Even at the best of times, Internet traffic in Iran is subject to extensive filtering. But in the wake of the disputed election and the civil unrest that has followed, the government appears to have taken more aggressive steps to police online communications. Nevertheless, news and images continue to make their way out of Iran, and a limited amount of organization by groups within the country appears to be continuing despite both online and real-world crackdowns. This can be ascribed in part to a number of volunteer efforts to provide Iranian citizens with secure ways of accessing the ‘Net through secure proxies.
According to the OpenNet Initiative, Iran is ranked up with places like China and Burma as having pervasive filtering of online content. The ONI completed a report on the nation immediately before the election that suggested the country was following a trajectory similar to China’s. Internet use is booming, having grown roughly 25-fold in this decade alone. The government had initially relied on off-the-shelf software to block sites deemed offensive for political or cultural reasons, but has developed an expertise and sophistication that matches the growth in the number of users it must police.
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