Iran’s Online Crackdown Prompts Smuggling of Starlink Kits

Iran’s government has throttled down bandwidths, stepped up filtering of social-media sites and taken down virtual private networks, according to analysts and reports by nongovernment organizations. It has also sought to intercept Starlink and other satellite internet devices, which are illegal in Iran. The number of Iranians with access to Starlink is a tiny fraction of the millions who use virtual private networks and other platforms to evade government restrictions, users say. But the terminals provide internet access free from the government’s controls, making them especially useful for protesters seeking to send video files and communicate securely. Social-media apps have been widely used to organize and share footage of the protests. One of the main efforts to get Starlink gear into Iran is by a group of Iranian-American activists and tech entrepreneurs in California, who began making plans to buy and ship the devices only days after the protests broke out.