More than 65 journalists, bloggers and writers have been detained in Iran since last June’s disputed presidential polls and could be tried on charges of “spying” for the foreign media, a New York-based media rights group said Tuesday.

“The picture (in Iran) is pretty gloomy,” Robert Mahoney, deputy director of the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) told a press conference here as he presented a worldwide 2009 survey titled “Attacks on the Press in 2009″ and highlighted the detentions in Iran.

“The government has no respect for the privacy of individuals,” Bahari said. “The strategy of the Iranian government is to make everyone’s life, especially journalists’ lives, insecure.”

And in an alarming development, Mahoney said Iranian authorities were now using online social networks such as Facebook to target journalists and dissidents.

“The Iranian government is now using (Facebook) to go after and find dissidents and journalists, mining their data, seeing who their friends are,’ he added. “They are turning the technology that should liberate the press against the press. This is a worrying trend.”