Earlier this month, a new has been released that says, the Iranian government has backed up their special force which will act on cyber related campaign for discouraging users to use the anti-filtering tools for bypassing the censorship implementing system in the country.
Kamal Hadianfar, who is working as the head of specialized police unit has said that, the major target for this operation is to reduce the usage of VPN services in Iran which is assisting users to remain unknown while browsing on the web, and helping them to access all blocked websites through secured, safer, and specialized encrypted tunneling protocol systems.
Through a report from the Mehr News agency, the specialized police unit’s head has also mentioned that, there has been agreement sanctioned by the government to make sure of blocking all illegal VPN services. He has also mentioned that, more than 20 to 30% Iranian internet users have been using this VPN service which will be like more than 7 million Internet users out of 36 million Internet users in this country. With his report, it has come to know that, the usage of legal VPN services will only be available for ministries, airlines, specialized organizations, and banks. Even though, these sectors will also be monitored by the special commission. However, this action is not new in Iran as the government had used campaigns like this for reducing the usage of this type of tools and illegal or objectionable websites.
The reason behind this new campaign is still questionable. This may due to the hostile approaches from certain websites against the government or some of the obscene issues that have hampered reputation of the government. The government has been persistence in case of implementing bans to some legalized websites whose are basically social networking websites like Facebook and Twitter, some news sites like BBC and CNN, legal torrent websites, web portals and blogs.
The practice of raising voice against the political parties has received substantial amount of movement during the period of 2009 when the president election had taken place. The anti- Ahmadinejad supports were boiled across the country, and it was in peak due to the hyper activity on the social media websites.
This new declaration has immersed when the government has found out the increase usage of web browsing through unblocking all restrictions imposed by them by using the IP based proxy software or VPN services.
However, the administrative authorities have been planning to execute more strong measurements for discouraging the usage of Internet service in a typical form which is known as the “Islamic Internet”.
This will not only create a barrier between the rest of the nations and Iran, but also initiate an absolute blockage over the progress a major portion of business Iranians who have been doing their business through worldwide marketing.
Few months back, the ministry of telecommunication in Iran has given order to all government based machineries in order to stop using any type of facility of Gmail for any communication purpose with clients, and suggested them to create domains for new emails that include .ir which would reflect the nation’s sign. Moreover, the incidences that have connection internationally were being slowed down on a high note. These type incidences have indicated the discouragement showed by the government for not to use any type of foreign facilities in Iran. The government is backing itself to implement all these measures, but it is not getting any positive response from people. The government is getting high level of criticism from general people to politicians.
The former president of Iran, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani who is still a tall figure in the country has mentioned about the Facebook as the blessings in a report from ISNA news agency. He also mentioned that, there are obvious reasons of getting influenced by millions of users as it is a great medium that can exceed for radio and television media. He has also showed his favor towards the general citizens while mentioning that, people can’t be restricted from revealing information. He has also said that, Iranian government may not like this feature, but if it is about happiness of citizens, then it needs to be followed.
US president Barack Obama in the mean time has showed his disappointments about the movements against the user’s right on usage of Internet service with freedom. To provide assistance to Iranian people, Obama has asked assistance from the US software developers to create something that can bypass the filtering system in Iran. Besides, he has also asked to take some actions against some specified companies that have restricted users from accessing internet service in Syria and Iran. If it had not been enough, Obama has increased the level of cyber attacks on different nuclear programs that are undergoing in Iran, and the Stusnet virus attach. However, Iran has finally recognized the virus, and suspected the involvement of United States for this attack.
Nowadays, it is quite predictable that, this type of action is going to execute in Iran along with some other countries as well. The reports of not letting people of Iran to use VPN service is quite discouraging news.
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