Internet censorship in Iran
Encyclopedia
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
. 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. 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.
Many blog
gers, online activists, and technical staff have faced jail
terms, harassment and abuse. In November 2006, Iran
was one of 13 countries labeled "enemies of the internet" by activist group Reporters Without Borders
. In March 2010, it was one of twelve regimes so labeled. 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."
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.
(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. The state blacklist consists of about 15,000 websites forbidden by the Iranian government. Before subscribers can access Internet service provider
s, they must first promise in writing not to access "non-Islamic" sites. In 2008, Iran has blocked access to more than five million Internet sites, whose content is mostly perceived as immoral and anti-social.
SmartFilter, developed by San Jose
firm Secure Computing
. However, Secure denies ever having sold the software to Iran, and alleges that Iran is illegally using the software without a license.
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
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
.
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).
The Kurdish version of Wikipedia
was blocked for several months in 2006, according to Reporters Without Borders
.
s, 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.
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. The forbidden keywords are controversial—banning "gay" effectively bars access to a host of gay and lesbian sites—and have had unintended consequence
s. The banning of "ass", for example, blocks access to the website of the United States Embassy. A complete list of the blacklisted keywords on the American server can be found here.
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. The company has denied that what it sold to TCI had such capacity but only "lawful intercept" capacity relative to child pornography e.g.;
ian 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. 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
). (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.
, 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,
Andrew Lighten, a NSN employee, however, states 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.
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.
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
. When initially introduced, the Internet services provided by the government within Iran
Iran
Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...
were comparatively open. Many users saw the Internet as an easy way to get around Iran's strict press laws. 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.
Many blog
Blog
A blog is a type of website or part of a website supposed to be updated with new content from time to time. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in...
gers, online activists, and technical staff have faced jail
Prison
A prison is a place in which people are physically confined and, usually, deprived of a range of personal freedoms. Imprisonment or incarceration is a legal penalty that may be imposed by the state for the commission of a crime...
terms, harassment and abuse. In November 2006, Iran
Iran
Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...
was one of 13 countries labeled "enemies of the internet" by activist group Reporters Without Borders
Reporters Without Borders
Reporters Without Borders is a France-based international non-governmental organization that advocates freedom of the press. It was founded in 1985, by Robert Ménard, Rony Brauman and the journalist Jean-Claude Guillebaud. Jean-François Julliard has served as Secretary General since 2008...
. In March 2010, it was one of twelve regimes so labeled. 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."
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.
Internet service providers
Every ISP must be approved by both the Telecommunication Company of IranTelecommunication Company of Iran
Telecommunication Company of Iran was established in 1971 with a new organizational structure as the main responsible administration for the entire telecommunication affairs, and Iran Telecommunication Industries was also founded in the same year to manufacture the required equipment for the...
(TCI) and the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, and must implement content-control software
Content-control software
Content-control software, also known as censorware or web filtering software, is a term for software designed and optimized for controlling what content is permitted to a reader, especially when it is used to restrict material delivered over the Web...
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. The state blacklist consists of about 15,000 websites forbidden by the Iranian government. Before subscribers can access Internet service provider
Internet service provider
An Internet service provider is a company that provides access to the Internet. Access ISPs directly connect customers to the Internet using copper wires, wireless or fiber-optic connections. Hosting ISPs lease server space for smaller businesses and host other people servers...
s, they must first promise in writing not to access "non-Islamic" sites. In 2008, Iran has blocked access to more than five million Internet sites, whose content is mostly perceived as immoral and anti-social.
Software
The primary engine of Iran's censorship is the content-control softwareContent-control software
Content-control software, also known as censorware or web filtering software, is a term for software designed and optimized for controlling what content is permitted to a reader, especially when it is used to restrict material delivered over the Web...
SmartFilter, developed by San Jose
San Jose, California
San Jose is the third-largest city in California, the tenth-largest in the U.S., and the county seat of Santa Clara County which is located at the southern end of San Francisco Bay...
firm Secure Computing
Secure Computing
Secure Computing Corporation, or SCC, was a public company that developed and sold computer security appliances and hosted services to protect users and data...
. However, Secure denies ever having sold the software to Iran, and alleges that Iran is illegally using the software without a license.
As of 2006, Iran's SmartFilter is configured to filter local Persian
Persian language
Persian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and countries which historically came under Persian influence...
-language sites, and block prominent English-language sites, such as the websites for the New York Times and Facebook
Facebook
Facebook is a social networking service and website launched in February 2004, operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. , Facebook has more than 800 million active users. Users must register before using the site, after which they may create a personal profile, add other users as...
The software effectively blocks access to most pornographic
Pornography
Pornography or porn is the explicit portrayal of sexual subject matter for the purposes of sexual arousal and erotic satisfaction.Pornography may use any of a variety of media, ranging from books, magazines, postcards, photos, sculpture, drawing, painting, animation, sound recording, film, video,...
sites, gay
Gay
Gay is a word that refers to a homosexual person, especially a homosexual male. For homosexual women the specific term is "lesbian"....
and lesbian
Lesbian
Lesbian is a term most widely used in the English language to describe sexual and romantic desire between females. The word may be used as a noun, to refer to women who identify themselves or who are characterized by others as having the primary attribute of female homosexuality, or as an...
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
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
.
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
Telecommunication Company of Iran
Telecommunication Company of Iran was established in 1971 with a new organizational structure as the main responsible administration for the entire telecommunication affairs, and Iran Telecommunication Industries was also founded in the same year to manufacture the required equipment for the...
(TCI).
The Kurdish version of Wikipedia
Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its 20 million articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world. Almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site,...
was blocked for several months in 2006, according to Reporters Without Borders
Reporters Without Borders
Reporters Without Borders is a France-based international non-governmental organization that advocates freedom of the press. It was founded in 1985, by Robert Ménard, Rony Brauman and the journalist Jean-Claude Guillebaud. Jean-François Julliard has served as Secretary General since 2008...
.
American proxy server
Iranians can sometimes access forbidden sites through proxy serverProxy server
In computer networks, a proxy server is a server that acts as an intermediary for requests from clients seeking resources from other servers. A client connects to the proxy server, requesting some service, such as a file, connection, web page, or other resource available from a different server...
s, although these machines can be blocked as well. In 2003, the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
began providing a free proxy server to Iranian citizens through its IBB
International Broadcasting Bureau
The International Broadcasting Bureau is an entity within the Broadcasting Board of Governors , which is a U.S. independent agency. The IBB supports the day-to-day operations of Voice of America and the Office of Cuba Broadcasting...
service Voice of America
Voice of America
Voice of America is the official external broadcast institution of the United States federal government. It is one of five civilian U.S. international broadcasters working under the umbrella of the Broadcasting Board of Governors . VOA provides a wide range of programming for broadcast on radio...
with Internet privacy company Anonymizer, Inc
Anonymizer
An anonymizer or an anonymous proxy is a tool that attempts to make activity on the Internet untraceable.It is a proxy server computer that acts as an intermediary and privacy shield between a client computer and the rest of the Internet...
. The proxy website changes whenever the Iranian government blocks it.
However, even the U.S. proxy filters pornographic websites and keywords. "There's a limit to what taxpayers should pay for," an IBB
International Broadcasting Bureau
The International Broadcasting Bureau is an entity within the Broadcasting Board of Governors , which is a U.S. independent agency. The IBB supports the day-to-day operations of Voice of America and the Office of Cuba Broadcasting...
program manager was quoted as saying. The forbidden keywords are controversial—banning "gay" effectively bars access to a host of gay and lesbian sites—and have had unintended consequence
Unintended consequence
In the social sciences, unintended consequences are outcomes that are not the outcomes intended by a purposeful action. The concept has long existed but was named and popularised in the 20th century by American sociologist Robert K. Merton...
s. The banning of "ass", for example, blocks access to the website of the United States Embassy. A complete list of the blacklisted keywords on the American server can be found here.
Deep packet inspection
The possibility that Nokia Siemens Systems sold, in 2008, TCI a deep packet inspectionDeep packet inspection
Deep Packet Inspection is a form of computer network packet filtering that examines the data part of a packet as it passes an inspection point, searching for protocol non-compliance, viruses, spam, intrusions or predefined criteria to decide if the packet can...
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. The company has denied that what it sold to TCI had such capacity but only "lawful intercept" capacity relative to child pornography e.g.;
Internet connection speed restrictions
In October 2006, the IranIran
Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...
ian government ordered all ISPs
Internet service provider
An Internet service provider is a company that provides access to the Internet. Access ISPs directly connect customers to the Internet using copper wires, wireless or fiber-optic connections. Hosting ISPs lease server space for smaller businesses and host other people servers...
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. 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
Celebrity sex tape
A celebrity sex tape is typically an amateur pornographic video recording involving one or more celebrity famous person which has been, intentionally or unintentionally, made available publicly....
featuring a popular Iranian soap opera
Soap opera
A soap opera, sometimes called "soap" for short, is an ongoing, episodic work of dramatic fiction presented in serial format on radio or as television programming. The name soap opera stems from the original dramatic serials broadcast on radio that had soap manufacturers, such as Procter & Gamble,...
actress (or a convincing look-alike
Look-alike
A look-alike is a person who closely resembles another person. In popular Western culture, a look-alike is a person who bears a close physical resemblance to a celebrity, politician or member of royalty. Many look-alikes earn a living by making guest appearances at public events or performing on...
). (See the Iranian sex tape scandal
Iranian sex tape scandal
The so-called Iranian sex tape scandal involves the public outcry and judicial proceedings against Zahra Amir Ebrahimi, an actress who appeared in the soap opera Narges, and an associate producer, accused of appearing together in an explicit sex tape, allegedly filmed for private consumption with a...
)
As of 2010, most major ISPs in Tehran offer 1Mbit/s for 2,190,000 Rials
Iranian rial
The rial is the currency of Iran. It is subdivided into 100 dinar but, because of the very low current value of the rial, no fraction of the rial is used in accounting....
/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.
Monitoring
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 MazaheryLily Mazahery
Lily Mazahery is an Iranian-American lawyer, human rights activist, and an expert source on Iran. She is principal of and the founder and president of , an international non-governmental organization .-Overview:...
, 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."
Andrew Lighten, a NSN employee, however, states 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.
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.
Future government plans
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.See also
- Censorship in IranCensorship in IranCensorship in Iran is the limiting or suppressing of the publishing, dissemination, and viewing of certain information in the Islamic Republic of Iran...
- Communications in IranCommunications in IranIran’s telecommunications industry is almost entirely state-owned, dominated by the Telecommunication Company of Iran . Fixed-line penetration in 2004 was relatively well-developed by regional standards, standing at 22 lines per 100 people, higher than Egypt with 14 and Saudi Arabia with 15,...
- Media of Iran
- Internet in IranInternet in IranIn 1993 Iran became the second country in the Middle East to be connected to the Internet, and since then the government has made significant efforts to improve the nation's ICT infrastructure. Iran's national Internet connectivity infrastructure is based on two major networks: the public switched...
External links
- Blocked In Iran - Test if any website is blocked in Iran in real-time.
- Internet Enemies: Iran, Reporters Without BordersReporters Without BordersReporters Without Borders is a France-based international non-governmental organization that advocates freedom of the press. It was founded in 1985, by Robert Ménard, Rony Brauman and the journalist Jean-Claude Guillebaud. Jean-François Julliard has served as Secretary General since 2008...
- Iran and Internet Filtering (OpenNetOpenNetOpenNet may refer to the following:*OpenNet Initiative, a joint project with a goal of monitoring and reporting internet filtering and surveillance practices by nations*OpenNet , a Russian news site about free and open source software...
- 2009 report) - Fed contractor, cell phone maker sold spy system to Iran - Washington Times article (2009)
- How to Bypass Internet Censorship, also known by the titles: Bypassing Internet Censorship or Circumvention Tools, a FLOSSFlossFloss may refer to:* Dental floss, used to clean teeth* Embroidery thread, machine or hand-spun yarn for embroidery* Fairy floss or candyfloss, alternative names for cotton candy* Rousong, i.e. meat floss-Computing:...
Manual, 10 March 2011, 240 pp.