Iran Plans to Cut Itself Off from Internet to Shield its People from ‘Dangerous’ Ideas
Iran, like many other dictatorships, has wrestled with the problem (at least from its point of view) of shielding their people from what it considers to be dangerous ideas about freedom and human rights, transmitted via the Internet.
Toward that end, Iran is embarking on a two-year plan to disconnect the country from the Internet and to replace it with its own internal Internet that will be “Islamic compliant.”
Protestors against the Iranian regime have used the Internet and its social networking functions to communicate with one another and to get their message to the outside world. The same sorts of techniques have led to the fall of dictatorships in such Islamic countries as Tunisia and Egypt. Iran does not propose to be added to that list.
The Iranian regime feels especially threatened by the Internet’s ability to expose its people to foreign ideas it views as antithetical to the principles of Islam, as it sees it. By closing off Iran from the world-wide Internet and replacing it with its own version, the Iranian regime hopes to tighten its grip not only on its own people but on the very ideas that they have access to.