Iran will increase access to the Internet among Internet devices | Censorship News

Tehran, Iran Iran is looking for ways to provide limited access to legitimate individuals and organizations that continue to face government-imposed internet shutdowns, and tiered access model which is currently being offered which experts say is undermining the digital rights of the Iranian people.

President Masoud Pezeshkian On Wednesday he announced the creation of a new organization to monitor the spread of the Internet in the country called the Specialized Headquarters for Organizing and Guiding Iran’s Cyberspace, with Vice President Mohammad Reza Aref, a relative of the minority, appointed as its head.

Pezeshkian said that he hopes that the 74-year-old vice president “makes an institutional agreement and coordinates policies and measures with relevant organizations” and “stops parallel work and resolves multiple voices in the management of the country’s national space”, referring to several organizations that control communications in Iran.

Reza Aref is also expected to develop and implement a strategy to “regulate cyber governance”, and perhaps most importantly, review the role of the Secretariat of the Supreme Council of Cyberspace and its branch, the National Cyberspace Center.

The agency, which Pezeshkian has now said he wants to replace, is a powerful government agency established by slain Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in 2012 to control Iran’s internet.

The council, and its current secretary, Mohammad Amin Aghamiri, have taken the lead in severely restricting Iranians from using the Internet based on “security concerns”.

Pezeshkian’s move to review government internet policy comes 11 weeks after an internet blackout affecting 90 million citizens, which followed the same 20-day shutdown. deadly protests across the country in January.

Even the economic crisis is rising people’s frustration shutdown caused, the new body does not mention the end of the shutdown of the Internet.

Since February 28, when the war with the United States and Israel began, most Iranians have been cut off from the world’s Internet, which the government insists is critical to keeping out Israel’s Mossad spy agency and other hackers.

It is now the world’s largest Internet network, where users can access a low-speed and low-profile intranet, which supports government-approved software and content.

Virtual private networks (VPNs) and other unblocking methods provide the only way to access unsecured Internet services, but they can be expensive and are often blocked by Iranian authorities. Security forces are also on search for Starlink Internet connection.

The Supreme National Security Council, the organization that oversees Iran’s security, has launched a government-distributed service called “Internet Pro”, but at prices several times higher than the Internet package.

It offers users a slightly higher level of Internet access than that offered to the general public, where Telegram, WhatsApp and ChatGPT can be accessed through the platform, but YouTube and almost all other international services remain blocked.

The service is said to be for businesses, university professors, lawyers and other groups of people the government deems appropriate, but other government-affiliated organizations have also been selling multiple accesses at a nominal price.

The Chief Justice of Iran Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei, this week, acknowledged the disagreement over the establishment of Internet Pro and described it as “a sledgehammer that descends on people’s minds”, but he also warned that violations of Internet laws should be prosecuted.

The government promises that the situation will be temporary

Officials have promised to restore the Internet, but only until the end of the war, and there is no indication of when this will happen.

Iranian government spokeswoman Fatemeh Mohajerani criticized the media at a press conference in Tehran on Tuesday, after they forced her to block the internet.

“At a time when the US president says a ceasefire saves lives, what’s your response?” he said in a press conference.

“The country is at war, we have to accept that human security is a war,” he added, but said that the Internet is “temporary”.

Amir Rashidi, a digital security expert, believes that access to the Internet is here to stay in Iran, and that it is based on the principles approved by the Supreme Council of Cyberspace after the deadly protests across the country in November 2019.

This is when the Islamic Republic established its first approx internet shutdown in the countrywhich lasted about a week, and became a way for the government to deal with the riots.

“Until now, the main reason it was not fully implemented was the lack of political will. The political will is there now, and the process is progressing rapidly,” Rashidi told Al Jazeera.

Rashidi said that the new center of cyberspace that Pezeshkian established this week can, in principle, provide “a better communication method for the implementation of the principles of the Supreme Council of Cyberspace”, but in fact, there will be no hope of a major change in government policy.

‘Against national security’

A cybersecurity expert in Tehran who spoke to Al Jazeera on the condition of anonymity said the internet shutdown has cost the country more than protecting against cyberattacks and other malicious activities.

Even some government officials are complaining about the policy.

“The decline of the Internet has disrupted scientific communication and national research, and continuing to disrupt the Internet for all people will be against national security,” said Hossein Simaei Saraf, Minister of Science, Research and Technology, in a speech last week.

Saraf bypassed the Minister of Information and Communication Technology Sattar Hashemi, as well as the president, when he wrote a letter to Aghamiri, the secretary of the Supreme Council of Cyberspace, to request that the official website of the US National Library of Medicine, PubMed, be closed. It was reopened to Iranians a few days later.

Hashemi boasted in a meeting with hardline lawmakers on Tuesday that local apps like Baleh, Eita and others have 100 million users.

Many government and law enforcement services are strictly outsourced to these programs, which do not enjoy strong encryption or security protocols.

The elimination of almost all international jobs has forced many Iranians to do so relying on local communications programsallowing Iranian authorities to monitor communications between citizens with internet access.