{"id":5379,"date":"2016-08-31T00:07:28","date_gmt":"2016-08-31T05:07:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/?p=5379"},"modified":"2016-08-31T00:07:28","modified_gmt":"2016-08-31T05:07:28","slug":"hundreds-of-instagram-whatsapp-users-arrested-in-iran","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/5379\/","title":{"rendered":"Hundreds of Instagram, WhatsApp Users Arrested in Iran"},"content":{"rendered":"

News source By: Clarion Project<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

‘These people were carrying out immoral activities, insulted religious beliefs or had illegal activities in the field of \"WhatsApp-Rouhani-IP\"<\/a>fashion: IRGC.<\/p>\n

Hundreds of Instagram, Telegram, WhatsApp and other social media users were arrested<\/a> or summoned by the Iranian regime, as reported Seven Days<\/em>, an Egyptian news outlet.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese people were carrying out immoral activities, insulted religious beliefs or had illegal activities in the field of fashion,\u201d the Revolutionary Guard-affiliated Gherdab\u00a0<\/em>website\u00a0reported<\/a>. Another report on the arrests was run by the independent ISNA<\/em> (Iranian Students News Agency).<\/p>\n

Particularly troublesome to the regime, which seeks to monitor and control all Interest usage in the country are those sites that are encrypted, such as Telegram and WhatsApp.<\/p>\n

Since 2012, it has been reported that the Iranian government blocks 27 percent of Internet sites at any given time. As of 2013, close to half of the top 500 sites \u2013 including YouTube, Facebook and Twitter \u2013 had been blocked, although software is available through which these sites can be accessed.<\/p>\n

Close to half of Iran\u2019s 80 million people use the Internet with 20 million users on Telegram.<\/p>\n

Sky News reports that last May, President Hassan Rouhani, billed as a moderate by the West, gave foreign social media companies one year to hand over requested data<\/a> on their Iranian users.<\/p>\n

In 2009, the U.S. Senate authorized $50 million to help Iranians dodge the regime\u2019s Internet censorship. In addition, the funds were to be used to dissuade foreign companies not to sell monitoring equipment to Iran.<\/p>\n

According to the Washington Times<\/a>, Nokia Siemens Network (through a German holding company) sold the Iranian government equipment enabling it to sort and catalogue phone calls, e-mails and other web communications.<\/p>\n

In 2012, the Iranian government passed legislation which required Internet cafes to gather a variety of personal details about their users.<\/p>\n

The Iranian news outlet Tabnak<\/em>, reported police issued a warning to all Internet cafes:<\/p>\n

\u201cInternet cafes are required to write down the forename, surname, name of the father, national\u00a0identification number,\u00a0postcode\u00a0and telephone number of each customer. Besides the personal information, they must maintain other information of the customer such as the date and the time of using the Internet and the\u00a0IP address, and the addresses of\u00a0the websites\u00a0visited. They should keep this information for each individual for at least six months.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Elsewhere in Iran, police arrested 34 men and women at a private party in a home in the center of Kerman, Iran, as reported by Seven Days<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In announcing the arrests, the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Court in Kerman, Dod Houda Salari said two wealthy brothers owned the house and used their riches to transform the residence into a place of corruption, alcohol consumption and other crimes.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

News source By: Clarion Project ‘These people were carrying out immoral activities, insulted religious beliefs or had illegal activities in the field of fashion: IRGC. […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5380,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5379","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5379","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5379"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5379\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5381,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5379\/revisions\/5381"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}