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On Tuesday, March 3, the smartphones of tens of millions of Iranian citizens beeped in unison.

Dear compatriots, before going to the hospital or health center, install and use this software to determine if you or your loved ones have been infected with the coronavirus, said the message, which claimed to come from the Ministry of Health.

It included a link to download the app from an Iranian app store called Cafe Bazaar.

Of course, the app couldn't tell citizens if they had coronavirus. But what it could do is hoover up huge amounts of data on citizens, including names, addresses, dates of birth, and even track people's location in real time.

The government has already boasted that millions of citizens have shared this information with them at a time when most Iranians are completely in the dark about the threat from coronavirus. The government is being accused of covering up the real infection and death rates with experts claiming the real figures are exponentially higher. With confusion and fear gripping many parts of Iran, this app is looking to take advantage of that to boost Tehran's surveillance capabilities.

The regimes survival is intertwined with suppression, surveillance, espionage, and intruding in the most personal affairs of the Iranian people, Shahin Gobadi of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, base din Parid, told VICE News. It does not spare any opportunity to intensify its efforts, even at the time of such a major crisis such as coronavirus.

READ: Iran says it only has 500 coronavirus deaths. So why can you see the mass graves from space?

Iran is one of the countries hardest hit by the coronavirus outbreak. On Saturday, officials confirmed that 611 people had died in total, with the country recording 1,365 new infections in the previous 24 hours, bringing the total to more than 12,700.

But public health experts believe that the real death toll is much higher, with some predictions based on a variety of indicators suggesting that the number of infections in Iran could be as high as 2 million.

On Thursday, Gobadis NCR group presented a report from more than 65 Iranian physicians, medical staff, and professionals in the medical field in Europe, North American and Australia to the World Health Organization, claiming that based on its research including interviews with frontline medical workers the death toll was over 3,000.

The report also claims Tehran covered up early cases of the coronavirus in order to boost attendance at an annual march marking the anniversary of the 1979 Revolution on Feb. 11 and local elections on Feb. 21.

READ: Iranian officials keep dying from the coronavirus

But as Irans lawmakers and government officials began to contract the virus and in many cases die, the government sought to quell the growing sense of unease with a new app.

The app is called AC19 and it claims to be able to detect whether or not people are infected, says the coronavirus anti-virus program is designed by the Ministry of Health to detect the likelihood of people having coronavirus.

Once downloaded the app asks users to verify their phone number even though the government has access to all phone numbers via its control of the countrys cell providers. Then users are prompted to give the app permission to send precise location data to the governments servers.

Screen shots of visual prompts from Iran's tracking app AC19, which claims to diagnose coronavirus but actually collects location data.

The problem is that the prompt is part of the Android system and unless users have changed the default setting, the prompt is displayed in English, not Farsi, meaning the vast majority of users wont know what they are being asked.

READ: Iran's answer to the coronavirus outbreak: cut the internet

And for the 40% of Android users in Iran who are using an older version of Android, there will be no prompt at all, meaning their location data is shared without their knowledge.

But one expert who has looked at the apps code says that the location monitoring goes far beyond just finding out where in the country you are located:

Collecting location data is not a one-off thing, Nariman Gharib, an Iranian security researcher living in London, told VICE News, pointing out that the app uses an Android library that is typically used by fitness apps to track your movement. They can actually track you. If you move your device from location A to B, they can actually see that in real-time.

The app itself claims to be able to detect if a user has contracted COVID-19 or not. To do this, it asks a series of YES or NO questions about the symptoms users are experiencing. Once these are answered, users click submit to send your details to the government for assessment.

But instead of having to wait hours or days for a result, the app claims to be able to diagnose you in second, telling you if you are more or less likely to have contracted the disease and whether or not you should go to the hospital.

It is impossible to say how many of Irans citizens have downloaded the app, but according to this tweet from the ICT minister MJ Azari Jahromi, at least 3.5 million people have now shared their precise location and intimate details with the government.

Tehran has in the past shown its willingness to monitor and track the communications of its citizens including restricting and even shutting down internet access in times of crisis.

During the November 2018 uprising in Iran protesters made wide use of the encrypted communication app, Telegram. In the aftermath of the crisis, the regime built its own version of the apps, called Golden Telegram and HotGram, which had up to 30 million users inside Iran.

The apps looked like the official Telegram app, but the company soon issued a warning that the apps were unsafe and the Iranian government could be monitoring all communications.

The company that built the apps for the government back in 2018 was Smart Land Solutions, a company known today as Sarzamin Housmand the same company that produced the coronavirus app.

The development of the app will likely only add to the confusion among citizens in Iran where the regime has kept tight control on information being shared.

On Friday Tehran moved to limit the spread of the coronavirus by announcing that security forces would be clearing all public spaces such as city streets another decision designed to maintain control at all costs.

The regimes attitude is evident during the coronavirus crisis, Gobadi said. Instead of being transparent and alerting the public regarding the real scope of the crisis, the regime has resorted to a massive campaign of deception and concealment particularly as it pertains to the number of victims and fatalities.

Cover: A woman wears a protective mask while using a smartphone as she stands along the side of a street in the Iranian capital Tehran on February 24, 2020. (Photo by ATTA KENARE/AFP via Getty Images)

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Iran Launched an App That Claimed to Diagnose Coronavirus. Instead, It Collected Location Data on Millions of People. - VICE

LONDON The Iranian artist Shirazeh Houshiary works out of a luminous studio in a leafy corner of southwest London. Her misty abstract paintings evoke the galaxy, the cosmos, the afterlife. To make them, she floods the canvas with water, pours pigment over it and draws tiny marks over the dried surface.

Abstraction is one of the most sophisticated ways of coming to feeling, like a piece of music: You have tone, color, rhythm, so many things that touch you right inside, she said in a recent interview at her studio, where she tiptoed around in striped socks. I really want to get to the core of what I dont know. And what I dont know fascinates me more than what I know, even about myself.

Ms. Houshiary, who moved to London in 1975, is one of a number of Iranian-born artists to have solo exhibitions in the United States this year. Her show at the Lehmann Maupin gallery in New York opens May 1.

Like many of her peers, she left the country around the time of the Islamic Revolution of 1979 and settled in the West, as political conditions in Iran made it hard for artists to live and work there. While she steered clear of figuration, other artists in exile have tackled political themes by representing veiled women and religious fervor in their work. Among them is the video artist and photographer Shirin Neshat, who is based in the United States and whose retrospective just ended at the Broad in Los Angeles and opens in February 2021 at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. With the animosity between the governments of the United States and Iran now at a peak, these representations are finding a bigger platform in American museums and galleries.

Joanne Heyler, founding director of the Broad, said in an email that when Ms. Neshats retrospective was in the planning stages, she hoped it would lead to a wider reflection on the history of the United States and Iran as well as on the contemporary immigrant experience. She noted that Ms. Neshat, who now works in New York, was initially based in Los Angeles, a city with the largest population of Iranians outside Iran (half a million Iranians live across the United States), and many shared the artists experience of leaving their country around the time of the revolution and the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s. The events of that time were seismic and continue to impact global events, yet it is a story not well known by Americans, especially younger Americans.

Ms. Houshiary, who was nominated for the prestigious Turner Prize in 1994, moved to London to escape Tehran the colorless capital that her family had moved to and school, where teenage classmates displayed a sudden thirst for revolution that she did not share. She enrolled in art school and became drawn to minimalist sculpture, and in her degree show, she exhibited an enclosure of darkness and light that drew coverage from The Financial Times. Soon afterward, she signed on with Londons Lisson Gallery. Her best-known work to date is a stained-glass window inside a London landmark: the church of St.-Martin-in-the-Fields, off Trafalgar Square.

The year of the revolution, another future member of Irans artistic diaspora was born in Tehran: Amir H. Fallah, a figurative painter now based in Los Angeles. Because of the political turmoil in Iran, Mr. Fallah had a much more unstable childhood. He grew up at the height of the Iran-Iraq war, when aerial bombings often forced families to take refuge in bunkers stocked with cans of food.

When the family decided to move to Austria, they entrusted their savings to a distant relative who ran off with the money, leaving them stranded for two years in Turkey. We went from middle class to abject poverty overnight, he recalled in a telephone interview.

Settling in Virginia, the family eventually regained its former status. After graduating from the University of California, Los Angeles, Mr. Fallah started exhibiting in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates in 2005. His first large-scale exhibition is at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tucson, Ariz., through May 3.

I dont feel 100 percent anything, really, and I feel like Im in a state of limbo, which is fine with me: I think thats where richness lies, he said of his multiple cultural identities. As a dark-skinned Iranian, he said, he suffered racism. A lot of Iranians get a cultural pass because they can pass off as white, but I never had that experience, he said.

His acrylic paintings are decorative and ornate, a bridge between two worlds. For me, its interesting to mash up a detail from a Persian miniature or a Persian rug with a 1980s skateboard graphic, or references to graffiti art or graphic design and pop culture, because thats kind of what I am, he explained.

In his earlier body of work, faces are concealed with a bandanna or a scarf. When you cant see somebodys physical features, then you have to focus on the other things around them, he said. It goes back to my own identity. People are always misreading me because Im dark-skinned. Thats kind of where this comes out of.

Mr. Fallah said the art world was focused on areas its been neglecting, such as African-American and Latino artists, and some of that does trickle down to Iranian artists. But honestly, I havent seen a big boom.

In the international auction world, prices of Iranian modern and contemporary art are not comparable to their Western counterparts. The most expensive work by a living Iranian artist is Parviz Tanavolis bronze sculpture The Wall (Oh Persepolis) (1975), which sold in 2008 for $2.84 million. Other modern artists popular with collectors include Monir Farmanfarmaian, Siah Armajani (who had a show at the Met Breuer last year) and modern masters such as Bahman Mohassess and Leyly Matine-Daftary.

Roxane Zand, Sothebys deputy chairman of the Middle East and Gulf region, said that the early 2000s brought a sudden attention toward Iranian art but that the 2008 global financial crisis led to a market correction. The situation today is more normalized, she said.

She noted a growing gap between artists of the diaspora and those living in Iran, where economic hardship, sanctions and a collapsing currency mean that artists are unable to buy colors or canvases, or to have their work exhibited by Tehran-based gallerists at international fairs.

The Iranian-born collector Mohammed Afkhami who will exhibit works from his collection of contemporary Iranian art at New Yorks Asia Society in October said that when he started making acquisitions in 2005, Iranian art collecting was an exclusively Iranian affair among Iranians.

Today, Iranian artists are represented by top international galleries, and they are in the collections of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, the British Museum and the Pompidou Center, he said. Yet, we are still in the early stages of that diversification away from purely Iranian patronage, he added.

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As Tensions Rise With Iran, So Does Interest in Art It Inspired - The New York Times

The official COVlD-19 death toll in Iran has risen to 237 people today as the U.S.-Iranian diplomatic standoff continues to slow down international cooperation to fight the new coronavirus disease.

The Trump administration quietly loosened sanctions on the Iranian banking system to allow for humanitarian trade and offered the Iranian government help in dealing with COVID-19 at the end of February. But the diplomatic breakthrough was short-lived, as Iran has rejected the U.S. offer and U.S. sanctions continue to throw up obstacles in the path of Irans pandemic response.

The restrictions on the central bank imposed in September had created tremendous uncertainty for companies that relied on [humanitarian exemptions] for the export of food, agricultural commodities, medicines, or medical devices to Iran, the law firm Hogan Lovells explained in a March 5 memo to its clients, so the Trump administrations measures indicate an effort on the part of the U.S. Government to facilitate humanitarian trade with Iran.

Its not like theyre doing nothing, explained sanctions lawyer Erich Ferrari, but a lot of this is [the Trump administrations] own doing. Theyre trying to reduce the negative effects of their own actions.

On February 27, the U.S. Treasury had loosened U.S. legal restrictions on the Central Bank of Iran, which had prevented Iran from importing coronavirus test kits and other medicines and medical devices. The next day, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo offered direct assistance to the Iranian government.

Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi denounced Pompeos offer of direct support, calling it a ridiculous claim and a political and psychological play and condemning U.S. economic terrorism in a March 2 interview with the state-run Mehr News Agency.

We hope that the government of Iran will heed our offers of humanitarian assistance and medical supplies, Pompeo reiterated to reporters on Friday. But a State Department spokesperson confirmed to the National Interest on Monday that Iran has turned down the U.S. offer of assistance both publicly and privately.

But the humanitarian exemption continues to exclude certain goods. Suppliers need a license to sell certain medical devices, including full-face respirators and certain decontamination systems. It took the U.S. Treasury an average of 77 days to approve and 177 days to deny a license for medical devices, according to statistics released for last year.

The National Interest asked Brian Hook, the State Department official in charge of Iranian affairs, on February 28 whether the Trump administration would consider expanding the humanitarian exemptions to include medical devices like respirators and decontamination equipment.

I think that what you described is something that we will be taking a hard look at, he responded at the briefing, hosted by Al Monitor. We are looking at what we can do, but the president right now is focused very much on the American people, but we can do two things at the same time. Were looking at what we can do to help.

We have no new policy announcements at this time, a State Department spokesperson told the National Interest on Monday.

Ferrari added that the U.S. Treasurys guidance to the public is just pointing them to a bunch of regulations, and said that the Trump administration could make it more clear what kind of business with Iran is allowed.

When you actually get into the details of compliance, it is still a minefield, said Peter Harrell, an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security who specializes in sanctions law.

If youre selling $75 million of medical supplies, its worth navigating the minefield, he added.For smaller transactions, it can make it uneconomical.

U.S. sanctions law also categorically bans selling medical devices to the Iranian military and police. Harrell emphasizes that this is a balanced approach because government-run civilian hospitals are still exempt from the sanctions.

But the Iranian military has muscled its way to the front lines of the coronavirus response, and the ban on selling to security forces imposes enhanced due diligence requirements on exporters, according to the Hogan Lovells memo.

The biggest issue is not so much whether or not sanctions are in the immediate term making it impossible for Irans public health sector to respond to the virus, said Esfandyar Batmanghelidj, founder and publisher of Bourse & Bazaar, an organization that tracks developments in Irans economy.

Batmanghelidj said that pre-existing stocks of medical goods should be enough in the short-term but that Iran could run into shortages if the epidemic continues for a long period of time.

The situation inside Iran is currently worseningand officials have hinted that the true death toll of the pandemic is far greater than the official number.

Iranian officials announced two new measures on Monday to slow the spread of COVID-19. The judiciary announced that it would be furloughing seventy thousand prisoners. Irans religious head Ayatollah Ali Khamenei canceled his plans to address the nation on Irans spring solstice holiday, which is also New Years Day for Iranians.

Iranian health ministry official Mohammad Hossein Qorbani told reporters on Sunday that over two hundred people had died of COVID-19 in the northern province of Gilan, greater than the total nationwide death toll published earlier that day.

I didnt say that all these deaths were because of the coronavirus, he added, amidst accusations of a coverup. It is possible that many of these individuals had underlying respiratory illnesses.

Video shared on social media showed a crowd of locals that day setting up an impromptu checkpoint in Mazandaran, another northern province, aimed at keeping tourists out of the coastal region.

Ahmad Lashaki, a member of parliament from Mazandaran, was caught on tape begging Iranian presidential advisor Mahmud Vaezi to quarantine the province.

The people of Mazandaran are being annihilated. They are closing the roads, he said. Please, close the paths for one week until the situation becomes stable and normal.

Matthew Petti is a national security reporter at the National Interest. Follow him on Twitter: @Matthew_Petti.

Image: Reuters

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Coronavirus: The Deadly New U.S.-Iran Standoff - The National Interest

GENEVA - A report submitted to the United Nations Human Rights Council Monday documents the harsh treatment and abusive conditions of detention facing activists and opponents of the Iranian government.

Evidence documented in the U.N. report suggests that Iran brooks no dissent and that those who commit acts that displease the government will be harshly punished.

Arbitrarily arrested and imprisoned

U.N. special rapporteur on the human rights situation in Iran, Javaid Rehman, notes people who have peacefully protested for better economic conditions have been arbitrarily arrested and imprisoned.Others detained include Iranian women who have protested against wearing the veil, human rights defenders, lawyers, journalists and those who seemingly oppose the government.

He says ethnic and religious minorities also are among a long list of dissidents who run afoul of the Iranian authorities and are often imprisoned. Rehman says he is deeply concerned about what he considers to be sub-human conditions of detention. He says the frequent use of solitary confinement and the use of torture to extract forced confessions are alarming.

Overcrowding, poor nutrition and a lack of hygiene are also serious concerns.These issues indicate a high risk to prisoners health from malnutrition and disease.Recent reports indicate that the COVID-19 virus has spread inside Iranian prisons.

The latest report by the World Health Organization puts the number of confirmed cases of coronavirus in Iran at 5,823, including 145 deaths.

Death sentences for children

The U.N. investigator also expresses dismay that children are still being sentenced to death.He notes international law absolutely prohibits applying the death penalty to juvenile offenders.And yet, he says, two Iranian boys aged 17 were executed last year and more than 100 child offenders reportedly are on death row.

He urges Iran to uphold its human rights obligations and to bring detention conditions and practices up to international standards.

Iranian Ambassador to the U.N. in Geneva Esmacil Bagbace Hamanch dismisses the report as another targeted display of abusive misinformation about the state of human rights in his country.

He describes the report as a patchwork of sporadic cases of alleged violations with the help of biased sources.He says the report is far from being a faithful reflection of Irans continuing progress in the realm of human rights.

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UN: Government Opponents, Activists in Iran Face Harsh Punishment - Voice of America

GENEVA (9 March 2020) Individuals detained in Iranian detention facilities are suffering from serious human rights violations and the situation of those arrested during the November 2019 protests is a subject of particular concern, said a UN expert in his latest report presented to the Human Rights Council.

Javaid Rehman, UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran, also highlighted that significant economic challenges in the country, worsened by sanctions, are having a significant impact on economic and social rights.

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I am concerned that the effect of sanctions has resulted in serious shortages of medication and medical equipment, including for rare and life-threatening conditions, Rehman said. I urge the countries imposing sanctions and the international community as a whole to take all measures to mitigate the negative impact of sanctions on human rights, especially the right to health.

The UN expert also stressed his concern that the Iranian Governments long-standing violations of the rights to freedom of expression, assembly and association persist. Making specific reference to the Iranian authorities unprecedented lethal response to nationwide protests in November 2019, he reiterated his call for an independent and impartial investigation of the events and for perpetrators to be held accountable.

During these protests, authorities used excessive force against individuals protesting fuel price rises and economic hardship, including aiming live ammunition at the head and organs. At least 300 people were killed, including over 20 children, a horrific violation of the right to life that I condemn in the strongest terms, he said.

Concerns about detained protesters relate to Rehmans findings on detention conditions and related fair trial rights. Detention conditions are below international standards set out in the Nelson Mandela Rules, while due process guarantees are also often violated. The Special Rapporteur is also alarmed at the prevalence of forced confessions due to torture, denial of medical treatment and other ill-treatment.

While using confessions extracted through torture as evidence is prohibited under Iranian law, in practice forced confessions are frequently used as the sole basis for convictions, the expert said.

Overcrowding, poor nutrition and a lack of hygiene are also serious concerns. These issues indicate a high risk to prisoners health from malnutrition and disease. Recent reports indicate that the COVID-19 virus has spread inside Iranian prisons.

Rehman expressed particular concern that some individuals detained during protests are reportedly being tortured to extract confessions, and that some have received harsh sentences, including the death penalty.

Other issues highlighted in his report include the arbitrary detention of womens rights advocates, human rights defenders, lawyers, cultural workers and dual and foreign nationals; discrimination against minorities; and the continued execution of child offenders despite its strict prohibition under international human rights law.

The UN expert noted progress in certain areas, such as the new nationality law that allows Iranian mothers to pass on their citizenship to their children in most cases. Rehman also welcomed the Governments increased engagement with international human rights mechanisms, including participation in the November 2019 universal periodic review and cooperation with the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Javaid Rehman was appointed as Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran by the UN Human Rights Council in July 2018. He is a Professor of International Human Rights Law and Muslim Constitutionalism at Brunel University, London. Mr Rehman teaches human rights law and Islamic law and continues to publish extensively in the subjects of international human rights law, Islamic law and constitutional practices of Muslim majority States.

The Special Rapporteurs are part of what is known as the Special Procedures of the Human Rights Council. Special Procedures, the largest body of independent experts in the UN Human Rights system, is the general name of the Councils independent fact-finding and monitoring mechanisms that address either specific country situations or thematic issues in all parts of the world. Special Procedures experts work on a voluntary basis; they are not UN staff and do not receive a salary for their work. They are independent from any government or organization and serve in their individual capacity.

UN Human Rights, Country Page Iran

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Iran: UN expert alarmed by detention conditions in the wake of recent protests - YubaNet