Iran has banned Pokemon Go citing “security concerns,” becoming the latest country to follow Russia’s lead in expressing concerns and blacklisting the augmented reality smartphone game due to its direct links to the CIA and intelligence community.
The decision was announced by the High Council of Virtual Spaces, the official body regulating online activity, and follows a Kremlin report that young people are being tricked into giving up their privacy to intelligence agencies. While playing the game they act as unwitting intelligence gatherers for the CIA.
The game has an extensive list of intrusive tracking permissions, and it is these ‘fine print clauses’ that raised eyebrows in the Kremlin and sparked the ongoing investigation, national daily newspaper Izvestia reports.
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The Kremlin investigation revealed that the game’s creator, Niantec, is closely linked to the CIA. Niantec CEO John Hanke created Keyhole in 2001, which was later bought by Google. Most of the money used to create Keyhole came from the National Geo-Spatial Intelligence Agency – and the CIA.
Pokemon Go represents the pinnacle of Hanke’s intelligence gathering career thus far. He has been exposed as a New World Order intelligence operative whose career has involved creating ingenious ways to spy on unsuspecting citizens and siphon the information back to his financial backers, the CIA and specialist intelligence agencies.
With the launch of the viral game, the CIA effectively recruited a generation of unaware, distracted people to work as unpaid intelligence and surveillance operatives, gathering previously time consuming, expensive data for the intelligence agency.
An agency that wants footage of the inside of a private space can now place desirable Pokemon there, and naive citizens, operating as “imperial probe droids” capture real-time, ground-level footage for them, reaching into dark alleyways and basements that spy satellites and Google cars cannot reach.
Putin, who has promised to destroy the New World Order in 2016, believes the augmented reality smartphone game is a case of wolf in sheep’s clothing.
The viral game didn’t get a release in Russia, however some Russian Pokemon fans gained access and started playing the game in Moscow, prompting Putin to warn them to stay away from his Kremlin residence and government buildings over security fears.
The game had a limited black market life span in Russia, and now Iran and other countries are following suit in banning the CIA-funded game over security concerns.
Iran’s High Council of Virtual Spaces, responsible for the ban, was created by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the nation’s current Supreme Leader.
A decree set out the Council’s aim to prevent Iran from perceived harm from “the increasing spread of information and communication technologies, particularly that of the global internet network and its important role in personal and social life,” the BBC reported at the time.
