p2pnet news | Freedom:- The Iranian government is thinking about shutting down the Net for the general legislative election on March 14, two Iranian news outlets reported Monday, says the New York Times.

But, "the two accounts appeared to differ on the rationale, it says, going on:

" ‘Shutting down the Internet service will depend on security plans and on the Ministry of Telecommunication,’ said Mostafa Pourmohammadi, the interior minister, according to Etemad Melli, a daily.

"At the same time, a senior election official, Muhammad Javad Mahmoudi, said a shutdown would help ensure that the government had unimpeded Internet service for the election, even though the governments’ Internet lines had been upgraded, according to ISNA."

Millions of Iranians, "follow political news on the Internet, and political parties have their own active Web sites," says the NYT, adding:

"In 2006, the authorities banned download speeds on private computers faster than 128 kilobytes per second.

"The government also uses sophisticated filtering equipment to block hundreds of Web sites and blogs that it considers religiously or politically inappropriate. Many bloggers have been jailed in the past years, and dozens of Web sites have been shut down."

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Also See:
New York Times – Iran May Block Internet on Election Day, March 4, 2008

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 5th, 2008 at 8:20 am and is filed under Freedom, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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