In an effort to eliminate the dissemination of western ideals into their country, Iran plans on having all of their citizens use a state-censored and completely internal internet within two years according to the country’s telecommunications chief. As it turns out, roughly 60% of the nation’s homes and businesses are expected to be on the more »

Iran announced that it has banned Google’s popular Gmail service. The government’s telecommunication service has also disrupted Internet access and text messaging services, likely in an attempt to quell any opposition protests as the country celebrates today’s anniversary of the Islamic Republic. The Wall Street Journal reported that the government has even gone so far more »

Officials from the site said their DNS records had been tampered with but that everything had been fixed and an update would be coming soon. It’s not clear if the “Iranian Cyber Army” actually is from Iran, but Twitter does have a history with the country. During Iran’s hotly disputed presidential election earlier this year, more »

Siemens AG and Nokia Corp. should be so proud as they watch the news. A joint venture between the two companies helped lead to the massive spying technology being used by the Iranian government. They’re using a practice called deep packet inspection. This practice is one that is even more invasive than anything China is doing. With deep packet inspection, it allows the government to block communications, monitor information, and alter it for disinformation purposes. And this capability was provided by Siemens/Nokia in the later part of 2008 according to Ben Roome, a spokesman for the joint venture.

With news reports stating about how Iranian protesters have been using Twitter as a way to relay events, Google and Facebook have both rushed to add Iranian language support on their respective websites. Both are adding Persian translation services on the sites as a way to help Iranians communicate to other parts of the world. more »

Has Twitter finally found it revenue source? Bowing to pressure from the US State Department, Twitter put off some downtime in efforts to keep their conduit open for news that is flowing out of Iran. The recent Iranian election results have put the people in the streets demonstrating for what they believe is a fraudulent more »

Microsoft has announced that users in five countries will be blocked from using Windows Live Messenger. The popular instant messaging service is now off limits to people living in Syria, North Korea, Iran, Sudan and Cuba. All of those countries have U.S sanctions against them and are continued to be hostile or threatening to our national interests.

Microsoft declined to say why it had suddenly decided to shut down service now or exactly how many users would be affected. All they would say is they do not do business in those countries. Users in those countries who attempt to log in will be greeted with the error message “810003c1: We were unable to sign you in to the .NET Messenger Service.” Users who research the error will find this explanation in the Messenger Support Space:

Iran is getting ready to debate a new law that could potentially send web criminals to the death chamber. The newly proposed bill is aimed to “toughen punishment for harming mental security in society,” and would mean that people found guilty of promoting activities such as corruption, prostitution or apostasy online could face the death more »