Last week, I wrote a very detailed post on the Iran controversy and the importance of social media communications; on how Twitter and the new online media has emerged as the hero in Iran by helping us get the news from the very heart of chaotic Iran. The current Iran government might have clamped its hands down on the communications network there, but the news still did manage to trickle out, albeit a bit slowly.
I again emphasize on the fact that the protests are still being organized in Iran via traditional offline networks and calling the gallant efforts by the supporters of democracy at Iran a “Twitter Revolution” will be doing them injustice. (And it looks as if Gaurav Mishra agrees with me here)
So, I thought of writing this post from the other side.
From the government’s side and what have they been doing to crack down on the protests and stopping the viral spread of WOM (word of mouth) to the outside world.
The real conclusion that many people here tend to forget is that for regimes hell bent on surviving their rebels, electronic dissent is so much easier to suppress than traditional methods of organizing information. The Iran government has one of the most sophisticated mechanisms in the world for censoring the internet on Iranian soil, which allows them to see every packet of data travelling in the digital lines. The Iranian government is using a method called Deep Packet Inspection; where all digital traffic in the country is routed to a single choke point and can thus be inspected and monitored. This includes every e-mail, tweet and blog post. Technical experts then set up filters for some specific hot keywords and hence keep the bad stuff from going out. Because of the crowd sourcing capabilities of Social Media, it’s now no longer enough to block access to web sites hosted elsewhere.
This monitoring capability is not new and is being used in many countries, most notably being The People’s Republic of China. The Iranian machines were provided by a joint venture between the cell phone giants Siemens and Nokia. It was apparently a very ‘small’ part of the huge deal which included mobile phone networking technology. I personally think it’s still a wonder that the two companies have still not faced any PR backlash because of this.
If you stop and think about it, it’s pretty obvious that it’s not just the good guys who will know how to use the power of web to their advantage? One thing of which I am really proud is that the Internet sure is giving the government one hell of a time, those sons of ….
