Iran Clamps Down on Web, Blocking Sites and Requiring Cameras in Internet Cafes
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Iran is mounting new clampdowns on Internet expression, including rules that will impose layers of surveillance in the country's popular Internet cafes, as Tehran's political establishment comes under increasing strains from economic turmoil and threats of more international sanctions.
In the most sweeping move, Iran issued regulations giving Internet cafes 15 days to install security cameras, start collecting detailed personal information on customers and document users' online footprints.
Iranian users also have reported more blocked sites this week, as well as new barriers to accessing social-networking services. Internet connections, too, have bogged down.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}"They are closing in on us, and we are already feeling the dire impact of these announcements. Everyone is afraid," a prominent student activist said in an email exchange from Iran. "It will make it very difficult for us to tell the world what's happening here."
The network slowdown likely heralds the arrival of an initiative Iran has been readying—a "halal" domestic intranet that it has said will insulate its citizens from Western ideology and un-Islamic culture, and eventually replace the Internet. This week's slowdown came amid tests of the Iranian intranet, according to domestic media reports that cited a spokesman for a union of computer-systems firms. He said the intranet is set to go live within a few weeks.
Taken together, the moves represent Iran's boldest attempts to control flows of online information—a persistent thorn in the side of Tehran's political establishment since activists used the Internet to plan and document mass protests against what they said was a rigged election that returned President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to office in 2009.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Tehran hasn't directly commented on the measures. The Islamic Republic, however, has long battled the Internet's influence and tried to filter access to sites, such as pornography or even fashion, that didn't fit within the norms of a conservative Islamic society. Since 2009, Iranian officials have widened their Internet monitoring to fight what they say is a "soft war" of culture and ideology against it. That year they formed the Cyber Police, a task force drawn from various security arms, which the government says has trained some 250,000 members.
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