Official: Smartphone usage by Iran authorities to be banned

A senior Iranian official says authorities with access to classified information will be banned from using smartphones.

A senior Iranian official says authorities with access to classified information will be banned from using smartphones.

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General Gholam Reza Jalali, who heads an Iranian military unit in charge of combatting sabotage, was quoted by the semiofficial ISNA news agency as saying on Saturday that instructions for the ban have already been drawn up and await ratification.

Jalali argued that the main danger is the possibility that smartphone manufacturers - all of whom are based in Western countries - could have access to data stored on the phones.

Iran considers itself to have been the target of a complicated cyber war since 2010, when a virus known as Stuxnet disrupted controls on some of its nuclear centrifuges.