At a company-wide meeting in October, Google CEO Sundar Pichai expressed concern and heartbreak over Iran’s deadly crackdown on human rights protests. “To our Iranian Googlers, know that you have our full support,” Pichai said, answering a question submitted by a staffer about the swelling revolt. The query had been upvoted by thousands of workers, according to four employees.
Google by then had spun up a cross-company task force to focus on Iran, just as it had after Russia’s attack on Ukraine, the arrival of the pandemic, and other major events. Teams were endeavoring to keep services like Maps and Meet video chats accessible through government throttling in Iran. Demand for the company’s Outline virtual private network was growing to millions of Iranians seeking uncensored internet access. And security staffers reviewed and suspended a few popular Android apps in Iran that violated policies meant to keep users safe. On Google’s internal chat boards, workers celebrated Pichai’s acknowledgement and the company’s efforts.
But at the same time, Google’s Iran response has frustrated some employees, rights groups, and US lawmakers. They want the company to deepen its support, including by opening up cloud computing and software development tools to people inside Iran to help protesters communicate securely and circumvent government internet firewalls.
Some employees born in Iran point to Google’s aid in Ukraine as evidence that it is capable of doing more, and Microsoft’s Iran response has caused similar tensions with lawmakers, advocates, and some employees. A few of the tech workers unsatisfied by the industry’s contributions on Iran have now taken matters into their own hands.
One Google engineer bought a server from a little-known provider to host a VPN to help his parents and other family in Iran stay in touch, he says. He followed a how-to guide that Iranian peers at Google and other companies compiled, and on a recent trip to Iran checked that his parents’ tablet could connect to the service. Other workers across North America and Europe are stealthily taking on more complex anti-censorship and anti-surveillance software projects that could help sustain the protests, according to 15 workers involved in or familiar with the volunteer activities.
The recent wave of “Woman, Life, Freedom” protests in Iran began in September, following the death of 22-year-old woman Mahsa Amini, who also went by Jina, while in morality-police custody for allegedly wearing a hijab improperly. Iranian officials have blamed her death on prior medical problems and the violent protests on enemies including the US and domestic separatists. Iran’s foreign ministry did not respond to a request for comment. Security forces in the Islamic Republic have killed hundreds people, including by public hanging, and have arrested thousands in the crackdown, according to the group Human Rights Activists in Iran.
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The Biden administration quickly loosened US sanctions on Iran after the protests began, to allow companies to supply social media, mapping, and communication tools. In October, then-congressman Tom Malinowski and three other US lawmakers wrote to the CEOs of Google, Microsoft, and other big tech companies asking them to provide cloud and analytics capabilities. “Iranians are fearlessly risking their lives for their fundamental rights and dignity,” the letter said. “Your tools and services may be vital in their efforts to pursue these aspirations.”
But in a previously unreported response, Google’s US public policy head Mark Isakowitz wrote back a month later saying that newly relaxed sanctions still had not authorized those activities, “unfortunately.” Isakowitz instead urged Congress to work with the Biden administration “to identify additional means of ensuring Iranians’ access to vital communication and information tools.”
Google’s Iran response, like that of other tech giants concerned about sanctions and related financial risks, prompted side projects by employees to put their technical skills to use. Many of the workers involved declined to be named or provide complete details about their work out of fear of retaliation by their employers or Iran.
The grassroots coding is all about “developing technology that they think can form a level playing field,” says Faraj Aalaei, one of the Silicon Valley community leaders funding and marshaling some of the projects. Overall, hundreds of volunteers from the tech-savvy Iranian diaspora are involved, says Aalaei, a longtime tech executive and now founding general partner of investment firm Candou Ventures.
A priority is to develop software that could enable use of Elon Musk’s Starlink internet satellites in Iran to defeat web censorship without fear of being tracked by the government. Activists have brought hundreds of Starlink units into Iran, with some already operating, Aalaei says. Security experts have warned that users need to take precautions to avoid exposing their location.
Among groups tackling that issue are four engineers who work at tech companies, including Google, who have begun meeting online to debate practical solutions and write software aimed at helping Starlink users hide themselves, one person involved says. The group aims to have a solution ready within weeks.
The rallying within the Iranian-born tech community has an energy unlike ever before, because more members now support a regime change in Iran and the unrest has spread to a wider swath of the population, particularly women, several workers say. There also is recognition that government censorship helped stymie previous protests in the country.
“Staying connected to the outside world is a lifeline for protesters inside,” says Shoresh Shafei, a data scientist who left Google a year ago. “The more we raise awareness about what's going on in the streets and prisons of Iran, the less likely the government is able to repeat what has happened in the past 40-plus years.”
Tech workers have been not only inspired but also frustrated by the way the industry stepped up to help Ukrainians over the past year. That has included providing cash to humanitarian groups, and cybersecurity and cloud computing services to the Ukrainian government. “We want to be acknowledged and legitimized,” Shafei says. “The silence is deafening.”
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Google’s Ukraine response saw it and its employees donate over $45 million in a campaign it promoted several times on a company blog. For Iran, Google quietly matched donations in a worker-led internal fundraising campaign that ultimately directed about $375,000 to a foundation supporting internet access in Iran, three employees say. The company has remained silent about the Iranian government limiting some users to accessing the version of its search engine with the company’s SafeSearch feature activated, which human rights organization Miaan Group says hobbles access to protest-related web results because they can be gory and thus considered unsafe.
Google spokesperson Shira Almeleh says that, as part of the industry group Global Network Initiative, the search giant has “stood with many companies in clearly expressing [its] deep concern about the ongoing violence and efforts to disrupt free expression.” Use of Google’s Outline VPN has surged tenfold in Iran since protests began, Almeleh says, and the company remains focused on legally permissible ways to assist Iranian citizens.
In one previously unreported initiative that some Iranian tech workers view as emblematic of the caution at play, in October, after lobbying from employees, Microsoft allowed anyone to place calls to Iran on Skype for free to help families stay connected, according to two employees and posts on the company’s online help forum and social media. “#Skype has made it free to make international calls to Iran. I just called my family and it worked!” one Twitter user wrote at the time. But Microsoft did not publicly announce the promotion and then ended it after two days without public explanation, the two employees say.
Microsoft declined to comment for this story. It provided a significant amount of free credit for cloud computing services to Iranian activists, but it is unclear if they will get more, two people involved in projects using them say.
Tech companies have several reasons to be more deliberate about Iran than Ukraine. The geopolitics of a war that threatens Europe’s security and the domestic upheaval in Iran are very different, and not every Iranian immigrant working for a US tech company is supportive of the protests, adding to complexities for companies to weigh as they face the calls to wade into the latest social crisis.
Companies also face legal uncertainties. The United States has blocked business with Iran for decades over its alleged support of Islamic terrorists and pursuit of nuclear weapons. Although the Biden administration loosened sanctions on social media and other tech tools, interpretations of those rules vary, and breaching sanctions can come with prison time and multimillion-dollar penalties. The Biden administration has repeatedly said it welcomes exemption requests from companies seeking permission to launch new services supporting internet freedom in Iran.
With companies likely to stay cautious, the workers who have sprung into action include teams working on secure chat technology. One group of five, mostly European, engineers has met twice a week for the past three months to research enabling texting between devices, without need for the internet, while leveraging Tor and other data transfer protocols to ensure security, a person involved says.
Others are upgrading an existing encrypted messaging system or writing a guide for using Meta’s WhatsApp through a proxy server that eludes government censors. A few engineers in Canada developed a website that helps a long march of protesters synchronize their chants, one source says.
Not all tech workers are operating in stealth. Mahni Shayganfar, a machine learning engineer in Silicon Valley, says he posts on Instagram about the protests 30 times a day now, after barely ever sharing content on any topic before. He says if people become informed about Iranian culture, they might consider offering support. “The main thing we can do is be their voice,” he says of the protesters.