Like many women in Iran, Darya is used to feeling under surveillance. Yet in recent months, the 25-year-old finance analyst from northern Tehran says that she never knows who could be watching her every move.
She says she has received messages from the police before warning her of suspected violations of the country’s strict hijab laws, but last November she was sent an SMS message containing her car registration plate that stated the exact time and place that she had been recorded driving without her head properly covered. Next time it happened, the SMS warned, her car would be impounded.
“It was really unsettling,” she says.
“When you receive these messages you don’t know who has reported you – and the police never seem to have proof of the violation.”
After widespread outcry last year, the Iranian authorities said they would suspend enforcement of the new, strict, hijab laws, which impose draconian penalties – including fines and prison sentences – on women found in breach of the mandatory dress code.
Yet women in Iran are reporting that state surveillance has been steadily increasing.
Last week, the UN’s fact-finding mission reported on Iran’s increasing reliance on digital surveillance such as its Nazer mobile application, a state-backed reporting platform that allows citizens and police to report women for alleged violations.
The app is accessible only via Iran’s state-controlled National Information Network. Members of the public can apply to become “hijab monitors” to get the app and begin filing reports, which are then passed to the police.
According to the UN mission, the app has recently been expanded to allow users to upload the time, location and licence plate of a car in which a woman has been seen without a hijab.
It can also now be used to report women for hijab violations on public transport, in taxis and even in ambulances.
According to the UN report, aerial surveillance using drones has also been used at events such as the Tehran international book fair and on the island of Kish, a tourist destination, to identify women not complying with the hijab law.
The government has also increased online monitoring, blocking women’s Instagram accounts for non-compliance of hijab laws, and issuing warnings via text message. CCTV surveillance and facial-recognition technology has also been installed at universities. “This ‘digital repression’ is not only stifling academic freedom but also causing increased psychological stress among students,” says a spokesperson for the Amirkabir Newsletter, an Iranian student media group.
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Skylar Thompson, deputy director of Human Rights Activists in Iran, says the app represents a dangerous escalation in the regime’s digital surveillance efforts. “Not only does this app reinforce gender-based discrimination and empower a culture of fear, but its flaws also raise serious concerns about wrongful arrests and detentions.”
Last July Arezoo Badri, a 31-year-old mother of two, was shot and paralysed when a police officer opened fire on her vehicle in Noor city, Mazandaran province, after her car was reportedly flagged for a hijab violation.
Yet Darya, like many others, is resolute in her defiance. “If you walk through the streets, you’ll see that many of us have stopped wearing the hijab despite these intimidation tactics,” she says.
“The money they are wasting on this surveillance could actually help some people survive.”
