The Great Persian Firewall
The Great Persian Firewall - by Art Keller
In the days of the Cold War, the free flow of information into the Warsaw Pact countries was blocked by a literal “iron curtain” of steel fences and mines. Now, the control of electrons — not border crossings — has become crucial to keeping your populace in the dark, a lesson the repressive regime of Iran, long fearful of the potential of the Internet, appears to have learned well. Still, all is not yet lost; as the Iranian regime’s control over electronic media grows ever tighter, the United States is doing everything it can to ensure Iranians retain access to an open web.
Unfortunately for the citizens of Iran, September 23 marked yet another day on which the country’s Internet freedom suffered a major blow. An Iranian government minister announced that Google’s search engine and email service have now been blocked, a move that suggests Tehran’s plans to completely control external Internet access for Iranian citizens are gaining momentum.
Iran announced earlier in the year that it considered Google a tool of Western espionage and that it was developing a domestic alternative dubbed “Yahaq,” or “Oh Lord” in Farsi. Such a tool is likely only to bring up search results palatable to the regime. The announcement that Google was now cut off did not say that Yahaq was now active (an intentional omission?), but since the earlier regime announcement specifically said Yahaq was being developed as an alternative to Google, it is reasonable to infer that Iran’s regime has or soon will have Yahaq up and running.
This blow to Iran’s Internet freedom is only the latest in a series of major attacks on Internet freedom that began in 2009. After Iran’s 2009 presidential elections, which many Iranians considered rigged, Tehran turned bandwidth down to a dribbling flow. This wickedly simple tactic made it almost impossible for average citizens to share amateur video of the regime’s brutal tactics in suppressing post-election demonstrations. Later in the year, Iran announced the creation of a “cyber-police,” banning thousands of websites and any content deemed “insulting.”