34C3 - Tightening the Net in Iran

Music

Herald: Because Iran pops up in the news

frequently and mostly when it pops up,
it's often about censorship and

surveillance and our speaker here Mahsa
Alimardani she's actually an expert on

this topic. She's a specialist, she
currently works at the Oxford Internet

Institute, where she researches politics
of Iran and of the Iranian internet but

she also works for the NGO Article 19 and
in her talk - which we hope we'll have

the slides up very soon - in her talk
she's doing a rundown of the current state

of censorship and surveillance in Iran. So
thank you for waiting until now, please

give a warm round of applause to

Mahsa Alimardani

Applause

Mahsa Alimardani: Well, thank you for coming and

being so patient to hear me talk today I
have to admit I did not anticipate doing

this without my computer in front of me
but I guess it's a good exercise in

becoming less reliant on my devices. But I
do still have my phone in my hand with the

slide so I think that'll be useful; so,
the name of the talk is "Tightening the

Net" and so as the introduction went I'm
going to be talking a little bit about how

information controls work on the Iranian
intranet. You're probably listening to my

voice wondering why someone with an
Iranian name sounds kind of American. I'm

- I grew up in Canada and I spent most of
my life going back and forth between the

various countries I lived in abroad and
back to Iran, so that's why I sound this

way. It's a Canadian accent. And so I, I
had slides to accompany what I was going

to say next and it had a frightening
Iranian vampire, that I was going to get

into later on, but it seems that I can you
know replace the frightening Iranian

vampire for now. So the reason why I am
here. Who am I?Well I wear a lot of

different hats, the introduction said that I am,

oh, that's not my slide,

there's a frightening woman in front of me.

Laughter

So I, I'm doing my PhD at the Oxford Internet

Institute and there I'm studying how
social media evolves in Iran's information

control space to see how political
participation shapes, especially during

elections and things like that. I also
spend the majority of my time at a london-

based NGO called Article 19 and there I
work with an Iran team that tracks how

freedom of expression and access to
information takes shape in Iran, and uh, I

think my slides are on their way up here?
No? Is it there? It will come? That's

promising. So at Article 19.

Applause

Yay, my slides are here, that's so

exciting. Oh can I actually? then I it goes

... can I actually control it?

Herald: You have to signal.

MA: Oh, I have to signal, okay. We

can go to the next slide.

Laughter

No, nope, oh
this is fun, okay, so this was the part

that would appear when I'm explaining
who I am. What are you? It's the scene

from the movie, but, I've been
referencing, it's called "A girl walkes

home alone at night" I think you should
all watch it. So, we can go to the next

slide. So, um, there was a troll on
Twitter yesterday when I posted about my

talk, who were saying that I'm kind of
doing war-mongering or something like

that, so I just want to leave a
disclaimer: I do work on human rights, I

am talking about some of the repressive
things that happens in Iran, but this is

not a talk to scare you away from Iran. In
fact, if - you can go back - in fact, if

it, if I weren't here and if I weren't
doing this particular type of work I would

probably be in Iran with my family for the
holidays, so I urge you, if you have no

security concerns, please go. It's a
amazing country lots to see. But, one

thing you will find is that the internet
experience is a little bit different than

what you would experience here in Leipzig,
which kind of brings me round to the topic

of my talk. So, the Iranian internet is
sometimes known as "Filter-Net", this is a

term that a lot of us who do kind of
digital advocacy for Iran know and often

use. I think the term was coined around
2009 or 2010 by a Iranian journalist, who

focuses on technology named Mima Akbar,
for, you can follow the hashtag on Twitter

and you could see lots of different things
related to Internet censorship and

surveillance in Iran. And so - next slide
- there's also the series, that I helped

run with a number of colleagues at Article
19, which is called "Tightening the Net"

the name of this talk and if you want to
get into the nitty gritty details of what

happens in terms of internet policy, in
terms of how users are put at risk in Iran

this is a series you can follow and it
started initially with the national

internet project, which is sort of
sometimes known as the "Halal-Net".

And then, we looked at software and cyber
tactics in Iran for the next edition and

now every quarter we come out with a
rundown of what's going on, online in

Iran, with a series of advocacy
recommendations for various branches of

the Iranian government. So, if you want to
get more information beyond the

generalities of this talk to check that
out. Next slide. So, understanding the

#filternet. In order to understand - next
slide - so whenever I do this, it means

next slide.
So, understanding what happens online you

have to kind of understand that in Iran
there is an infrastructure of control,

that kind of shapes how this works and I
can show this to you. Here, which is kind

of a map of what's going on in Iran and
you can see that in Iran the head of state

is in fact not elected, it's the supreme
leader. He's kind of a religious

authority, but also he has ultimate veto-
power over everything that happens in the

country and you can see him up at the top.
I'm not signaling to change, I'm just pointing.

It's, he's up at the top there
and everything sort of like falls under

his umbrella. And, what's interesting to
know that, every four years there, are

there is a democratic element to the
government in Iran and there is a

president that gets elected and within the
president's cabinet you have the Ministry

of ICT information communications and
technology and within the Ministry of ICT

you see a lot of what happens in terms of
control inside of Iran. So the Ministry of

ICT runs the telecommunications company of
Iran and they maintain and authorize all

the ISP and so in some ways this has been
really good, because the current

administration, that was elected back in
2013 and it was reelected in 2017 is a

moderate administration and so it's done a
lot to improve internet conditions in

Iran.
Internet speeds have improved by huge

amounts. So, sometimes the Iranian
internet was named, known as "condnet"

which, kind of is like "slow internet",
but that's really improved since this

government has come into power and it's
the government of President Rouhani and

other things, like Internet access has
come to villages, that often didn't have

this kind of access. So in terms of ICT
for development there's been a lot of

progress over the past few years because
of the work of this government in that

ministry, but in terms of how surveillance
occurs. So all Internet traffic is routed

through the telecommunications company of
Iran including private and government ISPs

and the TCI - as you can see right below
the Ministry of ICT - is responsible for

blocking webpages and blacklists and
keywords and in terms of surveillance the

TCI also uses proxy servers for
surveillance by logging all unencrypted

web traffic which is why it's really
important for there to be HTTPS over

websites in Iran.
What was particularly concerning is that

underneath the control of the Supreme
Leader there's a body called the

Revolutionary Guards and so, every time
there's a protest movement in Iran or

there's any sort of opposition's of the
status quo the Revolutionary Guards help

the regime kind of, you know, quell
protesters, arrest them, gather

intelligence and so the IRGC, excuse me.
In 2009 the IRGC a consortium owned by

this kind of paramilitary organization
bought about 51% of the telecommunications

company of Iran, because the government
was trying to privatize it, but in essence

its ownership falls, fell under this kind
of repressive body within the

establishment. So, beyond strengthening
the the Revolutionary Guards, with you

know, financial, through financial means
they had direct access to the data of

ordinary citizens which is super
concerning. We can go to the next slide now.

This was the news back in 2009 when they

got 51% of the shares of the
telecommunications company of Iran. Next

slide. So, just to go over a brief history
of controls, because along with the

infrastructure of control, there's kind of
a legal mechanism for how this kind of

established itself. So, back in 2001,
filtering really started in Iran because

there is a crackdown on newspapers and a
lot of people started migrating online.

The scripts for writing Persian online was
developing so, there was this huge

migration and it was only around 2001 that
the government started targeting and doing

censorship of these, you know, more
reformist or progressive journalists and

activists, who were writing and kind of
going against the ethos of the regime.

You can go back, you went ahead too. Oh,
so were you doing it? Oh sorry.

Laughter

Totally did not make that connection.
So that was in 2001 and they wanted to

codify how the system works, in terms of
the filtering committee that enables this

and so in 2006 there was a draft law known
as the computer crimes law and actually

Article 19, the law team and that Iran
team - I wasn't part

of it because this was before my time at
the organization - they actually are the

only source of translating and analyzing
this law and so, it came into a draft form

in 2006 and then by 2009 they really
wanted to mobilize it and make sure it

went into law. And 2009 was when the green
movement happened and so the government

was kind of trying to rein in control over
what kind of discourse was going on

online, because they they effectively shut
down the internet for a small period of

time during that protest movement and so
right after this happened they picked up

speed on this and made sure it passed and
by 2010 this became law.

You can take a look at this document in
more precise form, different things like

article 10, which makes things like
encryption illegal came out of this

document, different things like the
filtering committee that decides through

multi agency network of different
ministries and different experts in the

government what content needs to be
filtered.

Do you want me to do this and you can.

Laughs

Sorry I feel bad I've made you, yeah.

Laughter

Here she is.

Applause

Okay, okay, yeah, I'm sorry, I
didn't realize and she was crouching here

the entire time and that's not cool.
So, so the next thing I have is a video

which I feel like it's gonna get really
difficult. So, the law came into effect in

2010 and different bodies came into
formation as well, things like the

Revolutionary Guard set up their own cyber
division known as Gharargah in 2009, right

after the protest movement.
Iran's police forces also established

their own pulley of cyber force named
Fatah in 2011 and because the

establishment was realizing that the
internet was so, basically crucial to the

functioning of the nation, national
security was being compromised, things

like cyber attacks against the country's
infrastructure was happening, the supreme

leader basically wanted everything
centralized to him, and so he created the

"Supreme Council of Cyberspace" which, its
name translated into English, is very

scifi and fun to say sometimes and that
happened in 2012.

And so, this is all kind of like boring
and I guess lots of dates and lots of

things, but it's really important to how
things happen day to day in Iranian's

lives and how they experience the internet
and so... Back in a few years ago, a

colleague and I, okay, at the University
of Amsterdam, decided to go through the

censorship redirect page. So everytime you
want to visit a page that's censored it's

called peyvandha.ir - you can probably
look this up, if you want - and so we

using the wayback machine we, like, traced
it over the years and how it evolved and

how it kind of reflects on this changing
internet policy.

So I'm gonna take a crack at playing this,
I'm probably gonna really mess this up,

actually, but... uhm... so this is the
video... Can I do it without...?

AH: Let's try it... I can

MA: Yes. Yeah!

Video: arose with the establishment of
Iran cybercrime laws following the 2009

Green movement. The different versions of
peyvandha.ir, which contain literature

related to these laws and regulations,
evolve as norms of what constitutes as

filtered content becomes more entrenched
with Iran. From the inception of the very

first version of the page, whereby users
are told: "In the name of god, according

to the Computer Crimes Act, access to this
website requested, is not possible." The

messages users are viewing as censorship
page, is toned down in the next version,

whereby users are only told, that the
links they are viewing are some of the

registered links. Within version 2, we
also see the peyvandha.ir website creating

pages related to Internet policy. the 3rd
version of peyvandha.ir continues with the

theme of religious references, with a poem
featured that states: "If you listen to

the words of the poet Saadi, he says, he
consents to require the consent of him".

Immediately to the right of this, users
see the text: "In the name of god and the

merciful", as if to subtly tell users that
the censorship they are experiencing, is

by the will of god.
These religious references are continued

in version 4, whereby the main feature of
the page is a changing image that makes

references to national holidays and
events, maintaining the theme of allusions

to Shia Islam and national Imams. This
image, for instance, depicts a mosque,

marking the festival of Imam Reza, asking
users to click on a link to submit ideas

for the festival.
Version 5 of peyvandha.ir brings attention

to the islamic nature of censorship. The
links featured here are perhaps the most

related to state propaganda in comparisons
to the other versions. While the previous

version did not display any links, all
previous versions of peyvandha.ir featured

the popular Persian language blogging
platform, BlogFa. However, this version

omits the website. The omission of the
main image in version 5 makes it hard to

establish a firm connection between the
previous and following versions. This

finding is in line with the notion that
archives of web pages are not always

successful in capturing all of the
content. However, further research shows

that this version still made use of images
regarding Shia Islam. The after the Green

movement, internet controls in Iran from
2009 and 2012 report, by the OpenNet

initiative has captured and saved the
version of peyvandha.ir, as it was on a

25th of October 2012. This image features
quranic writings. The last 2 iterations of

the website in version 6 and 7 are very
similar in design. The sudden change in

design was explained by an anonymous
source to make filtering more pleasant. Or

rather to appear as a subtle part of the
Iranian internet experience rather than

one presented with indoctrinating aspects
of the government. The significant change

that comes in version 7, however, is the
prominent feature of the Internet policy

links. Concluding, we can say that this
historiography of the peyvandha.ir website

demonstrates a timeline of the beginning
of the heightened internet controls from

the inception of the page in 2010 to the
present day. The changes in the page

essentially demonstrate the evolution of
the ways the Iranian state represents its

censorship policies. The notions of
religious motifs decrease over time,

whereas the focus on internet policy
becomes more present by the last iteration

of the page.

MA: And that was that. And as I struggle

to go back to my presentation... Oh, I did
it... without any glitches... how

exciting... and so, over the years there
have been different programs that the

government has kind of put into place
beyond the censorship that they do. Things

that I have been following through my own
work have been "the spider program", which

comes from the Revolutionary Guards
Garrideb division, the cyber... kind of

Iranian cyber division of the
Revolutionary Guards and intelligent

filtering, the National Information
Network, and the different ways that the

Iranian government has been trying to
attack journalist, activists, and human

rights defenders in terms of... that the
attacking these kind of vulnerable

individuals that pose a threat. There's a
lot of different projects article 19

had an Iranian cyber army report about
this, and there's been really great work

to track this being done by the campaign
for human rights in Iran by their

researcher Amir Rashidi and by two other
researchers who've been tracking this with

the Iran threats project - Colin Anderson
and Claudio Ranieri - so there's tons of

great research being done in terms of
identifying these attackers. The

intelligent filtering project that the
Iranian government has been doing is

something that I looked into with another
colleague - Frederic Jacobs - in 2015 and

basically at that time we were noticing
that the Iranian government was making

these really grand statements. That's the
Ministry of ICT about how they had

sophisticated means to censor individual
pages on different social media. And

basically this has been a old policy that
they've wanted to do, so sites like

Facebook and Twitter were censored after
the protest movement in 2009. Actually in

the lead-up to the protest movement they
were censored. And so for a long time

various members of the government have
said they want to unblock these platforms

and find the means to just censor
individual pages, or problematic content

and leave these websites open.
However, that's really

hard to do, unless the government has a
relationship with these companies. If they

have a relationship with Facebook or
Twitter. And so back in 2015, they made a

grand announcement that they had finally
nailed it, and they were doing this on

Instagram. And Instagram is one of the
more popular social media platforms and so

what we noticed was that the censorship -
intelligence censorship, which is just

individual pages or individual pictures or
accounts being censored - it was only

being done on the mobile app, and the
reason was that Instagram hadn't yet

rolled out HTTPS on the mobile
application. It had enabled it on the the

browser version of the website, and so the
running governments great, grand unveiling

of intelligent censorship was in reality
just Instagram not doing this.

And so we found what kind of content they
were targeting, which was really

interesting, kind of cultural research in
terms of how censorship was working.

And then my colleague got in touch with
Instagram, and they soon rolled out the

HTTPS on the mobile app and then
intelligent censorship came unraveling as

the motherboard writer Lorenzo "Iran smart
Instagram censorship isn't that smart."

And so that's just one example of these
grand policies that actually don't really

add up to very much in terms of
intelligent filtering. The researcher

Colin Anderson recently found this
database of Europe URLs that different

ISPs were giving to this company called
Sahab Pardaz. I can't talk too much about

this, but this was kind of a public notice
he put out to ask anyone interested in

this data set, to see if this is actually
another phase of intelligent filtering.

However, the minister of ICT did respond
to this and said that they are not

actually compromising users' data, and he
condemned the work of this company Sahab

Pardaz, which doesn't quite add up, which
I guess helps illustrate how confusing

Internet policy is in Iran, like what are
they actually doing, what are they

actually saying, how does it align with
the laws, and those kinds of regulations.

In 2016... through the budget, it was
announced that Iran was spending about 66

million on the intelligent filtering
project, however it's really unclear what

that adds up to, like what are the
deliverables on this work that they're

doing? So again, it's kind of like this
chaotic quagmire of what's actually

happening or not in terms of their ability
to silence

different voices in Iran. They have been
kind of targeting different users in

different ways in 2015, 2016 the Garrideb
spider program was rounding up series of

models and people in the fashion industry
in Iran that are quite prominently present

on Instagram, and while some of the
statements coming from Garrideb was saying

that they had technical hacking abilities,
what they were actually doing

was arresting these models and forcing
passwords and getting their accounts that

way, but during that time I actually got
an Instagram request from one of these

seized accounts, Nikahang Clothing, which
you can see over there, and you can see

that Garrideb had taken it over, because
there's a notice that's saying because of

such-and-such law this account has been
seized under the spider program, and so

that was happening for a while under this.
Again, more actual physical takeover than

technical sophistication of that kind of
work. Another thing that's quite

concerning, that the campaign for human
rights actually was the first to report

on, was the Supreme Council of cyberspace
requiring all telegram accounts to

register with the government, and so
Telegram is hugely popular inside of Iran,

it's almost ubiquitous, and it's often
used as a social media application,

and so the public channels are run by
administrators, and if you have more than

5,000 followers, they basically needed you
to register and get approval, and by

registering they would add a bot to the
account, and the bot could basically get

information of the administrators and the
followers, which was quite dangerous

because last May, when in the lead-up to
the presidential elections there was a

roundup of Telegram administrators that a
lot of digital activists believe was

through this registration program of
having all of this personal data. Excuse

me. In terms of the national internet
project, it's quite a contentious project

in that a lot of people say that on one
extreme it goes towards being like North

Korea's intranet, kind of closed off from
the rest of the world. I... through

my own work I don't think this is what
the Iranian government wants to do. They

do want to localize certain things like
banking and different forms of

infrastructure against cyberattacks like
Stuxnet, but in general what they want to

do is keep data inside of the country, so
they can have access and control in...

part of this project has been to create
imitation versions

of foreign companies, so like I
said they couldn't force Facebook or

Twitter to censor things for them, because
they don't have a relationship, but if

they have local versions they can
effectively do this, and so and they've

come up with alternatives for things like
Instagram, with Lenzor, which you can see

has a very oddly similar user interface,
but oftentimes users inside of Iran don't

trust these imitation apps, so usage
amongst for like Instagram it's always

much higher than it is
for the local alternatives. One researcher

a few years ago saw that the way that a
Telegram imitation app was implemented

kind of traced how the data was going back
to the government, so there's generally a

sense of distrust for this kind of work.
Throughout the year, since 2016 this

attempt to localize user content has
really increased. They put a ultimatum on

platforms that have not been censored yet,
like Telegram and Instagram, that they had

a year to bring their servers inside of
the country, or else it would be censored.

This obviously didn't work, so in 2017,
this past year, they've been doing

different things that kind of have
basically added up to net discrimination,

like they've been going against net
neutrality values by offering incentives

for people to use local traffic, access
local traffic, local platforms and

websites over international ones, and
they've been giving million-dollar

incentives to developers to create apps,
and for example if they got a million

users, they would get a million American
dollars for developing such a platform.

Recently, we just translated and analyzed
a new policy that's forming into a law by

the Supreme Council of cyberspace policy,
an action on organizing social media

messaging applications, and this is just a
set of rules for local apps and foreign

apps that
need to follow in order to operate inside

of Iran. This is supposed to be a gif,
but that didn't work. So, another point

that's kind of come up over... especially
over the past year, is how controls don't

only come from the Iranian government,
but they

also come from abroad. So companies like
Apple and Google, in order to comply and

sometimes over-comply with US sanctions,
they've been denying certain services to

Iranians. So what has been happening... it
has been... Iranian app developers have

been seeing their apps being rejected from
the Google Play Store, and the Apple...

the App Store. Mainly because they were
providing financial transactions over it,

and even things that weren't directly
doing financial payments were getting

blocked, such as one particular app, which
is kind of the Uber of Iran, called Snap,

they were told to remove financial
payments over the app or else they would

be getting removed from the App Store.
Once they did remove that, it seemed that

they knew that there was some sort of
financial transaction occurring offline

and they still removed
that app from the App Store, just to

comply with sanctions. There's also a kind
of threat to other companies, as the

nuclear negotiations went through back in
2015, there's a lot of foreign companies

going in. There's been a huge influx of
the telecom sector, like Vodafone and

Orange, and different companies like that
going to Iran, and there's kind of a fear

that social media giants like Twitter
and Facebook might find incentive to also

go, so it's always good to keep pressure
to... for them to the remain transparent

about their dealings with Iran. The new
minister of ICT recently said that he had

started negotiations with Twitter to
unfilter Twitter in Iran, however Twitter

has refused to officially reply, or say
anything. So the thing that I spend most

of my time working on in terms of social
media discourse is Telegram, because

Telegram is kind of an exciting new
territory in understanding social media,

especially in Iran, because internet
penetration and Telegram usage are

almost on par, so there's about 40 to 45
million Internet users inside of Iran, and

according to the company Telegram, there's
about 25 million daily users and about

40 million monthly users.
So what this means for how

people communicate, how people are
accessing information in Iran, is huge,

because oftentimes everything from
shopping to staying in touch with friends

to getting updates on the weather and
traffic and news, it comes from Telegram

and the public channels. So understanding
this, and how the government is responding

to such an important application for
communication, is also really important

and as always it's become sort of a target
for vulnerable at-risk users, for example

a number of journalists a few years ago
were having their accounts seized through

SMS brute-force entry, I mean through SMS
logins, they were

able to get in, and so there's those kinds
of concerns. Telegram has been kind of

reactive to these security flaws. When the
journalist had their accounts taken over

through the SMS hacks, they did help
reinstate them. A few weeks ago there was

a flaw in a notification that users got in
Iran on Telegram, that hackers were able

to sort of take over - you can see in that
picture over there - and Telegram kind of

reacted really fast and fixed the flaw.
But the issue that a lot of digital rights

activists on Iran find is that Telegram is
so important, and it's so crucial to how a

lot of things operate inside of Iran, yet
they're not really trying to prevent

anything, they're being much more
reactive. There's also been concerns about

how they interact with the Iranian
government as well, and... however,

Telegram has kind of always made a...
taking a stand to say that they are not

cooperating with the Iranian government
and... but they do say large things,

boastful things, that they stand for
freedom of speech, yet they have failed to

really reach out to civil society and
human rights activists for Iran and so

there's a general kind of plea towards
this platform that's so important, for

them to be a bit more cooperative and
prioritize these human rights concerns in

Iran a little bit more. I was going to
slightly get into more security

aspects of things, but I'll quickly go over
it. Obviously, there's security concerns

with Telegram. It takes up some of the
work that I do at article 19, working with

civil society and protecting them in that
way, so I'll just quickly go over it

because I wanted to end on a particular
note. This is like a very... a standard

thing I'd like to say is you don't
necessarily apply the same security

concerns to Iran that you would here, so
just these grand statements of

"use Signal, use TOR" often don't work.
Telegram is hugely popular, so I often say

"why don't we work on making Telegram
safer," because users are not going to

migrate away from it unless Signal comes
and creates a whole infrastructure

and platform that's going to cater to
those specific needs of being both social

media and having the different usability
features. That's really the last point

I wanted to take away with. But I also just
wanted to have one kind of message, which is

I am super privileged to be standing
here and talking about this topic that

I am really passionate about and I am really
grateful that I've had this opportunity,

since over the years to work on these kind
of digital rights concerns on Iran, and

I've had certain personal hurdles in terms
of, without cutting into the nitty-gritty

of my personal life and the things I've
had to go through, but there's been this

general kind of mood in the past year,
with the #MeToo movement and all these

different stories of harassment and
basically I've been really grateful to all

the people who have supported me over the
years to make sure that the hurdles I've

had to encounter for the specific kind of
unfortunate personal events that took

place, that have affected my career...
To really help support me and when I was

coming to Leipzig I
was super proud to be coming to the Chaos

Computer Club's events and the stories
I've been hearing about people who have

been victims of harassment have really
upset me and I think it would be...

I would be remiss to not make a point
of saying that I'm a little bit

disappointed, that I've been reading these
things, and

Applause

And while I really appreciate all of you

and all the help you
give me to set up my talk and I appreciate

that I've been given this platform, but I
really hope we can do better, because this

is just not cool. It's not cool for people
to not feel safe and I know how it feels

personally and I hope Dina - I haven't
seen her yet, I have chatted with her

briefly, I hope she's having a great time
at this Congress, because... and I'm

really sorry to hear that some of... some
people that I think are doing great work

and should be in the space are not here
this year, and I just hope we can do

better in 2018. And that's about it. Thank
you.

Applause

Herald: Thanks for your talk. Mahsa

Alimardani, and for your patience with our
technical problems. Thank you very much.

Please line up at the microphones. There
are four microphones here in the room.

Please
line up there. We have a couple more

minutes for Q&A. You wanna hold a Q&A? Yes?

MA: Sure.

H: But first, maybe there are the signal

angels in the back. Is he waving or not,
are there any questions from the internet?

Signal angel: No, nothing.
H: Okay, thank you. There is someone

standing at microphone 3. What's your
question?

Microphone 3: Hi. Thanks for your last
statement, really. Thanks a lot. My

question would be about Instagram and
Telegram. I don't know if I missed that

part, but does it mean that then the
Iranian government has relationships with

them? Because you mentioned that they
help. I mean, they show these things, so

you've been blocked and this is because of
this. So why this happens? And why is it

only these two particular platforms? I
understood that Twitter and Facebook don't

cooperate. If you could say more about
that, thanks.

MA: yeah, that's a really great question,
and something that's been really

interesting. So, I think, I mentioned that
this new government the moderate Rouhani

administration has kind of, at least in
terms of how its positioned the words it

says, has been a bit more open to internet
freedoms and things like that. And so I think

one of the achievements of that government
is stopping the censorship of Instagram

and Telegram.
Because there's lots of hardline elements

in the establishment that have wanted this
to get censored. And it's kind of like

come to deliberation to censor it over the
years. There have been some rumors that

Telegram has been working with... with the
Iranian government. Although, I think that

might be rumors, because the Ministry of
ICT every so often says that they have a

direct relationship and then Telegram
comes and refutes it. So, yeah, that's up

in the realm of rumours, however. But I
think it's mainly the work of this

moderate administration that's been able
to prevent the censorship. If that answers

your question.
M3: So they are in connection

with Instagram?
MA: No, there are as far as I know they're

not working with Instagram. Instagram is
owned by Facebook, so Facebook is

censored. But, I mean there could be many
different reasons but these are all

conjecture. Instagram is just kind of more
for entertainment, so they have less of a

reason to block it, but also the work of
this moderate administration to kind of

keep Instagram going. Although, for a
short while during the elections they were

blocking Instagram live, because it was
being used for like protests and

gatherings and things like that.
H: Microphone number 1 please.

Microphone 1: Mahsa I just wanted to thank
you for you for your talk, and also

appearing persevering through all the
adversity. Not only of nation state

actors but of also people inside the
community that might.

H: Come a little bit closer to the
microphone please.

M3: Sure. I just wanted to say
thank you for persevering through all the

adversity that has come your way, and for
being here today to give this talk. It's

important and vital and your voice is
valued. The question about Iran in a

geopolitical landscape as its exerting
itself more in Yemen, Lebanon, perhaps

other places. Do you see that the
technology that's being pioneered by the

state apparatuses, the state bodies inside
of, inside of Tehran and Iran, will have a

trickle-down effect into other countries,
that may replicate the oppressive

structures in which that Iran has placed?
Do you see it being a model, as Iran

geopolitically exerts this muscle? Well,
do you see that some of these the

technical sophistication and other things
will be picked up by other actors in the

region?
A: Yeah, that's a good question. I think

Iran would like to have the technical
sophistication that would be replicated

elsewhere. And I guess in some ways the
capabilities are some that you're on cyber

Iran cyber army which is kind of very hard
to associate directly with the government,

because sometimes the affiliations are
very loose. They have certain

capabilities, but in terms of the
technology, I think, for censorship and

surveillance, I think Iran more models
itself on the technology coming out of

China and Russia. Because they have had
more effective and more sophisticated

platforms and means of doing it. So, I
think it's a little bit the other way

around.
H: Microphone number 1 please.

Microphone 1: Thank you for your talk.
You, if I'm not wrong, you mentioned some

government supporters being arrested. Is
this correct? Do you see any kind of clash

between the Revolutionary Guard or the
religious power and the government?

MA: Yeah, absolutely. I mean after the
nuclear negotiations the foreign minister

Javad Zarif, who is like kind a little
bit westernized, he speaks perfect

English. And he had, he has a huge fan
base in Iran because he established the

nuclear deal. He had like almost physical
confrontations in Parliament with the

hardline elements. So, yeah there
definitely is that, and the reason why

some of the Telegram administrators, who
are actually supporters of Rouhani, were

arrested is because of this kind of clash
between hardline elements like the

Revolutionary Guards and the more moderate
administration. So, there is this kind of,

yeah, differentiation and nuance that
happens.

H: I guess we're moving to the last
question at microphone number 3 please.

M3: Oh hey. I just want to ask a question.

What can we... First of all
thank you for your great talk, it was very

well researched and great information and
for your very brave proclamation. What can

we in the room do, other than fund your
work? Can we put pressure on the companies

that, you know, work inside of Iran? Can
we put pressure on the governments of the

nations we're citizens in? What's the next
step for people who are listening and want

to do something? Thank you.
MA: Yeah, I mean especially if you're not

American, I think, laughs, Iranian
government would be more open to hearing

kind of the non-western perspective. But I
think the reason why I think it's so

important to be here in Europe, is because
Europe is actively engaging in dialogue

with Iran. So, if there's way to put
pressure through the different companies

that are going into Iran, like I mentioned
there's you know the British Vodafone and

like Frances Orange that are going in. If
they can make certain demands for, you

know, human rights standards and things
like that. That would be, that would also

be really great. I mean campaigning and
putting pressure different ways through

social media is always helpful. The main
thing that I think we could perhaps have

effect on is, hopefully a company like
Telegram is listening and they can make

the security and privacy of Iranians one
of them one of their bigger priorities. So

that's really the place that I think can
have the most change, because we can have

more, we can have easier dialogue with
like Facebook, Telegram and all these

different platforms to ensure that privacy
and security is upheld.

H: Mahsa Alimardani, thank you very much
for the talk. And please give her a warm

round of applause.

Applause

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