It was only a matter of time before some country banned "Pokemon Go," the addictive location-based game. Now, Iran has claimed that distinction. Others will surely seek to regulate the augmented-reality game too, for a simple reason: "Pokemon Go" poses too many questions that do not have satisfactory answers yet.
Iran may have had some Islam-related reasons to ban "Pokemon Go": a fatwa, or religious ruling, was issued against earlier Pokemon games; it rejected, among other things, the basic idea that one could speed up the creatures' mutation to make them more powerful as it hints at evolutionary theory. But Abolhasan Firouzabadi, the country's internet czar, has been quoted as saying security concerns prompted the ban.
The Israeli Army has also banned "Pokemon Go" for security reasons. The game, it argued, activates phone cameras and location services, and could betray base locations to someone watching. The U.S. military has gone for softer warnings, only saying the game was "not authorized" in restricted areas. In China, there are concerns — unofficial at this point, since the game hasn't even been released there — that it might compromise the security of military installations.