The Iranian regime has developed, with the assistance of European telecommunications companies, one of the world’s most sophisticated mechanisms for controlling and censoring the Internet, allowing it to examine the content of individual online communications on a massive scale, reports the WSJ.

Interviews with technology experts in Iran and outside the country say Iranian efforts at monitoring Internet information go well beyond blocking access to Web sites or severing Internet connections.

The Iranian government appears to be engaging in a practice often called deep packet inspection, says the WSJ, which enables authorities to not only block communication but to monitor it to gather information about individuals, as well as alter it for disinformation purposes, according to these experts.

The monitoring capability was provided, at least in part, by a joint venture of Siemens AG, and Nokia, the Finnish cellphone company, in the second half of 2008, Ben Roome, a spokesman for the joint venture, confirmed.

The “monitoring center,” installed within the government’s telecom monopoly, was part of a larger contract with Iran that included mobile-phone networking technology, Mr. Roome said. “If you sell networks, you also, intrinsically, sell the capability to intercept any communication that runs over them,” said Mr. Roome.

Nokia denies any help with Deep Packet Inspection:

Nokia Siemens Networks has provided Lawful Intercept capability solely for the monitoring of local voice calls in Iran. Nokia Siemens Networks has not provided any deep packet inspection, web censorship or Internet filtering capability to Iran.

Robb Topolski (above), a network engineer in Portland, Ore., determined that Comcast used DPI technology to identify packets coming from peer-to-peer applications, then secretly blocked those packets (pdf).

According to Tim Berners-Lee, “The Internet in general has and deserves the same protection as paper mail and telephone. In fact, you could argue that it needs it more, as it carries more or our lives and is more revealing than our phone calls or our mail”.

In other news, Raytheon announced it will use speech technologies provider Loquendo to integrate their Voice Security Library (LVSL) into the company’s Redwolf Collection System. Raytheon’s Redwolf provides government intelligence agencies with a one-stop solution that collects, stores and analyzes digital audio telecommunications, Internet traffic and VoIP communications.

The Loquendo Voice Security Library filters data and identifies voices, languages and the gender of the speaker so that intelligence agencies no longer need to take a number of recordings to uncover data. Loquendo Automatic Speaker Verification interfaces with any kind of DB architecture.

Redwolf supports post-processing operations such as call data analysis, call content playback, call mapping, geo location, link analysis, and pen register database functions which turn information into actionable intelligence.

Narus, “the leader in real-time traffic intelligence”, protects and manages the largest service provider and government IP networks around the world including KDDI (Japan), Raytheon, Telecom Egypt, Reliance (India), Saudi Telecom, US Cellular, Pakistan Telecom Authority and many more, according to their website. The NSA’s “secret room“, at major switching points, allegedly uses Narus gear to intercept and analyze IP traffic from a variety of networks.

The Baltimore Sun thinks expanded wiretap powers should be rejected. The House intelligence committee late Thursday approved measures to strengthen oversight of the National Security Agency. Sen. Dianne Feinstein said that as far as she knows, the NSA has not committed flagrant violations of the rules governing surveillance of American e-mails and phone calls.

“You don’t have to look far into history to know that when the government, any government, is given secret authorities, that those authorities are ultimately abused,” said Mike German, a former FBI agent who is now policy counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. “You don’t even have to attribute bad motives to anyone. In an intelligence officer’s zeal to protect the country, they often will overstep their bounds.”

Related Dailywireless articles include; SMS: Revolution Now, Shape Shifters in Paris, Geosync Spies, Senate Investigates Ad Tracking , Domestic Spying Bill Approved, Tankman Goeth and Deep Packet Inspection Explained.