Iran Forces Messaging Apps To Move Data To Iranian Servers (techcrunch.com)

An anonymous reader writes: According a report from Reuters, the Iranian government wants to be able to track private and semi-private conversations on messaging apps, and has given companies behind popular messaging apps one year to move their data onto servers in Iran. As it stands, many social networks are already blocked in Iran, and now the government wants to control even more online communication platforms. Apps like WhatsApp and Telegram, which have become incredibly popular in Iran, allow users to communicate with no government control. With Telegram, users can contact hundreds of people by creating groups. Now, even though WhatsApp for example is required to move their data to Iranian servers, it's unlikely the government will be able to intercept messages from the app since it features end-to-end encryption. WhatsApp can't even read the content of communications -- only WhatsApp users can decrypt the messages in their conversations. Apple's iMessage also features an encrypted messaging protocol, and Telegram does too, but users need to start "secret conversations" with end-to-end encryption.

Comments

is it?

[Tom]

The official reason is different than the summary states:

"Foreign messaging companies active in the country are required to transfer all data and activity linked to Iranian citizens into the country in order to ensure their continued activity,"

And honestly, that's a good lie if it even is one. Iran is not on the good side of the USA and knows that if their citizens and businesses rely on US services, those can be shut down at any time. Moving them into the country is, frankly speaking, something that I would have recommended to them as a consultant. If you cannot rely on your third party providers, move the services in-house. It's pretty basic.

That said, of course it also makes surveilance easier. But again, the question for Iran may not have been "do we want surveilance of our citizens?" but more akin to "do we want the NSA or our own secret service monitors our citizens?" to which the answer is obvious.

You see, if the infrastructure is within Iran, they gain the ability to block out NSA surveilance, even that built in to the Apps through backdoors, by shutting down the outgoing Internet connections. If things get ugly again, you would want to at least have that option.

It sickens me that this is painted as a "state government vs. freedom" issue when it is almost certainly more a question of two tyranical police states fighting for control.