GVF — The growing number of social networking media is cause for concern amongst Iranian officials, says a member of a newly formed body charged with overseeing the Internet.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei recently ordered the formation of the Supreme Council of Virtual Space, which will include the president, the Intelligence and Culture ministers, and the heads of police and the Revolutionary Guards Corps.
Hamid Shahriari, who holds a seat in the Council, told the Fars news agency that the body would enhance “coordination” between various policy-making institutions with regards to cyber space. “Today, the virtual space is a cause for [great] concern; because some use this platform for transferring information and at times espionage,” he added.
“Around a year ago, the leader’s office took an active stance towards the subject. After regular weekly meetings between the [representatives] of the three branches [of government] and individuals who had had nationwide experience on the topic, we carried out an assessment of the current situation [of the Internet] which we submitted to the leader.”
Shahriari stressed that the Council would not be a “security” body; nevertheless he admitted that the expansion of social networking sites constituted a threat and was a concern for officials in Iran. He claimed that authorities had identified 650 websites that were opposing the country’s political establishment.
The setting up of the Supreme Council of Virtual Space is only the latest in a series of attempts by Iranian authorities to control users on the net.
Last week, the Paris-based media watchdog Reporters Without Borders named Iran in its “2012 list of the Enemies of the Internet.” The document, which was published on World Day Against Cyber-Censorship, said that Iran had reinforced its “technical capacity” in 2011 to tighten its grip over the free flow of information.
According to RWB, Iran has the largest number of netizens in prison after China and Vietnam. “Iranian authorities … favour extracting confessions from dissidents then broadcasting them on television.”
The group also voiced its concern over the Iranian regime’s plans to launch a “National Internet.” While little is known about the details of the new “clean” network, experts believe it could effectively cut off Iranian citizens’ access to the World Wide Web. Iran’s Telecommunications Minister Reza Taghipour recently hinted that the “National Internet” could be up and running in late May or June.
During a 12 March interview with Weblog news, a spokesperson for the Organised Crime Surveillance Centre of the Revolutionary Guards criticised email providers Yahoo and Google for their lack of cooperation with the Islamic Republic.
“Up until now, we have made numerous requests to the two [email] services most popular in Iran—Google and Yahoo—for the purpose of obtaining information on criminals and accused individuals,” Saeidi admitted. He said, however, that both companies had declined to address the concerns raised by Iranian authorities.
In September 2011, Gmail warned users in Iran that their accounts might have been compromised by the fake Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) security certificate issued by Dutch security firm DigiNotar.
“We learned … that the compromise of a Dutch company involved with verifying the authenticity of websites could have put the Internet communications of many Iranians at risk, including their Gmail,” Google said after it learned of the security breach.