{"id":14065,"date":"2022-10-27T05:43:09","date_gmt":"2022-10-27T12:43:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=14065"},"modified":"2022-11-02T05:49:54","modified_gmt":"2022-11-02T12:49:54","slug":"hacked-documents-how-iran-can-track-and-control-protesters-phones-the-intercept","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=14065","title":{"rendered":"“Hacked Documents: How Iran Can Track And Control Protesters\u2019 Phones”, The Intercept"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sam Biddle<\/span>, Murtaza Hussain,\u00a0October 27 2022<\/span><\/p>\n

The documents provide an inside look at an Iranian government program that lets authorities monitor and manipulate people\u2019s phones.<\/p>\n

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Read this story in Persian<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

AS FURIOUS ANTI-GOVERNMENT<\/u><\/a> protests\u00a0swept Iran, the authorities retaliated with both brute force and digital repression. Iranian mobile and internet users reported rolling network blackouts, mobile app restrictions, and other disruptions. Many expressed fears that the government can track their activities through their indispensable and ubiquitous smartphones.<\/p>\n

Iran\u2019s tight grip on the country\u2019s connection to the global internet has proven an effective tool for suppressing unrest. The lack of clarity about what technological powers are held by the Iranian government \u2014\u00a0one of the most opaque and isolated in the world \u2014\u00a0has engendered its own form of quiet terror for prospective dissidents. Protesters have often been left wondering how the government was able to track down their locations or gain access to their private communications \u2014 tactics that are frighteningly pervasive but whose mechanisms are virtually unknown.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cThis is not a surveillance system but rather a repression and control system to limit the capability of users to dissent or protest.\u201d<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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While disconnecting broad swaths of the population from the web remains a favored blunt instrument of Iranian state censorship, the government has far more precise, sophisticated tools available as well. Part of Iran\u2019s data clampdown may be explained through the use of a system called \u201cSIAM,\u201d a web program for remotely manipulating cellular connections made available to the Iranian Communications Regulatory Authority. The existence of SIAM and details of how the system works, reported here for the first time, are laid out in a series of internal documents from an Iranian cellular carrier that were obtained by The Intercept.<\/p>\n

According to these internal documents, SIAM is a computer system that works behind the scenes of Iranian cellular networks, providing its operators a broad menu of remote commands to alter, disrupt, and monitor how customers use their phones. The tools can slow their data connections to a crawl, break the encryption of phone calls, track the movements of individuals or large groups, and produce detailed metadata summaries of who spoke to whom, when, and where. Such a system could help the government invisibly quash the ongoing protests \u2014 or those of tomorrow \u2014 an expert who reviewed the SIAM documents told The Intercept.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Iran\u2019s Mobile Surveillance<\/div>\n