Shahram Aghamir speaks with Nima Tootkaboni, who led an organization called Students for Equality and Freedom in Iran during the 2000s, about the current situation in Iran and how it compares to his experiences in the past.

Nima Tootkaboni is currently a Ph.D. student in Sociology at the Johns Hopkins University.

Courtesy of Voices of the Middle East & North Africa (VOMENA)

Hundreds of millions of dollars have been invested in facial recognition, surveillance tools and internet technology to monitor the Iranian population, block or slow down the internet, suppress dissent and cover up the regime's widespread violent suppression of recent protests. Amir Rashidi spoke with Malihe Razazan about this subject.

Amir Rashidi is an internet security and digital rights researcher. He has over 10 years of experience in digital security and rights in Iran. Rashidi is an expert on Iranian Internet censorship, cyber-attacks, and security trends. He has conducted tens of digital security audits, trainings, and rapid response actions for Iranian human rights defenders and organizations. He is in a unique position to assess the security risks and needs of Iranian organizations, especially those who are in contact with at-risk people, such as activists and journalists. Rashidi worked as the internet security and digital rights researcher at the Center for Human Rights in Iran, where he conducts in-depth research, data collection and analysis on internet security and access in Iran, internet policy and infrastructure, and the tools and methods of state-sponsored censorship and hacking.

Courtesy of Voices of the Middle East & North Africa (VOMENA).