Internet Power in Iran

The ongoing crisis in Iran has exposed the power of Internet. Despite the government banning all the medidums of communication, Internet emerged as the powerful medium to communicate the anger of the country.

The Times of India editorial reports (19 June 2009)


In the days following Iran's general election, a somewhat unexpected development has taken place. The Iranian government moved to limit information
from getting out of Iran by blocking foreign journalists from stepping out of their offices to report on the protests being organised by supporters of Mir Hosein Mousavi, the main opposition leader. Restrictions have also been imposed on the local media, with two well-known local journalists reportedly arrested and state-controlled television channels hardly mentioning the turmoil on the streets. In the middle of this clampdown, new social media such as Twitter and Flickr have emerged as real-time sources of information on what's going on inside Iran, offering the world a primer in conflict in the 21st century.

No longer is it as easy as it once was to shield a country from international attention. Iran's young population 60 per cent of the country's 70 million people are below the age of 30 is not only using the internet to communicate with the outside world, it is using channels such as Twitter to organise protests and rallies. This strategy has so far been so successful that the US State Department reportedly asked the micro-blogging service to delay a planned outage so as to not cut the Iranians off. And though the traditional media is unable to verify all the information available - no doubt some of it is unreliable - the blogs and tweets are able to effectively convey the mood of the nation.

The government's attempt to control the flow of information has intensified with the force of the public uprising. Internet speed has apparently been reduced and mobile phone services interrupted. But this has not been enough to stem the flow, which illustrates the difficulty of attempting to regulate internet traffic. Even selectively banning certain websites and services does not do the trick. It is possible to bypass censorship through the use of proxy servers, which sit between the point of origin and ultimate destination. The user connects to the proxy service and is rerouted and disguised.

A more sophisticated cloaking mechanism, also in use in Iran, emerged from China, another country where the state's attempts to control the internet has led to a strong underground movement. All this proves that despite the best efforts of authorities to stifle the flow of information via the traditional media and online, the internet gives people a voice that is hard to take away.