Tehran, Iran – The Iranian government has blocked Signal after Iranians went to the messaging platform after Facebook-owned WhatsApp privacy concerns.
As of Monday, Iran-based users reported problems with connecting to the open source signal, which many have chosen as a more secure form of encrypted communication, as a new privacy policy issued by WhatsApp earlier this month led to greater control of data collection practices.
In a tweet, Signal said it has been “working around Iranian censorship” since the app became the most downloaded content in Iranian app stores.
“By not being able to stop the record, the IR censors are putting aside all Signal traffic,” the tweet said. “Iranians deserve privacy. We haven’t given up. “
On January 14, Signal was ordered to withdraw from Cafe Bazaar, the Iranian version of Google Play, and Myket, another well-known local app store.
“Thank you for understanding our limitations,” he greeted a message to Iranians wishing to download Signal.
The application was labeled by a filtering committee tasked with identifying “criminal content” that is headed by the country’s attorney general and is made up of representatives of the judiciary, the communications ministry, law enforcement, the parliament and the ministry of education, among others.
However, the judiciary tried to distance itself from the ban on Tuesday.
Spokesman Gholamhossein Esmaeili said that under the new head Ebrahim Raisi, since 2019, the judiciary has not “blocked any media, any news service or any messaging service and has not blocked cyberspace or any cybersecurity service. social messaging “.
“Insurance of state authorities”
This is not the first time that Signal has been targeted by the Iranian authorities.
The app previously crashed sporadically between 2016 and 2017, but the filtering flew largely under the radar, as Signal did not have a sizable user base in Iran at the time.
Later, the courier service was quietly unlocked and the authorities never provided any official reason.
Several Iranians used the signal during protests in late 2017 and early 2018 in an effort to maintain secure communications, according to Mahsa Alimardani, an Internet researcher at the British human rights organization ARTICLE19.
“The signal has always been advertised as a major demand for dissidents or activists to remain safe from any state authority, especially the United States and its broad surveillance capabilities,” he told Al Jazeera.
“Before this migration of users heartbroken by WhatsApp’s new privacy changes, Signal was already a daily tool of civil society and activities,” said Alimardani, a doctoral student at the Oxford Internet Institute.
Signal joins a large number of other major social networking apps that have been blocked by Iranian authorities, including Telegram, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.
Telegram leaked in May 2018, shortly after protests erupted in dozens of cities in Iran over economic, political and social grievances.
WhatsApp and Instagram remain the only foreign social networking platforms unlocked in Iran.
The fact that Signal was blocked but WhatsApp can still be used has led to speculation by Iranian users on social media that the Iranian government somehow has access to users ’information about WhatsApp.
Alimardani said he began circulating the same rumor about Telegram before its blockade put him on hold.
“There is no factual basis for this rumor, as it is highly unlikely that the Iranian authorities will have the ability to oppose Facebook’s security capabilities or that Facebook will collaborate with Iran to share data. “, he said.
Instead, he said, Iranian authorities are more likely to try to keep the number of unlocked apps limited before Signal grows too much in Iran.
Will the ban work?
With years of experience in dealing with Internet restrictions by Iranian authorities and those imposed by international companies due to sanctions, Iranians have become familiar with the circumvention tools.
Many Iranians regularly use virtual private networks (VPNs) that mask users ’IPs to access blocked content, including social media.
Despite being banned for almost two years, Telegram continues to be used daily by tens of millions of Iranians. However, state entities were legally prohibited from returning to the courier service.
In this environment, Alimardani said the signal ban will likely slow down the growth of its user base and keep people on WhatsApp in the beginning.
“However, Telegram statistics have shown that while use went down directly after censorship, it eventually stabilized,” he said. “But the ban slowed projected growth before censorship.”
There are currently no data on how many people use Signal in Iran, but it is believed that its base is still much smaller than that of Telegram, which has been used in the country since its launch in 2013.
More restrictions to come?
The signal leak has renewed fears about more potential restrictions on Internet freedom in Iran.
Iran’s ministry of information and communications has repeatedly tried to distance itself from the blockade of social media, saying it lacks the authority to make those decisions.
After authorities cut off Internet access in Iran for nearly a week during national protests in November 2019, ICT Minister Mohammad Javad Azari Jahromi said it was not his decision.
So far, the councilor has remained silent on Signal filtering.
Last week, the judiciary filed charges against Azari Jahromi, but released him on bail for allegedly refusing to block Instagram and restrict other social media.
The ministry said the litigation of a group of 432 Ahwaz people over the use of cyberspace in a September 2018 attack and 150 Kerman religious scholars on digital “corruption” were, among other reasons, for the convocation of the Minister.
Despite the decision-making, Amir Rashidi, a researcher on Internet security and digital rights, says the ministry is almost entirely in charge of implementing internet blocking techniques in Iran.
Rashidi explained that when an Iranian user wants to use the global Internet, his command is sent first to his local Internet service provider and then to the telecommunications infrastructure company, affiliated with the ministry, which is the gateway to entrance.
“Thus, censorship on the Internet can be applied at either level,” he told Al Jazeera.
Rashidi said, like Telegram, Signal’s popularity became its rift with the Iranian authorities.
“Traditionally, whenever the Iranian government can’t figure out what’s going on or who’s doing what, they’re afraid that people will do something against the government,” he said.