On August 24th Apple began aggressively purging Iranian apps from the App Store citing US sanctions law. Apps removed include the famous online store Digikala, Iranian ride-hailing app Snapp, and online meals delivery start up Delion Foods among many others. This follows Apple’s recent removal of major VPN providers from its China App Store at […]
Introduction In Iran, elections and heightened Internet censorship often go hand in hand. A few weeks before the contested 2009 election, Facebook was blocked and the SMS network was shut down. When the next presidential election rolled around in 2013, the authorities disrupted circumvention tools, and network throttling slowed Internet speeds to a crawl. Such […]
March 15, 2017 —Major technology and social media companies should stop barring Iranians from buying or accessing personal communications tools and services that are not banned by any sanctions, and make immediately available to Iranians the full range of permissible items, the Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI) and ASL19 said in a joint […]
Kyle Bowen is a Researcher at ASL19 (Farsi for Article 19), an organization that helps Iranians bypass internet censorship. You can find him on Twitter @KyleBowen17. Ali Bangi is co-director of ASL19. He may be found on Twitter @alibangi. Editor’s Note: As we were preparing this article for publication, news broke that the Trump Administration […]
Last Friday, President Trump signed an executive order that indefinitely suspends the resettlement of Syrian refugees, and bans the citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the U.S for 90 days. ASL19 strongly urges the U.S. government to rescind this discriminatory policy that is against our core international values and fundamental rights. As an Iran-focused […]
An Iranian Revolutionary Court sentenced 8 Facebook activists to a total of 127 years in prison. The same court had issued serious sentences for another group of individuals that had been active on social media and especially on Fecebook. IRNA, Iran’s official news agency reported on July 13, 2014 that the 8 social media activists […]