§8754a Strategy and Grant Program to Promote Internet Freedom in Iran

Summary

Require the Secretary of State, working with other federal agency leaders, to make a plan within 90 days after December 23, 2024, to help people and groups in Iran get information online. The plan must look at how Iranians use virtual private networks (VPNs), how people who do not use VPNs get online (including reliability, speed, coverage, censorship, and surveillance), ways to make VPNs more available, other tools that can bypass internet limits, whether companies that make or share these tools can reach the open internet, how able the Iranian government is to cut off all internet access, and ways to get around internet blackouts. An updated plan must be sent to the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee not later than 120 days after December 23, 2024. The Secretary must review the plan at least twice a year and send updates to those committees if changes are needed. Plans must be submitted unclassified but may include a classified annex. Allow the Secretary of State, with the USAID Administrator and the President of the Open Technology Fund as appropriate, to give grants and sign contracts with private groups to support programs in Iran that promote an open, secure internet and protect online rights. Grant-funded programs should aim to keep internet access open, expand tools that bypass technical and political blocks, spread those tools across Iran, study repressive internet tactics, provide digital safety information to civil society, and work with private companies about keeping internet access open. Grants must be chosen using evidence, and each new technology made with grant money must pass a full security audit to ensure it is not compromised in a way that harms U.S. interests or people using it. The Open Technology Fund is authorized $15,000,000 for each of fiscal years 2025 and 2026 to run the grant program, and those amounts remain available until spent.