page on sex – are filtered.
- "Zagros-e-ma" blog has protested to the filtering of three blogs in Brujerd. It regarded the law of cyber crimes ambiguous, since every individual can have a personal interpretation out of it.
- Some users report about unofficial filtering which means a website is actually filtered yet instead of Filtering page (Peyvandha.ir) the time out page appears.
- On December 14 some users reported on free access to YouTube for some hours.
- Some reported that the word "oil" was filtered in the morning of December 20 by start of implementing the targeted subsidy plan in Iran.
The summary of Fall 2010
Regarding the closed structure of filtering system in Iran as well as this fact that there are not many reports on this topic, therefore, publishing statistics about the filtered pages in Iran would be very difficult and in some cases even impossible.
As a result, in this reports we only focus on those websites and blogs which are of a political, social, and cultural importance. Accordingly, in fall 2010 at least 34 important websites and blogs have been filtered in Iran. The highest amount of filtering that has been carried out during the late November and early December about 41 % (with 14 cases) and the least amount has been done in the late October and early November by 27 % (9 cases). (Pie chart 1)
Considering the content, we should say the majority of the filtered pages have had a political or news theme (41 %) and the lowest amount are pages with the religious theme with 15 %.
The interesting point is that 29 % of Filtered pages have been active in IT field. In addition, 15 % of the filtered addresses belong to the Persian blogging services such as Blogfa or Persianblog. (Pie chart 2)
Based on this statistics we can conclude that the implemented filtering policy in Iran has expanded its target group, i.e. it used to target only political opponents and critics, and however nowadays the websites belong to high ranking clerics and their fans are also included in their target list. It is interesting since Iran is known as being a religious regime in which clerics are important political players and have significant power.
Moreover, it shouldn't be neglected that the filtered pages in the IT fields' shows that there is not yet a defined policy for filtering after a decade.
هیچ نظری موجود نیست:
ارسال یک نظر