Iran Regime MP: That’s a Bitter Truth, but People Have No Trust in Domestic Messaging Apps
NCRI – An Iranian regime’s MP says the ‘fact’ is that people have no trust in domestically developed messaging apps, while also warning state officials that as the technology advances, internet censorship won’t be possible in the not so distant future.
“We still lack necessary infrastructures for developing domestic messaging apps” says Abdolkarim Hosseinzadeh in his interview with state-run ILNA news agency on Tuesday March 27, adding “that’s a bitter truth, but people have no trust in domestically developed messaging apps.”
With some regime official commenting in the past few weeks on the necessity of replacing foreign messaging apps with domestic ones while expressing concern over continued operation of such popular messengers like Telegram, there are increased speculations about possibility of blocking such applications in the near future.
Regime’s MP Mahmoud Sadeghi last week quoted House Speaker ‘Ali Larijani’ as saying that according to a report submitted by Communications Minister to Supreme National Security Council, more than 30 million people used anti-censorship programs during the days –from late December to early January– when Telegram was blocked.
Acknowledging failure of regime’s approach towards dealing with cyberspace, Hosseinzadeh has added that “every Iranian child has now access to a smart phone equipped with Telegram and dozens of other apps, using anti-filtering programs to access all the channels that were inaccessible until yesterday.”
Hosseinzadeh points out that in the not too distant future, there’ll be even no need for anti-censorship programs, saying “an obvious example of such new technologies is Facebook’s attempts to provide internet access in Africa with the help of solar drones.”
Regime’s MP says that “even with a censorship system in place, others could offer techniques to circumvent the filtering,“ adding “isolating the country is not the right approach to deal with those who are planning against us.”
Hosseinzadeh then compared blocking Telegram during the recent nationwide protests to banning video tapes and satellite receivers in the past, acknowledging that the security and judicial officials’ approach towards dealing with cyberspace has failed.
“Did people stop watching videos when video tapes were banned?” he said, adding “Did destroying satellite dishes increase the number of people watching state TV, did it reduce the number of foreign-based Farsi-language satellite channels? Did people stop using anti-censorship programs when Telegram channels became inaccessible?”
Hosseinzadeh’s comments are following the remarks made by Hamideh Zarabadi, regime’s MP from Qazvin, who had recently stated that according to her sources, the country’s Supreme Council of Cyberspace has approved blocking Telegram next Persian year, starting from March 21.
Earlier, Secretary of regime’s Supreme Council of Cyberspace ‘Abolhassan Firouzabadi’ had said that “I explicitly assert that continued operation of Telegram in its present form is not within our interests. But our problem is that we have no alternative messaging app and we need to develop one.”