Iran plans permanent break from global internet, say activists | Iran

According to Iranian digital rights activists, Iran plans to permanently disconnect from the global internet by allowing only those the regime vets to connect online.

“A secret plan is underway to turn international internet access into a ‘government privilege’,” according to a report report From Filterwatch, an organization that monitors Iran’s internet censorship, citing some sources in Iran.

“State media and government spokespeople have already signaled that this is a permanent change and have warned that unrestricted access will not return after 2026.”

Filterwatch leader Amir Rashidi said that under the plan, Iranians who have security clearances or pass government inspections would be able to access a filtered version of the global internet. All other Iranians will be allowed to access only the national internet: a local, parallel internet disconnected from the world.

The ongoing internet blackout in Iran began on January 8, following 12 days of escalating anti-regime protests. Thousands of people were killed, although the demonstrations appeared to slow down under the weight of brutal repression.

Only limited information is being filtered from the country due to the power outage, which is one of the most severe internet outages in history and lasts longer than Egypt’s internet blackout during the Tahrir Square protests in 2011. A government spokesman He reportedly told Iranian media It was stated that the international internet will be closed at least until Nevruz on March 20, the Iranian new year.

A former US State Department official who worked on internet censorship said the idea that Iran might attempt to permanently cut off the global internet was “plausible and frightening” but also costly.

“It’s unlikely they’ll do that, but the economic and cultural impact as these situations arise will be really huge. And they can do whatever they can.”

Rashidi said: “It seems [authorities] “They are satisfied with the current level of internet connectivity and believe that this type of shutdown helps them control the situation.”

Iran’s current shutdown is the result of a 16-year effort to solidify the regime’s control over the country’s internet. One side of this effort involves a complex system of filtering internet traffic, allowing a select few people to access the global internet and blocking everyone else, a practice known as whitelisting.

This whitelisting is probably enabled by technology was exported Researchers at Project Ainita and the Outline Foundation focused on Iran’s internet, according to a study by China, who asked not to be named because of Iran’s reprisals against digital rights researchers, they said. This is made possible thanks to high-capacity breakout boxes that connect to network cables to monitor and manage internet traffic. Currently commercially available systems can be scaled to allow authorities to monitor entire countries’ internet traffic, spy on individual users, as well as block websites, protocols, and certain VPN tools.

“Basically, there is censorship equipment found on every network, and the government can block connections from going in both directions,” they said.

The flip side of this is Iran’s national internet, which can only be accessed from within the country. It allows all Iranians, including Iranians, to use a handful of websites and apps created specifically by the regime. messaging servicesto call enginesnavigation applications and video streaming service It’s similar to Netflix. It is monitored and has almost no connection to the wider internet.

Iran has been working on a national internet since 2009, after authorities briefly shut it down during mass protests following the re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and realized that a wholesale shutdown would incur very high costs.

“They pulled the plug without really thinking about it. They had never done this before,” researchers at the Outline Foundation and Project Ainita said. “And it actually destroyed the entire internet and really damaged a lot of things as well.”

By 2012 the government established He approached the Supreme Council of Cyberspace and began planning for a fragmented, domestic internet. Over time, authorities began to improve internet outages during the 2012 protests by blocking services such as Facebook, Twitter and Google, but leaving other economically valuable services running.

Over the next 10 years, Iranian authorities used a “carrot and stick” approach to force online businesses, banks and internet service providers to move their core infrastructure (data centers and offices) into the country, researchers at Project Ainita and Outline said. Authorities gave tax breaks to those who did so and prevented those who refused from working in Iran.

In 2015, a group of researchers used Bitcoin to buy servers space In Iran, it began scanning the country’s IP address space; The address range allocated to devices on the network.

They made a surprising discovery: Iran was building a domestically connected internet completely isolated from the outside world, using the same protocols to connect the internal network of a corporate office or home.

“It’s like having file servers or HR systems when you’re in your office space; if you go to a coffee shop, you can’t reach them because they’re on an internal network. It’s impossible to point them out,” one of the researchers said.

Iran succeeded. The national internet has been operating throughout the protests and is currently the only option most Iranians have to get online. It is likely to be developed, but it is not accessible to outside users and there is no wider internet connection.

The former US state department official said the powers Iran has unleashed in recent days in terms of its ability to control the internet are remarkable; beyond some other authoritarian regimes that might want to do the same.

But time will tell whether Iran can create a new and lasting online reality. “The digital rights community is right to be alarmed. But the fallout will be very severe indeed for the Iranian authorities, who will bear responsibility for this damage to their economy.”