cousins originated in europe. ♪ hello again. the headlines on al jazeera. at least one person has died in a hundred more missing in florida after part of a beachfront apartment building collapsed. rescue workers have pulled out dozens of survivors from beneath the rubble. it is unclear why the building plunged to the ground. >> we have dogs out in the middle of the night looking for survivors. but it was so dangerous and dark that they did one pass and got no hits. i know they were coming back in daylight, so i know they are out

there looking. the building has literally pancakes. there is just feet in between stories where there were 10 feet. that is heartbreaking, because it does not mean to me that we will be successful, as successful as we want to be to find people alive. >> more than 750 unmarked graves have been found at the site of the former residual school for indigenous children in canada. this is the second such discovery within a month russia has warned the u.k. will target any foreign warships testing its territorial claims off of crimea. british prime minister boris johnson says the u.k. does not recognize russia's annexation of crimea and is pursuing freedom of navigation in international waters. a group of republican and

democratic senators has announced a rare agreement to outline how to spend a trillion dollars on infrastructure, a plan championed by the president. while the president has hailed the agreement, it is not clear if enough votes can be secured in the full senate. there has been a standoff between protesters in the occupied west bank and palestinian police. demonstrators were trying to march following the death of an outspoken critic of mahmoud abbas. he died after being arrested and beaten by palestinian security forces. those are the headlines on al jazeera. "inside story" is next. thanks for watching. ♪

>> access denied. the u.s. seizes media rep -- media websites link to iran. wise is happening now? could it set a dangerous precedent for global censorship? this is "inside story." ♪ hello and welcome to the program. like many nations, iran has media outlets. but the u.s. is accused tehran of using them to spread misinformation. the u.s. justice department seized 33 sites linked to iranian state media. it blocks three websites operated by hezbollah.

some of the pages were soon back online under a different web address. tehran accused washington of double standards. >> what the u.s. did to her radiant websites was a breach of all principles of freedom of speech, which the u.s. is proud of. they restricted freedom of speech. we condemn this measure and we will use all our legal and international means to counter this policy. it is not constructive at a time when nuclear talks are underway in vienna. anchor: iran has just elected a new president. raisi has already ruled out meeting joe biden. diplomats have held six rounds of talks to revive the 2015 -- 2016 nuclear deal. -- 2015 nuclear deal. negotiators say they are close

to a breakthrough. let's bring in our guests. a professor of political science at surround university. a contributor at tech policy press. and an emeritus professor of international politics at the university of birmingham. warm welcome to you all. let's start with you. these seizures have come at a really critical and delicate time, a time when u.s. and iranian officials are trying to revive the 2015 nuclear deal. how strange is the timing of this to you? do you believe it has the possibility to derail the negotiations? guest: it is not a good sign. it does not show goodwill by the americans. also it is interesting to note the press has been reporting critically of the negotiations

in the past month. the very same day it was seized, it was seized, a broken exclusive new story with sources close to the negotiations saying the american team was not very flexible in the talks. and had been doing so for the last month. so i think the fact it was seized during this sensitive time might actually complicate the process of reaching a deal between iran and the u.s.. anchor: from your vantage point, what do you think about the timing? is this strange? what does the u.s. gain by doing this right now? could it be seen as a political tool you have more leverage in the negotiations going forward? guest: i do not think there is a direct connection between the biden administration's tactics and the seizures. i think it might sound strange, but you have two tracks of american policy. you have the policy which is to go into the nuclear talks in

vienna, very close to a resolution according to the iranians. on the other hand, you have a track in american policy which has been there for years and was ramped up by the trump administration, which is imposing sanctions. those sanctions include for example pressure on any iranian entity which is using a u.s. service or outlet, which is what the internet domains are. the treasury in this case simply was pursuing its own bureaucratic path. last october it seized almost 100 sites from tehran's revolutionary guards. they have moved on and said they will take other sites, whether they are iranian state outlets, outlets connected to houthis. i agree with the professor. it is counterproductive.

it does not deal with any issues. there are the nuclear talks. it could undermine them. it does not go with regional issues. and it does not deal with real issues about iranian politics and dissent. for example, when you talk about iran's own censorship, or its detention of iranian journalists. anchor: in the realm of information warfare, how significant is it what the u.s. has done here with these seizures and from your perspective does this set a new and more dangerous precedent comes to global censorship? guest: this is the latest, although in the information warfare that has been happening around the world as states are seeing new ways to exert their policies through internet governments -- governance. what we're seeing is the seizure of these domain names, these websites. the u.s. is trying to convey its

power and its foreign policy priorities, but i think one of the things we should also be thinking about is the fact that these so-called news websites or propaganda websites were aiming at providing information related to the nuclear talks. the u.s. is not only concerned about iran. it is also concerned about domestic perception of engagement with iran and about reentering the nuclear deal. i think you might be a little bit more complex. -- i think it might be a little bit more complex. in terms of censorship, we should be concerned when these types of approaches are taken in turning the domain name system into a tool of geopolitical information warfare, because that threatens the integrity of the internet and the global network that is the world wide web. we want to be careful about this. anchor: scott, i saw you nodding to what courtney was saying. you want to jump in?

guest: i they she is spot on. the wider issue is the president. -- precedent. will the u.s. do this with other countries? not only china or russia. you could do it with france, germany, the u.k.. two other countries who happen to have -- do other countries who happen to have websites registered with them, they exert pressure on them, as well? once you open up the door that a state can sort of bring the hammer down on access to the internet, whether it be by state or nonstate entities, you cannot close the door. this really cries out for something we can address perhaps in a separate program, the need for international cooperation overregulation of the internet. anchor: do you believe this opens up a new front in the global information war? do you think this has made things more dangerous?

has this escalated things? guest: it is a very dangerous move. something probably we could have expected from the trump administration, not from the biden administration, which present itself as a supporter of democracy and freedom of expression. with regard to the accusation of misinformation, the issue here is who gets to decide what is misinformation -- what is information and what is misinformation. if a government, any government including the iranian government or u.s. government, does this, it is the sensor of the internet. -- censor of the internet. the internet is somewhere people express themselves freely. regard to these news sites, -- in regard to these new sites, some of these are professional news channels with hundreds of people working in them. when you censor them, you essentially send a very bad signal, even to the iranian

people. on the one hand you are always talking about freedom of expression, having a variety of voices, but at the same time, if you censor voices you do not like, that would simply be completely wrong. again, it opens the door for a very dangerous path, i think. anchor: courtney, if the rationale behind this is to counter disinformation, you have to look at what happens next. a lot of these websites, they have been seized. and if the domains have been seized and the websites have been shut down, aren't the iranians, if they have not already, just going to be moving them to other domains and starting new websites that are excessive to everybody? there was an example in 2018, a site was seized and shut down in a move to a new domain. it was back online soon afterwards. how does this actually help counter disinformation? guest: that is exactly the

point. this is not the same level of censorship we see in iran, where it has blank up blocks in the country against the entire intranet. it has created portions of an internal intranet. this is an effort to deny iran access to u.s. services and to easily reaching u.s. audiences. the ip address still exists. those websites still exist. they just are not hosted on an american based no may name server. -- based domain name server. this is not new. the same thing happened with wikileaks a decade ago. the same approach was proposed in a law in the u.s. that would allow the u.s. to do the same thing for sites that regularly host copyright infringing material. but what we see with this is this expands how this dns approach is a used. but you also have to ask -- does

iran have a right to use all of these expressive services, whether we are thought -- whether we are talking about may name services, twitter and facebook accounts, to reach the global public to convey its messages, while it denies the same rights internally, forcing its own population to use virtual public network -- vpns, virtual private networks, or other circumvention technologies? let's not forget that denying the ability of the u.s. to maine -- u.s. domain name service provider to host and rainy and website is a far cry from the censorship that iran has with at least 15 journalists in jail, the murder of a journalist, the assassination of -- by the state. overt, rampant censorship. we also need to be careful about false equivalency here. anchor: scott, i would like to

ask you another question with regard to the timing of this move by the u.s. this comes days after braemar ec -- ebrahim raisi has been elected president. should this be construed as a message to him and his incoming administration? guest: as the professor pointed out, we do not know. we do not know if the two tracks i pointed to earlier arlington anyway. i would be surprised if they are meant to be a message from for a couple of reasons. first of all, raisi is there is a spokesperson for the supreme leader. his manufactured election was because he was a favorite of the supreme leader's office. all candidates i could have defeated him in the election were blocked by the guardian council. there is a message being sent to the supreme leader's office. i do not think they will be that

concerned about the seizure of the domains of these sites. as you have noted, the sites continue to operate and if anything it gives iran a sort of unwitting propaganda victory here. they can claim to be the victim of the awful americans, who are trying to oppress them and suppress their freedoms, when in fact, iran has basically been not only censoring, they have been doing so on a mass scale. i read press 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 is happening, which is that since the 2009 mass protest over the disputed elections in iran, press tv has been curbed, sharply curbed in what it can report and how it reports it. the guidelines are much stricter on it. if you try to shut down press tv completely, we don't get smart about what is happening.

it limits our opportunity for an informed dialogue between you and i and as part of the international community. anchor: what about those criticisms from iran -- towards iran from various rights groups that says iran does not have the credibility to go after the u.s. on this in a country with so much censorship? that they cannot cry foul? guest: i think it is true the iranian government will not be able to do anything, but the fact that the iranian government censors the internet does not make this ok. internet censorship is wrong anywhere, so if the iranian government does it, it's wrong, it's the same with the american government. we have to remember these were used with political messages. they were not involved with terrorism or drug trafficking or pornography or anything like that. the fact that you are actually

censoring a political message is a very bad move. at the same time, you have to remember there is a significant power difference here. the americans had a vast array of resources and capacity regarding the internet. these domains were.com domains. seizing them has blocked access all over the world, not just within the u.s. and that is different from the iranian government. the u.s. government is essentially censoring these websites all over the world, not just within the u.s. and i think that opens a door to maybe a bleak future, if they continue to do this with other countries, as well. anchor: courtney, iranian officials have said they will pursue this through legal channels. are there legal options available to them? guest: that's a great question. one of the things we saw several years ago is that icam, which

used to be -- the u.s. used to have control over the whole domain system, but they have really devolved authority over that. they have created several, many hundreds of new top-level domain names. press tv -- presstv.ir, which is hosted in iran, still accessible. it is correct that .com, .net, these high-level domain names run by u.s. registries and u.s.-based services, are being told that providing a service to iran counteracts the sanctions and that the services did not effectively register under the foreign agents registration act, fara. this is a lot more, gated because the u.s. is not trying to frame this as a speech thing.

they have censored one specific way to get the contact -- content, and they have put pressure on iran. this also raises questions about other platforms that allow iran and an iranian leader on sanctions lists access to their services to create accounts. whether or not this represents a massive escalation or kind of a one-off salvo, i think, remains to be seen. but it raises questions about whether a lot more services are going to be deciding whether they need to register as a foreign agent, whether they need to make it clear that they cannot provide these services. we do not know that yet. we do not know if the treasury department will pursue that or these private companies will decide that to be in compliance they will have to deny the service. that would represent an escalation of the information war.

4 -- anchor: scott, do you want to expand on the point she's making? guest: she's absolutely right. a blanket ban, even if you are enforcing sanctions information, really is not going to work. i think it will raise, and fact, wider international attention to this on how to deal with this. they are parallel. i would like to hear the reaction from the other guests. when we have had this information, and press tv does put out this information, it's not the majority of information, but there is some -- when, for example, you have russian outlets such as rt that have put out this information, they have lost their license to operate in certain countries as a broadcaster. press tv has offered it -- has lost its license to operate in the u.k. is a broadcaster due to some disinformation. i think that question as to whether there will be a system of licensing which will not be, as it were, this blanket ban,

but targeting certain sites if they are found to be pernicious -- that could be the next phase of what we look at, not only in terms of broadcast, but in terms of what is available. anchor: it looks like you might have wanted to add to what scott was saying. you want to jump in? guest: yes. i think that the fact that the .ir domain is still operating will not fix the issue, because the domain is not well-known. around the world people know the .com and .net domain. this is not a censor of some content on press tv. it is essentially shutting it down. when we talk about misinformation and disinformation from rt or other outlets, if there is an unbiased international organization that has decided, perhaps i could work. but when it is natural

government doing this, i think that is propaganda in itself. you're actually shutting down the voices you not like, where his freedom of expression means tolerating voices you do not like. -- whereas freedom of expression means tolerating voices you do not like. i think people should be able to access the information they like. especially when it comes to the internet, which is actually free. access to news, access to information for people all over the world. the biden administration can talk about democracy and freedom of expression, and country such as iran, and then censoring voices within iran that it does not like. it is a double standard. anchor: courtney, trying to counter disinformation and misinformation is so difficult in this day and age. is there a more effective way to do it? who does ultimately get to be the arbiter of this?

are there actual concrete steps that can be taken to really effectively counter the problem? guest: i mean, i think that is the million dollar question. the world is trying to figure it out. one of the things this whole incident illustrates, again, is the need for a pluralistic environment of dns providers, a social media platforms, of places where these things are hosted, because the fact is, yes, .com and .net are well-known, but the whole reason of creating new top-level domains and now doing that in local languages, etc., is to make that more accessible, to widen the array of entities that can have these domain name services. i think it just emphasizes the need that we need pluralism.

if, for example, when trump gets kicked off facebook and cries of censorship, if facebook was on a 3 billion person company with massive profits, maybe would not be so worried about him getting kicked off of one platform. it is really about the power of certain platforms that have this outsized influence in the internet regulatory sphere. but in terms of combating disinformation, let's be clear. iran is engaged in disinformation, targeting the u.s. to undermine its democracy and electoral process. that is why you saw several social media platforms kickoff accounts and content that were trying to spread disinformation and undermine the u.s. election last year. and also, iranian news organizations and state accounts are targeting journalists, iranian journalists, who are trying to report freely and

independently on the country. think about the bbc. they are targeting them with disinformation, online harassment campaigns. these are not just neutral reporting's on truth or whatever is happening with the latest developments on the nuclear talks. they are engaged in an information warfare targeting iranian citizens. anchor: scott we only have a minute left. let me ask you very simply. where does all this leave the u.s. and iranian relationship at the moment? is it as bad as it has been for a long time? is there any possibility it gets better? guest: in the short-term, where the rubber hits the road is the nuclear talks in vienna. the six rounds -- the eu pointed that the next round of talks could have an -- could have a deal. if there is a deal, all these

ripples we are talking about today will be superseded by this opening. that is winick it's complicated, because beyond that, you get -- that is when it gets complicated, because beyond that you have the regional issues. what about the syrian conflict? what about iraq and yemen? i think the nuclear pond off the chessboard is important. then we get to these nuclear -- then we get to these regional issues that will link politics and society and the internet. anchor: we have run out of time so we will have to leave our conversation there. thank you so much to all our guests. and thank you for watching. you can see this in all our previous programs any time by visiting our website. for further discussion, visit our facebook page. you can also join the conversation on twitter. from me and the whole team here, goodbye for now. ♪

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