The Twitter-verse is alive with postings from Iran. With global news agencies blocked from Tehran the world’s exposure to post-election chaos is delivered via Twitter and YouTube. These seem to be the only sites able to escape the tightest Internet filtering system in the world - built by Siemens and Nokia.

If ever there was a public relations nightmare for a company this has to be the daddy of them all.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Iran’s monitoring system is the most sophisticated in the world. It even exceeds the capabilities in China. And it was provided, in part, by European companies Siemens and Nokia:

“The monitoring capability was provided, at least in part, by a joint venture of Siemens AG, the German conglomerate, and NokiaCorp., the Finnish cellphone company, in the second half of 2008, Ben Roome, a spokesman for the joint venture, confirmed.” (Source: The Wall Street Journal)

To be fair the equipment and technology was developed to improve mobile telephone technology in a developing nation. Yet the sophistication of the filtering and blocking system exceeds that of any country in the world. Surely it would have been apparent, at installation, the capabilities could be used for political oppression especially as Iran remains an autocratic state.

I, for one, will be monitoring the response of Siemens and Nokia to these developments.