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Facebook and Twitter Blocked Again in Iran After Respite Facebook and Twitter Blocked Again in Iran After Respite
(about 2 hours later)
TEHRAN — Internet users in Iran lost access Tuesday to Facebook and Twitter, a day after they were surprised to find that they could call up the sites without having to evade a government’s firewall that for years had blocked direct access. TEHRAN — Iranians lost unrestricted access to Facebook and Twitter on Tuesday almost before they knew they had it, leaving many people wondering whether the opening was deliberate or the result of some technical glitch.
Iranian officials dismissed the episode as a technical glitch, but many Iranians were skeptical. The country’s new president, Hassan Rouhani, has promised several times to reduce Internet censorship, and several of his cabinet ministers, including the foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, have set up Facebook pages and opened Twitter accounts, some of them quite active. The Web sites had been blocked since huge anti-government protests exploded following the disputed presidential election in 2009. But for almost a full day on Monday, jubilant Iranians were able to call them up without resorting to VPN software, which is illegal.
Insiders say the “glitch” might have been caused by infighting between groups allied with the president and conservatives who still control the hardware to block the sites. The Internet has long been a battleground in Iran between those pushing for more personal freedoms and hardliners who feel they must protect society from dangerous influences — a struggle that may have played out on Monday.
The government walled off Facebook and Twitter during the unrest following disputed presidential elections in 2009, saying they were being used by antigovernment protesters to organize demonstrations. To reach the sites, many Iranians began using virtual private network, or VPN, software to connect through computers located outside the country, though the government eventually deployed technology to block much of that traffic as well. Iran’s new president, Hassan Rouhani, has repeatedly promised an easing of Internet restrictions. He has a Twitter account which is managed by people close to him. His foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, has Facebook and Twitter accounts where he actively engages in debates.
Iranian Internet users reacted to the apparent unblocking on Monday as if a digital Berlin Wall had just crumbled on their computer screens. Political insiders say Monday’s mysterious unblocking of Facebook and Twitter was an attempt by certain groups within the Iranian political establishment — it was not clear exactly who — to measure the reactions of Internet users.
“Hurray, I came to Facebook without using VPN,” a user called Bita posted on her wall. “Thank you Rouhani!!!” “Monday’s move was a test conducted to see what people would do if Facebook and Twitter were opened,” said one source close to the new government who asked to remain anonymous because of the secrecy surrounding the matter. “Apparently the test results have been unfavorable, because the sites have been closed again.”
In a twist of timing, an American Web-hosting company recently shut down the Web site of Mehdi Karroubi, an opposition leader who has been under house arrest since February 2011, to comply with United States sanctions that block the hosting of any site with the domain .ir, for Iran, Reuters reported Monday. That was echoed by Farshad Ghorbanpour, a political analyst close to the government. “It seems to me the authorities wanted to see what would happen if the Web sites were opened,” he said. “This is not uncommon in Iran.”
In Iran, Internet censorship is the responsibility of the Supreme Council for Cyberspace, which has declared millions of Web pages off limits for Iranians, including the Web site of The New York Times. A special police unit visits Internet users at home, especially in smaller cities, and warns them not to try to visit blocked sites. It is unclear exactly what the authorities would have been seeking to find out with such a test.
It was especially difficult to sidestep the firewall in June, around the time of the recent Iranian presidential election. In the days before the vote, supporters of the departing president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, fought for hours with officials at an Internet filtering center when several sites favoring Mr. Ahmadinejad were blocked. Conservatives tended to favor a technical glitch as the explanation for the unblocking of the Web sites. “God willing this has been a mistake,” Judge Abdolsamad Khoramabadi, a prominent hardliner, told the semi-official Mehr news agency. “But if this was done on purpose we will confront those behind it.”
Several hard-line politicians have made public comments in recent days calling Facebook “a Zionist tool,” but the fact that it was accessible in Iran on Monday suggested that the censorship council, which Mr. Rouhani heads, might have decided otherwise. Mr. Khoramabadi warned on Sunday that Facebook is destroying families, saying that it is the cause of one-fifth of all divorces in the United States. “Some officials seem to be unaware of the dangers of this Web site when they speak of unblocking it,” he told the Khabaronline news agency.
Still, the government has sometimes let the firewall blocking Facebook and Twitter slip open briefly by mistake, and some Iranians cautioned that the opening on Monday, too, might be nothing more than that. On Tuesday, the semi-official Fars news agency published a long article pointing out the dangers of social media, saying that Facebook is blurring the lines between private and public.
“Many women choose profile pictures without their Islamic scarves. Facebook is aiming to blur our cultural lines between private and public,” Fars wrote in an editorial. “There are no borders on Facebook, this is extremely dangerous.”
But in another sign that Monday’s unblocking was a test, a famous TV anchor, Reza Rashidpour, who campaigned for Mr. Rouhani, congratulated Iranians on Monday for gaining unrestricted social media access but also cautioned them. “We hope our people will restrain themselves and our officials will be patient.”
If indeed a test was conducted, it seemed to reveal a pent up hunger for less restriction and more interaction. One tweet by this reporter — ‘Hello world, we are tweeting without restrictions from Iran.” — was retweeted nearly 900 times, with many Twitter users welcoming Iran to Twitter and Iranians saying they could not believe what was happening.
But the window quickly closed. Rayaneh, a poet, said she tried to get online on Monday to post a message to the world. “1, 2, 3… 1,2,3… Can you hear us? We are testing if Facebook is running without VPN here,” she said. “But by that time the filters were back on,” she said.
ENDIT