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Politics

Iran’s Chief Prosecutor Calls For Total Internet Shutdown

December 2, 2022
Akhtar Safi
1 min read
"I stood up to the issue of blocking [the Internet] and I was cursed a lot. We ban a VPN today, it is immediately available from abroad in another way," Montazeri said in the northeastern city of Qom on December 1.
"I stood up to the issue of blocking [the Internet] and I was cursed a lot. We ban a VPN today, it is immediately available from abroad in another way," Montazeri said in the northeastern city of Qom on December 1.

Iranian Prosecutor-General Mohammad Jafar Montazeri has said that access to the Internet should be entirely blocked in Iran, amid a heavy-handed state crackdown on weeks of nationwide anti-government protests.

Known for its harsh Internet censorship, which includes banning thousands of websites, the authorities have to a large scale shut down the Internet for most of Iranians in an effort to prevent them from accessing and disseminating information online and from communicating safely.

The measures include cutting off mobile data, slowing Internet services and blocking individual users, as well as apps such as Instagram and WhatsApp. Other major social media platforms including Facebook, YouTube and Twitter had previously been banned.

"I stood up to the issue of blocking [the Internet] and I was cursed a lot. We ban a VPN today, it is immediately available from abroad in another way," Montazeri said in the northeastern city of Qom on December 1.

Virtual personal networks (VPNs) are used by many Iranians to circumvent the Internet restrictions.

"We should shut down cyberspace altogether, but that measure is not approved by the top leadership, and also it is not possible today”.

Iran has been working for years on a project to develop a sanitized, national Internet that would work independently from the World Wide Web.

The National Information Network project aims at creating an Internet network that can be cut off from the global internet and be controlled by the Iranian government.

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