October 2017 - ooni-talk - lists.torproject.org

Considerations for upcoming OONI Probe desktop apps
by Maria Xynou 31 Oct '17

31 Oct '17

Hello, Over the next year, the OONI team will be building native OONI Probe apps for Windows and macOS. Hopefully this will make it easier to install and run OONI Probe, and to engage others with censorship measurement research. To implement these apps, OONI started off by carrying out research to decide what technology stack to use, and the high-level architecture. The OONI team experimented with various solutions and documented their advantages and disadvantages. OONI's Arturo published a blog post outlining the architecture and design considerations that we made for the implementation of OONI Probe desktop apps, as a result of research and experimentation with a variety of libraries and approaches. This document, outlining the rationale behind our choices for the apps, is available here: https://ooni.torproject.org/post/writing-a-modern-cross-platform-desktop-ap… Always open to your feedback and suggestions. ~ The OONI team. -- Maria Xynou Research and Partnerships Coordinator Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI) https://ooni.torproject.org/ PGP Key Fingerprint: 2DC8 AFB6 CA11 B552 1081 FBDE 2131 B3BE 70CA 417E

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OONI article for Data Driven Journalism project
by Maria Xynou 25 Oct '17

25 Oct '17

Hello Oonitarians, Today the Data Driven Journalism project published our article on "Investigating internet censorship with OONI data", which you can read here: http://datadrivenjournalism.net/resources/ooni_data Cheers, Maria. -- Maria Xynou Research and Partnerships Coordinator Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI) https://ooni.torproject.org/ PGP Key Fingerprint: 2DC8 AFB6 CA11 B552 1081 FBDE 2131 B3BE 70CA 417E

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OONI team meeting in Montreal
by Maria Xynou 21 Oct '17

21 Oct '17

Hello Oonitarians, The OONI team met in Montreal for a 4-day meeting (right before the Tor meeting) between 7th-10th October 2017. We published a post where we share: * The main things we're working on these days * Information about the sessions we held at our meeting and session notes * Meeting outcomes You can read this post here: https://ooni.torproject.org/post/ooni-team-meeting-montreal-2017/ We'd love to hear your thoughts and address any questions you may have. Cheers, Maria. -- Maria Xynou Research and Partnerships Coordinator Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI) https://ooni.torproject.org/ PGP Key Fingerprint: 2DC8 AFB6 CA11 B552 1081 FBDE 2131 B3BE 70CA 417E

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New Report on Internet Censorship in Pakistan
by Maria Xynou 18 Oct '17

18 Oct '17

Hello Oonitarians, Today, in collaboration with Bytes for All Pakistan, the Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI) published a research report examining internet censorship in Pakistan over the the last three years. The report, titled "*Internet Censorship in Pakistan: Findings from 2014-2017*", is available here: https://ooni.torproject.org/post/pakistan-internet-censorship/ https://twitter.com/OpenObservatory/status/920588717508751360 This study includes an analysis of thousands of network measurements collected (through the use of OONI Probe) from 22 local vantage points in Pakistan over the last three years. We *confirm the blocking of 210 URLs in Pakistan*. Explicit blockpages were served for many of those URLs, while others were blocked by means of DNS tampering. In many cases, Pakistani ISPs appear to be applying "smart filters", selectively blocking access to specific webpages hosted on HTTP, rather than blocking access to entire domains. Overall, we only found ISPs to be blocking the HTTP version of sites, potentially enabling censorship circumvention over HTTPS (for sites that support encrypted HTTPS connections). We found a wide range of different types of sites to be blocked, including LGBT sites, communication tools, and pornography, amongst others. Notably, most of the blocked URLs include: * Sites hosting content pertaining to the controversial "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day" * Web proxies The blocking of sites related to "Draw Mohammed Day" is legally justified under Pakistan's Penal Code, which prohibits blasphemy. Similarly, the blocking of other sites (such as pornography and other sites promoting provocative attire) can be justified under Pakistan's laws and regulations. However, we also found the *sites of the Baluch and Hazara ethnic minority groups to be blocked *as well. According to human rights groups, these minorities have experienced discrimination and abuse by authorities. These censorship events may be politically motivated. On a positive note, we found popular communication tools, like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, to be accessible. Quite similarly, the Tor network was accessible in most networks throughout the testing period. All data collected from Pakistan is publicly available here: https://api.ooni.io/files/by_country/PK ~ The OONI team. -- Maria Xynou Research and Partnerships Coordinator Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI) https://ooni.torproject.org/ PGP Key Fingerprint: 2DC8 AFB6 CA11 B552 1081 FBDE 2131 B3BE 70CA 417E

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Report on blocking of Catalan referendum sites
by Maria Xynou 04 Oct '17

04 Oct '17

Hello Oonitarians, Today, in collaboration with our friends at Virtual Road, OONI published a post on the blocking of Catalan referendum sites. You can read our post here: https://ooni.torproject.org/post/internet-censorship-catalonia-independence… This report links to network measurements collected from three local networks over the last week, examining the blocking of domains associated to Catalonia's independence referendum. *Our findings confirm the blocking of 25 Catalan referendum sites between 25th September 2017 (when OONI Probe testing started) to 1st October 2017 (referendum day).* France Telecom Espanya (AS12479) and Euskaltel (AS12338) blocked these sites by means of DNS tampering, while Telefonica/Movistar (AS3352) served block pages through the use of HTTP transparent proxies. While Telecom Espanya and Euskaltel were not found to be blocking seized .cat domains, we found Telefonica to be serving block pages even for .cat domains already seized. This case highlights the need to measure internet censorship everywhere, even in countries that we consider to be less likely to censor information. We can't go back in time and run measurements, but we can always be prepared. ;) You can consider running OONI Probe in your country through our installation information here: https://ooni.torproject.org/install/ You can also explore OONI data further here: https://explorer.ooni.torproject.org/world/ All the best, Maria. -- Maria Xynou Research and Partnerships Coordinator Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI) https://ooni.torproject.org/ PGP Key Fingerprint: 2DC8 AFB6 CA11 B552 1081 FBDE 2131 B3BE 70CA 417E

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