SPECIAL ISSUE:
Iran's War on the Internet
[Editor’s Note: Over the past two years, growing fears of Western influence have led the Islamic Republic to wage a major campaign to curtail, monitor and ultimately control its population’s access to the World-Wide-Web. The Iranian regime’s expanding assault on Internet freedom—ranging from the creation of a dedicated domestic “intranet” to the passage of restrictive new rules on Internet usage—led the watchdog group Reporters Without Borders this month to once again brand it an “enemy of the Internet.” The survey below chronicles some recent developments relating to the Islamic Republic’s efforts at cyber-censorship, and cyberwarfare.]
NATIONAL INTRANET INCHES CLOSER TO REALITY
Iran’s Telecommunications Minister, Reza Taghipour, has announced that the Islamic Republic will launch its long-planned “National Internet” in May or June. Few details about the initiative are available as yet, but speculation abounds that Iran’s “National Internet” could resemble an intranet system used in many offices—with a key difference. Unlike local workplace operating environments, Iran’s intranet would span the length and breadth of the country. Taghipour has called the initiative to create a “secure” communication infrastructure to be among “the most important strategic decisions in the field of cyber defense” being undertaken by the Iranian regime. (Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, February 21, 2012)
NEW COUNCIL TO OVERSEE CYBERSPACE
Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has issued a decree calling for the creation of a new governmental agency to monitor cyberspace. The proposed oversight body, to be named the Supreme Council of Cyberspace, would be able to issue decrees concerning the Internet that would have the full strength of law. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would lead the organization, along with other top officials from both Iran’s intelligence apparatus and the Revolutionary Guards. “Planning and constant coordination” of the Internet are needed “to prevent its damages and consequences,” Khamenei argued in his decree.
The full authorities of the proposed body have yet to be formally delineated, but signs point to the fact that the body will have sweeping administrative and supervisory power. Khamenei’s decree outlines that the Council should have “a constant and comprehensive monitoring over the domestic and international cyberspace,” it added. (Los Angeles Times, March 7, 2012)
A CYBERATTACK ON THE BBC
England’s official British Broadcasting Corporation is pointing the finger of blame at the Iranian regime for a March 1st cyberattack against the broadcasting outlet. In prepared remarks, the BBC’s Director, General Mark Thompson, stated that the cyber-attack coincided with an attempt to jam two of the satellite feeds to Iran used by the BBC’s Persian Service. Thompson noted that the timing of the attacks is “self-evidently suspicious.” The move amounts to an escalation of pressure on the British public diplomacy outlet, which—along with other foreign news vehicles such as Germany’s Deutche Welle and U.S. broadcasters RFE/RL and the Voice of America—has played an active role in reporting on Iran’s domestic conditions, and on the state of the country’s opposition. (Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, March 15, 2012)
A HELPING HAND FROM CHINA...
The People’s Republic of China, which has itself struggled to control its population’s access to the Internet, appears to be actively assisting the Islamic Republic in doing the same. A recent investigation by the Reuters news agency has revealed that a Chinese telecommunications company sold surveillance systems that can monitor land and mobile phone lines, as well as the Internet, to an Iranian counterpart. The transaction is not strictly private; the Chinese company, ZTE Corp, has several shareholders, but a Chinese state-owned-enterprise is the largest one. The Iranian company, the Telecommunications Company of Iran (TCI), has a monopoly on Iran’s land phone lines, and a significant amount of Iranian Internet traffic goes through TCI’s systems. The transaction was finalized in December 2010, according to documents and interviews gathered by the news agency, and provides Iranian authorities the ability to locate users, intercept the users’ voice, text, chat, and email communications, as well as intercept users’ web access. (Reuters, March 22, 2012)
...AND NEW ATTENTION FROM THE WEST
Iran’s war on cyberspace is increasingly garnering attention from the international community. Last month, the European Union last month agreed in principle to target telecommunications equipment sold to Iran that monitors dissidents—possible through the imposition of new sanctions. Leading U.S. policymakers, meanwhile, are urging for the Obama administration to take a more activist stance on the issue. In a recent editorial in Israel’s Ha’aretz newspaper, former Senator (and current Kansas governor) Sam Brownback, Hudson Institute scholar Michael Horowitz and former U.S. ambassador Mark Palmer argued in favor of utilizing U.S. government resources to break the Islamic Republic’s increasingly sophisticated web filters. “Iran's Internet firewalls could rapidly be made significantly inoperative by the use of no more than $20 million dollars in Internet freedom appropriations now sitting idle in State Department budget accounts,” they have written. (Reuters, March 22, 2012; Tel Aviv Ha’aretz, March 9, 2012)
