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The Iranian government isn't exactly known as a champion of free speech and access to information. Thus, it's never shocking to hear about Internet censorship in the country, the state of which appears to be getting worse all the time.

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.

If you think anti-piracy legislation like SOPA and Spain's so-called Sinde law are as far-reaching as it gets, you obviously don't live in Tehran. Well aware of the disruptive threat to its power posed by the Internet, the Iranian government is beginning to implement a plan that would get rid of it all together.

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.

Eurasia Review reports that Rojin Mohammadi has been arrested. Mohammadi is a medical student, currently studying at the University of Manila in the Philippines. The Human Rights Reporters Committee reported that she was arrested initially on November 14 when she returned to the country to visit her family, but was released 24 hours later.

She was rearrested yesterday in her home province of Kermanshah.

Campaign for imprisoned Syrian blogger. Anyone who still believes that imprisonment and torture of social media users is limited to political radicals and gadfly journalists need look no further than Syria's Anas Maarawi to be disabused of that notion. Maarawi was arrested on July 1. Talk about geek like me. Maarawi started Ardroid, the first Arabic language blog devoted to Google's Android OS.

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.

Suspects arrested in blogger assassination. Five suspects were arrested in the politically-motivated killing of Brazilian blogger Ednaldo Figueira. Federal and civil police from the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Norte made the arrests in a joint operation on July 2 and 3.

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.

Hoder goes down for 20. Hossein Derakhshan, the Canadian-Iranian blogger known as "Hoder," has lost his appeal in Iranian court. He was originally sentenced to 19 and a half years last September, following his arrest when he returned to Iran. Now, that sentence has been confirmed, making him the blogger serving the longest prison sentence ever.

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.

The tendency to map our world with our own country or region front and center is well documented and reasonably well-understood, at least intellectually. When someone from America sees a map with, say, Peru in the middle, with south in the up position, it still creates some dissonance. But that dissonance can be useful, beyond simply disabusing ourselves of the notion of our own centrality. It can make the world, including our own homes, new again and impart us with an urge to understand how elsewhere affects here.

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

Parvaz has been freed.

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.

Iran Officially Worst Online Oppressor. A new report from Freedom House has ranked Iran as the world's worst abuser of online rights.

"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.)

The same week that Freedom House called Iran the world's worst Internet offender, the hacking group Anonymous has begun striking at the country. Officially set to begin on Sunday, some reports indicate the politically-inspired hacking has already commenced, with messages left on several of the websites previously defaced by Iran's government-supported "Cyber Army."

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."