Personally, I couldn’t believe my eyes when I picked up Monday’s edition of The Wall Street Journal and found a headline reading:

Iran’s Web Spying Aided by Western Technology

European Gear Used in Vast Effort to Monitor Communications.

According to the Journal report, a joint venture between Nokia and Siemens sold the internet and communications monitoring equipment to the Islamic Republic in the second half of 2008. The sale of the equipment by Nokia Siemens Network was originally reported by an Austrian tech website and was picked up by the Washington Times in April.

A spokesman for the venture, Ben Roome, reportedly confirmed that, “the ‘monitoring center’, installed within the government’s telecom monopoly, was part of a larger contract with Iran that includes mobile-phone networking technology”. Roome claimed that the ability to monitor networks is intrinsically sold alongside the network itself.

But now Wired reports that Roome is denying the report:

“There’s a lot of misinformation out there about this,” wrote spokesman Ben Roome in an e-mail to Threat Level. “But we do not provide any web or internet monitoring or filtering. We do provide the capability for millions of Iranians to communicate via mobile networks, and as part of this provide voice call lawful intercept capability. Mobile networks are not allowed to be built in Iran (and most other countries) without this feature. It is part of telecoms network architecture.”

For its part, The Wall Street Journal stands by its story. And saying that you only provide the capability by nature of the sale isn’t really an excuse for selling communication-intercepting technology to an oppressive, theocratic regime. “Lawful” typically means requiring a warrant or some sort of checking mechanism. In Iran, communications are intercepted to halt the spreading of dissent and organization of protests.

Telecommunication companies in the United States and other countries are required to provide this so-called “lawful intercept” capability so that domestic law enforcement agencies can eavesdrop on calls to investigate criminal activity. “Lawful,” of course, means different things in different countries. In the U.S. such interception generally requires a court order.

And many people are apparently seeing it the same way:

Consumers are calling for a boycott of telecom equipment makers Nokia and Siemens after the Wall Street Journal reported that the companies’ joint networking firm sold sophisticated internet surveillance equipment to Iran — a story that the company says is false.

Despite the denial, boycotters have written Nokia saying they’ve destroyed their Nokia phones, and are telling friends and family to avoid Nokia products until the company “can make the right ethical choices.”…

Another commenter named “Freeman Lowell” says that even if Nokia Siemens didn’t provide internet monitoring gear to Iran, it’s not acceptable to sell surveillance-friendly telephone switching equipment to a country with Iran’s dismal human rights record.

“What happens when your ‘Lawful Intercept’ capability is sold to regimes which are likely to use it a way which would be considered unlawful under European and UN Human Rights conventions — say to suppress freedom of speech?” he writes.  “Your statement seems to be suggesting that the benefits to the Iranian people outweigh the potential costs, but tell that to the people that may have been arrested or have ‘disappeared’ – perhaps permanently — because of what you have done.”

Indeed.