Internet Butcher

Amir
Nazemi

The "whitelisting" idea, which gained significant traction during Amir Nazemy's tenure as head of the Information Technology Organization, represented a fundamental shift in Iran's filtering architecture. In this model, instead of blocking "unauthorized" sites (blacklisting), the default state is to block the entire global internet, allowing access only to "approved" websites. This initiative began in 2019 with official letters sent to companies asking them to list the foreign websites essential for their operations—a move critics described as the final step toward fully implementing the "National Information Network" and severing free access to the global web.

While Nazemy claims these actions were intended to mitigate economic damage and demonstrate the business community's dependence on international internet to security agencies, digital rights activists view him as a primary architect of "tiered internet" infrastructure. Projects initiated under his leadership, such as "Abr Arvan" (Cloud Iran), effectively provided the technical framework for the government to decouple domestic traffic from global traffic, enabling total internet shutdowns during crises without disrupting essential government services.

Amir Nazemy has since left Iran and is currently working as a researcher at Loughborough University in the United Kingdom. His departure and relocation to a Western academic environment have sparked widespread backlash from social media users and internet freedom activists. Many argue that his history of managing restrictive internet structures in Iran contradicts the values of free access to information, maintaining that he should be held accountable for his executive role in extensive internet blackouts, most notably during the November 2019 protests.