As part of its crackdown on free speech following last week’s rigged elections, Iran’s government is exerting unprecedented control over the country’s Internet communications. And to do that, it’s using products supplied by European companies.

Based on interviews with technology experts inside and outside Iran, the Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that those pesky mullahs are carrying out deep packet inspection on a massive scale.

In addition to blocking or slowing Internet communication, deep packet inspection gathers information about users and can be used to alter the content of the communication itself—changing a “yes” to a “no,” for example—which may be more disruptive than shutting off Internet communication altogether.

The nefarious capabilities are there for the mullahs to use, courtesy of a JV between the German multinational, Siemens, and Nokia, a Finnish mobile phone provider.

According to spokesperson Ben Roome, the company installed a “monitoring center” within the Iran’s government-run telecom monopoly as part of a larger gig that included the installation of mobile-phone networks.

“If you sell networks, you also, intrinsically, sell the capability to intercept any communication that runs over them,” Roome told the Journal.

The Iranian government had briefly experimented with the Big Brother-like equipment in the run-up to last week’s travesty, but few people fully understood the system’s capabilities until its powers were unleashed in the face of escalating street protests.

Deep packet inspection involves the deconstruction and subsequent reconstitution of Internet data including email, Internet phone calls, and images and messages sent via social-networking sites like Twitter and Facebook.

It could explain why the mullahs allowed Iran’s Internet to function rather than shutting it down altogether, and why it has been running at glacial speed since things started getting out of hand.

Iran is “now drilling into what the population is trying to say,” Marshal8e6 director of technical strategy Bradley Anstis told the Journal. “This looks like a step beyond what any other country is doing, including China.”

When the Big O lifted the curtain on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research in March, scientists applauded the move as a long-overdue boost for the promising field.

Now, these same scientists worry his plan may have the unintended effect of dampening progress by forcing researchers to comply with ethical standards that were enacted after their research began.

“We’re very concerned,” Amy Rick, chief executive of the Coalition for the Advancement of Medical Research told the Washington Post. “If they don’t change this, very little current research would be eligible. It’s a huge issue.”

Ongoing stem cell research has already passed ethical scrutiny, but when Obama lifted the ban, he charged the NIH to develop new guidelines governing the field. Those guidelines would be difficult to meet in retrospect.

This is essentially moving the goal post,” the Harvard Stem Cell Institute’s George Daley told the Post.

For example, the new NIH guidelines require that couples sign documents stating that they agree to donate their embryos for research and that they have been informed about other options like donating the embryos to other couples instead.

Many clinics did just this, but their consent forms did not necessarily specify as such.

No one knows how many stem cell lines would be affected by retrospective enforcement of the NIH guidelines, but experts believe most would not pass muster.

The NIH has a chance to clean up the mess when it releases the final version of its guidelines on or before July 7. 

“We know issues like this have been raised, and we will take them into consideration,” Raynard Kington, the NIH’s acting director told the Post. “The intent of the president was to expand opportunities and research in this area.”