Everyone knows that internet usage in Iran is subject to filtering. Like parents limiting the sites their children can visit by clicking “Parental Control” on their routers, the Islamic Republic too redirects us to “Access Denied” pages when we input the wrong words in our browsers. Depending on which ISP is the carrier, this is what we get when we stumble upon places deemed to corrupt our minds.
From left to right they are from Pars Online, Datak and Shatel.
Like many other measures our government takes to control our lives, this too is about preventing the “disturbance of mental security in society”. While it is obvious why some subjects might be considered harmful to our society, there’s a whole array of others that have become collateral damage in this war.
Take pornography for instance. One can see how the government might take offense with it – though the “disturbance” it causes me seems to be more of a physical nature, rather than mental, but I don’t make the laws. Now as most filtering in Iran is done through keywords, if a site contains ugly words, especially in its address or title, it will be inaccessible, whether it is pornographic or not. So, naturally, you cannot get to “www.worldsex.com”. But the issue is how search engines get affected. While you can get to Google, typing “sex” in its search box will get you to one of the beauties I’ve posted above. That word ends up in the URL while Google is searching and the filters pick it up. This is the correct and desired behavior for a filter. And now, we start getting into the gray areas, which makes the act of searching for information an art form in Iran. Take “breast cancer” for example. That’s a no no! The problem: “breast”. How about “boob”? “Boob cancer”? Darn! Wait a minute… “Mammary gland cancer”? Bingo!
Amateur, virgin, bizarre, condom, glamour, there’s a myriad of words that fall into this realm. It took me a while to figure out what was wrong with “bios dual hard drive SATA master slave”. Want to take a shot?…It’s “slave”.
The site “www.msexchange.com” is off limits – drop the “m” and you’ll know why – and no matter how many times I entered the site into the “request for removal” form on the redirect page, despite being a legitimate claim, it is still blocked. I called my ISP once to ask why it is so after a year and a half of sending the same request, and I was told that these claims are handled by one guy, who has to get it approved by the TCI (Telecommunication Company of Iran), and that he’s real busy. I can imagine.
I should say that filtering is erratic, and not uniform at all ISPs. While “Annmarie” might be blocked at one ISP, today, another might allow it. Check back in a year and you will probably get different results. This may be due to the busy guy not being so busy at some of these companies, or they might have a team of busy guys. But as far as the really bad words are concerned, everyone seems to be on the same page. One little exception here is “anus”. Everyone agrees that’s a good word.
Not all sites corrupt the mind with unsightly words. They use other methods, some of them more subliminal than others, and they belong to a variety of genres. In these cases, their entire domains are blocked. YouTube, The Seattle Times, Metrolyrics and flickr are a few of those. I remember a while back, when we couldn’t get to a site, we would try connecting through its secure port, and as long as that site served its content through https, we’d hit pay dirt, thanks to the genius the TCI consulted about filtering. Although this hole seemed to be plugged for a while, I recently tested it and I could get to Facebook and some other hazardous sites. The government also passed a law a couple of years ago, limiting DSL bandwidth to 128 kbps for residences, in an attempt to curb the enthusiasm for all things dirty. But porn flicks still get downloaded, they just take longer. What the government did was to extend the anticipation for them.
Do these practices keep people from getting what they want out of their internet connections? That’s most definitely a no! Well, maybe only in the case of those who are less savvy about the workings of the internet. Maybe grandma, but she’s learning, because every grandchild has a few “filter breakers” in his or her arsenal. These “filter breakers” are essentially proxies. Although most web based proxy sites are blocked, there are servers we can connect to directly and jump on the net unhindered. Let me give thanks right now, to everyone out there who is participating in providing these servers.
Internet filtering is happening in the other direction as well, only to a much lesser extent. There are websites and companies that are mandated by their governments to block their content to Iranian surfers. This is out of fear of technology transfers or the sheer joy of some other political motive. Sun is one of these companies. We cannot download Java software anymore – what am I saying…we can, just not through the regular channels. And there are rumors every once in a while about how Google and Yahoo will be closing their email services to us soon. It makes me sad. The only ones harmed in this picture are the people. So far, it is proven that the only way to prevent them from reaching out to seek information, to absorb different perspectives, or to simply entertain themselves is to block the internet altogether. Should such a day come, let it be the doing of our own government.
Tags: censorship, internet, internet filtering