June 23, 2009
Hi-tech helps Iranian monitoring
As protests continue in Iran, details are emerging of the technology used to monitor its citizens. The BBC reports.
Iran is well known for filtering the net, but the government has moved to do the same for mobile phones.
Nokia Siemens Network has confirmed it supplied Iran with the technology needed to monitor, control, and read local telephone calls. It told the BBC that it sold a product called the Monitoring Centre to Iran Telecom in the second half of 2008.
The product allows authorities to monitor any communications across a network, including voice calls, text messaging, instant messages, and web traffic.
But Nokia Siemens says the product is only being used, in Iran, for the monitoring of local telephone calls on fixed and mobile lines.
Rather than just block traffic, it is understood that the monitoring system can also interrogate data to see what information is being passed back and forth.
A spokesman described the system as "a standard architecture that the world's governments use for lawful intercept". He added: "Western governments, including the UK, don't allow you to build networks without having this functionality."
... Nokia Siemens markets the Monitoring Centre product to 150 countries around the world where it does business. The firm says it does not supply the system to China or to Burma.
Traffic in and out of Iran is largely controlled by Iran Telecom. On 13 June, the day after presidential elections, data traffic come to an almost complete halt, according to analysis by network security firm Arbor Networks.
Since then, traffic has gradually recovered, and analysts have speculated that the slowdown and re-start was caused by authorities putting in place filtering and monitoring systems.
Because Iran is effectively reading every message, this results in an inevitable slow down of traffic.
Related: - Iran's internet dilemma
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