If you enjoy the content at iBankCoin, please follow us on TwitterNew cyber regulations announced by Iran last week, including requiring Internet cafes to install surveillance cameras, could be just a precursor to the Islamic Republic’s “halal” network, many observers are saying.
That network, an “Islamically permissible” intranet that the nation’s telecommunications ministry publicized in early 2011, would disconnect Iran from the rest of the world and run a parallel internal service that would automatically censor material and block popular global sites and search engines, such as Facebook, Google and Wikipedia.
“I don’t think it’s a question of if, but a question of when,” said Austin Heap, executive director of the Censorship Research Center, who also works on developing technologies for increasing Internet freedom.
At the time of the announcement, Iranian authorities said the new infrastructure would be revealed soon, but did not give a specific time frame.
“They are taking the lessons of the 2009 uprisings and figuring out how to prevent that,” Heap said. “A halal network would be only what the regime would want you to see.”
Iran’s network could mirror what Burma, another nation with draconian cyber crackdowns, has done to isolate its people from the Web, limiting users to a national intranet at a high price that deters most potential users.
Joined Nov 11, 2007
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They took a page out of our playbook.
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d111:s.03480:
When in doubt, put blinders on and shut off communications, (in our case grant the power for it to be possible). Some say Arab spring showed what power the influence of the internet can have against government powers. it certainly would explain Iran’s behavior to block influence, but some suggest it is why the US is suddenly considering giving the ability of the “kill switch” on the entire internet.
And no, you don’t need to shut down the entire internet because one server gets attacked, anyone who talks with a programmer or is one should know that you can shut down a server or two.
Information and social media is what allows people to organize, and the attempt to suppress it has shown an equally influence on the desire to revolt as the increase of social media allowing the information to spread that leads to organized protests.
In the case of a kill switch, wouldn’t peer-2-peer systems still remain functional?