In the first few years of the 21st century, Iran experienced a great surge in Internet usage, and, with 20 million people on the Internet, currently has the second highest percentage of its population online in the Middle East, after Israel.[1] When initially introduced, the Internet services provided by the government within Iran were comparatively open. Many users saw the Internet as an easy way to get around Iran's strict press laws.[2][3] It increased with the administration of conservative president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2005. Regime opponents in Iran are said to rely heavily on Web-based communication with the outside world.[4]
Many bloggers, online activists, and technical staff have faced jail terms, harassment and abuse.[5][6] In November 2006, Iran was one of 13 countries labeled "enemies of the internet" by activist group Reporters Without Borders.[1] In March 2010, it was one of twelve regimes so labeled.[7] Following the 2009 Iranian presidential election, the U.S. Senate ratified a plan to help curb "censorship in the Islamic Republic". The legislation dubbed the Victims of Iranian Censorship (VOICE) Act was allocated $50 million to fund measures "to counter Iranian government efforts to jam radio, satellite, and Internet-based transmissions."[8]
Recently, the Iran government required all Iranians to register their web sites in Ministry of art and culture. They also plan to filter all other websites up to March 2007.[9]
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Every ISP must be approved by both the Telecommunication Company of Iran (TCI) and the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, and must implement content-control software for websites and e-mail. ISPs face heavy penalties if they do not comply with the government filter lists. At least twelve ISPs have been shut down for failing to install adequate filters.[10] The state blacklist consists of about 15,000 websites forbidden by the Iranian government.[3] Before subscribers can access Internet service providers, they must first promise in writing not to access "non-Islamic" sites.[11] In 2008, Iran has blocked access to more than five million Internet sites, whose content is mostly perceived as immoral and anti-social.
The primary engine of Iran's censorship is the content-control software SmartFilter, developed by San Jose firm Secure Computing.[11] However, Secure denies ever having sold the software to Iran, and alleges that Iran is illegally using the software without a license.[12]
As of 2006, Iran's SmartFilter is configured to filter local Persian-language sites, and block prominent English-language sites, such as the websites for the New York Times and Facebook [13]
The software effectively blocks access to most pornographic sites, gay and lesbian sites, reformist political sites, news media, sites that provide tools to help users cloak their Internet identity, and other sites nebulously defined as immoral on various grounds. Iran has been accused by its critics of censoring more Internet sites than any other nation except China.[1]
Iran has since developed its own hardware and software for filtering purposes. The architecture of the Iranian Internet is particularly conducive to widespread surveillance as all traffic from the dozens of ISPs serving households is routed through the state-controlled telecommunications infrastructure of the Telecommunication Company of Iran (TCI).[14]
The Kurdish version of Wikipedia was blocked for several months in 2006, according to Reporters Without Borders.[15]
Iranians can sometimes access forbidden sites through proxy servers, although these machines can be blocked as well. In 2003, the United States began providing a free proxy server to Iranian citizens through its IBB service Voice of America with Internet privacy company Anonymizer, Inc. The proxy website changes whenever the Iranian government blocks it.[16]
However, even the U.S. proxy filters pornographic websites and keywords. "There's a limit to what taxpayers should pay for," an IBB program manager was quoted as saying.[16] The forbidden keywords are controversial—banning "gay" effectively bars access to a host of gay and lesbian sites—and have had unintended consequences. The banning of "ass", for example, blocks access to the website of the United States Embassy.[17] A complete list of the blacklisted keywords on the American server can be found here.
The possibility that Nokia Siemens Systems sold, in 2008, TCI a deep packet inspection countrywide capacity for monitoring or even altering content of Internet voice and mail communication was raised in a Wall Street Journal report in June, 2009.[18] The company has denied that what it sold to TCI had such capacity but only "lawful intercept" capacity relative to child pornography e.g.;[19]
In October 2006, the Iranian government ordered all ISPs to limit their download speeds to 128kbit/s for all residential clients and internet cafes. Although no reason for the decree was given, it is widely believed the move was designed to reduce the amount of western media (e.g. films and music) entering the country.[20] There is also a newfound state awareness of how domestically produced content considered undesirable can pervade the internet, highlighted by the 2006 controversy over the appearance of a celebrity sex tape featuring a popular Iranian soap opera actress (or a convincing look-alike).[1] (See the Iranian sex tape scandal)
As of 2010, most major ISPs in Tehran offer 1Mbit/s for 2,190,000 Rials/Month (around 220 Dollars/Month), 2Mbit/s for 3,950,000 Rials/Month (around 400 Dollars/Month) for unlimited data traffic. 1Mbit/s with 2GB traffic limitation costs 189,000 Rials/Month (around 19 Dollars/Month). Note these prices are just for Tehran. Prices are usually higher in other cities. Restriction for the residential client speed of 128Kb/s is still in place and the speeds mentioned above are just for offices and commercial firms. [21]
According to the American newspaper Washington Times, Iran is using an electronic surveillance system to monitor communications by political dissidents on the internet. A monitoring center installed by Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) for Irantelecom intercepts Web-based communications and archives them for the Iranian government. Lily Mazahery, a human rights and immigration lawyer who represents Iranian dissidents, reported that one of her clients was arrested because of instant messaging he had participated in with Ms. Mazahery,
"He told me he had received a call from the Ministry of Intelligence, and this guy when he went to the interrogation, they put in front of him printed copies of his chats with me. He said he was dumbfounded, and he was sent to prison." [4]
Andrew Lighten, a NSN employee, however, states[22] that the company has not provided Deep Packet Inspection software for the Internet to Iran, but only monitoring and deep packet inspection software for 3G UMTS mobile networks, which he states, actually require this kind of technique to be present wherever they are implemented.
According to a newly passed legislation, Internet Service Providers (ISP) in Iran are required to store all the data sent or received by each of their clients. ISPs may delete the data no sooner than 3 months after the expiry of each client's contract.[23]
Out of country protests following the 2009 elections resulted in Iran increasing their monitoring of online social networks, especially targeting Facebook. Upon re-entry to the country, citizens that have lived abroad have been questioned and detained due to the contents of their personal Facebook pages.[24]
Reports show that Iran has plans on creating a so-termed "national Internet" separated from the rest of the internet, specifically for domestic use. Creating such a network, similar to one used by North Korea, would prevent unwanted information from outside of Iran getting into the closed system. Myanmar and Cuba also use similar systems.[25]
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