The censorship of Internet communications by the Iranian theocracy has been known for years. Months ago, a Freedom House study singled out Iran as one of the four worst enemies of Internet freedom. Yet a 22 June Wall Street Journal article got about 100 times more publicity than the Freedom House report, by making what turns out to be a spurious claim. Nokia-Siemens Networks is alleged to have sold the theocrats deep packet inspection (DPI) equipment that made it possible for them to, in the reporter’s words, “not only block communication but to monitor it to gather information about individuals, as well as alter it for disinformation purposes.”
The story was eaten up because it pushes hot buttons on both sides of the American political spectrum. For liberals and the left, the article fingered DPI technology, which many fear will be used to undermine if not destroy net neutrality. And to many in that camp, nothing could be more ideologically simpatico than to place some of the blame for the Iranian debacle on greedy capitalists. For conservative nationalists, on the other hand, the story hit an equally strong nerve. They tend to favor a hard-line foreign policy toward Iran, a charter member of the “axis of evil.” Their agenda is to isolate and demonize the Iranian government and, in a replay of the Cold War, push to cut off all trade and dialogue – if not to invade it outright. DPI becomes a proxy for nuclear weapons and a new kind of nonproliferation is advocated.
But even as the story was rippling through numerous email lists and blogs, I smelled something fishy about it.