Arrest of 100 Hackers and Blocking of 20 Telegram Channels by Law Enforcement

Saeed Montazer al-Mahdi, the spokesperson for Iran's Law Enforcement, announced on Sunday that 20 Telegram channels containing "immoral content" have been blocked and their managers arrested. According to Fars News Agency, the spokesperson, speaking at a press conference, also reported the arrest of over 100 hackers in the past month. In recent weeks, several journalists and social media activists in Iran have been detained by the Intelligence Organization of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). On Saturday, November 6, an official from the IRGC in Qazvin Province stated that "the managers of more than 170 active groups on mobile social networks, which were operating in the area of 'anti-moral security', were identified and arrested in a complex technical and intelligence operation." However, a day later, on November 7, Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei, the spokesperson for Iran's judiciary, denied this news and said that the Qazvin prosecutor's office announced that "the person who published this news has been summoned and asked to explain on what basis this news was published." On November 20, the cyber official of the Quds Force in Gilan Province reported to Tasnim News Agency the arrest of several virtual activists accused of "inciting Azerbaijani speakers in Gilan" and calling for "chaos and unrest." "The police have no accounts on social media," the spokesperson for Iran's Law Enforcement stated in another part of the press conference, adding that "there is absolutely no website, channel, or blog belonging to the police on social networks, and all of them are fake and likely fraudulent." Iranian security officials have recently increased "supervision and control" over mobile messaging applications. Telegram, one of these tools, was previously claimed by its CEO to have been pressured by Iranian government officials to allow them to spy on the network, but later he retracted this claim. In this context, "blocking Telegram remains on the agenda," according to Vaezi: Telegram will not be blocked if red lines are respected. A judicial official stated that no social network will be blocked ahead of the elections. The Iranian Minister of Communications rejected the CEO's claims about hosting Iranian Telegram users' data inside the country, calling it "absolutely nonsense." The number of Iranian users of the Telegram application is reported to be "13 million."