The AP ran a a piece yesterday about Iran's latest crackdown on bloggers. Research from the Open Net Initiative shows that Secure Computing's Smartfilter software has been used by the state-mandated ISPs in Iran to control internet traffic. Smartfilter is the censorware that blocked BoingBoing as a "nudity" site. Snip from AP item:
To bolster its campaign, the Iranian government has one of the most extensive and sophisticated operations to censor and filter internet content of any country in the world — second only to China, Hopkins said.
It also is one of a growing number of Middle Eastern countries that rely on U.S. commercial software to do the filtering, according to a 2004 study by a group called the OpenNet Initiative. The software that Iran uses blocks both internationally hosted sites in English and local sites in Farsi, the study found.
The filtering process is backed by laws that force individuals who subscribe to internet service providers to sign a promise not to access non-Islamic sites. The same laws also force the providers to install filtering mechanisms.
The filtering "is systematically getting worse," said [Hossein] Derakhshan, who was detained and questioned during a visit to Iran last spring, just before the election of hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Link (Thanks, Kathryn Cramer!)
Previously:
– MySpace banned in UAE, like BoingBoing, presumably with SmartFilter
– Distributed BoingBoing, for those blocked by censorware
– SmartFilter, BoingBoing, and Adult Baby – Diaper Lovers.
– Xeni's NYT op-ed: Exporting Censorship
– More on SmartFilter blocking BoingBoing and other popular sites.
