<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
</head>
<body text="#000000" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">
<p>Hello Oonitarians,</p>
<p>Today, in collaboration with ASL19, ARTICLE 19 and Small Media,
the OONI team released a new research report: <b>Internet
Censorship in Iran: Network Measurement Findings from 2014-2017.</b></p>
<p>You can read the report here:
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://ooni.torproject.org/post/iran-internet-censorship/">https://ooni.torproject.org/post/iran-internet-censorship/</a></p>
<p>We also published a summary of the report on the Tor blog:
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://blog.torproject.org/internet-censorship-iran-findings-2014-2017">https://blog.torproject.org/internet-censorship-iran-findings-2014-2017</a></p>
<p><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://twitter.com/OpenObservatory/status/913454524450447365">https://twitter.com/OpenObservatory/status/913454524450447365</a><br>
</p>
<p>This study involves the analysis of thousands of network
measurements collected from 60 networks across Iran over the last
3 years.</p>
<p>OONI data confirms the blocking of 886 domains (and 1,019 URLs
overall), most of which include news outlets and human rights
sites. The breadth and scale of internet censorship in Iran is
pervasive, since we found a wide range of different types of sites
to be blocked, with the blocking extending beyond a simple
definition of legality.</p>
<p>Blocked domains include search engines (such as google.com and
duckduck.go), online social networks (e.g. facebook.com,
twitter.com, plus.google.com), media sharing platforms (e.g.
instagram, flickr.com, youtube.com), blogging platforms (e.g.
wordpress.com, blogger.com), and communication tool sites (such as
viber.com and paltalk.com). We also found Facebook Messenger to be
blocked by means of DNS tampering.<br>
</p>
<p>But<b> </b>blocked domains also include opposition sites,
pro-democracy sites, and even the sites of digital rights groups
in our community, such as: EFF, CDT, Freedom House, ASL19, ARTICLE
19, Global Voices, The Citizen Lab, and Reporters Without Borders.</p>
<p>Iranian ISPs appear to have shifted their practices from applying
"smart filters" (only censoring specific webpages) to "blanket
censorship" (censoring entire sites). Previously, they used to
limit their censorship to specific webpages hosted on HTTP. But
over the last years, as more sites have adopted HTTPS, we found
that most ISPs blocked access to both the HTTP and HTTPS versions
of sites (since it's not possible to target specific webpages when
a site is hosted on HTTPS).</p>
<p>What's interesting is that we found internet censorship in Iran
to be non-deterministic.<b> </b>By this we mean that we found
ISPs to be flipping between blocking and unblocking sites over
time, possibly in an attempt to create uncertainty or to make the
censorship more subtle.</p>
<p>Internet censorship in Iran is sophisticated because we found
ISPs to be serving blockpages by means of DNS injection and
through the use of HTTP transparent proxies. But another reason
why it is sophisticated is because it is reinforced through the
blocking of multiple censorship circumvention tools. We even found
the Tor network to be blocked most of the time across most
networks, but on a positive note, Tor bridges were partially
accessible.</p>
<p>Iranian ISPs also appear to be taking extra steps to reinforce
internet censorship and limit circumvention. We found various
online translators to be blocked. Pasting a URL into an online
translator will provide access to the site's content, even if that
site is blocked. Online translators can therefore provide a form
of censorship circumvention, likely explaining why we found them
to be blocked.</p>
<p>Political relations appear to influence how information controls
are implemented in Iran. This is strongly suggested by the fact
that we found multiple Israeli and U.S. domains to be blocked.
Israeli domains even appear to be blocked almost indiscriminately.
US export laws and regulations, on the other hand, restrict the
use of services in Iran, which is why we found Norton, Virus
Total, and GraphicRiver to be inaccessible in the country.</p>
<p>Internet censorship in Iran also appears to serve as a tool for
the reinforcement of geopolitical dynamics of power. This is
strongly suggested by the fact that we found multiple Kurdish
sites to be blocked.</p>
<p>Much more can be said about this study....but this email is
already quite long. :)</p>
<p>We encourage you to explore the data we published!</p>
<p>Thanks for reading.</p>
<p>~ The OONI team.<br>
</p>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Maria Xynou
Research and Partnerships Coordinator
Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI)
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://ooni.torproject.org/">https://ooni.torproject.org/</a>
PGP Key Fingerprint: 2DC8 AFB6 CA11 B552 1081 FBDE 2131 B3BE 70CA 417E</pre>
</body>
</html>