[Infowarrior] - Iran announces ‘halal Internet,’ new cyberdefense study program

[Richard Forno]

Iran announces ‘halal Internet,’ new cyberdefense study programs

Cyrus Farivar | Featured, Iran
17 Apr 2011
http://internetofelsewhere.com/blog/2011/04/17/iran-announces-halal-internet-and-new-cyberdefense-study-programs/

On Friday, Ali Aghamohammadi, the Ahmadinejad Administration’s head of economic affairs was quoted in IRNA, a state-run news agency that Iran was working on a “halal Internet.”

“Iran will soon create an internet that conforms to Islamic principles, to improve its communication and trade links with the world,” he said, apparently explaining that the new network would operate in parallel to the regular Internet and would possibly eventually replace the open Internet in Muslim countries in the regions.

“We can describe it as a genuinely ‘halal’ network aimed at Muslims on a ethical and moral level,” he said.

“The aim of this network is to increase Iran and the Farsi language’s presence in what has become the most important source of international communication.”

In other Iranian Internet news, the commander of the Iranian civil defence organisation, Gholam Reza Jalali was also quoted in IRNA on Saturday that Iran believes the United States and Israel were behind the creation of the Stuxnet worm.

“Investigations and studies show that the source of Stuxnet originates from America and the Zionist regime,” he said.

In the same IRNA interview, Jalali was also quoted as saying that Iran was creating the “1390 Program” — 1390 being the current year in the Persian calendar — which would add six cyberdefense master’s degree programs and one doctoral program across various Iranian universities.

“The final solution to problems of [cyberdefense and the] formation of Jihad, is to achieve economic self-sufficiency in the production of basic software such as operating systems and software,” he said.