Police Chief Announces Disagreement With Shutting Virtual Social Networks

Just two days after Iran’s deputy judiciary chief issued an ultimatum to the minister of telecommunications demanding that some virtual social networks such as Viber and Whatsapp be blocked public access, the chief of the country’s police force Ismail Ahmadi-Moghadam publicly said he was not in favor of shutting social networks so long as security concerns were addressed .

As reported by Mehr news agency, Ahmadi-Moghadam told reporters last Tuesday in the northern town of Ardebil “The Supreme Council for Virtual Space has created the basis for the activities of the social networks. IN expanding this space, security and safety considerations must be respected.” He also said that the police force was active in crime prevention measures in this realm.

These remarks come just two days after Gholam Hossein Mohseni Ejhei, the deputy judiciary chief issued a written ultimatum to the cabinet minister of telecommunications to the effect that it had up to one month to shut some of the social networks such as Viber, Whatsapp and Tango. In his letter, Ejhei’s had warned that if the instructions of the judiciary to shut criminal virtual social networks were not implemented, the judiciary would intervene and take measures into its own hands.

According to Paris-based Reporters Without Borders organization which monitors the flow of information across the world Iran remains one of the staunchest enemies of the Internet and blocks many virtual sites and communications services.

Calls and actions by hardliners and what are known as principlists to curtain access to virtual social networks in Iran have been growing in recent months. They particularly gain momentum after jokes appeared about the founder of the Islamic republic, ayatollah Khomeini on some social networks, particularly the popular free telephone network Viber. Soon after that the chief of Iran’s cyber police Hossein Ashtari had said that his forces had identified some leads in the so called insulting online messages.

Observers have said that the message may have been spread by regime insiders to make it easier for the state apparatus to clamp down on the social networks and curtail their public access.

Last June, Iran’s judiciary had issued a similar order to shut Instagram, the world’s largest photo exchange site, but the government of Hassan Rouhani and the ministry of telecommunications merely ignored the order.

The responsibility of monitoring the virtual space in Iran is set for FETA cyber police but the supreme cyber space council, formed on orders of the supreme leader also directly intervenes in the field. A few months ago a decision had been made at the cabinet level to move the responsibility of monitoring cyber space to a body that was essentially under the full control of the administration, as a way to evade pressures to block internet sites.