More Iran Internet Disruptions Raise Concerns Over Censorship As Elections Loom

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iranians faced a second and more extensive disruption of Internet access Monday, just a week after email and social networking sites were blocked, raising concerns about state censorship ahead of parliamentary elections.

The latest Internet blockade affected the most common form of secure connections, including all encrypted international websites outside of Iran that depend on the Secure Sockets Layer protocol, which display addresses beginning with "https."

"Email, proxies and all the secure channels that start with 'https' are not available," said a Tehran-based technology expert who declined to be identified.

"The situation regarding accessing these websites is even worse than last week because the VPNs are not working."

Many Iranians use virtual private network, or VPN, software to get around the extensive government Internet filter which aims to prevent access to a wide range of websites including many foreign news sites and social networks like Facebook.

Last week, millions of Iranians suffered serious disruption in accessing email and social networking sites amid concerns the government is extending its surveillance on ordinary citizens.

Iranians have grappled with increased obstacles to using the Internet since opposition supporters used social networking to organize protests after the disputed 2009 re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The government denied any fraud in the vote which ignited large-scale street protests that were crushed by security services after eight months.

Iran is preparing to hold parliamentary elections on March 2, the first national election since 2009.

(Reporting by Zahra Hosseinian and Ramin Mostafavi; Writing by Amran Abocar; Editing by Sami Aboudi)

Copyright 2012 Thomson Reuters. Click for Restrictions.

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Comments

[MIKEinNYC]

06:05 PM on 02/20/2012

How do Iran's supporters justify this?

[Midnight Son]

09:07 AM on 02/20/2012

The folks over at the Tor Project have been fighting this. If you would like to help the people of Iran as their government attempts to choke off their internet connections, please consider running and Obfuscated Tor Bridge. The link below provides easy instructions on how to do it.

https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/TorObfsBridgeSetupForBeginners

[Stephen Stafford]

09:50 AM on 02/20/2012

As this involves an ordinary citizen to be part of international espionage and intrigue, I would caution the ordinary citizen to get much more information about all of this before jumping in.

If it is that easy to strike a blow against this big bad government, how easy would it be to retaliate against you? And novices would not be tasked with that project. Using technology to influence what happens in another land: some part of that has serious charges written all over it.

"If everyone else is jumping off the bridge, are you going to jump, too?"

[Midnight Son]

09:58 AM on 02/20/2012

It's hardly espionage. If the authorities of a country that engages in censorship finds a Tor Bridge they hadn't known about for, they simply add its IP address to a blacklist. They don't hunt you down and kill your family. Nor is it illegal to run a Tor Bridge.

[gmb007]

10:18 AM on 02/20/2012

Perhaps the perfect answer to your post lies in your bio:

Be the answer to somebody's prayer!