Iran studies blocking Telegram app

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Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 28

By Umid Niayesh – Trend:

The Iranian Committee for Determining Offensive Contents will discuss the issue of banning Telegram, a mobile messaging application, popular in Iran.

The committee will hold a meeting today on the issue, Iranian MP, Mohammad Ali Esfanani said, ISNA news agency reported Oct. 28.

The Committee, which is headed by the prosecutor general of Iran, is responsible for identifying sites that carry forbidden content and report that information to the Telecommunications Company of Iran and other major ISPs for blocking.

Esfanani, who is a member of the Committee for Determining Offensive Contents, said that arguments about necessity of banning Telegram will be discussed in the meeting and finally a decision will be made.

Iranian authorities already denied allegations that they have temporarily blocked the app.

Pavel Durov, founder of the company that launched Telegram, said on Oct. 20 that Iran 's Ministry of ICT demanded that the app provide the ministry "with spying and censorship tools”.

"We ignored the demand, they blocked us," Durov wrote on Twitter. However Iranian Minister of Information and Communications Technology Mahmud Vaezi said Telegram's services were disrupted for several days due to "disconnections in some communications channels”.

He added that Tehran had previously called on Telegram to block "immoral content".

Telegram, which functions as a messaging and content sharing application, has become popular in recent months among Iranians, who use it to communicate with each other and also share materials like pornography and political satire. Many of Iran 's government-controlled news agencies have also embraced the platform, using it to advertise their stories.

Currently, at least 13 million Iranians use Telegram, according to the Islamic Republic’s communications and information technology ministry.

It should be noted that several of world's most popular networks, such as Twitter and Facebook are banned in Iran, while users are still able to access them via proxies. A proxy allows bypassing 'gates' meant to block certain sites.
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http://en.trend.az/iran/politics/2449561.html
 
mmm ja....for a long time already. In fact, were they not taken to court by a Turkish operator being accused of underhand dealings to get he operating license in Iran or something like that. Cant remember the details.
 
Telegram, which functions as a messaging and content sharing application, has become popular in recent months among Iranians, who use it to communicate with each other and also share materials like pornography and political satire.
Click to expand...
How they know it is used for spreading porn if they are unable to decrypt messages?
 
Seems like Iran isn't happy with the swingers scene. stop
 
State Filtering Body Refuses to Block the Service

An official Iranian state censorship body has resisted calls by hardliners in Iran to block the Telegram messaging service, the most popular social media application in Iran.

Hardliners appointed by supreme leader Ali Khamenei to the Working Group to Determine Instances of Criminal Content on the Internet, Iran’s principal body charged with Internet filtering, had tried to have Telegram blocked, and in this they were supported by hardliners in Parliament, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, the Judiciary, conservative Iranian media outlets, and influential Friday prayer leaders. But they were not able to amass the votes in the body needed to block the widely used application.

Abdolsamad Khorramabadi, Secretary of the Working Group, said on January 5, 2016, that a proposal to ban the use of the Telegram messaging network in Iran did not get the required votes. However, he left the door open for the Judiciary to block the application in the future if it deemed necessary.

“The Committee’s decision does not mean that the Judiciary will avoid its responsibility in taking action against Telegram to stop the distribution of criminal content in cyberspace,” he said.

With 20 million accounts, Telegram is the leading social media application in Iran, according to a survey (http://isna.ir/fa/news/94101005345) published by the Iranian Students Polling Agency (ISPA) on December 31, 2015.

The application is popular not just among ordinary Iranians but also widely used by state officials to make announcements to the general public—including, oddly, many hardline officials in Iran’s security and military agencies who have simultaneously called for Telegram’s blocking.

A source with knowledge about social media usage in Iran told the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran that more than 50 percent of Iran’s weekly Internet traffic is on Telegram, compared to 12 percent on Instagram.

Telegram’s popularity has alarmed hardline officials and religious leaders who want to control and track its content or to block it altogether. In the past year, access to the application has been frequently interrupted in Iran while state telecommunication officials tried unsuccessfully to obtain Telegram’s cooperation in sharing information about Iranian account holders.

Last October Iran’s Revolutionary Guards warned that enemies were using Telegram to spread indecent and criminal content.
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http://www.iranhumanrights.org/2016/01/telegram-not-filtered/
 
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