Iran has begun blocking its citizens from using the end-to-end encryption service, Signal.
End-to-end encryption ensures that only the communicating users can read the message. Under repressive regimes, such as that in Tehran, services like Signal offer journalists, activists and ordinary citizens the ability to communicate, without being monitored by the state.
Signal had witnessed an unprecedented rise in downloads in Iran, rising to number one on the Iranian “Play Store”, following new privacy concerns over the Facebook-owned Whatsapp alternative.
However, in a statement put out via Twitter, Signal announced that:
“Unable to stop registration, the IR (Islamic Republic) censors are now dropping all Signal traffic.”
Tweet
Ever since Signal simultaneously hit #1 on the ?? Play Store and #1 on the ?? government’s block list, we’ve been working around ?? censorship.
Unable to stop registration, the IR censors are now dropping all Signal traffic.
Iranian people deserve privacy. We haven’t given up.
— Signal (@signalapp) January 25, 2021
On January 14 2020, Cafe Bazaar and Myket (popular local app stores similar to those of Apple and Google) were ordered to remove Signal from their stores.
Moreover, Iran-based users began reporting issues in connecting to the service on Monday (25 January 2020). With users being greeted with the message: “We thank you for understanding our limitations,”
While the regime has not commented on the blocking of Signal directly, Spokesman Gholamhossein Esmaeili claims that the regime has not: “blocked any media, news outlet or messaging service and is not after blocking cyber space and any social messaging services”.
However, the country’s prosecutor general has headed a filtering committee tasked with identifying the application’s “criminal content”. The committee consists of representatives from the judiciary, the communications ministry, law enforcement, the parliament, and the education ministry among others.
The Iranian regime has precedent in restricting its country’s access to online services in a bid to quash potential dissent. During the November protests of 2019, which resulted in the death of over 1500 Iranians, the regime presided over a near total shutdown of internet connections. At the time, Netblock called it the most severe shutdown they had tracked in any country “in terms of its technical complexity and breadth.”
Iran’s crackdown on communications is two-pronged; it inhibits the ability of activists and journalists in the country to organise against a repressive regime, but it also keeps news of the regime’s repression from reaching the outside world.
Masha Alimardani, an internet researcher for Article 19 has said:
“Signal has always been advertised as the go-to application for dissidents or activists to stay secure from any state authority…Before this migration by users disaffected by WhatsApp’s new privacy changes, Signal was already a day-to-day tool of civil society and activities,”
Communication crackdowns are a favoured tactic of un-democratic regimes attempting to control their population and limit press freedom. Similar situations can be seen in Turkey’s new “Internet Law” and a Russian bill passed in September 2019, which ultimately gave Putin power to shut down internet access at his whim.
It is also not the first time Signal has been targeted by Iranian authorities, having previously been blocked and later quietly unblocked without official comment between 2016 and 2017.
The filtering of Signal – which joins Telegram, Twitter, Facebook and Youtube in being banned by the Iranian regime – has again demonstrated Iran’s willingness to quash freedom of expression.
In relation to Signal being blocked, Amir Rashidi, Internet Security and Digital Rights Researcher for the Center for Human Rights in Iran, comments that:
“Traditionally, whenever the Iranian government can’t figure out what is going on or who is doing what, they fear maybe people are doing something against the government,”