Mahsa Alimardani is an internet researcher, focusing on technology and human rights in Iran. She's a doctoral researcher with the Oxford Internet Institute at the University of Oxford, and works with the human rights organization ARTICLE19.
The escalating conflict between Washington and Tehran has severely increased economic difficulties for ordinary Iranians as the Trump administration renewed sanctions. A related but largely ignored effect of the crisis has been the curtailment of digital freedoms in Iran as the Islamic Republic has found greater legitimacy for its efforts to tighten and centralize its controls over the internet in the country.
Since President Trump pulled out of the nuclear deal in May 2018, both Iran and the United States have feared that a conflict between the two countries would include cyber warfare. Tehran is showing growing urgency to localize the platforms and the internet infrastructure Iranians rely upon for their online lives inside national borders.
The anxiety about cyberattacks and the perceived need for greater control has led Iran to introduce two bills which aim to further tighten controls and entrench the notion of a “National Internet.” Iranian Parliament is reviewing the Draft Personal Data Protection Act, which presents “localisation” of data within Iran’s borders and under their authority as one of its key pillars. The draft act’s many vague and inconsistent provisions leaves room for the government to collect personal data in the name of national security and risks granting greater online controls to the state and increasing surveillance.
A second draft bill, the stuxnet american sanctions cyberwar legitimizing iranian internet controls
