The plan to regulate social messaging apps was submitted as a bill with 77 signatures. According to Iranian officials, the aim of the bill “is to build trust and protect citizen’s rights, privacy, culture, and national security.”
This plan was previously proposed as the “Regulation of Cyberspace Services,” which later became known as the “User Protection Bill.”
The aim of this particular bill in reality is to restrict the activities of foreign messaging apps by creating legal frameworks (such as forcing the presence of the legal entity of foreign messaging app developers in Iran, accepting Iranian laws, and bringing hardware into Iran), operating on the NIN domestic network, supporting domestic messaging apps, and reducing the bandwidth of foreign messaging apps.
If all these conditions are accepted by foreign messaging apps, they would be additionally prohibited from providing some services such as financial and banking services, cryptocurrency-based services, or exchanging messages between government devices.
This legislation affects the mode of operation of Iranian and foreign messaging apps. The process of joining and operating in Iran, content censorship, non-compliance with user security and privacy (given the government’s history of eavesdropping on user information) are important issues that could potentially impact social media users in Iran if they are successful.
Signatures on Karzar site
Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei; Abolhassan Firouzabadi, the head of the National Center for Cyberspace; Rouhollah Momen Nasab, Ali Akbar Raefipour, Reza Taghipour, Nasrollah Pejmanfar; Kayhan newspaper.
https://cyber-law.ir/?p=11316