EU ban censorship technology sales to Iran

The EU members implemented legislation on Saturday banning the sale of technology which “may be used for the monitoring or interception of Internet or telephone communications.” In recent years EU-based companies such as Nokia Siemans Network have faced public scrutiny and embarrassment for selling ‘internet snooping’ technology to Iran due to Iran’s  reputation for having one of the worlds most extreme censorship programmes and arrest records for so called internet abusers.

Technology banned includes deep packet inspection equipment, semantic processing engine equipment, speaker recognition/processing equipment, pattern recognition and pattern profiling equipment, semantic processing engine equipment and WEP and WPA code-breaking equipment. The EU also implemented a visa ban and asset freeze on officials whose work centres on censorship and propaganda including; Ezzatollah Zarghami, Head of the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting; Reza Taghipour, Minister for information, Mohammad-Ali Ramin, Vice-Minister in charge of press and Seyyed Sola Mortazavi, Deputy Minister of Interior.