Among all the countries in the Middle East and Persian Gulf, Iran has the most Internet users. For the past six months, Iran’s young population has used this effective medium as a tool for the opposition movement to organize events and demonstrations.  Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society says Iran is home to one of the world’s richest and most varied blogospheres, with major clusters for secularist and reformist politics as well as conservative politics, for “CyberShia” religious discussion as well as Persian poetry appreciation.

At the same time, the OpenNet Initiative says Iran has one of the world’s most extensive Net filtering systems, on par with China’s. Iranians, however, manage to get around the filters by using proxy servers. Many major Iranian news sources such as Voice of America and Radio Farda—both funded by the U.S. government—make daily announcements informing their viewers and listeners how to use proxies.

In order to combat the use of Internet by the opposition, the authorities have purchased sophisticated technology from Western companies to filter undesired information and monitor the activities of Iran’s 23 million Internet users. This has caused a backlash in Iran against these companies, chief among them are Finland’s Nokia and Germany’s Siemens. The Wall Street Journal provided some good information on this topic outlining the purchases made by the Iranian authorities and how these new sophisticated technologies help them monitor the activities of the opposition.