Connected, but not dependent

Iran could be considered as special case, when it came to role of internet in society. In Middle East, Iran has biggest number of internet users, but in same time internet penetration is just 68.5% which put country in 9th position in Middle East. Moreover, Iran host the biggest Middle Eastern Facebook community with approximately 17,200,000 users even when use of Facebook is banned by government. (InternetWorldStats, 2016) Censorship in Iran could be tracked to 2002 when Supreme leader issued order to Internet service providers to block access to morally questionable websites. (Halderman, Simurg, & Homa, 2013) At that time, due to insignificant number of users, it was more countermeasure for Western soft war on Iran, that question of national security or protection of domestic economy. Nowadays Iran has one of the most complicated systems of state regulation of internet use. Many popular websites as Facebook and YouTube are blocked. Government have had two main reason for doing that. One is obviously content regulation, but second one is protecting Iranian domestic IT market. Good example is Iranian YouTube alternative Aparat.com, which had in 2015 approx. 5 million videos watched daily. (Al-Monitor, 2015) If YouTube is not blocked or throttled for users of VPN by software using whitelist method[1], its big possibility that Apart would be not successful. As result, according to Alexa.com, the Aparat is 7^th most popular website in Iran, but YouTube is in 24^th place. VPN is widely used in the country to circumvent state censorship, but users are not aware, that they risk to become victims of tracking software which allow them to get free access to internet, but same time records their activity. (Halderman, et. al., 2013) So, state agencies have quantum of personal information at their disposal offered by users. Another special feature is development of national intranet. Sensible governmental databases and Iranian companies’ data have been transferred to intranet, for decrease of their vulnerability from attacks from abroad. In May 2015, 10 to 30% of domestic internet traffic were performed on intranet. In addition to protection, intranet provides possibility to cut connection to global internet, but at same time, e-banking and governmental services will be still available for users. So, it seems that Iranian national interest in cyberspace is to be connected, but not to be dependent on others.

Sources:

Halderman, A., Simurg, A., & Homa, A. (2013). Internet Censorship in Iran: A First Look. Retrieved November 19, 2016, from https://jhalderm.com/pub/papers/iran-foci13.pdf

InternetWorldStats (2016, Jun 30). Internet Usage in the Middle East. Retrieved November 20, 2016, from http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats5.htm 

Pargoo, M. (2015, November 8). How Internet censorship protects Iranian businesses. In Al-Monitor. Retrieved November 20, 2016, from http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2015/11/iran-filtering-policies.html

Addition info:

Structure of Iranian censorship system

http://iranmediaresearch.org/sites/default/files/research/pdf/1363180689/1385/internet_censorship_in_iran.pdf