Iran Blocks Google, Moves Forward With Domestic Network Plans

hlovy writes "Iran moved forward with their previously discussed plans for a domestic version of the Internet over the weekend, as government officials announced that Google would be one of the first websites to be filtered through their state-controlled information network. According to Reuters, officials are claiming that the country's self-contained version of the World Wide Web, which was first announced last week, is part of an initiative to improve cyber security. However, it will reportedly also give the country the ability to better control the type of information that users can access online."

Comments

Hey

[benjfowler]

I wonder how hard the Iranian people need to be shit on before they do something about their awful government?

Re:Hey

[PolygamousRanchKid]

They wanted an Islamic government, and now they have one.

They got what they asked for, but not what they wanted. At that time, they didn't think about any back out or early termination clauses either.

"Every country has the government it deserves (Toute nation a le gouvernement qu’elle mérite)" -- Joseph de Maistre, Lettres et Opuscules Inédits vol. 1, letter 53, written on 15 August 1811 and published in 1851.

Re:Hey

[MightyMartian]

It means Iranian the business, education and research industries will be starved of the valuable interactions that have made the Internet such a key part of the global economy. Even China is wise enough not to actually build a wall, contenting itself with imperfect filtering.

This whole concept underlines what is so critically wrong with the Iranian regime. It's not that it is an authoritarian government, it's that it is an authoritarian government that knows a lot about being authoritarian, but lacks the imagination or wit to understand that if you keep adopting measures that suppress economic activity, sooner or later the house of cards will topple and the very power you seek to keep in your clutches will fall away.

Even Burma/Myanmar has finally figured it out, as it watches its neighbors making vast fortunes as its own economy underperform with tragic social consequences. Iran is rapidly moving to join North Korea in the incurable basket case club. Yes, they will likely have nukes like NK does, and that will certainly mean they are immune from direct threat, but internally it will be a situation of where the elite spend their days and nights wondering whether they should point the nukes at neighboring countries, or at their own populace.

Re:Hey

[Anonymous Coward]

The Iranian revolution was anything but. My relatives tell me that the Shah was reasonably fair — sure, kind of a dictator, but he and his father had taken the country from an agragrian backwater to a modern industrial society in a matter of two generations — and basically... the U.S. funded student groups, pro-democracy organizations, &c and sowed dissent so that none of them would agree enough to stand in unity... and then gave guns to the Ayatollah. All because the Shah had the audacity to defy U.S. regional interests... funny, since the U.S. basically cemented the power of the Shah too (didn't count on an educated populace making a gradual transition to democracy, eh?). Left to their own devices, in all likelihood there would have been a democratic revolution in the 80s and the entire geopolitical situation would be different.

My father and many of his friends are still here in the U.S. because they were in a University exchange program learning various engineering disciplines when it all went down. It really is a shame... and then the youth attempted a real revolution just before the Arab Spring, and ... well, where was the U.S. when people started disappearing and the Revolutionary Guard was slaughtering people on the streets? Really, the work of the CIA in 70s is amazing: they managed to install such a brutally repressive regime that any hope of the people revolting has been quelled for over 30 years. It's not in our best interests to have a free Iran, or a free middle east. But, hey, when we think the populace is sheepish enough to accept a puppet... time to liberate!

Re:Hey

[mr.mctibbs]

They wanted a secular democracy, and had it. Then we took it away from them, and the only folks left who were willing and able to fight for self-determination were Islamist extremists. It's not the government they deserve -- it's the only option the CIA left them. And now because of us once again (Stuxnet/Flame), the Islamists have a pretext to restrict internet freedoms even further in that country. Way to go, guys.

Re:Stupid is as stupid blocks.

[Anonymous Coward]

what is wrong with google (in the eyes of iran) is that it allows for easy access to education. education is the enemy of a religious based government such as the iranian government. education makes the masses less likely to believe in religious doctrine.

basically, this is the equivalent of burning the library of alexandria.

Re:So, basically Iran is deploying a LAN?

[ackthpt]

Sounds like a big LAN to me. But, it might be harder for us to get viruses into them now.

In the end it won't be about viruses, but Twitter, Facebook, various blogs and forums, which they want to keep their people away from, so the only source of information becomes the state. If you can't trust the state, whom can you trust?

BTW, Ahmadinejad has won the next election by a landslide, take their word for it.

LOL

[Jaysyn]

"self-contained version of the World Wide Web"

You're doing it wrong.

Re:LOL

[idontgno]

"Bring me a hard-copy printout of the Internet and a black pemanent marker..."

IPv4

[Anonymous Coward]

Is this going to free up a bit of IPv4 address space?

Back! Back to the middle ages.

[i kan reed]

Unfettered access to information? How unacceptable to my locked-in dogmas.

But nuclear power? That's a technology my stupid caveman government can support.

Re:Stupid is as stupid blocks.

[benjfowler]

The Iranians I've met buck the trend with Islam in general -- they seem to be cultured and enlightened people who have a lot of respect for education.

This would present obvious problems for the odious theocratric tyranny they suffer under at home.

Attacking education and the free exchange of idea is the old standby of reactionaries everywhere.

Re:So, basically Iran is deploying a LAN?

[clarkkent09]

BTW, Ahmadinejad has won the next election by a landslide, take their word for it.
 
No he hasn't because his final term is up soon and he can't run again. That doesn't matter though as he is just a disposable puppet, the real power lies with the Supreme Leader who doesn't need to concern himself with silly things like elections.

Beginning of the end?

[ducomputergeek]

Back when I was in college 10 - 12 years ago the internet was this thing that would never be tamed. It was the wild west of free expression that could never be taken away. Censorship would be automatically routed around and all was good. That was a common belief by many here and in academia. I had one professor, philosophy professor with an undergrad in comp sci from Berkeley back in the 70's and a masters in math, who thought it very differently. He felt by 2020 the beast would be tamed, the powers that be would find ways to regulate it and bring it back under their control. The genie, he insisted, would indeed be put in the bottle. Not only that, but it would be come the tool of easy mass surveillance and that the internet would be the end of privacy as we knew it. I didn't want to believe him either, but a decade later here we are. And it seems like he was more right than wrong.

When China erected its Great Firewall it proved the internet could indeed be censored. Is it perfect, no, but it doesn't have to be. Just good enough. Soon a lot of countries were doing it.

Now, if (and I stress if) Iran can create their own internal network and succeeds then it is the end of the "internet" as we know it. The world wide web will be Balkanized so that content can be better regulated by local regimes.

Re:So, basically Iran is deploying a LAN?

[MightyMartian]

I think we know enough about Iran's internal power dynamic to know that Khameini and the Guardian Council themselves are just figureheads. It certainly was the case when Khomeini was Supreme Leader that the position was unassailable, but Khameini was always considered a relatively weak man, and almost certainly since 2009 Iran is now really run by the Revolutionary Guard and the leadership of the Basij. If Khameini was independent before, he is now a sick old man dominated by the "guardians of the Islamic revolution", and most certainly when he kicks the bucket, the next Supreme Leader will be the Revolutionary Guard's man. The day when the Supreme Leader was an independent authority capable of bringing the other factions to heal are gone. Iran is essentially a thinly veiled military dictatorship.