Official Suggests Iran May Soon Block Access to Widely Used Telegram Messaging App

iranhumanrights.org

Image from article, with caption Abdolsamad Khorramabadi, the secretary of Iran’s Taskforce to Determine Instances of Criminal Content

Excerpt:

A provocative comment by a high-level official in Iran has resulted in renewed fears among the public that the government may soon block access to the country’s most widely used private messaging app, Telegram.

“Twitter and YouTube will not be un-filtered,” Abdolsamad Khorramabadi, the secretary of the Taskforce to Determine Instances of Criminal Content (TDICC), the body in charge of censoring internet content, told the Iranian Students’ News Agency (ISNA) on March 16. ...

Khorramabadi’s provocative statement follows recent, pivotal events in Iran relating to internet freedom. First, the country’s widespread December 2017 protests, in which access to Telegram was blocked for two weeks. Second, a comment by an official of the policy-making Supreme Cyber Council (SCC) describing Twitter, which has been blocked since 2009, as “an effective means of public diplomacy [JB emphasis].”

“Twitter and YouTube have been filtered [blocked] by judicial order of judicial authorities and other authorities cannot interfere in matters decided by judicial authorities,” insisted Khorramabadi.

“The reason Twitter and YouTube have been filtered is that they do not comply with the laws of the country and to prevent the publication of millions of criminal content and block the paths to espionage and the domination of cyberspace by foreigners,” he added. ...