Analysis: Iran’s censors tighten net against ‘polluting’ western influence

Iran is rapidly bolstering its already extensive cyber censorship defences to combat what it calls a “soft war” being waged by the West.

In the past month, an institute affiliated with Iran’s ministry of communications and information technology called on domestic companies to help “purify” the internet, which it said has been polluted with “immoral sites”.

The institute tactfully left out more pressing reasons why building a cyber-fortress is a top priority for Iran’s leaders: they fear internet espionage and virus attacks from abroad and want to stifle opposition outlets at home.

“We have identified and confronted 650 websites that have been set up to battle our regime,” Hamid Shahriari, a conservative cleric who is a member of a recently established council to censor the internet, said in March. “Thirty-nine of them are by opposition groups and our enemies, and the rest promote western culture and worshipping Satan, and stoke sectarian divides.”

The call for help to construct “a healthy web and organise the current filtering system” rang alarm bells among Iran’s vibrant but harassed online community.

Journalists, cyber activists and many ordinary Iranians fear that once a controllable “intranet” is in place, authorities will cut off access to the global internet.

Iranian officials deny any such intention, but they have provided few details about their intranet project, other than to say it will be launched in the near future.

In a related scheme, Iran said last month that it would unveil its own internet search engine before the end of the year. This, according to Iran’s police chief, Esmail Ahmadi Moghadam, means Iranians no longer have to use services such as Google, which he branded an “instrument of espionage”.

The government has already established a national e-mail system that requires users to give their names and phone numbers.

But many experts doubt that Iran, ranked the No 1 enemy of the internet this year by the French media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF), has any immediate plans to sever access to the web.

“Some business companies affiliated to the government would lose a lot of money if that happened,” said Amir Bayani, of the London-based anti-censorship group Article 19. He hopes their opposition will scotch any attempt to stop global cyber-contact.

Cyrus Farivar, a technology journalist in Oakland, California, agreed. “The internet is simply too important for financial transactions,” he said. “It seems Iran wants what China already has.” China’s “Great Firewall” cuts web links at any signs of politically uncomfortable chatter, but does not restrict business activity.

Iran’s call for help to filter the internet could indicate that any plans to cut access to the web are a long way off, Mr Farivar said: “Why invest in such a project if it’s going to be shelved anyway?”

Instead, there are suspicions that the Iranian regime is aiming at what RSF called a system of “digital apartheid”. The government, along with the Revolutionary Guards, big business companies and religious leaders would have access to the web while most ordinary citizens would be limited to a fast but censored intranet. Iranian authorities already block millions of websites and blogs.

Managers of cybercafés are compelled to install cameras on their premises, take customers’ details and list the websites they visit.

Millions of Iranians who use virtual private networks to bypass the country’s internet censorship have been warned they are committing a crime.