This is 60-Second Science, I'm Tula Gabbos.

Iranians have been fiercely and relentlessly protesting against their government.

This was sparked by the death of a 22-year-old Kurdish woman named Masa Amini, who died in the

custody of the country's morality police.

The demonstrations have been led by young women who refuse to accept restrictive laws

like hijab requirements.

But authorities have been cracking down with violence arrests and with surveillance.

I'm here with Sophie Bushwick, our tech editor at Scientific American.

Sophie interviewed a Mayor Rashidi, who was the Director of Digital Rights and Security at

Mian Group in Austin, Texas-based advocacy organization, working to improve human rights in Iran.

Hey, Sophie. Hi. Sophie, so how did you find this story?

I had heard that some protesters in Iran were worried about the government using facial

recognition, and I reached out to Amir to just ask him about this technology in particular.

But what I learned is that the use of technology for suppression in Iran goes

way beyond facial recognition.

And in fact, the government is actively trying to create its own nationwide

internet that would be separate from the global internet and allow it to maintain

much stricter control over what its citizens can see on the internet.

Do you think that has any roundifications in the near future?

So within Iran, what I learned is that the government has been interested in this

internet project for a while, but there hasn't been a lot of adoption.

In part, because people know that the government is really interested in surveillance and

...