The Wall Street Journal is reporting that with the with the assistance of European telecommunications companies, the Iranian regime has developed a way to examine the content of individual online communications on a massive scale, using deep packet inspection, going beyond blocking access to Web sites or cutting Internet connections.
Deep pack inspection allows authorities to not only block communication but to monitor it to gather information about individuals, as well as alter it for disinformation purposes according to interviews with technology experts.
"We didn't know they could do this much. Now we know they have powerful things that allow them to do very complex tracking on the network," a network engineer in Tehran told the WSJ.
The capability was provided by a joint venture of Siemens AG, the German conglomerate, and Nokia, the Finnish cellphone company. "The "monitoring center" installed within the government's telecom monopoly, was part of a larger contract with Iran that included mobile-phone networking technology", said Ben Roome, a spokesman for the joint venture.
With the recent fallout from the election, and people using the internet to get their message out, the Iranian government has been blocking access to certain sites like Facebook and Twitter, and has been jamming other forms of communication such as cell phones texting, and satellite transmissions, Fortunately, people are finding way to get around this.
Like most totatalitanian regimes, Iran seeks to control the flow of information in and out of the country. As we previously reported, they have also been photoshopping images to make it look like there is more support for the voting outcome than there really is.
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