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Since Donald Trump War on Iran It began more than three weeks ago, and US military forces allegedly attacked more than 9000 sites, creating a climate of constant fear and uncertainty for Iranians in Tehran and across the country. Without an advanced warning system from the government, and a longer wait Shut down the internet In Iran’s history, Iranians are left in an information vacuum.
Even before Israel and the United States started dropping bombs, Iran’s lack of a public warning tool was severe State-controlled digital repression It affected tens of millions of citizens. Since the 12-day Israel-Iran war last year, a group of Iranian digital rights activists and volunteers have been working to bridge the gap through a regularly updated, dynamic mapping platform called Mahsa Alert. The project cannot replace the early, real-time alerts that can come from a coordinated government service, but the tool sends instant notifications when Israeli It warns forces of attacks, details some confirmed strike locations, and provides offline mapping capabilities.
“There is no emergency alert in Iran,” says Ahmad Ahmadian, president and CEO of the US-based digital rights group Holistic Resilience, which is behind Mahsa Alert and has been developing the platform since last summer. “This was where we saw the traction, we saw the need, and we continued to work on that with volunteers, with some[open source intelligence]experts, and used that to map the ecosystem of Iran’s repression and surveillance machines.”
Mahsa Alert is a website but also has Android and iOS apps, which are intentionally designed to be lightweight and easy to use on any device. Given the heavy government control over communication within Iran and Irregular access to the InternetVolunteers also prioritized engineering the platform for offline use. It can be easily updated if the user gets connected for a brief period by downloading APK files containing new data. The team works to keep these updates very small; The last version was 60 kilobytes in size, and Ahmadian says it is usually no more than 100 kilobytes.
one overlap Mahsa Alerts maps the locations of “confirmed attacks” that Ahmadian says his team or other OSINT investigators have verified, using video footage or photos sent to a Telegram bot or shared on social media. There are also warnings about areas where Israeli forces have issued evacuation alerts, along with the crucial element of people filing reports about what is happening around them.
“We have to go through a process of due diligence, verification, and flag them before we put them on the map,” Ahmadian says of reported attacks and incidents, adding that the team has a backlog of more than 3,000 reports that it is working on or unable to verify. Besides trying to map strikes, the team behind Mahsa Alert also mapped out “danger zones” that could be at risk of attack — such as sites linked to Iran’s nuclear program or military — so that ordinary citizens could stay away from them. Ahmadian claims that 90 percent of confirmed attacks were at locations that were already on the map. “Some of them we can confirm, we do it because (the user) shared a photo or shared some details that make it possible to verify them,” he says.
The map also includes the locations of thousands of surveillance cameras, suspected government checkpoints, and other local infrastructure. Medical facilities, such as hospitals and pharmacies, are included on the map along with other resources such as the locations of religious sites and past protests.
Mahsa’s alert has become more visible on global social media channels as Iranians around the world share details from the map, Encouraging the people For consideration Service and tag it to friends and family who can use it as a resource. “The app went from almost zero to over 100,000 daily active users in a matter of days,” says Ahmadian, adding that in total there have been about 335,000 users this year, with people first turning to the app during the Iranian regime’s brutal crackdown on anti-government protesters in January. From the limited user information the app collects, Ahmadian claims there are indications that 28 percent of users access the platform from within Iran.