Today, news surfaced that the country is blocking access to websites that use HTTPS. That means that a number of popular, secure websites like Google, Gmail, Yahoo and even online banking sites are inaccessible. Anything based outside the country that uses a secure connection via HTTPS is blocked, according to news reports and a thread on Hacker News. Secure sites based within Iran are reportedly still accessible.

Meanwhile, developers and members of the Hacker News community are brainstorming ways to help Iranians get around the limitations. Some have suggested setting up Tor bridges for Web users in Iran, although that presents its own logistical issues.

These measures come just as the Iranian government begins to roll out longer-term plans to effectively strangle the Internet to death and create a new, state-sponsored Web for citizens of that country to use. The government is even requiring Internet cafe owners to videotape all patrons so that Web surfers can be more easily identified by authorities.

If news reports are accurate, Iranians could be facing a level of Web censorship that approaches that which exists in North Korea, where public access to the Internet we all know and love is barely existent. Whether or not Iranians, who have already had a taste of what the Web can do, will tolerate such restrictions without a struggle, remains to be seen.

That the Iranian government is clamping down on Internet access is hardly a surprise. In 2009, they saw firsthand the kind of unrest that emerge amidst a well-connected and dissatisfied citizenry. Since then, governments in nearby countries have been overthrown or otherwise challenged in the so-called Arab Spring.

Web censorship in the Islamic republic is nothing new, but this latest initiative cranks things up quite a few notches and paves the way for a government-approved domestic intranet that will be completely cut off from the public World Wide Web we all know and love. Iranians are already reporting painfully slow Internet connections and difficulty accessing certain sites or using VPNs, the Wall Street Journal reports. Soon, Internet cafes in the country will be required to videotape all Web users and gather personal information about them.

If the world felt like a safer place to autocratic rulers before the Internet came around and ruined everything, what better solution is there than to just strangle the darn thing to death?

That appears to be what the Iranian government is going for. This week, the government began testing a closed, domestic intranet that "will insulate its citizens from Western ideology and un-Islamic culture, and eventually replace the Internet," the Journal reported. The end result would be not unlike the situation in North Korea, where the Internet as we know it is not accessible to most of the public, much of which is unaware it exists.

The recent clampdown begins just a few months ahead of the country's next parliamentary elections, which are already a source of controversy and protest.

Will this plan work? Unlike the citizens of North Korea, Iranians are already accustomed to having access to the Internet, even if it is limited and monitored. Businesses rely on it just like they do anywhere else, so shutting it down could add more economic strain to a society already facing sanctions from the West.

She was rearrested yesterday in her home province of Kermanshah.

"Five days later, security forces raided her father's home in Kermanshah province in an attempt to detain her, however she was absent at the time. Authorities summoned Mohammadi...for questioning on 21 November and after three days of interrogation, they finally transferred her to Evin prison on Wednesday."

Evin prison is notorious for its brutality and dreadful conditions. Political prisoners are mixed with hardened criminals. It was in Evin that Omid Reza Misayafi became the first blogger to die in custody.

The charges against Mohammadi are unknown.

Rojin photo via Oye! Times

His supporters have started a Facebook page to publicize his situation. A blog, Free Anas, has also been started, as well as a hashtag, #freeanas. Get on it, nerdlingers.

Libyan Internet starts to fail. Renesys reported that, after a long, stable summer of nothing much to report, Libya's Internet has now started to fail, probably as a result of infrastructure degradation due to war and neglect. The effects of this failure will be largely negative for the government, as they are the only ones who currently have access.

Egyptian blogger arrested for "defaming the military." In what looks like a frantic race back to the bottom, the Egyptian military, the erstwhile saviors of the people during the revolution, have added another notch to their billyclub with the arrest and probable prosecution in a military court of 26-year-old Asmaa Mahfouz. Admittedly, a statement on one of her social media accounts muddies the waters.

"If the judiciary doesn't give us our rights, nobody should be surprised if militant groups appear and conduct a series of assassinations because there is no law and there is no judiciary."

Egypt seems to have moved on from the confident non-violence of the Arab Spring.

Iranian blogger freed. After a hunger strike that lasted 25 days, the Iranian government released Dr. Mehdi Khazali. He was released on bail. Khazali, son of a conservative cleric, has been arrested three times.

Al Jazeera journalist arrested in Israel. Last week, Samer Allawi, a Palestinian and the Kabul bureau chief for the Qatari news agency, was arrested while journeying from the West Bank to Jordan. He was brought before an Israeli military court Tuesday and charged with belonging to the outlawed terrorist group Hamas. Allawi denies he is a member of the group.

Tunisia upholds filtering decision. According to Reporters Without Borders, "A Tunis appeal court yesterday upheld a 27 May court decision requiring the Tunisian Internet Agency (ATI) to block access to pornographic websites. ATI said it would refer the case to the country's highest appeal court because it did not have the 'financial and technical resources' to create the filtering and censorship system needed to implement the ruling."

Filtering regimes start, with few exceptions, with the "protection" of innocent eyes against the scourge of pornography. It never, ever stops there. (There is, after all, so much to protect you from.)

Iranian blogger beaten in prison. Hossein Maleki Ronaghi was beaten by a guard "after writing a letter to Iran's judicary authorities." He required hospitalization afterward. He is serving a 15-year sentence.

International investigation panel closes up shop in Bahrain. The international Bahrain Commission of Inquiry, an international group investigating the violence during Bahrain's protests, has shuttered its offices and hit the road "after angry crowds scuffled with staff members following reports that government officials would be cleared of committing abuses against protesters seeking greater rights."

Argentina blocks websites. The country's judiciary blocked leakymails.com and leakymails.blogspot.com, sites which "linked to allegedly leaked emails from members of the Argentine government." The effect was to inspire the creation of myriad mirror sites to distribute the material.

Anonymous, Telecomix take on Syrian Cyber Army. Declaring an #OpSyria, the groups are targeting the official pro-government computer hackers as well as the suppliers of censorship equipment to the country's violent ruling clique.

In June, Figuiera became the first blogger to be assassinated. Figueira, who was also a newspaper editor and the president of the local branch of the Workers Party, used his blog to discuss drug-related corruption in his home state of Rio Grande do Norte.

Iranian actress and blogger missing. Iranian actress and blogger Pegah Ahangarani, who was scheduled to travel to the Women's World Cup in Germany on July 4, is missing. Many are concerned that she was arrested in Iran prior to her departure. She had a contract to blog about the championship for the German news organization, Deutsche Welle. According to a friend, she was summoned to the Iranian intelligence ministry the day before she was scheduled to leave and told that she would be arrested if she showed up at the airport.

Iranian blogger and publisher arrested. Iran cannot arrest too many bloggers. Mehdi Khazali was a publisher and the son of a prominent leading cleric, Ayatollah Khazali.

Egyptian military cements rule. The military in Egypt was considered a friend of the people during the protests. After Mubarak stepped down, however, the Egyptian military took over a harsher role, imprisoning a blogger, among others, and inspiring a movement against its continued role. The movement, which uses the hashtag #noscaf. Now, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces is setting up rules that will influence any new constitution to allow an outsized role for the military.

Nothing good will come of this.

CrowdVoice launches with new design, more content. CrowdVoice, a user-generated platform for reporting on, and dialoguing about, freedom and civil society, has relaunched. Users now have the ability not just to add content (photos, posts, videos) to an existing page, but to add new pages, or "voices," themselves.

New pages include Malaysia and Malawi, where there have been protests, the Gaza flotilla and a page for gay American issues. The service is still blocked by the government of Bahrain, where it is located.

Like most of Mideast Youth's undertakings, CrowdVoice is well-built, attractive and easy to use. It's easy already to see the effect the freer approach will have on the platform's reach; it will be interesting to see how that freedom will affect the overall quality.

Alleged members of Anonymous arrested. In December of last year, three Dutch teenagers were arrested; in January of this year, British police arrested five alleged members of the hacking collective; another British teen was arrested in June; and now, in the U.S., the Federal Bureau of Investigation has arrested 16 people across the country and served 35 search warrants in the course of a series of raids.

Those arrested have been charged with conspiracy, which carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine, and with intentional damage to a protected computer, which carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000.

Egypt army photo by Al Jazeera

Hoder was well-known for publishing instructions on how to use blogging software for the Persian language, earning him the nickname of "the Blogfather." Outspoken, he first visited Israel, interviewing, among others, Iranian Jews who had immigrated there. Later, he made an about-face and became a vocal supporter of the Iranian regime, returning to the country of his birth. There he was arrested, his conversion to the cause of the Islamic Republic apparently not enough to wash away his sin of independent thought.

Nigeria blocks Internet, mobile for inauguration. Sources indicate the Nigerian government shut off the country's Internet and mobile communications networks in the capital of Abuja for 12 hours during May 29th's presidential inauguration. Nigeria is not noteworthy for its repressive attitude to the Internet, but its relationship to the oil industry has created instability in the country that has resulted in political violence before.

U.N. report calls Internet access a right. After introducing and passing a resolution condemning blasphemous speech, the U.N. recently reversed that decision. Now, in a new report, it has proclaimed that Internet access itself is a human right.

Arrest of "Gay Girl in Damascus" followed by questions. When "Amina Abdallah Araf al Omari" was reported by her cousin to have been kidnapped by what appeared to be security agents in Damascus, the situation quickly became an Internet cause célèbre . A brave, outspoken Syrian-American lesbian was imprisoned. On a tip, NPR's Andy Carvin tried to follow up. He was unable to find anyone who had met Amina in person. Later it turned out the photo she was using apparently belonged to another woman.

This is by no stretch proof that Amina doesn't exist or is not in trouble. But it is distressing and distracting. Regardless, Amina is only one of possibly thousands of bloggers and others who have been detained by the Syrian regime.

Another Chinese microblogger gets a year in a work camp. The Arab Spring-inspired crackdown of social media users in China continues apace with the sentencing of Fang Hung. Fang's crime? Mocking "the son of a Chinese Communist Party revolutionary elder." This is not the first time a satirical Chinese microblogger has gotten a year in the gulag. Last year Cheng Jianping began serving a year only days before she was to have been married.

Google defies Kazakhstani attempt to wall off the Web. Google has redirected all users of its Kazakstan-customized search site to the international version. This was in response to the country's attempt to create reflect the political borders of the country online. It now requires all sites running the .kz root to run on local servers.

Cyrus Farivar has done much the same thing with his book, "The Internet of Elsewhere: The Emergent Effects of a Wired World."

Instead of focusing on the capital of the Web, Silicon Valley, or even on one of the Silicon Valleys outside of the original, like Bangalore, India, Farivar has taken a look at our wired world through the lenses of South Korea, Senegal, Estonia and Iran.

There is a tendency to think of the Internet as being a priori and sui generis. This is a new world so powerful and so game-changing that it effects history and culture, no matter where one stands. Farivar's argument, and it is a well-made one, is that like any other element of the human experience, the Internet is effected by history and culture. If we ignore that fact, if we let ourselves believe that the Internet, not history, is more of a determining factor in our future, we are liable to be surprised by it to an excessive degree.

Each of the places he covers are important to our understanding of the Internet because their histories and cultures have influenced how they have embraced it. In a way, the countries he has chosen to profile are reflections of each other, Senegal of South Korea and Estonia of Iran.

South Korea

South Korea has innovated two things: professional gaming leagues and citizen journalism. With a block on much of the tech coming out of Japan (given how Japan treated Korea in World War II the restrictions are many), Korea's game of choice is StarCraft. Ohmynews was like a new planet when it burst on the scene in 2004.

Both of these things are direct results of the history of Korea, that is, its past (its geopolitical position and struggle with Japan) and its present, where it is one of the greatest providers of free broadband Internet access to its citizens.

Senegal

Although Senegal is the most wired country in Africa, it does not have the infrastructure in Korea, meaning that most computing is done inefficiently in Internet cafes. Like Korea, the country's leadership is pro-Internet and focuses a great deal of attention and emphasis on it. But this attention is top-down and insufficiently distributed. No matter how much a country's upper echelons believe in something, if they do not have the capacity to make it possible for everyone to contribute to building that belief, there is a good chance it will die. Even if it does not, it is destined to stagnate, or at least plateau.

Despite being a politically stable, relatively prosperous country, Senegal's reality is Africa's: a raft of intelligent, interested people working against a history of compromised infrastructural elements.

Estonia

Where Korea has widespread, fast and reasonably-priced broadband, Estonia has widespread, fast and reasonably-priced (often free) Wi-Fi. This in part explains the success of Estonian companies, with Skype in the lead, only 20 years after the fall of the Soviet Union. The half-century occupation left Estonia an apparently broken country.

But its history of facing, and considering itself part of, the West, was not easily expunged. When the opportunities were available again, mostly when the obstacles were removed, Estonians went crazy innovating Web tools and companies. Now it has one of the highest rates of Internet penetration in the world, as well as a lot of time to make up. Like South Korea and Senegal, this access to an almost complete national Wi-Fi blanket is both an expression of citizen will and an expression of political will at the highest levels.

Iran

Although China probably has to receive the Palm D'Or of online repression, Iran is competing in the same league. Using the same combination of tools pioneered by the Chinese - laws, social checks and technological filtering - Iran's Internet has been rendered a third-class communications network. The Iranian leadership recognized early on that they had a citizenry with a long history of intellectual and technological competence and that the Internet was going to prove important in the future. Members of the Iranian leadership began to utilize social media to promote their points of view and continue to do so today.

Big Three

The three big ideas I took away from this book were these.

1. History matters. As "disruptive" as web technology is, the history of a country or region, right down to the present moment, profoundly and tangibly affects how that place and its people will respond to that disruption. Farivar did a particularly good job of outlining the relationship between each of these countries' histories and their relationship to the wired world.
2. Political will. The will of a country's leadership is important but it is not enough. The innovation of a ruling group must either reflect its people's will, or inspire their imagination.
3. Opportunity. Human beings are experimental and (in the broadest sense) entrepreneurial. If their impulse toward giving the Web a go are checked, due to lack of connectedness, unaffordability or overt limitation, it will check intellectual and financial prosperity. Individuals, whether app programmers in Senegal or dissidents in Iran, will move forward, but the society as a whole will not.

Al Jazeera reporter Dorothy Parvaz disappeared in Syria several weeks ago. Syria, whose citizens have been caught up in the Arab Spring but whose leaders most decidedly have not, has seen the death of over a hundred in the past three months. One of the reporters covering the situation was Parvaz.

Her employers subsequently discovered that the Syrians had arrested her and sent her to Iran. Her friends have responded with an instant and comprehensive social media campaign to free her. This campaign illustrates the quick roll-out that social media affords at this point in its development.

What these factors provide is a way to quickly escalate the spread of information about Parvaz. The expressions of concern for her, or indictment of her captors, are interlocked thanks to the dialogic nature of social media and the hashtag allows for a center to braid the disparate messages together.

There has been a lot written about "Facebook activism," with some justifiably charging that it is not an effective way to make anything happen. But the one thing that does happen with a widespread social media campaign, and which I believe is already starting to happen in Dorothy Parvaz's case, is that it will attract attention, both on the Web at large, and among journalists in particular.

Something heartening I discovered while directing the Committee to Protect Bloggers is that the social communications substrate is one of the fastest media for escalating news. With any luck this will force the pressure up, to places like the White House, who will in turn turn the screws on Syria and Iran. Because here is the Big Truth about tyrants: They absolutely hate attention. Attention has saved lives, stopped torture and restored individual liberty. So, pay attention.

Wicked Witch illustration via Wikipedia | other sources: Lost Remote

"Freedom on the Net 2011" determined that the five worst countries for online freedom - based on obstacles to access, limits on content and violations of user rights - are Iran, followed by Burma, China, Cuba and Tunisia. (The last entry is certainly changed somewhat by the uprising earlier this year.)

Turkey blocks domain names. Turkey has listed 138 words that cannot be used in domain names. Any website that opens in Turkey using one of these words will be shut down. The words include "animal," "beat," "escort," "homemade," "hot," "nubile," "free," "teen," "pic," (bastard in Turkish), "got" (ass), "Haydar," (mans name but also means penis), "gay," "çıplak" (naked), "itiraf" (confession), "liseli" (high school student), "nefes" (breath) and "yasak" (forbidden). Yes. The word forbidden is forbidden.

Burma bans Skype, trashes Internet cafes. The Burmese leadership banned Skype and other VOIP services and have sent Bureau of Special Investigation officers into Internet cafes to tell owners not to provide VOIP at their establishments.

Bahrain renews state of emergency. Bahrain has kept its "emergency" status to enforce a greater repression of expression and assembly in the wake of the March protests.

Vietnam jails sentences another blogger. Vi Duc Hoi, a blogger and democracy activist, has been sentenced to a five-year term in prison. The CPJ counts six bloggers currently imprisoned in the southeast Asian country.

Azerbaijani Facebook user denied bail. Bahthiyar Hajiev, a former opposition politician, was arrested for a show trial because he called for protests on Facebook and posted videos condemning the last set of elections in his country. He has been charged with "desertion." Despite being beaten and threatened with rape, the "judge" in the case refused his attorney's request to hear witnesses in Haijev's treatment.

According to the group's press release, the attack officially begins Sunday, May 1 - a labor holiday.

"A new dawn appears to you and your country will be free from the chains of oppression, tyranny and torture. You can finally exhale and take a new breath of air that will fill you with strength, wisdom and freedom."

The sites already hacked show this message:

"This Site Is Hacked By Anonymous Hackers .#OpIran FuCk Y0u 1Ranian G0urment. #OpIran Is here, You GTFO ..:: H4x012 Was Here::..

Special Fuck You To : Ashiyaneh Digital Security Team & Montazer 313 & Iranian Cyber Army"

Anonymous moved from attacking businesses that withdrew their services from embattled Wikileaks leader Julian Assange to attacking countries. Initially they targeted Zimbabwe and Tunisia, later Egypt, Yemen and Bahrain. They have focused on countries notorious for their restrictions on free speech.

If "Operation Iran" goes the same way that past attacks have, distributed denial of services attacks will be aimed at key, and high profile, government websites.

Here is a video version of the press release.

Other sources: The Hackers News, CNET, GMA News

"Freedom on the Net 2011" determined that the five worst countries for online freedom - based on obstacles to access, limits on content and violations of user rights - are Iran, followed by Burma, China, Cuba and Tunisia. (The last entry is certainly changed somewhat by the uprising earlier this year.)

"Since the protests that followed disputed presidential elections in June 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, though this too has become more severe since the election. Tactics employed include deliberately slowing internet speeds at critical times to make basic online activities difficult and ordering blogging service providers inside Iran to remove 'offensive' posts. The regime has also sought to counter critical content and online organizing efforts by extending state propaganda into the digital sphere: over 400 news websites are either directly or indirectly supported by the state.

"Since June 2009, an increasing number of bloggers have been threatened, arrested, tortured, and kept in solitary confinement, and at least one blogger died in custody. Over 50 bloggers and online activists have been arrested, and a dozen remained in detention at the end of 2010. The Iranian authorities have taken a range of measures to monitor online communications, and a number of protesters who were put on trial after the election were indicted for their activities on Facebook and Balatarin, a Persian site that allows users to share links and news. A group calling itself the Iranian Cyber Army, later found to be associated with the Iranian authorities, also managed to hack a number of opposition and news sites with a mix of technical methods and forgery."

In contrast, the five freest countries are Estonia, the United States, Germany, Australia and the U.K.

But here's arguably the worst indicator of the health of free speech online.

"Even in more democratic countries--such as Brazil, India, Indonesia, South Korea, Turkey, and the United Kingdom--internet freedom is increasingly undermined by legal harassment, opaque censorship procedures, or expanding surveillance."

We expect repressive countries to repress. We expect democratic countries to exert forces against that tendency. Of course they do, but when you see this sort of trend, you're seeing a speech ecosystem under serious threat. Transparency is growing more opaque even as it becomes the motif du jour. Is it time for those in democratic countries to spend at least as much time at the sickbeds of their own freedoms as the graves of others'? (That was a rhetorical question. It's time.)

Other sources: OpenNet Initiative

Ai Weiwei had been known for his role in the construction of the Beijing Olympic stadium and as China's leading digital activist and a pioneer in the use of blogging and Twitter in China.

Love the future.

Dubai blogger now charged with possessing demon rum. Ahmed Mansur, who was arrested last week for post critical of the UAE government, has had an additional charge heaped on him - possessing alcohol, a crime for an Emirati to possess, though it's served in hotels like it's going out of style. Perhaps the thought is observers will leave the poor city-state alone out of deference for its culture where they might not if they were honest about the real reasons for his arrest.

Iranian blogger arrested for "terror plot." A blogger, whose name was not given, was allegedly arrested. The reason given was his *sighs, rolls eyes* plot against the country's president Ahmajinedad. Since the source is a pro-government publication, at least some, if not all, of the report is false.

Iran to create "halal Internet." I think if I were Muslim I would be pissed off at Iran's use of this term to describe an infantilized Internet they plan to have ready in about 18 months. Religion is, as it always is in these online censorship situations, a mask for the real goal of the censors: obedience. The Iranian government intends to offer other Muslim countries the use of this "Internet." (What's Persian for "backdoor"?)

Uganda blocks Twitter and Facebook. In an historical move, given sub-Saharan Africa's largely complete freedom from filtering, Uganda has sent its three largest ISPs a memo requesting they block Twitter and Facebook. The reason? To "eliminate the connection and sharing of information that incites the public."

Bahraini doctors arrested so protesters will die. Bahrain's security apparatus has arrested 32 doctors, one who was operating on a patient at the time. This is in defiance of the Geneva Convention.

HTTPS Now Campaign Aims To Secure The Internet. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and Access, a digital freedom activist group, have partnered together to start "HTTPS Now," a campaign to spread awareness and advocate for increased Internet security.

U.S. screw-ups. There are a number of stateside idiot moves that deserve note.

• Michigan police stealing motorists' private data with handhelds.
• National Science Foundation blocks the proxies its government funds.
• Court hearing canceled on whether Twitter info can be compelled in Wikileaks case.
• Facebook lobbyist tells WSJ the company is allowing too much free speech.

In a blog post, Comodo explained that login information for an affiliate was obtained and used to break into the Comodo server and issue the certificates.

"The IP address of the initial attack was recorded and has been determined to be assigned to an ISP in Iran. A Web survey revealed one of the certificates deployed on another IP address assigned to an Iranian ISP. The server in question stopped responding to requests shortly after the certificate was revoked."

Hallam-Baker rightly points out that seizing entry to such high-traffic consumer sites, all of which are communications properties, would be of particular use to "a government attempting surveillance of Internet use by dissident groups."

The hackers could, with such access, intercept communications from individual users, plant malware on their accounts, harvest login information and block circumvention addons.

Was it Iran? Or was it a country Iran was helping? Or was it a false trail?

Cyber-warfare is becoming all too common. Iran has done a lot of it. But some of it, like the Stuxnet virus, has been done to Iran. Online connections and nodes are starting to assume the warfare importance radio stations had once upon a time.

Other sources: NYT Bits

The Iranians have employed "deep packet inspection" to follow Web traffic that would not normally be visible. Tor has known it was vulnerable to this type of software but had not yet developed armor against it.

Google accuses China of interfering with Gmail. "Internet users in China have reported difficulties with Gmail over the last few weeks, complaining that the email service is slow or unavailable. While it's been made to look as though it's a technical problem on Google's end, the search engine giant says that the Chinese government is responsible. "There is no technical issue on our side. We have checked extensively,' says a Google spokesperson. 'This is a government blockage carefully designed to look like the problem is with Gmail.'"

China shuts off mobile phones when the word "protest" is uttered. The block shuts off the phone of the user immediately, whether he or she is talking in Chinese or English. This is part of China's panicky crackdown against an "infection" from the Middle East's uprisings.

Online calls for a Jasmine Revolution in China met with 100 arrests. Many of the incarcerated in the latest round of arrests are not self-identified "activists," but "netizens," who identify themselves less as old-guard protesters and more as members of a global online community, while still remaining Chinese. Tweeting about the revolutions in the Middle East has attracted the ire of Chinese security worse than any time since the riots in 2009 in Central Asia.

China has shut down 130,000 Internet cafes. In the last six years, China has driven 130,000 Internet cafes out of business. Many in China rely on these cafes for their Internet access. The goal seems to be to keep Internet users off-balance but also to drive small shops out of business to be replaced by large chains. That, in turn, is no doubt a convergence of large business owners engaging in Party official kickbacks and the fact that one big chain with a lot to lose may be much more assiduous about implementing government censorship rules.

Syria arrests bloggers during protests. The recent protests in the Syrian city of Daraa has seen a blogger, Khaled Elekhetyar, arrested. At least he is presumed arrested, having disappeared during the protests. His Facebook page has been hacked and filled with pro-regime propaganda.

Ahmad Abu Al-Kheir, who was arrested, then released, last month has also been arrested.

China TV photo by Cory Doctorow

The sites were reported to have been restored to normal but at last check the main English language site was still hacked.

This is an important proof of concept for the idea that any tool a "dissident" group like Anonymous can use can be also be used by a government with the will and the know-how to do so.

According to Voice of America itself:

"VOA executives said the hackers did not penetrate any of the government-funded agency's computer networks. They did gain entry to an outside computer system that operates a domain name server - a database of Internet addresses available worldwide - and redirected VOA traffic to the hackers' own site."

It was done because of VOA's "anti-Islamic stand," claimed the Fars Agency.

"The move came in response to the false reports released by the VOA and other websites on the spread and progress of seditious moves in Iran. VOA and its affiliates have long been supporting anti-Islamic Republic groups and sought to provoke unrests in Iran."

The attack started Monday evening is lasting into today.

This is far from the first time this Iranian group has hacked a site. Last January, they broke into the Chinese search engine Baidu, also redirecting it to a political message. The month before, they broke into Twitter.