the government distributes free rations to the poor, but the health doesn't reach everyone. sony says she doesn't have the ration card that's necessary to get the food. her children, including 9 year old belt him, are only attending classes because of the kindness of a few young people who are teaching for free. sony wants sure, but to learn to cook and clean and case have free education stops. and she'll have to find work. elizabeth moran and al jazeera new denny. ah, we help us. they are, and these are the top stories, at least one person's died, but nearly a 100 fill on accounts for in florida. after part of a beach front apartment building collapse near miami whiskey workers have pulled dozens of survivors from the rebel. we have dogs out in the middle of the night, looking for survivors in the,

in the rubble. but it was just so dangerous and so dark that they made one pass and they did not get any hits. i know that they were coming back at daylight, so i know they're out there right now looking. the problem is the building has literally pancakes. it has gone down and i mean there's, there's just feet in between stories where there were 10 feet. that is, it is heartbreaking because it does it mean to me that we're going to be successful as successful as we would want to be to find people alive? now the headlines china has approved a government reshuffle in hong kong. the more critics, they will only tighten beijing's security cracked down on the territory. the police chief, chris tang will become security secretary, his predecessor john lee has been promoted to chief secretary. the 1st person from a policing background to assume that office. since hong kong was handed over to china, back in 1997 european union leaders have rejected

a proposal from germany and france to hold talks with russia vladimir putin chunk langler. merkle admitted, it was a difficult discussion. some leaders expressed concern over what they called moscow's aggressions. us police officer dirt showed when the man convicted of the murder of george floyd is due to be sentenced. later on friday, in 2027, put his knee on for his neck for 9 and a half minutes during an arrest. he's the 1st white police officer to be found guilty of murdering a black man in minnesota. and more than half a 1000000 people in australia's biggest city have been put under lockdown sydney's baffling and outbreak of the highly infectious delta variance of coven 19. there are 65 cases in the so called bondai cluster site up last week. restrictions across the state of new south wales have been extended until next month. they, you go, you're up to date with the headlines here on out as they are. the latest edition of inside story is next. india has been devastated by the coven 19

pandemic. the one on 18th makes the front line work risking their lives to treat the stage. and very the day one out to 0. ah, ah, ah ah, ah, ah, ah, the access denied the u. s. these is media websites linked to iran that ron calls it a breach of press freedom. so why is it happening now? and could it set a dangerous precedent for global censorship? this is inside stored.

ah, ah. hello and welcome to the program. i'm how the jim jones, like many nations iran has media out with broadcasting news to the world through that country's perspective. but the united states has accused to ron of using them to spread misinformation. the us justice department seized 33 sites linked to iran, state media such as the english language press t, v at a channel used by humans her with the rebels. it also blocked 3 websites, operated bike type hezbollah and iranian back group in iraq. but some of the pages were soon back online under a different web address. different accused washington of double standards in the me check on recon jerome the what the us did to iranian websites was

a breach of all principles of freedom of speech which the united states is proud of . they restricted freedom of speech. we condemn this measure. we will use all our legal and international means to counter this wrong policy of the united states. it is not a constructive move at a time when nuclear talks are underway in vienna. the seizures are happening at a sensitive time between the 2 nations. iran had just elected a new president. abraham racy has already ruled out meeting president joe biden. and in vienna, diplomats from the us, europe, china, russia and iran have held 6 rounds of talks to revive the 2015 nuclear deal. negotiators say they're close to a breakthrough. the. all right, let's bring our guests into iran homage. musashi is professor of political science at ron university. in washington d. c. courtney ranch is a contributor at tech policy press and in birmingham scott lucas isn't meritus

professor of international politics at university of birmingham. a warm welcome to you all had let me start with you today. the seizures they've come at a really critical and delicate time a time when us and iranian officials are trying to revive the 2015 nuclear deal. how strange is the timing of this to you and do you believe that it has the possibility to derail the negotiations? but i mean, it's definitely not a good sign. it doesn't show any good well by the americans. also, it's interesting to note that prestige had been reporting very critically of the negotiations in the past month. in fact, the very same day that it was sees, it broke an exclusive news story with sources close to the negotiations, saying that the merry can team was not very flexible in the talks that had been doing so repeatedly in the past month. so i think the fact that it was,

sees during this very sensitive time might actually complicate the process of reaching the deal between iran in the us. it's got it from your vantage point. what do you think about the timing? i mean, is this strange and also what does the u. s. gain by doing this right now? could it be seen simply as a political tool to have more leverage in the negotiations going forward? i don't think there's a direct connection between the, by the ministrations tactics and the seizures. i think it might sound a bit strange, but you have to traps in american policy. you have the policy right now, which of course is to go into the nuclear tops and be and what you're very close to a resolution according to the audience, including your offering entry to the deal, lifting of american sanctions. and iran returned to compliance. on the other hand, you've got a tracking american policy, which has been there for years and was wrapped up by the tropic ministration,

which is imposing sanctions. and those sanctions include, for example, pressure on any iranian entity which is using us service or us out. we just want the internet domains are. and so i think the treasury, in this case, simply was pursuing its own bureaucratic path. last october, it seized almost a 100 sites linked to ron's revolutionary guards, and they simply moved up and down on their bureaucratic paths that ok, now we're going to take sites linked to what they call this information. whether it be iranian state outlet states, to tease or to allies such as iraq sought to post for law. that said, i agree with professor most of the it's counterproductive, it's counterproductive because it, it doesn't deal with any issues that aren't there in the nuclear talks. i think in fact it could undermine them. it doesn't deal with regional issues and it doesn't deal with their real issues that are there about iranian politics and the sense, for example, whether you talk about it runs own censorship of websites. the engineering of the

presidential election last week, or indeed as detention for wrong in journalist courtney in the realm of information warfare. how significant is it? what the u. s. has done here with the seizures. and from your perspective, there's this set a new and more dangerous precedent when it comes to global censorship. well, i think this is the latest salvo in the information warfare that's been happening kind of around the world of states are seeing new ways to exert their foreign policy priorities through internet governance. and what we're seeing is what the seizure of the domain name system, you know, these websites that they're in, the u. s. is trying to convey its power and its foreign policy priorities. but i think that one of the things that we should also be thinking about is the fact that these, you know, so called news websites or propaganda websites. we're aiming act providing information related to the nuclear talks. and the u. s. is not only concerned about

iran, it's also concerned about domestic perception of engagement with iran and about re entering the nuclear deal. so i think it might be a little bit more complex. we don't know whether these are separate trucks or whether they're related. but in terms of censorship, we should, i think, be concerned when these types of approaches are taken and turning the d n as the domain name system into a tool geopolitical information warfare. because that threatens the integrity of the internet and the global network. that is the world wide web. so we want to be very careful about this. scott. i saw you nodding along somewhat. courtney was saying there, did you want to jump in? i think dr. rush is absolutely spot on, and that is the wider issue here beyond us in your, on is the president this such ok, fine. yours happens to be able because the domains, your registry. you asked to exert pressure on your, on. does it do so with other countries? not only china, russia, if they're perceived to be american photos,

you could do so with france, germany with the u. k. do other countries who happen to have workplace registered with them? do they now exert pressure on them as well? you know, the thing about taking a stop like this is once you open up the door, that a state can sort of bring the hammer down on access to the internet, you know, whether it be by state entities or non state entities. you can't close that door. i think this really cries out for something we can address, perhaps a separate program, which is the need for international cooperation over regulations. how many do you believe that this opens up a new front in the global information war? and do you think that this has made things more dangerous as this escalated things? i think it's definitely a dangerous move. something probably we could have expected from the trumpet ministration, but not from the bite and administration which presents itself as a supporter of democracy and freedom of expression. now with regard to the

accusation of misinformation, the issue here is who gets to decide what is information? and what is misinformation? if a government, any government, including the iranian government or the u. s. government does this, then it's simply the center of the internet. and the internet is somewhere where people could express themselves pre the it's been like this forever. and with regard to the new site, i mean, especially with press tv and i'll all and these are you a professional news channels with hundreds of people working in them? and when you sensor them, it essentially sends a very bad signal even to the uranian people. because on the one hand, you're always talking about freedom of expression having a variety of voices. but at the same time, if you sensor voices that you don't like, then that would simply be completely wrong. and again, it opens the door for a very dangerous path. i think courtney,

if the rationale behind this is to counter dis information. you know, you have to look at what happens next, which is that, you know, a lot of these websites, if they've been seized, if the domains have been seized and the websites have been shut down. i mean, aren't the iranians, if they haven't already, just going to be moving then to other domains and starting new websites that are accessible to everybody. there was the example of foreign news agency, 2018. you know, that was seized. that was shut down and then it moved to a new domain. it was back on line soon afterwards. so how does this move actually help counter disinformation? that's exactly the point, right? this is not the same level of censorship that we see in iran, where it has, you know, blanket blocks in a country against the entire internet and portions of it and has created there been internal internet. but this is an effort to deny iran access

to us services and to easily reaching us audiences. the i p address still exists. those websites still exist. they're just not hosted on an american based donate domain name server. so the same thing is not new. the same thing happened with wiki leaks over a decade ago. the same approach was the proposed in the law in the us that would allow the us to do the same thing for sites that regularly host copyright infringing material. but what we see with this is this expand how this deanna approaches views. but the fact is, you also have to ask, does iran have a right to use all of these expressive services, whether we're talking about domain names serviced, twitter accounts, facebook accounts to reach the global public to conveyance messages while it denies the same rights internally forcing its own population to use virtual

public bpn, virtual private networks, or other anti, you know, other circumvention technologies. and meanwhile, like let's not forget that, denying the ability of a us domain names service provider to host an iranian web site is a far cry from the censorship that iran house, with at least 15 journalists in jail. the murder of a journalist, the assassination by the state and you know, overt ramp and censorship. so i think we also need to be careful about kind of false equivalency here. scott, if i might, i'd like to ask you another question with regard to the timing of this move by the us. because this comes just days after abraham racy was elected president in iran, he's the incoming president. the u. s. is accused him of human rights abuses. they haven't post sanctions on him in the past. should this in any way be construed as

a message to him and his incoming administration? i think his daughters pointed out where we don't know what other the 2 tracks are from earlier are linked in any way. i'd be surprised if the she meant to be a message tracy, for a couple of reasons. first of all, right, you see is there as effectively as a spokes person for the supreme later he, his manufactured a watch was very much because he was the favorite of the supreme leaders office. all other candidates that could have defeated the election were band, were actually blocked by the guardian council. you know, so there's a message being sent here. it wouldn't be the right. you see, it would be to the supreme leaders office. and i don't think that the supreme leaders office is going to be that concerned about the seizure of the domains of these sites. because again, as you've noted, the sites continue to operate. and if anything, it gives iran, i think, in the past, sort of an unwitting propaganda victory here, because they can claim to be the victim of the, of the awful americans who are trying to process and suppress their freedoms. when

in fact, again, it's dr. rach pointed out, you know, iran has been basically not only a century they've been doing so on a mass scale. and indeed if we were to talk about cross tv, you know, i repress tv every day. i read it every day to try to understand what is going on from the perspective of the iranian state. and also to really track what has happened, which is that since the 2009 mass protest over the disputed elections in iran or prostate has been curved, sharply curved and what it can report and how it reports that in other words, the guidelines are much strict on it, if you try to shut down prestige the completely, we don't get smart about what is happening with, with press tv, but with other sites and that limits or opportunity for them for dialogue between you and i, and as part of the international community. hm. and what about those criticisms of iran from various governments and various right groups who say, you know, iran doesn't really have a way to credibly go after the u. s. for this in

a country where there is so much censorship, that you know, they cannot cry foul right now because of these moves that have been taken by the us. i think it's very true that probably the uranian government won't be able to do anything. but the fact that the uranium government sensors the internet doesn't make this ok, i mean internet, censorship is wrong anywhere. so if the running government does it, it's wrong. it's the same with the american government. also we have to remember that these word use websites with political messages. they weren't involved. busy in any sort of terrorism or drug trafficking were pornography or anything like that . so the fact that you're actually censoring a political message is, i think, is a very bad move. at the same time, we have to remember that there is a significant power difference here. the americans have a vast array of resources and capacity regarding the internet. now

these domains were dot com domain and essentially seizing them has blog access all over the world, not just within the united states, and that's different from the iranian government. so the u. s. government is essentially censoring these websites all over the world, not just within the united states. and i think it are open again a door to maybe at the future if they continue to do this with other countries as well. coordinate. iranian officials have said that they're going to pursue this through legal channels. are there legal options available to them with regard to this? i think that's a great question because one of the things we saw several years ago is that i can the internet corporation for sign names and numbers which used to be, you know, us, the us used to have control over the whole domain system. well, they've really devolved authority over that. they've created several, many, hundreds of new top level domain names. so press t, v dot i r,

which is host in iran still accessible. you know, it's correct that now dot com dot net these hi top level domain names that are hosted and run by us registries. and us based services are being told that providing a service to iran counteract the sanctions and that the services did not effectively register under the foreign agents registration act known as farrah. so i think this is a lot more complicated because the u. s. is trying to frame does not of the speech thing because they haven't actually censored the content. they've centered, you know, one specific way of getting to that content. and they put pressure on the services providing you know, that provide those services to iran saying, you know, this is not acceptable. i think we have to, you know, this also raises questions about other platforms that allow iran and iranian

leaders who may be on thanks. and list access to their services to create accounts, et cetera. so whether or not this represents a massive escalation or, you know, kind of a one off salvo i think remains to be seen. but it certainly raises questions about whether a lot more services are going to be deciding whether they need to register of the, for an agent, whether they need to make it clear that they can't provide these services. and we don't know that yet. we don't know if the treasury department is going to pursue that, or if these private companies will decide that they're a debt to be in compliance, they're going to have to deny the service and that would represent a significant escalation in the information war. scott, i saw you are reacting to some would. courtney was saying, did you want to expand on the point she was making? right. i think in other words, courtney is absolutely right that you know, just simply isn't. were a blanket ban up even if you're supposed to enforce you've sanctions information really isn't going to i think work and i think will raise in fact,

wide or international attention to this on how to deal with it. i think there's actually parallel, which i'll put out to you. i'd like to hear the reactions, the other guests on this. and that is when we have had this information and preston, he does put out this information times. it's not the majority of information on the site, but there is some. but when, for example, you've had russian outlets such as r t that have put out this information. they have lost their license to operate in certain countries as a broadcast. and the press tv has lost its license to operate in the united kingdom, algebra, castro, supposedly because of some just information. i think that question of whether there will be a system of licensing that will be adopted by various states, which will not be as it were, this blanket sweeping ban. but as it were targeting certain sites, if they're found to be pernicious, this information, misinformation and propaganda, that may be the next phase of what we're looking at, not only in terms of the broadcast, but in terms of what is available and how might it look to me like you might have wanted to add to what scott was saying that did you want to jump in as well?

yes. so i think the fact that the dot i r domain is still operating, i don't think it's going to fix the issue because the dot i or domain is not well known to anywhere in the world. people know the dot com and dot net domain. and this is actually not a sensor of just some content of the press tv website. it's essentially shutting it down for the international audience. now when we're talking about misinformation in this information from outlets such as r, t or other outlets, if there is like a unbiased international organization, decided then perhaps that could work. but when it's the natural government doing this, i think that is propaganda in itself because you're actually shutting down the voices, you don't bite. whereas freedom of expression means tolerating voice. if you don't like, what is it that these websites are saying that is so wrong?

i think people should be able to access the information they like, especially when it comes to the internet, which is actually freed access to news, an access to information for people all over the world. so divide in administration can talk about democracy and freedom of expression in countries such as iran and then censoring voices within your own that it doesn't bite. it's definitely a double standard. courtney, i mean, trying to counter disinformation and misinformation is so difficult in this day and age. is there a more effective way to do what i mean? who, who does ultimately get to be the arbiter of this? and are there actual concrete steps that can be taken, you know, to really effectively counter the problem? i mean, i think that is the $1000000.00 question that the world is trying to figure out. i mean, one of the things that this whole incident illustrates, again,

is the need for a pluralistic, you know, environment of, di, enough providers of social media platforms, of places where these things are hosted. because the fact is yes, dot com and dot net are more well known. but the whole reason of creating new top level domains and now doing in local languages, etc, is to make that more accessible to, to widen up the array of entities that can have these, these, you know, domain names, services you can provide these services. so i think it just emphasizes the need that we need pluralism. you know, if, if, for example, when trump gets kicked off facebook, you know, cries of censorship. if facebook wasn't at 3000000000 person company with massive profits, maybe we wouldn't be so worried about getting kicked off of one platform. so it's really about the, i think, the, the power of, you know,

certain platforms that have this outside influence in the internet regulatory sphere. but in terms of combating disinformation, i mean, let's, let's be clear. iran is engaged in disinformation, targeting the us to undermine its democracy. in the electoral process, that's why you saw several social media platforms take off accounts and content that were trying to spread disinformation and undermine us election last year. and then also, you know, the iranian news organizations and state accounts are using our targeting journalists, iranian journalists who are trying to report freely and independently on the country. think about the b b. c. think about my former colleague young and a resign on adjacent rely on they are targeting them with different from an online harassment campaign. so these are not just neutral reporting, you know, on true on truth or whatever. it's happening with the latest developments in the

near talk. they are also aged in information warfare that are also targeting iranian right. isn't scott, we've only got about a minute left. let me just ask you very simply, i mean, where it is all this, leave the u. s. and iranian relationship at the moment, i mean, is it? is it as bad as it has been for a long time? is there any, any, any possibility that it gets better? i think in the short term where the rubber hits the road is those nuclear talks and be enter. the 6 round ended last week, and when it did, not only the iranians with european union went to the idea that in the next round of talks, which should take place in the next couple weeks. there might be a deal. and if there's a deal, you know, all these ripples including what we're talking about today, they'll be superseded by this opening. all right, we've got the nuclear deal, but that's when it gets again complicated, because beyond that you get back to the regional issues. so which intercept with the seizures? you know, what about the syrian conflict? remote the iran in the u. s. is involved. what about iraq? what about yemen?

in other words, i think the nuclear power off the chest boards important. then we get to these regional issues that will link politics and society and indeed the, i'm not, all right, but we have run out of time, so we're going to have to leave our conversation there. thank you so much, oliver. i guess how much we, savvy courtney raj and scott lucas and thank you to for watching. you can see this and all of our previous programs again, anytime by visiting our website 0 dot com. and for further discussion, go to our facebook page at facebook dot com forward slash ha inside story. you could also, during the conversation on twitter, our handle is at ha, inside story for me, how much room and whole team here, bye for now. the challenging the way mainstream media reports the news. stories like these should be easy pickings for political reporters out of power to account how it is in journalism is breaking the destruction of civilian property. this is all evident

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