"Ignorance is power"

Nir T. Boms and Elliot Chodoff:

"Ignorance is power," wrote George Orwell in his famous book "1984," referring to the information police that kept bad ideas from the eyes of good people. The rationale of the Big Brother has, unfortunately, often appeared throughout history. According to this approach, the only way to maintain the strength of an idea is to eliminate all suspicion or doubt. If one has no reason to question a belief, then that belief will remain, and if the absence of questioning can be sustained indefinitely, then the belief will be upheld indefinitely. Welcome to Iran.
Adhering to a new governmental decree, Iran's Internet service providers (ISPs) have started reducing the speed of Internet access to homes and cafes. Iran's ISPs are now forbidden by the Communications Ministry from providing Internet connections faster than 128 kilobytes per second (KBps), a speed familiar to those who remember the now obsolete computer modems that disappeared over a decade ago. (Today, the standard worldwide is 512kb or higher.) The slower speed will prevent the use of Internet applications such as VOIP communication that would allow phone conversations outside the tightly controlled Iranian phone system. The new regulations will further hinder the work of students and researchers who already have limited access to the government-censored Internet.
This latest decree has much to do with an escalating clampdown on the media following President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's rise to power. Just last month, Iran's government urged the judiciary to clamp down on newspapers which spread "lies" about the government. "Those who spread lies against the government should be prosecuted," government spokesman Gholamhossein Elham asserted in a letter to Tehran Public Prosecutor Saeed Mortazavi.
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Iran has much to fear from the truth getting out. Frightened men in charge of a mess tend to want to keep others ignorant of it. It should also be noted that Orwell's model for the mistry of disinformation was the BBC. Not much has changed there either.