[liberationtech] on the traceability of circumvention tools

[Mehdi Yahyanejad]

On Sep 16, 2010, at 1:04 PM, Behdad Esfahbod wrote:

> Thanks Mehdi for starting this thread.  I'll reply in more detail later, but
> wanted to single-out this part:
> 
> On 09/16/10 00:31, Mehdi Yahyanejad wrote:
>> However, circumvention tools are not illegal in Iran
> 
> I'm fairly sure (and I mean 99% sure) that this is incorrect.  I'll dig out
> the laws tonight.
> 

I had already verified this by looking it up in the Iranian law for cyber crimes. 
It has no mention of circumvention tools being illegal. In fact, it doesn't make the act of visiting blocked websites illegal. 
I haven't seen any reports of anyone getting arrested for using these tools. 

I don't know about the case for downloads. In many countries, there are laws against downloading child pornography or bomb making manuals. The case for downloads might not be covered by cyber crime laws and could fall in other parts of criminal law. 

One thing related to the circumvention tools is illegal: building them or distributing them. 
This has  been put into effect. A number of VPN resellers have been rounded up in the past.



> behdad