Shahrvand

The organization was established in 2011 under the umbrellas of the University of Toronto's Munk School of Global Affairs' Citizen Lab, which has been producing reports on net freedom in Iran since 2005. Citizen Lab Director Ron Deibert, explains "our mission is to fill the missing gap, we are very much interested in raising awareness." As Diebert explains, Citizen Lab was responsible for inventing Psiphon, a suite of network software aimed at preserving security, privacy, and access to content. Today Psiphon, which is in its third generation, serves 700,000 to 900,000 people in Iran on a daily basis. Psiphon 3 is an application that can be utilized on both the Windows operating system and android phones making it even more accessible to many Iranians. Much of ASL 19's initial work was making Psiphon available to people in Iran as a circumvention tool. In addition ASL 19 has participated in numerous research initiatives with various academic and media partners to identify the needs of Iranians in relation to internet communication. Ali Karimzadeh Bangi ASL 19's director outlines the work of the organization, "Our efforts are twofold, on one side we work on research, we monitor what the Iranian government is doing and these networks are dynamic and in need of constant monitoring. We work with a team of journalists and editors and translators to unpack the information and make relevant news available." "On the technology side, since last April we started giving internet security tools and advice on how to use them to activists in Iran." Pasha Haghighi, who focuses on the technical side of the work at ASL 19 adds, "Providing Iranian Internet users with support and anti-filtering tools is a major part of our work. We make actual tools available to people in Iran as well as information on how to use them. We also troubleshoot problems as they emerge. Often, we act as a bridge between users in Iran and deliverers in places like Canada and the United States, we take the information from the users on problems and glitches and new challenges posed by the government's attempts to limit internet access to the developers who work on new solutions." Mahsa Alimardani, ASL 19's Research Manager explains, "Pasha outreaches to the Iranians world, we outreach to the English world, we help bridge the gap with scholarship produced in Farsi, we also manage most of the content on the Iran Media Program. Our work is about identifying what's being circulated within Iranian media outlets, and among internet users. At the moment we're busy documenting the news related to the upcoming elections." While ASL 19 works with broad networks of technicians and scholars specializing in the area of internet freedom across the globe, they see their role primarily as communicators and collaborators sharing information and jointly deriving at solutions rather than experts simply dispensing knowledge to activists in Iran. Ali notes, "Most of the time Iranians know better than those of us outside the country what the barriers to internet communications are and what tools may be needed to address them. These days most people are asking for a secure reliable set of tools from reliable sources. They recognize that anything that's online is public and can be corrupted and that a technique that works today may not work tomorrow. We are constantly working with Iranian activists and allies to customize and localize the best tools that come out to meet their ever-changing needs. But this is a two-way conversation." "We started ASL 19 because we realized there was a big gap in terms of communications and information sharing between people inside and outside of Iran, we started our work by posting surveys requesting feedback on what was needed and what issues people were having when attempting to communicate online from Iran. We thought that no one would post anything back but there was a lot of feedback - 3,412 people responded and we got a lot of advice from people in Iran," recounts Pasha. He also adds that Iranians are increasingly producing local tools to deal with the challenges to internet freedom, they are not simply waiting for others outside of the country to provide them with expertise and applications. Despite the work both inside as well as outside of Iran to circumvent internet control in Iran, the reality is that the cyber sphere in Iran will be a much more widely contested space during the June 2013 elections than the 2009 elections. "After the 2009 demonstrations the parliament in Iran ratified a bunch of bills dealing with censorship and cyber crimes in a rush, they designated a series of online activities illegal such as writing anything about boycotting elections. Last time in the lead up to the presidential elections there were mock elections on Facebook and Iranian media outlets like Press TV were reporting on these online campaigns. The reality is very different this time around. There have been ongoing roundups of journalists in Iran and the message they are sending to media is clear; if you cover the opposition movements we arrest all your journalists and shut you down," notes Ali. While the Islamic regime has been much more proactive in terms of their efforts to control online communications, there are some discernible divisions on their strategies on this front. "There's no unity within the administration in Iran about how to handle internet control; for example the office of the Supreme Leader is more into surveillance, they say we have censored so much that we are forcing people to use circumvention tools, so they have this new policy of smart filtering," explains Ali. Speaking about the current barriers to internet freedom in Iran, Pasha states, "The challenge has changed from access to how to anonymously access information online. Recently Iran has been more aggressively pushing towards monitoring activities." He adds, "With Psiphon we know this period is going to be a time where there's an increase in demand for reliable circumvention tools and that we are going to need to be ready to offer more support for usage of our tools. We are leading up to the election by educating users on how to be secure online and what tools to use to be as anonymous as possible. There's never a hundred percent guarantee but we want activists and journalists to be as safe as possible."