The Beginning of the End of Digital Prohibition? Google & Apple’s Decision to Allow Iranians Digital Access

For more than 20 years, Western sanctions and the Islamic regime’s isolationist import policies have blocked access to Western technological gadgets. Iranians live in Digital Prohibition. As a result, tech-savvy Iranians rely on the black market to satisfy their tech addiction, using pirated software and illegally-imported hardware from China and Dubai to get personal technologies. Black market digital technology comes at a high cost to Iranians though. The hardware is pricey, and while pirated software is cheaper than standard market prices, the costs to the user are still high due to security risks from malware.

But on Aug. 26., Google suddenly made free apps on Google Play available to Iranian Android smartphone users. The next day, Apple announced their products would be available for export to Iran, switching the previous ban on travelers who wanted to bring their iPads and iPhones to the country. The Silicon Valley juggernauts made these announcements without providing any clue as to why they made the decisions. While these are positive steps and can lead to more digital technology exports by other Western companies, Google and Apple’s decisions do not account for the present roadblocks that stem from a decades-old technology embargo the United States and the Islamic Republic have imposed on Iranians. Bewildered Iranians wondered why the companies made these seemingly out-of-the blue decisions and what it meant for their futures. 

Because of the confusion, misinformation flooded Iranian social media. Many Iranians incorrectly linked the moves to the inauguration of President Hassan Rouhani, the US Treasury Department, Google or Apple “Thank you [G]oogle,” wrote Mehdi Akar, a web developer at Chargoon Co, an Iranian software company, .on the comments feed of Google’s Android Developer Google + page. “[Y]ou give us freedom.” Dani Banini wrote. “I am hapyyyyyy. thanks[s] [G]oogle. [R]owhani mochakerim. The most euphoric commenters argued that these announcements will cause a tidal wave of Silicon Valley exports to Iran. In the Iranian news venture Heraldboy.com, Iran-based journalist Shamin Asgari wrote a headline capturing the fervor, “Apple Products to Dominate Iranian Markets and Iranians to Buy More Android Devices Following Google’s Decision.”

To compound the problem of misinformation, the Western mainstream press did a poor job reporting what sparked the Google and Apple announcements. A Washington Post story from Aug. 27 titled “Why Google Brought its app store to Iran, and what it could mean for Syria” diverted  the focus of the announcements to the implications for Syria because of the media’s focus on the civil war in that country.  The Wall Street Journal had a more detailed account of the implications of the changes on Iranian users in their story, but still did little to account for the role the Treasury Department played in the decision. The media just reported the changes as a result of Treasury Department revisions to sanctions policies on May 30, but did little to elaborate on how the Treasury Department came to the May 30 change, which helped influence Google and Apple.

So how did the Treasury Department and Silicon Valley come to these decisions? And how will they affect the future of digital technology exports to Iran?

In broken English, the commenter Danni Banini demands to know how Iranians can buy these now-available apps if financial transactions are still sanctioned, exemplifying the uncertainty a lot of Iranians feel about the new announcements. The implications and limits of these changes on Iranian technology users need exploration.

First, it needs to be established how the US Treasury Department decided on the May 30 exemption on personal technology to Iran before understanding its implications. Collin Anderson, a security researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, said that prior to the sanctions revision, US companies blocked Iranian IP addresses attempting to access software on online services like antiviruses, instant messaging, Java, Flash and more.  External civil society organizations deemed the situation problematic. They were crucial in calling an end to sanctions that enabled US companies to block services. ASL19, one of these organizations, is based in the University of Toronto. Ali Bangi, the director, said it has done critical advocacy work in changing sanction policies on the export of personal technology to Iran, pressuring Western technology companies to offer services to Iranians.

Without the pressure of these groups, the US Treasury department revision and the Google and Apple announcements would not have happened. For the past four years these organizations —from internet-related ones such as Access Now and ASL19 to human rights advocates like International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran to organizations that lobby like the National Iranian American Council (NIAC) — have used face-to face meeting with US government officials and Silicon Valley giants to call for changes to US sanctions.  

They faced an uphill battle throughout. The Treasury Department’s sanction policies were heavily influenced by the right-wing Israel lobby AIPAC and other hawkish advocates who have strived to increase sanctions on Iran in order to end its nuclear program. Facing these obstacles, the advent of the Green Movement came in 2009.  The State Department, grappling with the Green Movement and its aftermath, became the testing ground for civil society organizations in their quest for technology policy change towards Iran.

Civil society groups used a coordinated media campaign towards the public and policymakers to frame access to technology with the empowerment of Iranians to bring democratic change. Civil society groups used petitions, conferences, meetings with congressmen, and other forms of lobbying to put pressure on the State Department to propagate the message of digital technology’s liberating potential.

The most notable event was Access Now’s 2011 Silicon Valley Human Rights Conference (RightsCon) in San Francisco. US government officials, Silicon Valley companies, civil society, and a wide range of tech activists met to discuss digital technology’s potential in promoting human rights throughout the world and how to enact policies furthering that goal. At events like RightsCon 2011 and NIAC’s NewGen Forum on New Media and Social Change in Iran in New York City, these groups emphasized the importance of social media in bringing about the Green Movement and Arab Spring. The discourse became popularized in the mainstream media with the Twitter revolutions and YouTube viral videos of the death of Neda. Civil society organizations also had an internal ally with tech guru Alec Ross, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s appointee as senior adviser on innovation. Ross was receptive to the concerns of these groups.

Dubbed the “Che Guevera of the 21^st Century” by Hillary Clinton, Ross’ 2^1st  Century Statecraft Initiative advocated the West’s support of human rights and democracy via digital technology. With ongoing pressure from civil groups, the State Department increasingly adopted liberation technology rhetoric.

One notable outcome of the State Department’s initiative was the opening of a “Virtual Embassy of the United States, Tehran,Iran” on Dec. 6, 2011. Through the website, the US government hoped it could have contact with Iranian society through the virtual world, the same way the Iranian government is hoping to have contact with the West through Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif and President Rouhani’s Facebook and Twitter accounts. Nevertheless, the Iranian authorities blocked the Virtual Embassy website.

In light of the shutdown of the virtual embassy and pressure from civil society, the State Department increased funding for new and existing anti-censorship technology projects. Between 2008 and 2011, the US Congress authorized the State Department $76 million in the fight against online censorship against geopolitical enemies like Syria, Cuba, China and Iran. Tor and Psiphon are two of the most notable anti-censorship technology projects the State Department has funded for use in Iran. They enable users to circumvent internet filtering.  In his March 20, 2012 annual Nowruz address to the Iranian people, President Barack Obama expressed his dismay at the blocking of the Virtual Embassy. He declared the US’s role in the world as protecting and promoting freedom of expression in the digital world and reflected the State Department’s liberation technology discourse address to Iranians by advocating for the fall of Iran’s “Electronic Curtain” in the same fashion the Iron Curtain collapsed after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

However, a gap developed between the State Department and the Treasury Department’s policies. On one hand, the former advocated the use of anticensorship tools, and the latter advocated blocking access to hardware and software that used anticensorship tools. Moreover, the State Department-funded anticensorship tools allowed access to online services still illegal to access for Iranians under sanctions.  To resolve the contradictory policies, civil groups had to confront the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Asset’s Control (OFAC), which regulates and implements sanctions. OFAC ensures all US trade partners have their businesses comply with sanctions on Iran or face penalties. Prior to May 30, the exemptions to Iran sanctions allowed were only to medicine and food.

Empowered by their prior success, groups like, Access Now, NIAC and ASL19 pressured the Treasury Department to change their sanctions policy incrementally. First, as a result of pressure from the Internet freedom discourse flowing in the halls of Congress and the State Department after the Green Movement, OFAC allowed exemptions on software on March 8, 2010, allowing personal communications on the Internet. The change was vague and ineffective.  On June 20, 2012, Apple Store employees refused an Iranian woman’s purchase of an iPhone due to OFAC sanction regulations, garnering national media attention. A week later on June 28, Access Now and other civil society organizations pressed Silicon Valley giants such as Google, Facebook, and McAfee in an open letter to reevaluate their compliance to sanctions by applying for specific licenses for export to Iran or follow through on the vague exemption from OFAC’s March 8, 2010 revision. This letter generated a lot of buzz and led to discussions in DC for the need to change. Pressure continued and the Treasury Department decided to exempt all personal technologies on May 30 in the run-up to the 2013 presidential elections in June.

After successfully pressuring the US government to change their policies, Western technology companies needed to reform their policies towards Iran in accordance to the new exemption. ASL19 is in close contact with Silicon Valley giants such as Google and Facebook. They are working actively to persuade the companies to change their stance on Iran.  ASL19 contacted Google after the sanction change and several months later, it announced the availability of new technologies. Bangi, from ASL19, said Google “promised” the group that Google Play would be provided to Iranians before the August announcement and though there is no record of a formal agreement between ASL19 and Google, Google seems to have delivered its promise, with Apple following suit the next day.  Bangi said Facebook has made a similar “promise” to bring targeted ads to Persian-speaking users.

Recently, Google announced in a small press release on its Persian blog that it will offer  Persian-language targeted-ads for  its AdWords service on search engines on Sept. 6. Google AdWords and Facebook’s targeted-ad service are crucial for both companies’ multi-billion-dollar profit machine. This phenomenon has been known as online monetization.

Google relies on its 1.05 billion users (50.12% of the World’s Internet users) to offer their information from their search history to sell to advertising clients adspace targeting users. Each time the ads are clicked based on the pay-per-click model, the companies have to pay Google. Google in its press release announced that Persian-speaking e-business sites, for example, can create targeted ads for tea products to Persian speakers in Iran to generate revenue for Google. Millions of Iranian internet users can become profitable to Google.

It’s a mystery why there so little buzz from this announcement compared to the media attention Google’s Android attention created. If Google’s AdWords Persian-language service is successful, it can pave the way for more avenues of financial transactions for Iranian internet users, weakening sanctions on online financial sanctions.

Online monetization has been slow to come to Iran because sanctions and a weak volatile currency hinders Western IT companies from offering online services.  The success of Google AdWords may lead to Facebook following through on its “promise” and other companies offering ad services, and possibly the introduction of Amazon and Ebay services to Iranians one day.

Speculation on the implications of Google’s AdWords announcement are a pipe dream in present reality. Bangi admits that companies are slow in reacting to the sanctions change because “they don’t have significant business in Iran or have conservative lawyers.”  And all software and online services that are not free such as Photoshop, Amazon, GoDaddy content hosting, McAfee Antivirus, and Ebay are still not available for Iranian users. Google allows Iranians to use Google Play. However, the offer only extends to free software apps.  Recently, US-based content host giant Bluehost shutdown opposition figure Mehdi Karroubi’s site among many other Iranian registered sites in its database. Sanctions still continue the embargo.

Besides conflicting US sanction laws that prevent the use of personal technology by Iranians, the Iranian government has stepped up its embargo on Western technology.  Anderson mentions the draconian response the Iranian Parliament made in reaction to the easing of sanctions by the US Treasury Department.   The Iranian Parliament decided to ban all technology imports without a license. The ban strengthens prior stringent import laws. Also, The Iranian government has continued to block access to Google Play, Google AdWords, and Apple’s website for Iranian Internet users.  Anderson, the UPenn security researcher, said the only way to access these websites is through anti-filtering technology.

Iranians need further changes in US and Iranian government policies to end Digital Prohibition. Civil rights groups will continue to fight the exclusion of Iranian users. Until then, Iranians will have to live in a predicament. They will buy smuggled iPhones, download pirated apps and imagine the opportunities a future monetized Internet can create for e-commerce in Iran. Technological uncertainty will continue to be prevalent as long as Digital Prohibition remains.

 

Nima Rassooli is an independent scholar based in California. He has a B.A. in Political Science from the University of California, San Diego and an M.A. in Political Science from San Francisco State University. His current research is on the relationship between digital technology, state power, and cyber-capitalism.