Implications of New Technologies for Democratic Change in Iran

8/9/2019 Implications of New Technologies for Democratic Change in Iran

1/36

Implications of New Technologies forDemocratic Change

in Iran

Cyrus Farivarhttp://[email protected]

Global Voices 2010May 7, 2010

http://www.ickr.com/photos/yahyanatanzi/3837114239/


2/36

0. Who am I?


3/36

I. A Twitter Revolution?


4/36

I. A Twitter Revolution?


5/36

Not so much: Web Ecology Project (June 26, 2009)

Source: http://ww w.webecologyproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/WEP-twitterFINAL.pdf


6/36

Irans Internet Statistics

2000: One million Internet users2008: 23 million Internet users

Growth rate: 48 percentInternet penetration rate: 35 percent

Average Middle East Internet penetration rate: 26 percentSource: OpenNet Initiative (http://opennet.net/research/proles/iran)


7/36

Dear subscriber,access to this site is

not possible. In casethis site has been

mistakenly lteredplease email

[email protected] with thedomain name and

necessaryexplanation.

Internet Filtering in Iran


8/36

God is with us / Are you ltering him too? (2009)


9/36

II. How we got here

Islamic Revolution:1978-1979

Islamic Republic Declared: April 1, 1979


10/36

II. How we got here

Iran-Iraq War: 1980-1988

~ 500,000 dead


11/36

March 1989: World Wide Web Invented

Tim Berners-Lee (UK), a

visiting scientist at CERN(Switzerland) invents

World Wide Web.

1990:2 mil Internet users

(~85% are American)


12/36

June 1989:Khomeini dies, Khamenei now Supreme Leader


13/36

1992: Iran gets online

1988: Dr. Siavash Shahshahani uses Internet inItaly for rst time

1992: Mohammad-Javad Larijani (Director of Institute for Studies in Theoretical Physics andMathematics, Tehran), authorizes rst connectionto Internet.

1992: Iran connects to Internet (via Austria)

1995: 30,000 Iranians online

2010: M-J Larijani is a Khamenei adviser, headof human rights council in Judiciary Dept.Brother Ali Larijani was chief Iranian nuclearnegotiator and is currently speaker of Iranian

parliament. Other brother Sadeq Larijani is thenew head of Iranian Judiciary.


14/36

1992: Iran gets online

According to the Internet Society, in the rst half of this yearIran had the world's second highest increase in numbers of reachable computers hooked up to the Internet.

But will the mullahs -- once they gure out the full extent of what's going on -- allow it?

-- Carroll Bogert, Chat Rooms and Chadors: Iran: Will theInternet open a closed society? , Newsweek , August 21, 1995


15/36

May 23, 1997: Mohammed Khatami Elected

No, no, I don't like to hear slogans likethat, [President Khatami] exclaimed. Idon't like to hear 'Death to opponents' or death to anybody, because as matters standin our society at present, it will beinterpreted in a very negative way, asmeaning that anybody who does not shareyour views should be silenced, and that'snot right at all. The Iran we want should beone where there will be room for all thedifferent viewpoints, for all ideologies, eventhose that oppose the President. They, too,must have the right to express themselves.

John F. Burns, As Iran's Reformer Speaks, Anti-ReformersSit and Scowl, The New York Times, September 30, 1999


16/36

Montazeri.com vs. Montazery.com: Ayatollahs wage war on InternetFriday 15 December 2000 - Agence France Presse

PARIS, Dec 15 (AFP) - Dissident cleric Hossein Ali Montazeri, once in lineto be Iran's supreme leader, this week dropped a political bombshell by

publishing his memoirs on the Internet and provoking a cyber war with theleadership in Tehran.

Montazeri, 79, who had been chosen to succeed Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini,founder of the Islamic republic, has been living under house arrest in Qom,south of Tehran, ever since he was forced to resign weeks before Khomeini'sdeath in 1989.

. . .

But he struck a hard blow on Monday when he published a 600-page memoir onan Internet site based in Britain, which his sons veried as his work. The document,

published in Persian and available at www.montazeri.com, provides importanttestimony to some of the most dramatic moments of the revolution and the war withIraq.

Authorities in Tehran have so far not publicly reacted to Montazeri's memoirs but on

Thursday a counter-site -- www.montazery.com -- appeared on the internet anddescribed itself as representing the office of Khamenei.

December 2000: Montazeri.com vs. Montazery.com


17/36

September/October 2001: First Persian Blogs

http://www.globalpersian.com/archive/010901.html

http://web.archive.org/web/20080730053406/http://i.hoder.com/archives/2001/10/011007_005490.shtml

Salman JaririSeptember 7, 2001

Hossein Hoder Derakhshan

October 7, 2001


18/36

May 2001: Four hundred Tehran cybercafsshut down

June 2001: Iran TelecommunicationsCompany bans children under 18 from

accessing Internet

November 2001: Supreme Council for Cultural Revolution declares all ISPs should

be state-controlled

September 2002: Then-Judiciary Chief Ayatollah Seyed Mahmoud HashemiShahroudi (pictured) calls for the creation of a special committee for legal investigationon Internet-related crimes and offenses.

December 2002: Committee Responsible for Determining Unauthorized Sites established

2001 - 2002: Crackdown, Part I


19/36

April 20, 2003: Sina Motalebi arrested

http://web.archive.org/web/20040422231903/www.rooznegar.com/archives/2003_04.php


20/36

http://www.iranhrdc.org/httpdocs/English/pdfs/Reports/Forced%20Confessions%20-%20Targeting%20Iran%27s%20Cyber-Journalists.pdf

2004: Crackdown, Part II

September - October 2004: Many bloggers, online journalists arrested

Including: Omid Memarian(pictured, center)

Source: Iran Human RightsDocumentation Center September 2009


21/36

November 2005: We Are Iran released


22/36

August 8, 2006: Pres. Ahmadinejad begins blog

http://web.archive.org/web/20070509211753/http://www.ahmadinejad.ir/en/autobiography/


23/36

April 2008: John Kelly & Bruce Etling study released

http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/publications/2008/Mapping_Irans_Online_Public


24/36

March 18, 2009: Omid Reza Mirsaya dies in prison


25/36

III. Potential for Democratic Change?


26/36


http://gerdab.ir/fa/pages/?cid=422June 21, 2009


27/36


http://gerdab.ir/fa/pages/?cid=504September 7, 2009

Iranian Revolutionary Guards ready to ght cyber and Internet war


28/36


http://gerdab.ir/fa/pages/?cid=517October 1, 2009

An Internet battle report in the defeated velvet coup


29/36


December 3, 2009

In recent months, Iran has been conducting a campaign of harassing and intimidatingmembers of its diaspora world-wide -- not just prominent dissidents -- who criticize theregime, according to former Iranian lawmakers and former members of Iran's elite securityforce, the Revolutionary Guard, with knowledge of the program.

Part of the effort involves tracking the Facebook, Twitter and YouTube activity of Iraniansaround the world, and identifying them at opposition protests abroad, these people say.

Interviews with roughly 90 ordinary Iranians abroad -- college students, housewives, doctors,lawyers, businesspeople -- in New York, London, Dubai, Sweden, Los Angeles and otherplaces indicate that people who criticize Iran's regime online or in public demonstrations arefacing threats intended to silence them.

Source: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125978649644673331.html


30/36


On their own, new technologies do not takesides in the struggle for freedom and progress,but the United States does. We stand for a singleinternet where all of humanity has equal access

to knowledge and ideas. And we recognize thatthe worlds information infrastructure willbecome what we and others make of it.

-- Secretary of State Hilary ClintonWashington, D.C., January 21, 2010

Source: http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2010/01/135519.htm

http://www.state.gov/statecraft/


31/36


February 2, 2010

Do you have a representative or a spokesperson outside the country?

In the green movement, every citizen is a media outlet. But the green path does not have arepresentative or spokesperson outside the country. This is one of its beauties. Everyone can talkabout their ideas and the movement expands within a collaborative environment. As one of themembers of the movement, I, too, will express my comments and suggestions in this environment.

Source: http://www.kaleme.org/1388/11/13/klm-10327


32/36


http://gerdab.ir/fa/pages/?cid=607February 2, 2010

Computer Crimes ActArticle 1: Any unauthorized access of data, information or the Internet & Telecommunicationssystems which are under security measures will be sentenced to ninety days to one yearin prison, or nes of ve to twenty million rials ($500 - $2,000), or both.


33/36


Source:http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-02-04/iran-says-cut-disrupts-internet-opposition-blames-government.html


34/36


35/36


1995: Nicholas Negroponte (Professor, MIT):

The Internet can:atten organizations, globalize society,

decentralize control and harmonize people.The nation-state may go away.

~1858: Henry Field (pastor, author, brother of Cyrus Field)

The Telegraph: unites distant nations, making them feelthat they are members of one great family

By such strong ties does it tend to bind the human race inunity, peace and concord.


36/36

What we have seen, time and time again, isthat physical coercion by government thehallmark of a traditional legal system remains far more important than anyoneexpected. This may sound crude and ugly and even depressing. Yet at a fundamental level, itsthe most important thing missing from most

predictions of where globalization will lead,and the most significant gap in predictionsabout the future shape of the Internet.


Tim Wu and Jack Goldsmith, Who Controls the Internet? (Oxford University Press, 2006), 180

Documents

Implications of New Technologies for Democratic Change in Iran