Adam Satariano

One of the things that jumped out to me the most is many of these Iranians were out at the protests.

And then later they received a text message that was essentially threatening and warning them, saying that their presence at illegal gatherings, quote unquote, had been noted and that now they were under intelligence monitoring.

Researchers later determined that this was done by the government essentially pulling people's phone data to see that they were at these protests and then cross-check it with a database to see who they were and then to send them these warning, threatening messages.

And we heard other examples of this, of how people's phones or social media behavior were used against them.

So people who had posted on social media about the protests or other politically sensitive topics, they found that their SIM cards, so their access to mobile networks, had been turned off.

Access to mobile banking had been interrupted.

We also heard about people who were detained and interrogated

and shown evidence of facial recognition or location tracking.

And so it's just an example of this menu of surveillance technology that the Iranian government has.

And this is something they've been building up for years and years.

Iran has some of the most expansive surveillance technology available in the world, and they've shown a willingness to deploy it in ways that is really notable.