“Collective Rights” is a topic that is often overlooked among Iranian intellectuals. Discussions about human rights usually focus on individual rights, and less attention is paid to collective rights. If we were to define “collective rights,” we could refer to the definition given by the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, which states: “Group rights concern the rights of groups as groups, rather than the rights of the individual members within them.” An example of this would be the “right of the people or nation to determine their own destiny,” which is not an individual right but rather a right of the “people” or “nation” as a group. One of the most important characteristics of group rights is the right to “exist” as a whole or as a part of a whole, which is assumed as a default in this text and attempts to briefly highlight the violation of collective rights in the realm of the internet in Iran.

The role of technology in advancing the human rights approach is significant and effective. With the increasing use of technology, many human rights defenders and organizations have been able to make a great transformation in achieving their vision and goals. In this regard, many organizations such as Google and New Tactics have been trying to promote the use of technology in regional or international organization programs through training courses and festivals. For example, in Egypt during the protests in Tahrir Square, a website was launched to register cases of sexual harassment and verbal abuse against women, in an effort to raise awareness among people. In India, a non-governmental organization has been registering the amount of bribes paid, in order to warn their country’s officials.

In such countries, the government helps with the expansion of infrastructure; however, in Iran, the situation has taken a different turn and the Iranian government has become a major obstacle to the growth of organizations, especially in the virtual space. Unfortunately, during the events following the 2009 elections in Iran, a law was passed to address “cyber crimes”. This law has been so hastily and without expert consideration focused on cyber crimes that it can be said to have only addressed three areas: “insulting government officials or Muslim beliefs”, “propaganda against elections or their results”, and “pornography”. This law, for example, does not address cases such as electronic theft, hacking, and digital signatures, or they have been overlooked with generalization.

The point that this law creates an obstacle for the use of the internet by civil organizations is article 21, which states: “Service providers are required to, according to technical regulations and a designated list by the committee, determine instances of criminal content, including content resulting from cyber crimes and content used to commit cyber crimes; and filter them. If they intentionally refrain from filtering criminal content, they will be dissolved.” The group responsible for determining instances of criminal content in section (j) (content against public security and tranquility) refers to the criminal nature of internet groups and states: “Forming gatherings, groups, or organizations in the virtual space (cyberspace) with the purpose of disrupting the security of the country (article 498 of the Islamic Penal Code) [is a crime].” These restrictions are not limited to just this article, as articles 11, 16, 18, 22, 25, 32, 33, and sections 3, 5

But other limitations can be summarized in the following categories:

In the monopoly of the government, keeping the internet.

The government, with the implementation of the “National Internet” plan and spending over 1500 billion, is attempting to “purify” the internet space. If this plan is successful, public access to the internet will be eliminated. In addition, the government’s neglect of communication infrastructure and keeping internet speeds low has caused disruptions in the implementation of such plans. It is enough to mention this point that according to Article 46 of the Fifth Development Plan, it was expected that by the end of the period, Iran would rank second in the region in terms of “bandwidth per capita and other communication and information technology indicators”. However, in a recent report, Iran has one of the slowest internet speeds in the world.

Distorting the Persian web space.

In recent years, especially after the presidential election of 1388, the Iranian government has attempted to distort the Persian web by “producing fake content”, “arresting and threatening cyber and media activists and their families”, “blocking websites and critical online posts about the government”, “creating fake websites of personalities and media outlets such as BBC Persian”, “establishing an internet police and monitoring social media users”, and “officially supporting certain hacking groups” such as “Gerdab”, “Ashiyane”, “Cyber Army” or “organizing official hacking competitions” and “posting official job advertisements for hackers in the police and intelligence agencies”.

It is enough to search for data about a name, such as “Taraneh Musavi”, in search engines to be faced with a huge amount of data that has been censored by state media. In addition, after Behrouz Kamalian (manager of Ashiyaneh hacking company) was placed on the European Union’s sanctions list, Iranian state TV praised his activities in a live program. Furthermore, in 2008, Iran blocked more than 5 million websites and according to Alexa rankings, the official filtering website is the 6th most visited website in Iran.

The issue of sanctions against Iran and its impact on internet freedom.

Unfortunately, the obstacles facing organizations in the virtual space are not limited to pressures and limitations within Iran. We must remember that sanctions on technology companies themselves are a major barrier to their cyber activities. Recently, Google and Apple have lifted some of their restrictions for Iranian users, but these restrictions are not limited to just these two technology giants. Unfortunately, the sanctions have also affected smaller companies in this field, such as Samsung, which in April 2013 prevented Iranians from purchasing their programs from their online store.

The explanation of why and how sanctions have affected internet freedom cannot be contained in this article, but we will try to demonstrate the impact of sanctions by providing examples in two areas: services and communication equipment.

The severity of these sanctions was to the extent that amidst the protests of the Green Movement – a movement that became famous for the Twitter Revolution – internet service companies such as Facebook and Twitter, under the law of “Trading with the Enemy Act,” suspended the accounts of Iranian users. If it weren’t for Obama’s order to revoke this directive, Twitter may have never received over 400,000 tweets per minute about Iran; an event that astonished Twitter executives. These were the events that Eric Schmidt (former CEO and Chairman of Google) spoke about in February 2012, in response to the limitations on services for Iranians: “Although I am with you, these restrictions are determined by the US government and we have no role in this decision-making.”

Postscript:

Recently, the Volunteer Activists Institute has published a report titled “International Campaign for the Freedom of Associations”, which serves as a window into this report and takes a look at this issue with the approach of existing restrictions for Iranian associations in the realm of the internet.

For studying the “Computer Crimes Law” and “Examples of Criminal Content”, please refer to the website of “Working Group for Determining Criminal Content”.

Part of the “Iran Sanctions Regulations” states: Export, re-export by a third party, sale, direct or indirect supply from the United States or by individuals with American nationality to Iran or the government of Iran is prohibited unless there is an exceptional law for it. This law also prohibits non-American companies from exporting products that are entirely or partially produced in the United States to Iran. President Obama’s executive order, which later became an amendment to this law, states: “Export of services and software related to personal communication through the internet, including web browsing, web hosting, email, instant messaging and chat, social networks, and sharing of videos and photos from the United States or American individuals to individuals residing in Iran is allowed.”