President Masoud Pezeshkian ordered the Supreme Council of Cyberspace to take action to stop the sale of anti-filtering software has bewildered his supporters whom he promised to lift the filtering.
“I can’t understand the meaning of this order about anti-filtering software and how it can help the removal of filtering,” reformist political activist Hasan Asadi-Zeidabadi complained in a tweet Wednesday.
As president, Pezeshkian heads the Council and several cabinet members including ministers of telecommunications, intelligence, culture and Islamic guidance, science and technology, education, and defense sit on it.
Before being elected, Pezeshkian strongly opposed the filtering of the internet which has forced tens of millions of Iranians to pay for anti-filtering software to get access to thousands of websites as well as all major social media platforms such as Instagram, WhatsApp, Telegram, and YouTube for personal use and business.
Many allege that influential groups and companies that sell anti-filtering software have a strong foothold in the establishment and and have huge, vested interests in the continuation of internet filtering.
The President’s supporters expected him to speak about filtering at the first meeting of the Supreme Council of Cyberspace which convened Tuesday for the first time since he took office and convince other members to lift it.
“Mr. Pezeshkian, we didn’t vote [for you] to investigate the sale of anti-filtering software, we voted because we wanted filtering to be removed,” a disillusioned supporter tweeted.
Instead, the media reported that he ordered action against the companies that make billions from selling anti-filtering software and declined to set a definite term for the removal of filtering.
Many allege that influential groups and companies that sell anti-filtering software have a strong foothold in the establishment. These groups, they say, have huge, vested interests in the continuation of the filtering.
“Mr. President, trust us that one of the most important things for national unity and dignity for Iran is normalizing the conditions of the internet [access]. Remove the filtering and the mafia [that controls the sales] of anti-filtering software will be gone by itself,” journalist Ehsan Bodaghi tweeted.
Rouydad24 news website on Wednesday argued along the same lines saying that Pezeshkian’s order to take action against vendors of anti-filtering software could be an indication that there was “no will to lift the filtering of social networks in the short term”.
“The difficulty of Pezeshkian’s path does not prevent people from having demands in this respect. He promised to remove filtering and pledged his life to do it,” Rouydad24 wrote.
Government spokeswoman Fatemeh Mohajerani, however, said Wednesday that the government was pursuing the issue of the removal of filtering through several related bodies and councils and hoped that the promise made to the people would be realized.
The Supreme Council of Cyberspace was formed in February 2012 by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s decree which mandated it to establish a “national cyberspace center” and invested it with the power to decide internet control policies.
Most of the Council’s members are either Khamenei’s direct appointees (‘natural’ members) or sit on it by virtue of a role in other parts of the government he bestows on them.
These include the chief justice, parliament speaker, head of the state broadcaster, as well as commanders of the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) and the Law Enforcement Forces (Police).