{"id":827,"date":"2015-09-16T18:19:58","date_gmt":"2015-09-16T18:19:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/?p=827"},"modified":"2015-09-16T18:19:58","modified_gmt":"2015-09-16T18:19:58","slug":"khamenei-consolidates-power-over-internet-policy-in-hard-line-council-he-controls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/?p=827","title":{"rendered":"Khamenei Consolidates Power over Internet Policy in Hard Line Council He Controls"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Move Cuts Rouhani Administration Out of Decisions on Internet Access<\/strong><\/p><\/div>\n

September 14, 2015\u2014Iran\u2019s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, has announced that authority for Internet policy will be exclusively centered in the country\u2019s Supreme Cyberspace Council, a move that will consolidate decision-making power over the Internet into an organization the hardline cleric controls.<\/p>\n

Previously there were multiple state bodies involved in Internet policy, allowing for diverse power centers\u2014including those controlled by the more moderate Rouhani administration\u2014to weigh in on Internet decisions.
\nIf implemented, the decision bodes poorly for Internet freedom in Iran: the Council, while chaired by President Rouhani, reports directly to Khamenei and a majority of its members are appointed by the Supreme Leader, who believes the Internet is \u201cused by the enemy to target Islamic thinking.\u201d
\n\u201cThis decision will give a free pass to security agencies to block any site\u2014or go after any individual\u2014that challenges the official line,\u201d said Hadi Ghaemi, executive director of the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran.
\nIn an announcement on Khamenei\u2019s website on September 5, 2015 re-appointing the members of the Supreme Council of Cyberspace for another four-year term, the Supreme Leader asked for the \u201cdissolution of all Supreme Councils [state organizations] approved in the past, which are parallel to this Council, in order to strengthen its extra-branch and central position, and to transfer those other Councils\u2019 responsibilities to the Supreme Cyberspace Council.\u201d
\nIn other words, any other organization involved in Internet policy is to be dissolved and all Internet decision-making power concentrated in the Supreme Council. The decision will effectively cut the Rouhani administration out of Internet policy. It\u2019s Ministry of Information and Communications has played an important role trying to advance Internet access in Iran.
\n\u201cThis decision has stripped Rouhani of his ability to affect policy in an area that is central to Iran\u2019s 80 million citizens,\u201d said Ghaemi. \u201cThe question is, how will Rouhani respond, if at all, to this institutional sidelining?\u201d
\nThe Supreme Council of Cyberspace directs the filtering of the Internet in Iran and determines which websites should be blocked. At present, Iran is second only to China in the number of sites it has blocked.
\nMembership of the Council is comprised of individuals directly appointed by Khamenei and representatives of designated government ministries and organizations. The combined number of individuals who are directly appointed by Khamenei, and institutional heads who are appointed by Khamenei to their respective organizations, gives the Supreme Leader an unbreachable majority on the Supreme Council.
\nIn the re-appointment letter on Khamenei\u2019s website, he also announced three new members to the Supreme Cyberspace Council, of which two, Reza Taghipour and Seyed Ezatollah Zarghami have been designated by both the US and the EU as human rights violators and sanctioned as such.
\nThe decision to consolidate Internet policy making power in the Supreme Cyberspace Council takes place within the context of a growing struggle between hardliners who want to severely restrict Internet access, and moderates who argue greater Internet access is necessary for modern commercial, academic, and professional activities.
\nSince the election of Hassan Rouhani to the presidency in 2013, his administration has at times pushed back against hardliners. For example, on June 18, 2014, Rouhani refused to implement orders by the Working Group to Determine Instances of Criminal Content, another state body that has been involved in Internet filtering decisions and which works under the Supreme Council, to block the instant messaging service WhatsApp.
\nA significant area of contention has also been over the nature of Internet filtering. Hardliners have consistently pushed for the blanket blocking of full sites of which they disapprove. The Rouhani administration, in a move tech experts have noted was a bit disingenuous given its technical unfeasibility, argued that a more selective \u201csmart filtering,\u201d in which only objectionable content is blocked, would be sufficient to weed out offensive material, allowing sites to otherwise operate.
\nIt seems the ruse, however, has been realized. In an interview on September 6, 2015, one day after Khamenei\u2019s letter was posted, with Fars News Agency, Abdolsamad Khorramabadi, the Deputy Prosecutor for Cyberspace Affairs said, \u201cDespite widespread propaganda by the Ministry of Communications\u201d their smart filtering of content on Instagram \u201cwas unable to keep the huge flood of criminal content published on the network.\u201d
\nHe continued, \u201cForeign cell phone messaging networks such as WhatsApp, Viber, and Telegram\u2026[provide] grounds for widespread espionage by foreign states on the citizens\u2019 communications [and] have turned into a safe bed for cultural invasion and organized crime,\u201d and argued that all social networks \u201caffiliated\u2026to hostile states and foreign intelligence services\u201d should be completely blocked.
\nHe and other officials have also argued that only those social networks that agree to locate their servers inside Iran be allowed to operate. So far no global company has agreed to this, given the severe reputational costs any company would suffer from a move that would immediately compromise the security of its users; placing servers inside Iran would allow state authorities access to content flowing across them.
\nKhorramabadi told Fars Iran\u2019s domestic social networks should be strengthened so that the country\u2019s users would migrate to them. Duplicating global Internet services and applications with government-produced versions that covertly provide the authorities with backdoor access to the accounts has been central to state efforts to covertly monitor online content, and identify and prosecute online activists.
\nHardliner and moderates also clash over providing access to high speed Internet. For years the authorities slowed the Internet to render it effectively unusable, particularly for mobile phone use. Rouhani\u2019s decision to approve the granting of licenses for 3G and 4G networks in April 2014 was seen as a major advance for mobile Internet access. However, the state broadcasting agency, Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB), has been refusing [link: http:\/\/sharghdaily.ir\/News\/72858] to grant the frequency necessary for nationwide access to 3G and 4G services, limiting their coverage. The head of IRIB is appointed by Khamenei and reports directly to him.
\nMeanwhile, the authorities\u2019 assault on Internet users continues unabated as well. On August 30, 2015,\u00a0Judiciary spokesperson Gholamhossein Mohseni-Ejei reported the imprisonment of four individuals who posted \u201cinsulting\u201d content in cyberspace, the latest in a long line of arrests \u00a0and prosecution of Internet professionals and social media users.
\nIn addition, the Tehran Police Commander Hossein Sajedinia told the official Iranian Student News Agency (ISNA) on September 6, 2015, that over the last five months, Iran\u2019s Fata Cyber police had closed 272 Internet cafes and issued warnings to another 847.
\n\u201cKhamenei believes if he can maintain control over the Internet, he can maintain control over the citizenry. But with more than half of Iran\u2019s 80 million people online, that train has already left the station.\u201d Ghaemi said.<\/p>\n

Follow the\u00a0Campaign on Facebook and Twitter
\nFor the latest human rights developments in Iran visit the Campaign\u2019s website
\nFor interviews, contact:
\nHadi Ghaemi at +1-917-669-5996, hadighaemi@iranhumanrights.org<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

September 14, 2015\u2014Iran\u2019s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, has announced that authority for Internet policy will be exclusively centered in the country\u2019s Supreme Cyberspace Council, a move that will consolidate decision-making<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[231,113,232],"class_list":["post-827","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-human-rights","tag-ali-khamenei","tag-hassan-rouhani","tag-internet-policy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/827","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=827"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/827\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":828,"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/827\/revisions\/828"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}