Tehran, Iran – The Iranian government has decided to block Signal after Iranians traveled to the messaging platform following concerns about Facebook’s WhatsApp privacy concerns.
Since Monday, users in Iran have reported problems connecting to the open-source signal, which has been chosen by many as a more secure way to encrypt communication, as a new privacy policy issued by WhatsApp earlier this month has brought more a lot of control over the application. data collection practices.
In a tweet, Signal said it was “working around Iran’s censorship” since the app became the top downloaded content in Iranian app stores.
“Unable to stop recording, IR censors are now giving up Signal traffic,” the tweet said. “Iranians deserve privacy. I didn’t give up. ”
On January 14, Signal was ordered to be removed from Cafe Bazaar, the Iranian version of Google Play, and Myket, another well-known local app store.
“Thank you for understanding our limits,” he greeted a message to Iranians who wanted to download Signal.
The application was labeled by a filtering committee tasked with identifying “criminal content”, led by the country’s attorney general and consisting of representatives of justice, the ministry of communications, law enforcement, parliament and the ministry of education, among others.
However, the judiciary on Tuesday sought to distance itself from the ban.
Spokesman Gholamhossein Esmaeili said that since 2019, under the new chief Ebrahim Raisi, the judiciary has “not blocked any media, news outlets or messaging services and has not blocked cyberspace and any social messaging service ”.
“Safe from state authorities”
This is not the first time that Signal has been targeted by the Iranian authorities.
Previously, the app was sporadically blocked 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.
The courier service was subsequently quietly unlocked and no official reason was ever provided by the authorities.
The signal was used by a number of Iranians during the 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 ARTICLE 19.
“The signal has always been promoted as a simple application for dissidents or activists to stay safe against any state authority, especially the United States and its vast oversight capabilities,” she told Al Jazeera.
“Prior to this migration by users disappointed with the new changes to WhatsApp privacy, Signal was already a daily tool of civil society and business,” said Alimardani, a doctoral student at the Oxford Internet Institute.
Signal joins a large number of other top social media applications that have been blocked by the Iranian authorities, including Telegram, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.
The telegram was leaked in May 2018, shortly after protests erupted in dozens of cities in Iran over economic, political and social unrest.
WhatsApp and Instagram remain the only foreign social platforms unlocked in Iran.
The fact that Signal has been blocked, but WhatsApp remains usable, has led to speculation by Iranian users on social networks that the Iranian government somehow has access to WhatsApp user information.
Alimardani said the same rumor started circulating about Telegram before its blockade stopped him.
“There is no factual basis for this rumor, as it is very unlikely that the Iranian authorities will have the ability to oppose Facebook’s security capabilities or that Facebook will work with Iran to share data,” she said.
Instead, she said, the Iranian authorities are more likely to try to keep the number of unlocked applications limited before Signal grows too much in Iran.
Will the ban work?
With years of experience in dealing with internet restrictions by the Iranian authorities and those imposed by international companies due to sanctions, Iranians have become familiar with circumvention tools.
Many Iranians regularly use virtual private networks (VPNs) that mask users’ IP addresses to gain access to blocked content, including social networks.
Despite being banned for almost two years, the Telegram is still 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 that banning the signal will probably slow down the growth of its user base and will keep people on WhatsApp at the beginning.
“However, statistics from Telegram showed that although use fell directly after censorship, it eventually stabilized,” she said. “But the ban has slowed growth projected before censorship.”
Currently, there is no data on how many people use Signal in Iran, but it is believed that its base is still much smaller than that of the Telegram, which has been used in the country since its launch in 2013.
Are there any restrictions?
The filtering of the signal renewed fears of several potential restrictions on Internet freedom in Iran.
Iran’s Ministry of Information and Communications has repeatedly tried to distance itself from blocking social networks, saying it has no authority to make those decisions.
After authorities disrupted 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.
The minister has so far remained silent about Signal’s leak.
Last week, the court brought charges against Azari Jahromi, but released him on bail for allegedly refusing to block Instagram and restrict other social media.
The ministry said the disputes of a group of 432 people in Ahwaz over the use of cyberspace in a September 2018 attack and 150 religious scholars from Kerman over digital “corruption” are among other reasons for convening the minister.
However, in making decisions, Internet security and digital rights researcher Amir Rashidi says the ministry is almost entirely responsible for the technical implementation of Internet blocking practices in Iran.
Rashidi explained that when an Iranian user wants to use the global internet, their order is directed first to the local internet service provider, then to the telecommunications infrastructure company, affiliated to the ministry, which is the gateway.
“So at either level, censorship on the Internet can be implemented,” he told Al Jazeera.
Rashidi said, like the Telegram, Signal’s popularity has become null and void against the Iranian authorities.
“Traditionally, whenever the Iranian government cannot figure out what is happening or who is doing what, they are afraid that people will do something against the government,” he said.