Azri Jahrami, the former Minister of Communications and Information Technology, announced in his new interview that the 13th government’s statistics about the attractiveness of internal networks will not help the current state of the country.
Azri Jahormi, the former Minister of Communications and Information Technology of the 12th government, spoke in an interview with Andiseh Poya media about the issues of limiting the Internet in the 13th government. At the beginning of the interview, he criticized the country’s cyber space policy makers. Jahormi stated that the country’s governing body has a problem with the main function of the Internet – providing information. He further complained about the incorrect arrangement of the Supreme Council of Cyberspace and said:
Most of the members of the Supreme Council of Cyberspace are the heads and former managers of radio and television. The prevailing opinion is that virtual space is like radio and television. That is, one person from the top makes a decision for the newsroom, and all lower-ranking members must repeat it, and the people must hear the same. The goal pursued in the field of media is a controlled information research method. The new media structure is not managed in this way.
Jahormi’s opinion about the government’s decisions to restrict foreign platforms
In the continuation of the interview, “Jahrami” mentioned the government’s decisions in order to create restrictions for foreign platforms in order to attract people to domestic networks. He emphasized that new media tools such as social networks are undergoing a huge transformation. This transformation is related to reducing the delay in the transmission of messages. Regarding the replacement of internal platforms and the role of “supernodes”, “Jahrami” said:
If you turn Instagram into Rubik’s, will it change? Your ultimate ability is to replace Rubika and not allow an anti-revolutionary influencer or an anti-government network to settle there. Now, if you come and delete these Super Nodes, the connection will not only be broken, but the big Super Node will become a lot of small Super Nodes. It is enough for three percent of the members of this network to have access to the information of those former super nodes in the blocked networks from somewhere else – for example, the satellite of the neighbor’s house. The content will enter the same Rubika network and will be distributed among users at the same speed. Unless a message is placed above the head of each user in the social network.
He stated that during his presidency, he witnessed the filtering of the “Telegram” platform. Jahormi is confident that the free flow of information will not be completely interrupted by filtering. He said that this issue in Iran is not related to the nature of internal or external social networks, but everything comes back to the information that is published in it. He emphasized that the government cannot change the situation by replacing “Rubika” and cutting off the Internet. “Jahrami” believes that people will inform in one way or another.
Former Minister of Communications: Internet restrictions lead to the creation of economic cartels!
“Azri Jahormi” reacted to the question of the multifacetedness of Internet restrictions in Iran and declared that this restriction has political and economic aspects and that people (for example, filtering traders) benefit from this issue. He said the existence of fake jobs such as satellite installers or filter salesmen are the result of businesses from a faulty system. These businesses gradually turn into economic cartels, and these cartels for their own credit and prosperity may also affect the decision-making function.
The former Minister of Communications and Information Technology said in response to the Iranian government’s decision to implement a control policy on cyberspace:
When can the governing body call an emergency? When the number of defendants is small, but when the public’s thinking is negative towards media policies, the control policy no longer works. Usually, supernodes of social networks are network balancers. If they are looking for a solution, they should try so that the attitude of these supernodes towards the governing body is not negative. Because they do not lose their place in the network in any case, but move the point of balance and departure of the network to another place. Consider that before these recent riots, there was an attack on celebrities inside the country. Football players or actors have never had sufficient and accurate information about certain institutions or forces that are working against them in the cyber space, so there is a feeling that the whole government is against me. If you are looking for the chain of influence inside the country, see what chain has started destroying the minds of celebrities since a year ago.
“Azri Jahrami” further ridiculed the only policy solution of the 13th government – filtering – and explained the existence of filtering in different dimensions of Iranian society:
In the current situation, the government has filtering tools at its disposal. and wants to use it to control all aspects of people’s lives, the first and last way in politics is filtering. You want to solve the issue of hijab, you filter! You want to solve the currency issue, you filter! You want to lower the price of the car, you filter! We say the birth rate is low, you say to filter.
Jahormi: Statistics of the 13th government to show people’s acceptance of domestic poltermas is useless!
Then the former Minister of Information Technology mentioned the popularity of the “Club” platform among Iranians in the past years. He said that the “Club” platform did not receive money from the government, nor did any organization rent a server to it. This platform was produced by a tasteful person and people gradually embraced it. “Jahrami” said about people’s resistance to using internal social networks:
This resistance is because something called Ajan has been created in Iran. Correcting the statistics means the presence of 60 million Iranians on domestic platforms is useless. About 400,000 students of Azad University must use the educational application to choose a unit. You also send the access code to IGP and these 400,000 people have to install IGP because they have no other choice, but do they also use IGP personally?
In response to the question of people’s concern about Iran’s cooperation with China and Russia to create a national internet and digital colonialism, he said that people’s concerns are completely justified. Of course, “Jahrami” further clarified that such memorandums are reviewed among the security agencies and not in the usual understandings. In response to the question of Iran’s cyber cooperation with China and Russia, he said:
Don’t put me in a position to say that the agreement with China and Russia is good and the agreement with America is bad. Like you, I also believe that an agreement should be made with everyone, in a win-win environment and based on national interests; But we are not talking about unattainable possibilities. Many things are taken into account in the implementation and operation environment and decisions are made based on them. Sometimes, one of Iran’s goals for going towards China is to pressure the West to sit at the table. As a rule, the other party will direct the public opinion against you, that this agreement is against you in order to get his own points.
The former Minister of Communications talks about the technological achievements of the 12th government
“Azri Jahormi” confirmed that the internet was not interrupted by foreign countries in Iran. He emphasized that this action was based on a local knowledge that benefited from international knowledge. The former Minister of Communications and Information Technology spoke about his achievements during his tenure in the 12th government. He stated that the Ministry of Communications developed 3G and 4G internet at that time and created IXP and cloud system. He said about some policies at that time:
Our policy was that the economy of V.O.D. to develop in the country, but there were obstacles. In 2015, the economic structure of our network was the gigabyte structure. To watch each video, you had to calculate when your package would run out. With this situation, the VOD market did not grow. In the first step, the policy of connecting data producers to the internal network and I.X.P. we facilitated, the result of which was a decrease of 630 billion tomans in the income of the infrastructure communication company. VOD producer He had to pay both the operator and the infrastructure. That means, for example, we used to get money once from Filmo and once from the first companion. We made it free because we wanted to strengthen this part of the digital economy. The second policy that was put in place in 2015 was that the domestic tariff should be half of the international tariff; In fact, we positively discriminated in favor of the domestic platform.
“Jahrami” disagreed with the doubling of international internet tariffs in the 12th government and said:
We halved the domestic price and this was positive discrimination towards the consumer. In 2019, operators made the internet more expensive. I stood in front of them and the penal organization fined them. They had to return the prices. When I became the minister in 2016, in the first corrective action, I canceled the sale of gigabytes on the home internet. In the case of neutrality network, keep in mind that the concept of neutrality has been violated by the law of the parliament in our country since the first day. When filtering is recognized in the law approved by the parliament, neutrality no longer has meaning and is not recognized. This is a baseless statement that net neutrality was established in the country and Jahormi’s policies caused its violation.
Jahormi: The government will not find a way to turn off all the filter breakers
In response to the question of the failure of all filter breakers in the near future, he stated that such an event will never happen, because users will tunnel on SSL, HTTP and DNS in any way. Government restrictions cannot last forever. He announced that the recent disruptions and outages of the Internet have affected the country’s digital economy. For example, many programmers and start-ups emigrated from Iran or gave a statement of closure. Also, in the financial report of the first companion, we saw a decrease in income of 700 to 800 million tomans. He emphasized that the development of 5G internet is currently useless. The reason for the bad rating of Iran’s Internet in “Speedtest” is due to the free capacity of the networks.
At the end of the interview, Jahrami mentioned some decisions outside the scope of the Ministry of Communications. For example, he said that the filtering of “Telegram” was not done by the government and this decision was made by the judicial authorities. He said about the Internet disruption in November 2018:
The Internet was disconnected by the decision of the Supreme National Security Council and then connected again by the decision of the same council. The Minister of Communications was not involved in the cut decision, but was invited to make a decision about connection. I was against cutting the internet, but I couldn’t stand up to the law. When I was invited to the meeting connected to the Internet and had the right to vote, I defended myself.
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