https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2026/02/why-tehrans-two-tiered-internet-is-so-dangerous.html
Security researcher Bruce Schneier wrote the above article for Foreign Policy. It has some useful information on how two countries, Iran and China, have managed their Internet connectivity to control the information flows of their populations. They each have developed different ways to disrupt their peoples' domestic and international access to the public Internet. During the 2025 US/Zionist attack, Iran selectively shut down targeted services to disrupt protest organizing. This year, however, Iran forced a complete Internet blackout, according to Schneier, who views this as part of an Iranian strategy to promote two-tiered access to the Internet, one tier would be unfettered access for the regime officials and reliable supporters; everyone else gets highly-restricted access. According to the article: 'The current blackout is not an isolated panic reaction but a stress test for a long-term strategy, say advocacy groups—a two-tiered or “class-based” internet known as Internet-e-Tabaqati. Iran’s Supreme Council of Cyberspace, the country’s highest internet policy body, has been laying the legal and technical groundwork for this since 2009. 'In July 2025, the council passed a regulation formally institutionalizing a two-tiered hierarchy. Under this system, access to the global internet is no longer a default for citizens, but instead a privilege granted based on loyalty and professional necessity. The implementation includes such things as “white SIM cards“: special mobile lines issued to government officials, security forces, and approved journalists that bypass the state’s filtering apparatus entirely.' There was no discussion of US Internet policy, which the author may consider to be the gold standard or the least restrictive in the world. In the US and other over-developed capitalist countries, there are so many independently-operated connections between US and global operators that shutting down global access would require reengineering of the entire US network topology. Similarly, there are many "Internet points of presence" for internal access that these would similarly need to be re-engineered. But there has been no need to do that. Far less explicit controls are needed when capital dominates the Internet as it does in the US. The most visited sites, the most followed influencers, and the most used PC and smartphone apps are under the control of big capital, which also directs practically all the US tech industries. We should assume that US government police and spy agencies record our every use of the Internet. For over a quarter century, the US government has collected the "metadata" of who is contacting to what from where and for how long; unencrypted connections lets the US government access to the content of the message, but metadata alone is sufficient to construct a social network of who is talking who and when. That data alone is useful to federal police and intelligence agencies. Shutting off the Internet today would shut down the stream of surveillance data that is collected at each step along an Internet path, from Internet routers to the final social media and website destinations. Unfortunately, the left has learned to substitute social media for democratically-operated coalitions. Most left organization today cannot function without Internet apps and services. Some on the US left have talked about doing a "dry run shutdown" of Internet services for their organizations to test how well a groups can adapt when we are as unplugged as the people in today's Iran. But under today's conditions in the US, the capital-subsumed Internet is serving the system quite well. Mark -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#41117): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/41117 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/118329677/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/13617172/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
