Web-blogs Classified by Intelligence Ministry

Sara Isfahani, Rooz Online:

News sources from Tehran report that the Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence has classified domestic and foreign-based Iranian web blogs into three groups, based on their content: those against the regime, those that are pro-regime, and those that are neutral. This is the classification that will be used to determine whether and when a web-blog will be denied access from internet users from inside Iran.

Recently some web bloggers whose blogs are considered to be against the regime by the intelligence ministry have been contacted by agents of the ministry and informed that their sites would be denied access inside Iran because of their contents. At the same time, some web blogs hosted outside Iran have already had their websites denied access by users from Iran because of their publication of political, sexual etc reports. This has led some of the sites to change their domain names and URLs to remain accessible to users inside Iran.

During the past two years, web bloggers have joined Iranian journalists and intellectuals who had been arrested or detained because of their independent reporting on events in Iran. Mojtaba Samiizadeh and Arash Sigarchi are examples of two web bloggers who are in prison in Iran for their web writings. Others have been summoned by judiciary officials for explanations.

This blog has been banned for several years now. It appears that most Iranians from inside of Iran that make it here are likely associated with the regime. We normally have several who visit hourly.