Iran Continues to Censor Internet Communications

eldawg writes "Iran has recently been in the news after electing a 'hardliner' president. But even previous 'liberal' Iranian governments have been putting together a sophisticated Internet filtering system to prevent their citizens from visiting 'questionable' websites and censoring dissent. An earlier posting at Slashdot outlined the crackdown on blogs, chat rooms and email communications. A more recent research paper from the OpenNet Initiative provides an update on the censoring activity in Iran. Reports indicate that the Iranian authorities are specifically targetting 'content in the local Farsi language using a filterning second only to China.' We know Cisco has played a large role in bulding the 'Great Firewall of China' but is the Iranian initiative homegrown?"

Comments

Re:Is'nt americas working against Democracy

[Anonymous Coward]

The ONI report mentions Secure Computing's SmartFilter as the primary means of filtering, http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/cmp/20050 624/tc_cmp/164902259but the company denies ever selling a license to Iran.

It happened in 1948...

[ImaLamer]

The UN's "Universal Declaration of Human Rights" states (Article 19):

Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html

Just saying...

Re:Ain't nuthin' propa about your propaganda!

[_Sharp'r_]

Right, because the liberal environmental terrorist wackos are all about giving you freedom instead of forcing you to obey their edicts about land use?

There are a lot more socialist and communist we-want-to-run-your-life liberal wacko's out there than there are many of the peace-love-and-rock-n-roll just leave everyone alone crowd anymore.

Especially the farther you get into politics, since politics tends to attract the control types, while the non-control types don't seem to desire the power as much.

Another thing to keep in mind

[Raul654]

The average joe in Iran *hates* the mullahs. Unlike most other Arab governments (which encourage people to blame and hate the US for all of their home-brewed problems) the Iranian government has no easy scapegoat. (And 36 years of economic deprivation is a lot to answer for) That's why the people in power are so afraid of revolution.

Re:Ain't nuthin' propa about your propaganda!

[Curtman]

"Don't get me wrong, there are tons of liberal wacko's too"

Can anyone tell me how liberal became a derogatory term in the U.S. ?

I find this very strange every time I see it here.