Global News Journal
Beyond the World news headlines
Iran stocks up on censorship tools
– Tom Abate covers the technology sector for GlobalPost, where this article first appeared. The views are his own. —
When Iranian protesters used internet services like Twitter to gain global attention they also reminded the world that oppressive regimes continue to buy or build technologies to enforce censorship.
Clothilde Le Coz, director of internet research for Reporters Without Borders, says Iran is second only to China in the extent and sophistication of its efforts to stifle dissent online.
“The Iranian government said last year that it was blocking 5 million websites,” Le Coz said in a telephone interview. “They brag about what they can do, perhaps to intimidate their opponents.”
The complicity of Western companies in Iranian censorship was brought into focus when the Wall Street Journal reported that Iran’s ability to monitor online protests “was provided at least in part” by Nokia Siemens Networks, a jointly owned subsidiary of the two European tech firms.
Hoping to limit the damage to its reputation, the European telecommunications firm issued a statement explaining that it had only provided Iran the ability to tap wireless phone calls — a function called “lawful intercept” that it is also legally required to sell as a crime-fighting tool in Europe and the United States.
Here it works differently. Reuters, AP to even MTV is owned by De Rothschild, the elite Satanic family of secret true rulers of the world, who can dictate reporters what they supposed to report and manipulate the people what they supposed to know or supposed to think. All to the benefit of their hidden agenda, which is world enslavery for their own riches. Recently the many reports of rioting in Iran(mostly CIA/MI6/Mossad orchestrated) is a good example. On other hand, several supporter mass gatherings in favor of Ahmadinejad were completely censored out in ‘western’ media.