Iranian regime has been notorious for suppressing freedom of speech and putting curbs on the internet services in the past so as to stop cyber activists from Iran to cite their humanitarian concerns. During last elections in Iran, many flocked to social media networks and registered their concerns regarding the transparency of the elections. Apparently, Iranian government has prepared for such dissidents in advance and has cut off internet access to all international encrypted sites, all over Iran.
This latest outage of internet by Iranian authorities has happened just two weeks before the parliamentary elections in Iran next month. According a Tehran-based technology expert, “E-mail, proxies, and all the secure channels that start with ‘https’ are not available.”
Iran has already blocked access to Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo email services. Most of the Iranian use proxy servers to access different international sites, including social media portals. This access, albeit limited, allows human rights activists and opponents of the current Iranian regime to register their protest online and also to leak the news of human rights violations in Iran to the international community.
The Iranian government hasn’t released an official statement over this latest disruption of internet service so far. However, Iranian information minister did say that soon Iran will implement a firewalled national internet. Although he hasn’t given any specific details about this, it is quite apparent that Iran is taking it’s effort to censor to an all new level.
Image courtesy[ttjad] maHi.
