Morteza Agha Tehrani, the head of the Cultural Commission of the Islamic Consultative Assembly, says “We have firmly stood behind the protection plan” because, according to him, laws have been considered in all countries for “managing the virtual space”.

He spoke at the conference “Jihad of Explanation: Strategies, Obstacles, and Solutions” on Friday, 14th of Esfand 1400, stating that in our country, “explanation” in the field of cyberspace is “very weak” and “various enemies want the cyberspace in Iran to be completely abandoned so they can carry out their plans in this area.”

A photo of Hossein Ronaghi was simultaneously published on social media, showing him lying on a hospital bed, weak and emaciated, after being detained for two weeks and going on an eight-day hunger strike in protest of his detention.

Hossein Ronaghi is a political activist and human rights defender who is also an advocate for internet freedom in Iran. He has previously spent several years in prison due to his civil activities.

The fear of authority from awareness and information through the virtual space returns to the era of blogging in Iran. In the days when the Press Supervisory Board closed down newspapers one after another for crossing the government’s red lines, some journalists decided to use the digital space for writing. Since then, as the space for censorship, deletion, and restriction of free flow of information by the government has become narrower, civil society and freedom advocacy organizations inside and outside of Iran have increased their efforts to fight against this threat; a fight that has often come at a high cost for them.

Where did the story begin?

During the second term of presidency of Mohammad Khatami and in the period of 1376 to 1384, the process of filtering internet websites and dealing with bloggers and individuals who used the internet as a platform for content creation intensified.

The news of Sina Motallebi’s arrest and imprisonment, a journalist who published articles on a blog called “Webgard”, was shocking. It wasn’t long before eleven other journalists and bloggers were arrested en masse by the Ministry of Intelligence and the Revolutionary Guards and taken to safe houses. Their case became known as the “Bloggers’ Case” and some of them, including Omid Memarian, Farshid Ghazi, and Ruzbeh Mirabrahimi, were forced to leave Iran after their release, as they had been under pressure and harassment from security agencies for a long time.

All of these were happening, but under the shadow of censorship and filtering by the authorities of the Islamic Republic. In those years, Mohammad Khatami, during the World Summit on the Information Society held in Geneva in 2003, in response to reporters’ questions, said that “there is no censorship in Iran”; while at the same time, many political news websites outside the country were filtered in Iran.

Protests۰

880

,

The turning point of enmity is the dominance over cyberspace.

In June 2009, the people of Iran were at the end of a four-year term under President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Social media users were more active than ever, using all available platforms to encourage citizens to participate in the elections.

The candidates for the presidency of that period had launched pages on this website and had brought their election campaigns and advertisements to the virtual space. They believed that in the limited and closed space of Iran, from the perspective of freedom of expression, technology provided them with a wider opportunity to present their opinions and programs to the society.

On the third of Khordad of that year, twenty days before the elections, the media reported the filtering of the newly established and popular Facebook network in Iran.

The ILNA news agency had reported that the order to filter Facebook and YouTube was issued by the “Committee on Instances” composed of representatives from the Ministry of Information, Ministry of Interior, and Judiciary.

Hossein Ronaghi, a well-known Iranian civil activist and blogger who was recently abducted by security forces and taken to an unknown location, is one of the individuals who used to write under the pseudonym “Babak Khoramdin” before the 2009 Iranian presidential election. He was the leader of the “Iran Proxy” group, which provided a list of websites for people to bypass internet censorship and sent it to individuals via email.

Hossein Ronaghi was accused of acting against national security and sentenced to fifteen years in prison due to providing platforms for bypassing internet filtering and his extensive efforts to fight against censorship; a sentence that six years of it has been carried out.

On that day, the Financial Times newspaper wrote in a report that out of the seventy million population of Iran, twenty-one million people have access to the internet, which is a good potential for increasing citizen participation in elections.

On June 12, 2009, the election was held and the results were announced. The streets were filled with voters whose votes had not been counted. On June 16, images of one of the largest peaceful demonstrations by Iranian citizens after the 1979 Revolution were shared hand in hand on social media and websites.

The internet and modern communication tools have now become a supporting arm for opposing forces against the government in Iran; providing a space for coordinating the time and location of protests and reflecting the government’s violence against protesters to the world, and informing Iranian citizens about what is happening inside the country.

In this period, with the expansion of monitoring and surveillance of users in the virtual space, a number of civil activists inside and outside of Iran entered into action. The creation of secure filter breakers and proxies, as well as the instruction of guidelines for preserving the identity and security of users by virtual and civil activists, were effective measures in the fight against widespread censorship and oppression by the government.

Five months after the elections in November 2009, the scope of influence of the internet and the activities of virtual space activists was reporting their dominance over the political atmosphere of Iran; to the point that repressive institutions launched expensive “internet patrols”.

Although at that time Colonel Mehrdad Omidy, the head of cybercrime police, announced the purpose of launching these patrols as “fighting internet fraud”, it seemed that these patrols were formed to combat political activists and the virtual space.

On February 22, 2011, the law enforcement forces launched the Cyber Police under the pretext of the assassination of Masoud Ali-Mohammadi, a physicist and one of Iran’s nuclear scientists. According to General Ismail Ahmadi-Moghaddam, the former commander of Iran’s law enforcement forces, the Cyber Police was launched to combat “terrorist activities that take place through the virtual space.”

Ahmadi Moghadam emphasized the role of social networks in the protests after the 2009 elections, and their impact on “imposing heavy costs on Iran”.

The decade of the 90s and the fate of digital warriors.

A few months after the inauguration of Hassan Rouhani’s government, while he emphasized more than other politicians on the freedom of the internet in Iran and opposition to filtering, the suppression of activists and dissidents in the virtual space began.

Initially, the members of the website “Narangi”, one of the most popular websites in the field of news related to technology and gadgets, were arrested by the Kerman Revolutionary Guards and the activity of this website was suspended. (3)

Sepah-e Sarallah Kerman, after the arrest of Ali Asghar Honarmand, Abbas Vahedi, Alireza Vaziri, Nasim Nikmehr, Maliheh Nokhahi, Mohammad Hossein Mousazadeh, and Sara Sajadpour, members of the technical team and writers of the “Narangi” website, had announced the detention of several other internet activists and hacking of other websites known as “Narangi’s sisters”.

Kerman Central Radio and Television also produced and broadcasted a video of forced confessions by these individuals, in which the goal of launching the “Narenji” website was titled as “overthrowing the soft regime” and its members were accused of receiving money from foreign spy networks and receiving training.

During the presidency of Hassan Rouhani, the Telegram software was filtered, whispers about filtering Instagram were raised, and the implementation of the National Internet Plan, a legacy of the presidency of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was put on the agenda.

The end of the story and the protection plan.

In November 2019, on the fifth day of the widespread protests of the Iranian people against the high cost of gasoline, which had targeted the government’s major policies shortly after their implementation, the authorities found no solution other than restricting the internet, which was completely shut down.

However, at the same time, repressive institutions cut off the internet to suppress protests and prevent protesters from communicating with each other both domestically and internationally. Internet technology experts and civil society were thinking of ways to escape this situation.

Mehdi Yahyanejad is one of the internet technology experts and developers of the “Tousheh” technology. “Tousheh” is a digital information distribution platform that allows one-way offline information to be received via satellite. This method is an efficient platform for those who have a satellite TV, especially in areas with unreliable internet connection.

The proponents of the “Protection of Users in the Virtual Space” project say that this project is not aimed at internet filtering. Opponents of this project confirm this statement and believe that this project may have a specific goal: to establish a network within the country where users can be connected, but all exchanged content on this network will be monitored.

This is the ideal way of using virtual space in the governing system of Iran; a system in which its leader has repeatedly described the virtual space as “truly free” and “unrestricted” and has heavily criticized responsible institutions in this regard.

These days, reports of the internet slowing down in Iran are being published. Some experts in the field of technology speculate that a new type of censorship may be in effect. Civil society and groups that have been working to bypass filtering and censorship in Iran for the past two decades are still actively engaged. Internet experts have reached a level of technology where they confidently state that permanent blocking of VPNs is impossible.

Amin Sabati, a digital security expert, said in an interview with Radio Farda that “the only way a government can completely cut off access to circumvention tools is by completely cutting off users’ access to the internet, which in my opinion is almost close to zero happening permanently, because the political and economic costs are very high” (4). This means victory for defenders of freedom of expression over repressive policies.

Notes:

1- The head of Tehran Judiciary announced that the detainees of the “Bloggers’ Case” had not committed any crime, Radio Farda, 6 Ordibehesht 1384.

2- The Iranian government blocked the website “Facebook”, Deutsche Welle, 3 Khordad 1388.

3- Sepah arrested seven members of the Orange website, Deutsche Welle, on June 2nd, 2013.

4- Sabti, Amin, Can the Iranian government permanently block VPNs?, Radio Farda, 28 Esfand 1400.