The Next Web is reporting that Web sites using the “https” protocol are being blocked. Those include banks, Yahoo, Gmail, Google and any other site that relies on Google’s API.

The reports state that the blocks are widespread and began taking effect earlier this week. They covered the capital, Tehran, as well as Shiraz, Bushehr and Isfahan.

It’s assumed that the blocks will continue until Esfand – the 12th month of the Iranian calendar that begins at the end of February and ends in March.

A report on Hacker News seems to confirm the blocks:

I’m writing this to report the serious troubles we have regarding accessing Internet in Iran at the moment. Since Thursday Iranian government has shutted down the https protocol which has caused almost all google services (gmail, and google.com itself) to become inaccessible. Almost all websites that reply on Google APIs (like wolfram alpha) won’t work.

Accessing to any website that replies on https (just imaging how many websites use this protocol, from Arch Wiki to bank websites). Also accessing many proxies is also impossible. There are almost no official reports on this and with many websites and my email accounts restricted I can just confirm this based on my own and friends experience.

It would appear that Anonymous has also confirmed the blocks. They are now in the process of setting up proxies so that Iranian citizens can access the Internet.

None of this is officially confirmed and tomorrow might be yield interesting results from Iran. We’ll keep you updated if anything goes down.

Specifically, the Iran’s Supreme Court maintains, is that Saeed Malekpour, a Iranian-born 35-year-old who is a permanent resident of Canada, developed and promoted porn sites. Malekpour was visiting Iran to visit his ailing father when he was detained by a plain-clothes officer upon arriving to the country. The Guardian reports that his connection to the porn sites is questionable as the site managers were using photo-loading software Malekpour developed. Malekpour says that they used his software without his knowledge yet Iran extracted a televised confession from Malekpour that formed the basis for his conviction. Malekpour, however, recanted his confession in a letter he wrote in prison and stated that his confession had been made “under duress” (A link and excerpt of Malekpour’s letter can be found below).

Radio Free Europe spoke to Malekpour’s sister, Maryam Malekpour, after Iran confirmed his death sentence.

“All of Saeed’s activities were within the law,” Maryam Malekpour said. “He didn’t commit anything illegal. Saeed just wrote a computer program that could have been used by these immoral websites or any other website. Unfortunately, without his knowledge, the program was sold and used to upload photos on these immoral websites.”

Maryam Malekpour went on to tell Radio Free Europe that she found the court process to be a farce as it lacked a computer specialist who could corroborate her brother’s defense. Additionally, she agrees that his confession is counterfeit. “All the evidence they have against him is from his confessions,” she said told Radio Free Europe. “Saeed was in solitary confinement for about one and a half years and was under extreme physical and emotional pressure. For sure, anyone who is in this condition and wants it to end will confess to anything they’re asked.”

In order to help spread information about Saeed Malekpour throughout the Internet, United for Iran put together a short video about Malekpour’s plight:

Malekpour’s fate within the Iranian legal system has been tumultuous and unpredictable since his arrest. Iran Human Rights Voice issued a press release in summer 2011 “the Supreme Court had ‘quashed the death sentence.” The release continues, though, and says that “the Supreme Court declared months later it was unable to reach a voting decision on Saeed’s case due to existing discrepancies in the file that required resolving.” Eventually, after deciding to ignore the fact that the confessions were falsified or and even being unable to determine whether the trial was fair, one Iranian judge re-issued the death sentence.

On Twitter, supporters posted articles and implored others to take action in order to save Malekpour’s life.

As mentioned already, Persian2English provided a translation of a letter that Malekpour wrote last March detailing the physical and psychological torture he has been subjected to since his “arrest”:

My name is Saeed Malekpour. I was arrested on October 4, 2008 near Vanak Square (in northern Tehran) by plainclothes agents who did not present an arrest warrant or identification. The arrest resembled an abduction. Afterwards, I was handcuffed, blindfolded and placed in the back of a Sedan. A heavy-set agent leaned his weight on me by positioning his elbow on my neck, and forcing my head down throughout the ride. They transferred me to an undisclosed location they called the “technical office.” When we arrived, a few agents severely beat me and verbally abused me. While I was handcuffed and blindfolded, they forced me to sign a few forms that I was unable to read. As a result of the physical assault, my neck was aching for several days and my face was swollen from the punches, slaps, and kicks. That night, I was transferred to ward 2-A of Evin prison. I was placed in a solitary cell 2m X 1.7m (6’2″ X 5’8″) wide. I was only allowed to leave the cell twice a day at specified times for some fresh air. However, I was blindfolded during the times I left the cell. The only time I was allowed to remove the blindfold was in my cell.

~

On one particular day, One of those very days, as a result of being kicked, punched, and lashed with cables on my head and face, my face became very swollen. I lost consciousness several times, but each time they would wake me up by splashing water on my face [and continued with the torture]. That night, they returned me to my cell. At the end of the night, I realized my ear was bleeding. I banged on the door of my cell, but nobody came. The next day, while half of my body was paralyzed, and I was unable to move, they took me to the Evin prison clinic. The doctor, after seeing my condition, emphasized that I should be transferred to a hospital. However, I was returned to my cell instead, and I was left on my own until 9:00pm. Three guards eventually transferred me to Baghiatollah hospital.

On our way to the hospital, the guards told me I was not allowed to give my real name, and ordered me to use the alias Mohammad Saeedi. They threatened me with severe torture if I did not follow their orders.

Farnaz Fassihi reported in the WallStreet Journal today that Tehran is tightening its control on the citizenry by requiring that Internet cafe owners install surveillance cameras within fifteen days. They will also be required to “start collecting detailed personal information on customers and document users’ online footprints.”

Fassihi reports:

“The new rules on cybercafes, issued by the Cyber Police and published Wednesday in several Iranian newspapers, require customers at the cafes to provide their name, father’s name, address, telephone and national identification numbers before logging on. The venues must install security cameras that will let the government match users to the computer they used. They also must log each user’s browsing history, including the IP addresses of every Internet page visited. This data, along with the video images, must be saved for six months and provided to the Cyber Police on demand, according to the regulation.”

Internet users in Iran have reported unusual activities this week, including blocked sites, barriers to accessing social-networking services, and generally slow service connections.

The general feeling is that Iran has been readying a conversion to there “halal” (religiously approved) Internet service that will “insulate its citizens from Western ideology and un-Islamic culture, and eventually replace the Internet” entirely.

Iran has long been a place of controversy, silencing dissenters and rigging elections. In 2009, Tehran launched the Cyber Police – the sort of thing that only appears in sci-fi thriller films in the Western world. It is a task force from various security arms of the Tehran government that has trained a quarter of a million agents.

In other words, Iran has it’s own Department of Homeland Security with its sights set on the Internet. But, they’ve enlisted the support of regular citizens, for pay.

The government is reportedly paying people $7/hour to post positive comments online about the government and to flame those who post negative comments. Some 2,000 bloggers have been trained as Cyber Army staff.

There have been no formal diplomatic relations between the two nations since the revolution of 1979, which overthrew the US-friendly Shah of Iran and instituted a hardline Islamic regime ruled by Ayatollah Khomeini. During the conflict revolutionaries stormed the US Embassy in Tehran, taking its staff hostage. While some hostages – notably women and African Americans – were released shortly after the takeover, the remaining 52 hostages were held for 444 days. After a failed rescue attempt, the hostages were released on January 20, 1981, immediately following the completion of Ronald Reagan’s inauguration speech. The US has not had formal diplomatic relations since the hostage crisis ended.

The state department was careful to point out that this new virtual embassy “is not a formal diplomatic mission, nor does it represent or describe a real U.S. Embassy accredited to the Iranian Government.” Rather, the goal is to open lines of communication between the people of Iran and those of America. The site is critical of the Iranian government’s attempts to cut off its people from the outside world via the internet. The virtual embassy is meant to undermine that effort by providing the Iranian people a direct path to information about America.

The government of Iran, meanwhile, wasted no time in responding to the site. In a move that should surprise no one, the country’s internet censor blocked access to the embassy, which it accused of being a tool for recruiting spies and creating division among the Iranian people.

Iran’s government-run Fars News Agency called the closing “a decisive reaction by the Iranian authorities to the latest plots hatched by Washington against the Iranian nation.”

For instance, if you live in Iran, you are going to have access to only the slightest sliver of the web. Same goes for places like Bahrain, Vietnam and Tunisia. In many countries, there are battles being fought for the cause of internet freedom.

That’s the message of a short video infographic produced by Column Five Media for CBS’ What’s Trending.

They call it the “soft war,” based on what Iran’s Ayatollah Khamenei said about the connection between protestors, internet users, and international media. The video draws on a report released in April by Freedom House called Freedom on the Net 2011. In that report, they ranked 37 countries across the world based on 3 different criteria – obstacles to access, limits and content and violation of rights. Iran was the worst, and Estonia, the U.S. and Germany scored the best.

Did you know that Cuba has a “dual internet structure” that basically provides one internet for government officials and tourists and another, filtered internet for its citizens? North Korea has the same deal, and only about 1000 people are said to have open internet access in the country.

Set to what almost sounds like a spy movie soundtrack, the video discusses Iran, Anonymous and Social Media use. Check it out below –

The study judged countries based on three specific criteria: Obstacles to internet access, limits on content and violations of user rights.  They assigned each country a numerical score based on those criteria.  Countries scoring from 0-30 are designated “free,” countries scoring from 31-60 are designated “party free” and those with score of 61-100 are labelled “not free.”

Based on the same study performed in 2009, Iran changed the most negatively, with an addition of 13 points.  Georgia improved the most, subtracting 8 points from its score.

The study also group countries by region.  Out of the 16 countries studied from Asia, the Middle East and North Africa not one was given a ranking of below 30, or “free.”  Another interesting find was the incredible internet freedom in Estonia.  Other countries labelled “former Soviet Union” like Belarus and Kazakhstan did not perform very well.  About Estonia:

Today, with a high level of computer literacy and connectivity already established, the focus has shifted from basic concerns such as access, quality, and cost of internet services to discussions about security, anonymity, the protection of private information, and citizens’ rights on the internet. Local and international social-media services are used by more than 60 percent of internet users, and a majority of users conduct business and e-government transactions over the internet.

Go Estonia! (in my best Pauly Shore from Encino man)

The United States received a score of 13 out of 100, the second best rating in the study.  Here’s what the study says about good ol’ Uncle Sam’s interwebs:

Access to the internet in the United States remains quite free compared with the rest of the world. Users face few restrictions on their ability to access and publish content online. The courts have consistently held that federal and state constitutional prohibitions against government regulation of speech apply to material published on the internet. In addition, statutory immunity for online service providers continues to play an important role in fostering business models that permit open discourse and the free exchange of information.

However, several developments in recent years have placed the government and internet freedom advocates at odds over aspects of internet regulation as well as issues surrounding online surveillance and privacy. The United States lags behind many major industrialized countries in terms of broadband penetration, and the strength and legal viability of recent rules concerning network neutrality remain uncertain. The current administration appears committed to maintaining broad surveillance powers with the aim of combating terrorism, child pornography, and other criminal activity, and it has been reported that the government is seeking expanded authority to control the design of internet services to ensure that communications can be intercepted when necessary.

I’m kind of getting a “good for now, but…..” vibe from that.  How about you?

In contrast Iran, received a score of 89 and placed last, making it the most prohibitive country in the study.  Here’s what they say about Iran:

Since the protests that followed the disputed presidential election of June 12, 2009, the Iranian authorities have waged an active campaign against internet freedom, employing extensive and sophisticated methods of control that go well beyond simple content filtering. These include tampering with internet access, mobile-telephone service, and satellite broadcasting; hacking opposition and other critical websites; monitoring dissenters online and using the information obtained to intimidate and arrest them; ordering blogging service providers inside Iran to remove “offensive” posts or blogs; and trying to fill the information vacuum created by these measures with propaganda and misinformation.

Check out the whole report on a pdf, here.  It’s a long read but an interesting one. 

Note that this episode hasn’t quite escalated to the levels we saw when a Chinese attack was the subject of discussion; Google hasn’t made any public accusations, and no politicians have become involved.  Still, Comodo, a company that issues digital certificates, created a fairly damning incident report.

Apparently things began when an attacker logged into a Comodo RA account with the username and password of a Comodo Trusted Partner.  Then the account was used to issue SSL certificates for www.google.com, login.yahoo.com, login.skype.com, addons.mozilla.org, and login.live.com.

That would have potentially allowed the attacker to impersonate the sites and intercept user-submitted information, had Comodo not caught on and revoked the certificates.

Then here’s Comodo’s conclusion, edited only for spacing: “The circumstantial evidence suggests that the attack originated in Iran.  The perpetrator has focussed simply on the communication infrastructure (not the financial infrastructure as a typical cyber-criminal might).   The perpetrator can only make use of these certificates if it had control of the DNS infrastructure.  The perpetrator has executed its attacks with clinical accuracy.  The Iranian government has recently attacked other encrypted methods of communication.  All of the above leads us to one conclusion only:- that this was likely to be a state-driven attack.”

Stay tuned for further updates.  It should be interesting to see what happens next.

The company says it is committed to full compliance with the exports controls and sanctions programs, and that as a condition of Google’s export licenses from the Treasury Department, the company will continue to block IP addresses associated with the Iranian government. 

"During the protests that erupted in Iran following the disputed Presidential election in June 2009, the central government in Tehran deported all foreign journalists, shut down traditional media outlets, closed off print journalism and disrupted cell phone lines," said Google’s Export Compliance Program Manager, Neil Martin. "The government also infiltrated networks, posing as activists and using false identities to round up dissidents. In spite of this, the sharing of information using the Internet prevailed. YouTube and Twitter were cited by journalists, activists and bloggers as the best source for firsthand accounts and on-the-scene footage of the protests and violence across the country. At the time, though, U.S. export controls and sanctions programs prohibited software downloads to Iran."

"Our products are specifically designed to help people create, communicate, share opinions and find information," Martin added. "And we believe that more available products means more choice, more freedom, and ultimately more power for individuals in Iran and across the globe."

Last year, the New York Times reported that the U.S. began allowing tech companies to export online services like instant messaging, chat, and photo sharing to Iran (as well as Cuba and Sudan).

According to Frank Jordans, Bob Boorstin, Director of Corporate and Policy Communications at Google, said during a human rights meeting in Geneva, "This is a great accomplishment.  We are hopeful this will help people like yourselves in this room and activists all over the world take a small step down what is certainly a long road ahead."

What’s more, Boorstin indicated that Google isn’t going to just sit on the sidelines, wishing everyone well.  Boorstin reportedly "said the Web search company would now be able to offer some of its other products in those countries," including Google Earth, Google Talk, and Picasa.

This is an interesting turn of events, considering that China recently threatened to leave China over free speech issues.  If Google follows through on Boorstin’s remarks, the search giant’s sure to face fresh questions over whether it’s more interested in profits than human rights.

We’ll of course report on any further developments as they occur.

To be clear: these videos are not all specifically related to the Gmail development.  Some Iranians are instead using today, which is the 31st anniversary of the Islamic Republic, to protest the presidential election and the subsequent crackdowns on free speech.

Google just helped to put a spotlight on the clips and the deteriorating situation.  Olivia Ma wrote on the YouTube Blog, "[T]hese extraordinary videos provide an exclusive window into what’s taking place on the ground, as foreign press have been banned from the country.  YouTube remains blocked in Iran, but dissidents are passing videos to friends out of the country and using Internet circumvention technologies to post the footage, according to news reports and correspondence with those on the ground."

She then added, "We’re tracking the videos on Citizentube . . . .  A playlist can be found here."

Free speech advocates will no doubt find it reassuring that Google hasn’t tried to make nice with Iran’s government following the Gmail ban.