In the meantime, a large portion of mobile phone networks have become distorted starting May 8th. Iran’s mobile phone company is refusing to respond in this regard by merely saying, “We haven’t witnessed any special problem.”
Prior to this, Mehdi Akhavan Beh-Abadi, secretary of the mullahs’ Cyberspace High Council, had described “bypassing filtering software to access social networks in the Internet as a crime.”
Internet use is only possible through IPs registered by the communications company belonging to the Revolutionary Guards, in order to have control over the users’ cyber activities.
The regime’s repressive organ known as the FATA Police (Iran’s cyberpolice) has recently issued a regulation conditioning any use of the Internet on presenting a national code and user passwords. Owners of all Internet cafes are obligated to register full specifications of all customers. Otherwise the Internet café will be shut down. Furthermore, installing any anti-filtering software on the computers and withholding any anti-filtering software to access filtered sites, or introducing anti-filtering sites to users have all been banned.
Following the 2009 uprising, in order to prevent another outburst of the people’s wrath, the mullahs’ senior officials have allocated a high number of IRGC members to identify Internet users in measures dubbed “confronting the soft war”. According to Mohammad Ali Asoudi, IRGC deputy of cultural and propaganda affairs, “20,000 men of the IRGC are active in various cultural areas to confront the soft war.” He said these measures are taking place in “implementing the supreme leader’s orders on confronting the soft war”. (State-run Bahar daily – 2 January 2013)
Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran
May 10, 2013