ENNEMIS of the INTERNET / 12 MARch 2012 / world day against Cyber censorship//////////////////////////// 26
end of February 2012. Arrested in January, they had been held in solitary confinement in Sections 209 and 2 A of Tehran’s Evin prison, which are run by the Intelligence Ministry and the Revolutionary Guards. The journalists were freed after posting bonds in the amounts of 300 and 200 million tomans, respectively (USD 19,700 and USD 15,800).
the details of their clients and a list of the websites they visited. The use of software to circumvent content filtering, Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) and USB flash drives is banned. After raiding 43 cybercafés in Birjand (in the southern province of Khorasan), the police closed six of them for “non-compliance with security measures and the use of censorship circumvention software.”
The day before their release, the Revolutionary Guards’ organized crime unit, in a statement posted on the Gerdab website, accused them of “collaborating with the BBC, British intelligence and the foreign-based opposition.” The Revolutionary Guards had announced that an operation code-named “eye of the fox” had led to the breakup of an information-gathering network that produced content for the BBC en Iran. The British broadcaster denied that it had employed staff in Iran. Satellite stations such as the BBC and Voice of America had been jammed at regular intervals in Iran. On March 5, 2012, confessions of this operation’s victims – for the most part excerpts from their interrogations – were broadcast on national TV channels and relayed by Press TV, the Islamic Republic’s English-language station.
Social networks demonized
In early March 2012, a few days before Iran’s “International Women’s Day,” the regime intensified its crackdown on cyberfeminists, including Noushin Ahmadi Khorasani, founder of the Feminist School1 website, and one of the women who organized the “One Million Signatures for Equality” campaign, which calls for reforming laws that discriminate against women. Cyberfeminists are frequent victims of threats and arrests2. Another sign of the authorities’ intransigence was the regime’s refusal to accept a visit from Ahmed Shaheed, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Iran.
New regulations are bolstering Iran’s legislative arsenal At a news conference on December 28, 2011 – the day for registering candidates for the March 2012 parliamentary elections – Abdosamad Khoramabadi, the Prosecutor-General’s legal adviser, unveiled “a list of 25 election-related Internet crimes.” Among the contents deemed “criminal” are : calling for an election boycott, the publication of counter-revolutionary or opposition logos or website contents, etc.
The regime continues to demonize new media, claiming that they serve foreign interests and are “means of subversion.” On July 29, 2011, Intelligence Minister Heydar Moslehi stressed “society’s vulnerability to social networks introduced in the country by the enemy.” Two days before, Interior Minister Mostafa Najar had stated that “satellites and Facebook are the electronic means of a ‘soft war’ by the West intended to cause the Iranian family’s collapse.” The June 2011 announcement by the United States that it is developing a “shadow Internet”4 or “Internet in a suitcase” that will enable citizens anywhere in the world to have access to the Web – one that will work even if a government had shut down the national Internet, caused Iran to immediately adopt a tougher line5 and announce that it had the means to block this new technology.
Cyber censorship under full steam Cyber censorship constitutes a major investment for the Iranian government (read the Iran chapter6 of the 2011 “Enemies of the Internet” report for more information). As evidenced from the last few months, Iran’s technological advances show that surveillance is spreading in an increasingly sophisticated manner from one computer to the next. Censors can match a suspicious email with the sender’s IP address. While most dissidents are very well aware of what precautions to take online, the slightest error or lack of attention can be fatal. In August 2011, Gmail users became victims7 of a “man-in-themiddle attack”8 (MTM) via a fraudulent SSL certificate originally delivered by the Dutch company DigiNotar, which finally revoked it. Computer security firm F-Secure was reported by Agence France-Presse to have said : “It’s likely the Government of Iran is using these techniques to monitor local dissidents.”
Under the new 20-point regulations for cybercafés published by the Iranian Internet police3 on December 28, 2011, clients are required to produce an ID. Managers must install cameras on the premises and keep the camera recordings, along with all
Internet access cut-offs and a general slowing down of Internet bandwidth to disrupt communications have become commonplace in periods of unrest. They are increasingly adapted
1 http://www.feministschool.com/ 2 http://en.rsf.org/iran-government-develops-national03-08-2011,40738.html 3 http://www.cyberpolice.ir/ 4 https://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/12/world/12internet.html 5 Vahid Asghari
6 http://en.rsf.org/iran-iran-11-03-2011,39777.html 7 http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hg3bg9FbZAcSAgpmE-1deGgQitg?docId=CNG.3064197b18373026040b9c81ca 21df0a.2a1 8 http://www.techopedia.com/definition/4018/man-in-the-middle-attack-mitm