How did Iran cut off the Internet to 80 million citizens?

 

 By Alexander James              November 19. 2019

In recent days, Iran has been experiencing massive protests across the country, and a wave of government repression has almost completely cut off internet access.

An official at the Iranian Ministry of Communications stated that the internet was cut off "by a decision of the Iranian National Security Council", and that the service "will only return by decision of the Council itself."

To further understand the subject, the technology website Wired explained how Iran was able to cut off the Internet entirely to 80 million citizens.

Repressive governments such as Iran's government are increasingly modernizing their traditional and decentralized networks with technical updates or partnership agreements to give officials greater control, the website says.

According to Adrian Shahbaz, research director at the pro-democracy group Freedom House, which tracks internet censorship around the world, "this is the largest internet shutdown we've seen in Iran."

He added: "It's surprising to see the Iranian authorities banning all Internet connections instead of just international. This may mean that they are now more afraid of their people, and they are afraid that they cannot control the information space in the midst of these protests."

According to Wired, the Iranian regime has increasingly focused over the past decade on building a centralized national Internet, which allows it to provide citizens with web services while monitoring all content on the internet and limiting information from outside sources.

During the process of establishing this internal network, the Iranian regime has increasingly controlled both public and private communication, under the pretext of protecting national security.

The United Nations has explicitly regarded the government-led internet closure and censorship as a violation of human rights, adding that the Internet has been cut off from a long list of human rights violations committed by the Mullahs' regime at home and abroad.

The internet blocking process in an entire country depends on settings: in places with limited Internet penetration, there is usually one government-controlled internet service provider, along with some smaller private providers.

However, all providers usually have access from a single line under the sea, or over an international network, creating "primary" choke points that officials can use to essentially prevent a country from communicating from its source, according to Wired.

It took about 24 hours for the Iranian authorities to completely block internal and external Internet traffic in the country, said Net Blox, director of the contact tracking group.

He added that the slowdown in the Internet in Iran in the run-up to the complete outage was the result of telecommunications companies acting on government orders to disrupt the basics of the protection systems developed by the companies themselves.

"To close the Internet for any country, it takes a lot of preparation," said Lucas Olegenk, an independent information security and privacy consultant. We're talking about software and hardware layers, as well as regulatory frameworks."

Olegenk added: "The more networks and connections in any country, the harder it will be to cut off the Internet. The question is also whether you want to cut off access to the network within the country, or prevent it from communicating with the outside world as well."