U.S. Fails to Find Iran Suppliers

The Wall Street Journal--A U. S. government agency on Thursday reported it hasn't found any government-contracted information technology companies selling censoring gear to Iran—illustrating the difficulties in identifying vendors of online repression.

In July 2010, existing U.S. sanctions on Iran were expanded to forbid the U.S. government from doing business with any company that exports sensitive technology to Iran. The four-month study by the Government Accountability Office, or GAO, the investigative arm of the U.S. Congress, was aimed to help put the ban in place.

The study was a response to two congressional acts and an acknowledgment by Nokia Siemens Networks that it had provided telephone-monitoring equipment to Iran.

The joint venture of Siemens AG, the German conglomerate, and Nokia Corp., the Finnish cellphone company, has said it exited that business earlier in 2009.

At the time, Nokia Siemens Networks had nearly 2,000 contracts with the U.S. government valued at more than $250 million, according to a federal government funding website.

Nokia Siemens Networks said in a statement that it has addressed "the challenging issues that are posed when governments take beneficial technologies and abuse them in a way that violates human rights. We have…strengthened our internal processes to reduce the potential that communications technologies provided in good faith are not misused," it said.

"This report underscores the challenges inherent in preventing Iran from using technology to cripple the efforts of Iranian human-rights activists," said Ashley Mushnick, spokeswoman for Sen. Mark Kirk (R., Ill.), who is sponsoring legislation that would impose sanctions on companies selling censoring technology to Iran, among other related measures.

"Many of the technologies used to provide Internet access are the same ones that can be used to disrupt it," Ms. Mushnick added.

The GAO said in the report it was unable to identify companies selling such gear to Iran in part because of this dual-use nature of Internet technology. a concept called lawful intercept,

The ability to filter and monitor Internet phone and data traffic is standard and required in many countries for law-enforcement purposes, a concept called lawful intercept,as well as for network management, the report noted.

Filtering, such as for child pornography, is desirable and necessary in some instances.

What's more, Iran, which has been subjected to wide-ranging embargoes for years—including a 1995 comprehensive ban forbidding nearly all U.S. trade and investment in the country—has been able to obtain censoring technology via third parties and resellers in countries not under U.S. embargoes, such as the United Arab Emirates, the report said. Those sales are nearly impossible to track.

Another development explaining the lack of identifiable vendors is Iran's shift in recent years toward home-built technology, and away from foreign vendors, the report said. The "Iranian government is now focused on building its domestic capacity in this area," it said, citing evidence obtained from the U.S. Department of State. The country has shifted to domestic software and gear so it can more readily upgrade and service the equipment, something that was difficult using pirated technology. That shift also makes it easier for Iran to design equipment specific to its needs, Internet experts said.

The GAO report said the State Department is promoting ways for Iranians to get around their government's online controls, by funding circumvention tools and other technologies, and plans to spend another $28 million on such technology this year.

On Thursday, Iran's intelligence minister, Heidar Moslehi, said the country was prepared for such methods and had developed countermeasures, according to Iran's Fars News Agency.

"We had predicted these actions, for example the Internet in a suitcase, and devised proper ways to combat them," the minister said, according to the news agency, referring to reported plans to provide Iranians with ways to access the Internet that could be concealed in a suitcase.