Iranian regime intensifies crackdown on Internet freedom

Hassan Rouhani’s telecommunications minister confirmed that the development of a system that can identify every user who logs onto the Internet is in the works.

“In future when people want to use the Internet they will be identified, and there will be no web surfer whose identity we do not know,” the country’s minister of telecommunications, Mahmoud Vaezi, said on Saturday.

The remarks by Hassan Rouhani’s minister of telecommunication comes days after the latest report by Freedom House on ‘Freedom on the Net 2014’ which said that Iran remains the worst country in the world for internet freedom.

The move by the telecommunications ministry would give the regime much tighter control over the websites users can access.

The announcement of such a measure a day before the December 7 National Student Day Protest was aimed at intimidating all web users with the knowledge that their private Internet use is being constantly monitored by regime officials.

Vaezi also announced last month that the country would have "smart filtering" within six months that would enable the authorities block websites.

The crackdown on online usage under Hassan Rouhani has intensified in line with the general surge in executions and suppression towards women.

Students protesting against Hassan Rouhani on December 7 chanted “Political prisoners must be freed”, “Imprisoned students must be freed” and “Hassan Rouhani, what happened to your promises?”
Among the millions of sites that are regularly blocked for hosting politically or religiously contentious content are Google, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and most recently WhatsApp and other communications apps like Viber and Tango.

Internationally, the regime has been increasingly notorious for hosting and supporting hackers who have carried out cyber-attacks on major infrastructures including oil and gas companies in 16 countries, an 87-page dossier by Cylance revealed last week.

The online suppression is not limited to technological controls. Regularly, the regime’s State Security Forces inspect and shut down Internet cafés for not observing ‘security measures’.

Last month at least 26 Internet cafés were shutdown in a week in Tehran.

The Iranian regime also sentenced Mr. Soheil Arabi, a photographer, to death a year after being arrested for publishing satiric criticism of regime officials on his Facebook page.