Watch out Iranian internet users!

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/06/wsj-nokia-and-siemens-help-iran-spy-on-internet-users/

According to a Wall Street Journal story, Iran has "adopted NSA-like techniques and installed equipment on its national telecommunication network last year that allows it to spy on the online activities and correspondence--including the content of e-mail and VoIP phone calls--of its internet users."

Nokia Siemens Networks, a cooperative agreement between Germany's Siemens and Finland's Nokia, installed the monitoring equipment late last year in Iran's government-controlled telecom network, Telecommunication Infrastructure Co. Authorieties only recently enforced its full capabilities in reponse to recent protests that have taken place in the country over its presidential election. The equpiment allows the country to perform deep-packet inspection, which searches through data as it travels through a network searching for keywords in the content of e-mail and voice transmissions.

This is very scary for Iranian internet users, and I know I would be incredibly outraged if America decided to conduct this same invasion of privacy. I don't know what I would do though, and I'm not sure what Iranians can do in this instance. This is a very important and ethical topic, as the internet plays a huge role in private communication all over the world. Personally, I don't think something like this should be allowed, as the internet was formed on the basis of open and free communication, but then again, I'm not the law.