Iran warns: West using internet for spying

Iranian Minister of Communication and Information Technology Reza Taqipour lashed out at the West for making an instrumental use of the World Wide Web for spying and spreading corruption. "Unfortunately, the western states, the US on top of them, are using the internet for spying and spreading corruption on the Earth, but Iran has stated a movement in administering Internet use and will definitely limit such (western) misuses through the aid and assistance of (the world) free circles," Taqipour said at a meeting with Iraqi Minister of Communications Muhammad Tawfiq Allawi here in Tehran on Saturday. "Internet should be at all states' service and not for (West's) economic misuses and demonization of the other states," the Iranian minister underscored. In January, Iran's Police Chief Esmail Ahmadi Moghaddam said that Google is not a search engine, but a spying tool. Also in January, Commander of the anti-narcotics squad of Iran's Law Enforcement Police General Ali Moayyedi said drug cartels are using the cyber space to promote and encourage production and consumption of synthetic drugs inside Iran. "The mafia of synthetic drugs has targeted our country in recent years by training people how to produce amphetamines through the Internet," Moayyedi underscored, addressing a meeting on campaign against Crystal (Methamphetamine) here in Tehran at the time. Iran's Ministry of Communications and Technology has also said it will launch a national internet in the next few months. The domestic internet, which will work as a kind of intranet, is supposed to be "clean" from "immoral" sites. Iran's information minister said the country's own internet network will solve problems with costs, security and bandwidth. When the network becomes operational in a few weeks, internet use will no longer need an international bandwidth for domestic connections and bandwidth expenses will drop up to 30 percent, Reza Taqipour said. With domestic communications routed through the "national information network" the international bandwidth will be freed for international communications, Taqipour said. The network's purpose is to provide Iranian citizens with the safe environment to use the internet and to protect Iran from cyber-attacks. Protecting privacy and preventing cyber-attacks are concerns all the countries in the world, the information minister said. It would give government institutions and large companies access to the internet while limiting ordinary Iranians' use to the "halal" network (halal means in accordance with Islamic law).