(Feb. 11) -- A government crackdown has officially blocked Iranians from accessing Google's basic e-mail service, Gmail. Could Google's introduction of a flashy new social-media feature, Google Buzz, be the reason?
On Tuesday, Google began rolling out a free product for sharing media and keeping track of friends in real time through Gmail. Many analysts interpreted it as a direct challenge to similar real-time update streams on competitor Web sites Facebook and Twitter.
On Wednesday, the official Iranian communications agency said it would permanently suspend access to Gmail and replace it with a state-sponsored e-mail service, The Wall Street Journal reports.
The Journal notes that this is but one of many efforts to discourage and disrupt dissidents. Iranian security forces reportedly confiscated satellite-TV dishes, searched mobile phones and commandeered a bus station to use as a security outpost. Also, in recent days there have been suspiciously timed outages on Iran's Internet and mobile-phone networks.
Although Iran is notorious for its strict media censorship, the latest push comes as the country observes its most significant national holiday of the year, the 31st anniversary of the Islamic Revolution.
On Feb. 11, 1979, students led an uprising that deposed Iranian's secular, Western-backed monarchy, replacing it with the current anti-American and theocratic regime. The annual celebration of this day is traditionally marked by large public festivities. But many Iranians opposed to the current government were expected to engage in public protests, using the Web and cell phones to coordinate their response.
Internal opposition to the Islamic Republic has continued over the past eight months, following the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in June 2009. In the immediate aftermath of the vote, green-garbed Reformist protesters took to the streets to contest the election's validity. Security forces were called in to suppress the protesters, resulting in violent clashes that led to dozens of fatalities and numerous injuries.
Protests have occurred sporadically since, gaining the support of many journalists and politicians around the world. On each occasion, Iranian protesters used Web-based social-media tools to organize their activities and disseminate eyewitness reports of the violence on the ground to global media outlets.
Specifically, the opposition's use of Twitter was so prominent that the U.S. State Department asked administrators to defer site maintenance to ensure continued service. According to the blog TechCrunch, it's likely only a matter of time before the Iranian government bans Twitter alongside Gmail.
But while the Iranian government can claim Gmail as its latest casualty in the ongoing "cyberwars," it too was recently victimized by a mischievous hack on the president's Web site.
Filed under: World, Tech
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