Internet Access Blocked in Behbahan During Protests

Access to the Internet was severely disrupted yesterday, July 16, in Behbahan during fresh protests in the city. Reports by citizens and data from Internet access monitoring sites have confirmed the outage. Officials from the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology and Iran's mobile operators have not commented on the outage; but technical investigations show that, this time, as distinct from outages during the November 2019 protests, access was disrupted in new ways that made it difficult for experts to track the situation.

The city of Behbahan, in Iran's Khuzestan province, saw peaceful protests on July 16 that developed into clashes between protesters and special forces. Reports spread online about Internet disruptions as these began – soon the messages stopped around 930pm as the protests continued.

"My conversations with locals showed that Internet access was mainly cut off at the site of the riots (National Bank intersection)," Amir Rashidi, an internet security researcher who surveyed the communications situation in Behbahan, told IranWire. "The IranCell mobile Internet network was disrupted before other networks. After that, the Hamrah-e Aval network got into trouble, and later the Third Operator network was disrupted." 

According to Rashidi, quoting his conversations with local citizens, the Internet was still functioning in other areas of the city, although at a lower speed.

”A person who was a few kilometers away from the site of protests said the Internet speed had gone from 4G” to a much slower speed, Rashidi said.

It was still possible to make phone calls and to send and receive text messages between subscribers of all mobile operators. Rashidi added that home Internet connections were operating as usual in the city and that the disruption only occurred in mobile networks. But on this occasion, for those operators that did experience disruption, access to all online sites was blocked; in the past, domestic websites had remained mostly open.

Technical information about the Internet outage

Netblocks, a site that monitors internet disruption around the world, confirmed the disruption to Internet access in parts of Khuzestan province around 10pm on July 16. And data published to the Netblocks Twitter account shows that Internet access in Behbahan has decreased by about 25 percent.

Radar, an Iranian site that reports on Internet disruptions mostly covers only larger and has no data related to Behbahan.

But Radar website's data confirms a concurrent Internet disruption in Shiraz – where social media videos also show some form of unrest took place on July 16. The Shiraz disruption continued among some Internet operators until noon the next day.

Banning access to the Internet from a human rights perspective

Shutting down Internet access is not limited to Iran. China is one of the most infamous Internet controllers in the world. And recently governments in Venezuela, India, and several African countries have cut off or disrupted Internet access for political reasons. But these acts rarely attract significant international condemnation or legal action in human rights bodies.

"Unfortunately, experience has shown that the Internet restrictors are more likely to be prosecuted in the domestic courts of these countries," Kaveh Azarhosh, an Internet policy researcher, told IranWire. "International tribunals are more concerned with the perpetrators of killings, torture, imprisonment, and so on."

Azarhosh added that one of the most important efforts of human rights activists in recent years has been to show that cutting off Internet access at certain times has led to an increase in repression in certain states.

He considers the widespread shutting down of the Internet in Iran as one of the most important examples.

"The widespread Internet outage in Iran prevented proper information from being provided, and the Iranian government had more freedom to suppress the protesters," Azarhoosh told IranWire.

How can Internet connections be kept safe?

Cybersecurity experts have specific security recommendations for how citizens can maintain communications and to avoid eavesdropping between themselves – at least while Internet access remains available.

"There is always the risk of eavesdropping on communications via text message and regular calls," a communications security expert inside Iran, who did not want to be named, told IranWire. "But if the Internet is available and if users use encrypted applications, the possibility of eavesdropping will decrease."

Some of the mobile messenger apps that have better security and message encryption are Signal and WhatsApp.

This security expert also said that some communication apps, such as BitBay, can be used to encrypt communications with other users near you. But he added that "these apps work when the mobile network is open."