Information is king these days – just take a look at the Arab Spring and you will see how Twitter and Facebook functioned as organizational tools for the people to strongly voice out their dissatisfaction against corrupt regimes. Iran knows this, and did clamp down on Gmail and YouTube recently, introducing a second wave of disruptive Internet access today as well. No doubt this move has raised concerns surrounding state censorship ahead of parliamentary elections. This recent move will affect the most common form of secure connections, where it will comprise all encrypted international websites located outside of Iran which depend on the Secure Sockets Layer protocol – basically, anything that has addresses starting with “https” are not kosher.
Majority of Iranians rely on virtual private network (VPN) use as a workaround of the extensive government Internet filter, and this new clampdown is does not bode well at all. With Iran preparing themselves to hold parliamentary elections on March 2, tensions are running high. I do not think that disrupting the Internet will work in favor of the ruling government, but might just incense the people even more. What about you?
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