With hijab warnings via text, Iran expands digital surveillance on women

Dozens of women in Tehran and Shiraz have reported receiving personalized text messages in recent days from Iran's Headquarters for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice warning them about hijab violations.

What began as a pilot surveillance project in the conservative city of Isfahan is now quietly extending its reach to the Iranian capital.

The emergence of these messages in Tehran and Shiraz has triggered widespread concern that Iran’s hardline factions are laying the groundwork for a high-tech nationwide surveillance system to enforce mandatory hijab laws.

“I was visiting my father’s grave in the early hours of the morning when I received the warning,” wrote one woman posting under the handle @jesuisminaaa on X. “I sat there, crying and crushed. Someone there had reported me. How can a person think only about my headscarf in a place filled with grief?”

The message she and others received is stark: remove your hijab in public, and you may face legal action.

From cars to the streets

Since 2023, Iran’s police have used traffic cameras to detect unveiled women in cars. Registered vehicle owners receive automated warnings. If three warnings are logged, the car is impounded for up to four weeks. Tens of thousands of cars have been seized under the measure.

Many male owners report that no women—veiled or unveiled—were in their cars on the dates cited in the warning messages. Some female drivers also say they were not using their vehicles at the time the alleged violations occurred.

But the new measure, first piloted in late March in Isfahan and now rolled out in Tehran and Shiraz, represents a dramatic shift from vehicle-based enforcement to the surveillance of pedestrians with a much more advanced technology.

According to multiple experts and reports on social media, the institution is now identifying individuals by cross-referencing surveillance footage with mobile phone geolocation data, smart card usage including subway and bank cards as well as government identity databases.

The result: personalized messages delivered to women’s phones within hours of their appearances in public spaces.

Legal and ethical questions

The scale and precision of the operation have provoked an outcry from legal experts, activists and ordinary citizens.

“Law experts, please answer this: does the Headquarters for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice even have legal access to people’s personal data?” wrote Abdollah Ramezanzadeh, a reformist former government spokesman and law professor on X. “Let the country be in peace!”

The head of the powerful, hardline institution is appointed by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and appears to operate independently of the government.

Both the Minister of Telecommunications, Sattar Hashemi, and government spokesperson Fatemeh Mohajerani have denied the administration’s involvement or authorization for the expanded surveillance.

“It has been proven that the use of force in the realms of culture and society leads to counterproductive results. In the field of education, police and judicial measures have not been effective and will not be,” the president’s deputy chief of staff for communications said in a post on X.

“Blaming the administration and the president for the costs of repeating failed experiences is both inaccurate and unethical,” Mehdi Tabatabai added.

But critics argue that even if the government, parliament and the judiciary have no direct control and are not formally endorsing the measures, they are doing little to intervene.

A nation under surveillance

In September 2024, the Supreme National Security Council quietly shelved a newly ratified stricter hijab law to avoid public backlash.

Yet the technological enforcement campaign has continued—and expanded—in a parallel track.

Some Iranians are choosing to push back.

“Most of my female passengers are unveiled,” wrote Mohammad Farahani, a disabled veteran of the Iran-Iraq War who now drives a cab in Tehran.

“I’ve received two hijab warnings," he wrote on X. "For the sake of the women of my country, I won’t care if I get a third."