January 5, 2007
Iran: Special Police corps Charged with controlling phones
According to ADN Kronos special police corps has been officially tasked with checking the cell phones of Iranians and in the past few days plain-clothes officials have started stopping passers-by to inspect their mobiles. All text messages and audio or video files considered 'illegal' are erased by the officials from this new corps. In the past few years, cell phones have reportedly become the main means to convey news which would never make it into the government-controlled Iranian media.
News on scandals, jokes on Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and other political leaders, information on meetings, political assemblies and rallies mainly circulate via cell phones.
The crackdown on mobile phones follows measures in the past year to ban satellite television from Iranian homes, obscure over 100,000 internet websites and close the last daily considered relatively independent from the government, Shargh.
The president of the parliamentary commission on national security, Alaeddin Brujerdi, who has slammed the new police corps as "an illegal body" carrying out "completely illegal" inspections on mobile phones.
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