Internet Massacre by the Supreme Council of Cyberspace
The internet massacre by the Supreme Council of Cyberspace is underway. They say parts of the Protection Plan, titled ‘Duties, Authorities, and Composition of the Supreme Commission for the Regulation of Cyberspace,’ have been approved by the Supreme Council of Cyberspace and implemented. This is a commission that Mohammad Javad Azari Jahromi, the former Minister of Communications, strongly opposed and prevented from being executed during his tenure. However, with the new government of Raisi and a new minister, it has been easily approved.
In his interview with the Seke podcast, Azari Jahromi mentioned that members of councils like the Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution or the Supreme Council of Cyberspace are veterans and experts on the topics they decide on, and they make policies on issues they neither master nor are accountable to the people. He said that no matter how much a minister shouts that the work is wrong, it is useless. In the meetings of the Supreme Council of Cyberspace in the previous government, we even got into scuffles with some individuals, but it was of no use because, in the end, a resolution comes out of that session that the minister cannot be accountable for.
That real member is not accountable at all. When you say that, considering the market situation, your decision is wrong, you are tolerated for a while, but after some time, you become an undesirable element in that group, most of whom have come through an appointive process, not elective. On the other hand, you see that this policymaking body has entered the realm of regulation and execution.
The structure and powers of this body have moved towards reducing the powers of the government. The government does not have authority but is held accountable. He points out that institutions like the Supreme Council of Cyberspace have serious conflicts of interest and friction with developmental programs. He says you do not see an economist in the Supreme Council of Cyberspace.
Elimination of Stakeholders
Following the recent resolution of the Supreme Council of Cyberspace, we will witness the formation of a commission that will act as the regulator of cyberspace regulators. This is perhaps the most important and central part of the controversial Protection Plan. The regulator of regulators, whose nature, duties, and powers have now been redefined with this resolution, is ready to take on this key role. The absence of experts, knowledgeable individuals, and representatives of the private sector in a council that is supposed to lead the regulatory and governance discussions in the country is the most significant change made in the current composition of the Supreme Commission for Regulation.
The most important change in the composition of the commission members is that in the previous resolution, four real members were selected from among specialists and experienced individuals upon the proposal of the head of the National Cyberspace Center and the approval of the Supreme Council of Cyberspace. However, in the current resolution, while reducing the number of these members to two, the condition of being members of the Supreme Council of Cyberspace has also been considered for these members, and the presence of knowledgeable individuals or private sector representatives in the sessions of the Supreme Commission will be without voting rights.
Depriving these individuals of voting rights indicates the minimal influence of the council’s decisions and resolutions from knowledgeable individuals and private sector representatives. The possibility for 4 real members who could previously be present with voting rights from among specialists and experienced individuals in this council has practically been completely eliminated. In other words, the presence of these individuals in the council is not mandatory, it is optional, and it only matters in terms of consultation.
Azari Jahromi said in that podcast that what he had done within the government was to entrust the selection of these three knowledgeable members to the private sector. We said let the computer guild system introduce these three members themselves. They wanted to create a regulatory body for us that I stopped and said we have this commission. Now with Jahromi gone, the hands of the Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution are open to eliminate the stakeholders of this plan.
Internet Massacre
Azari Jahromi points out that in the Protection Plan, the goals of the internet massacre are covertly present. He says the first criticism of this plan is that it reduces the people’s right to have a say in major decisions. People vote for the government to create and implement policies, but with such plans, you weaken the foundation of democracy, meaning decisions that the government should make are handed over to a commission that is not derived from the people’s vote.
The Supreme Council of Cyberspace should remain a policymaker and leave the regulatory role to the government, but now it has entered the realm of regulation without being derived from the people’s vote. Independence from the government means involving stakeholders, not handing over the work to a few oligarchs. According to Azari Jahromi, the individuals in this policymaking body have powers that do not match their responsibilities. People who vote expect changes in certain policies, but the government is not the active decision-maker in these bodies and does not have the majority in voting. It is just the head of this body, and in the end, the people’s votes have less impact on policy determination.
IRIB Behind the Supreme Council of Cyberspace
Azari Jahromi criticized the performance of the Supreme Council of Cyberspace, saying that the members of the Supreme Council of Cyberspace and the Cultural Revolution should be placed side by side. The multitude of decision-making bodies and their authority in approving documents is such that they are a single entity. In the morning, they sit in a session of the Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution and make a decision, and in the afternoon, in a session of the Supreme Council of Cyberspace, they make another decision.
When we wanted to develop 5G, we faced an attack in the Supreme Council of Cyberspace session, asking why you did this. This is against the policies that you should not increase the bandwidth. He adds that the majority in this council are individuals who have not been appointed through an elective mechanism, and you even realize that an institution like IRIB plays a significant role there. The IRIB’s perspective is inherently opposed to the development of cyberspace, thinking that the entire cyberspace is media.
He says they believed that because the content domain is slow, communications should turn down the wick. Our argument was that if we turn down the wick, many other sectors will go to sleep. There is a correlation between the growth of bandwidth in the country and the growth of the gross domestic product. Our goal as the Ministry of Communications is the economic growth of the country. You cannot create competition in all sectors but create a monopoly in the content production sector and say it must go under the supervision of IRIB, which itself is facing numerous issues in its daily affairs.