Iranian ministers should be punished if they deliberately failed to censor online content by “trouble-makers and enemies”, said the head of the country’s cybercrime committee on Friday. On December 19, he told the country’s first conference on civil liberties: “We will not seek to filter social media. Our telecoms minister promises the people he will never touch the filtering button.”At 36, Telecoms Minister Mohammad-Javad Azari Jahromi was the youngest-ever cabinet member when he was appointed in August, and has stated his opposition to internet controls. They include bans on Facebook and Twitter, even though all the country’s top officials, including the office of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, regularly tweet. Instagram has been reinstated since the unrest calmed this week, but Jahromi said Wednesday that Telegram could only return if it blocked “terrorist” content.

Source: Pakistan Today January 05, 2018 14:48 UTC