The longest internet blackout in Iran's history.

From American Public Media, this is Marketplace Tech.

I'm Megan McCarty Carrino.

As U.S. and Israeli airstrikes against Iran continue into their fifth week, the civilian population is living kind of in the dark.

The regime has cut off access to the Internet since the war began, according to international monitors.

It's not a total blackout, according to Amir Rashidi.

He's the director for digital rights and security at the nonprofit human rights organization, Miong Group.

He says Iranians still have access to the National Information Network, or NIN, which is fully controlled by the regime.

Internet shutdown or disruption or censorship is not something new for us.

It's happened ever since internet became available in Iran.

And shutdown, you know, we have like every time that people go to the street doing protests,

we have internet shutdown sometimes on have internet shutdown, sometimes on a

neighborhood base, sometimes on a city base, and sometimes a national wine. For example,

if you want to order a coffee, we have equivalent to Uber eats, something called it, we call it,

a snap food. So you can order the coffee online. You don't need internet necessarily.

But if you want to go on Google, you want to go on social media, you want to read the news on BBC,

CNN, whatever, you don't have any access, absolutely zero, nothing.

What else is allowed and not allowed on the NIN?

So this NIN has a physical infrastructure.

But as exactly like internet, there is an application layer on top of all these infrastructure, right?

We have almost equivalent to every single international services in Iran.

We have national email service or even national search engine, right?

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