Google says it has found evidence the Iranian government is spying on its citizens. The tech giant suspects the Iranian government is trying to head off any political unrest by looking at citizens' email correspondence.
Iran’s economy is likely to be a major election issue, as the country faces crippling international sanctions, 30 percent unemployment, and soaring inflation.
There will be new penalties for financial institutions that deal in Iranian currency, which should cause the rial to devalue further. But new sanctions on the country's car industry could be felt more acutely.
As the European Union prepares to impose a ban on natural gas imports from Iran, the country's currency has already fallen sharply because of international sanctions.
Today police in Iran fought with money lenders and other protesters in front of the country's central bank. Inflation in Iran is running at a shocking clip: the Iranian Rial is down 25% against the dollar in just the past week.
With all this information technology at our disposal, it's striking how getting to the truth of a matter can still be so tough. Two tech stories from opposite sides of the world today remind us how even in 2012 the flow of information is still tightly controlled.
Over the weekend, Iran's government announced it was turning off Google. Officials also said plans are moving ahead to place the country's web users on a walled off intranet — as opposed to the global Internet the rest of us use.
