In order to allegedly contain potential uprisings, the nation of Iran is cutting off Internet access.

The Iranian government has reportedly begun blocking access to the Internet. A post on Hacker News explains that since yesterday, it’s been difficult to impossible to get online. “Since Thursday Iranian government has shutted [sic] down the HTTPS protocol which has caused almost all Google services (Gmail, and Google.com itself) to become inaccessible,” Sara70 writes. “Almost all websites that rely on Google APIs (like Wolphram Alpha) won’t work.”

This month marks the anniversary of the 1979 Islamic Revolution (a celebration which continues through March), and the Iranian government is allegedly attempting to contain potential demonstrations by quieting citizens’ connection to the rest of the world.

Websites using HTTPS are many: in addition to Google and its various Web products, they include Facebook, Hotmail, and Yahoo. An Iranian citizen who wished to remain anonymous told Cnet this morning that despite the widespread news, the government is denying these actions.

If the Iranian officials plan to cut off citizens during the entire holiday, that means Iran could be in the dark until next month. Iran operates its Internet much like China, meaning it has its own state run firewall. According to various reports, work-arounds typically used to circumvent this are not working.

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