July 2018 - ooni-talk - lists.torproject.org

New report: Social media disruptions in Mali amid 2018 presidential election
by Maria Xynou 31 Jul '18

31 Jul '18

Hello, Last Sunday, social media was reportedly inaccessible in Mali amid presidential elections. Today, OONI published a short report providing network measurement data that corroborates local reports on the blocking of social media during the elections. Our report is available here: https://ooni.torproject.org/post/mali-disruptions-amid-2018-election/ Daily OONI network measurements have been collected from Mali for more than a year, thanks to our local partners. This has allowed us to detect changes in censorship policies, particularly on the day of Mali's latest elections. Our main findings can be summarized as follows: 1. Orange Mali (AS30985)**appears to have blocked access to WhatsApp (app and web.whatsapp.com) Twitter, guardianproject.info and anonymizer.ru in the evening of 29th July 2018 (election day). These platforms had previously been accessible (pretty much) every day over the last year in this network (strongly suggesting that they were temporarily blocked). 2. Measurements collected from SOTELMA (AS21271)**don't show signs of internet censorship on 29th July 2018. Therefore, social media sites (and circumvention tool sites) weren't blocked by all ISPs on Mali's election day. If you're interested in expanding upon this study (particularly as political events in Mali unfold), you can do so through the use of OONI Probe (https://ooni.torproject.org/install/) and OONI data (https://ooni.torproject.org/data/) Thanks for reading! All the best, Maria.**** -- Maria Xynou Research & Partnerships Director 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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Reminder: OONI community meeting tomorrow
by Maria Xynou 30 Jul '18

30 Jul '18

Hello, I'm sending this email as a reminder that OONI's July community meeting is taking place tomorrow (31st July) at 13:00 UTC (for 1 hour). Where: https://slack.openobservatory.org (OONI Slack channel) or #ooni on IRC Please add topics that you would like to discuss as part of the meeting here: https://pad.riseup.net/p/ooni-community-meeting Looking forward to connecting with you soon! Cheers, Maria. -- Maria Xynou Research & Partnerships Director 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 Community Meeting: Tuesday 31st July 2018
by Maria Xynou 23 Jul '18

23 Jul '18

Hello, The OONI team warmly welcomes you to join us next week for our monthly community meeting. Where: https://slack.openobservatory.org/ (OONI Slack channel) When: Tuesday, 31st July 2018 at 13:00 UTC (for 1 hour, until 14:00 UTC) We'd love to hear your thoughts and suggestions on how we can improve our tools and research methodologies. Please add topics that you would like to discuss as part of the meeting in this pad: https://pad.riseup.net/p/ooni-community-meeting If you're not able to join us, please feel encouraged to join us on Slack or IRC any other day! Looking forward to connecting with you soon! All the best, ~ The OONI team. -- Maria Xynou Research & Partnerships Director 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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Survey & Interviews: OONI Probe feedback
by Maria Xynou 19 Jul '18

19 Jul '18

Hello, Do you use OONI Probe? We'd love your feedback! *# Survey** * We're excited to hear more about your experience with OONI Probe so that we can meet your needs in future releases! Please take a few minutes to complete our survey: https://ooniuxteam.typeform.com/to/a1P0cn Alternatively, you can fill out the survey using Tor's self-hosted version of it: https://storm.torproject.org/shared/VpAFK13fdAozTGTolFd2EsT1CkLY8-YlBLbRERy… *# Interview*** The OONI team is currently working on revamping the OONI Probe mobile apps to improve their usability, design, and include some new features based on community requests. By participating in a *10-15 minute interview*, you can gain a sneak peak into the new OONI Probe mobile apps and provide feedback on our mockups. If you're interested in being interviewed, please notify us via the above survey or by emailing me. Learn more through our blog post: https://ooni.torproject.org/post/ooniprobe-ux-survey-and-interviews/ Thanks for your time. Your feedback will help us improve OONI Probe for a global community measuring internet censorship! Cheers, Maria. -- Maria Xynou Research & Partnerships Director 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: The State of Internet Censorship in Egypt
by Maria Xynou 02 Jul '18

02 Jul '18

Hello, Today OONI and Egypt's AFTE published a joint research report on the state of internet censorship in Egypt. * Full report in English: https://ooni.io/documents/Egypt-Internet-Censorship-AFTE-OONI-2018-07.pdf * Full report in Arabic: https://ooni.io/documents/Egypt-Internet-Censorship-AFTE-OONI-2018-07.AR.pdf * Summary of the report in English: https://ooni.io/post/egypt-internet-censorship/ & https://blog.torproject.org/egypt-internet-censorship * Summary of the report in Arabic: https://ooni.io/documents/summary-egypt-internet-censorship-arabic.pdf You may remember that AFTE previously reported on hundreds of websites being blocked in Egypt. OONI and AFTE have now joined forces. We conducted a comprehensive study based on the analysis of OONI Probe measurements collected from multiple local vantage points over the last year and a half. More than 1,000 URLs presented signs of network interference, 178 of which seem to most likely have been consistently blocked throughout the testing period. The majority of these URLs include media websites, human rights sites, circumvention tools and sites expressing political criticism. More than 100 URLs that belong to media organizations were blocked, even though Egyptian authorities have only officially ordered the blocking of 21 news websites. AFTE interviewed journalists working with Egyptian media organizations whose websites got blocked to examine the impact of censorship. Many Egyptian journalists reported that the censorship has had a severe impact on their work and that some media organizations have been forced to suspend their operations entirely as a result of persisting internet censorship. Egyptian ISPs primarily block sites through the use of Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) technology that resets connections. In some cases, instead of RST injection, ISPs drop packets, suggesting a variance in filtering rules. In other cases, ISPs interfere with the SSL encrypted traffic between Cloudflare's Point-of-Presence in Cairo and the backend servers of sites (pshiphon.ca, purevpn.com and ultrasawt.com) hosted outside of Egypt. Egyptian ISPs also appear to apply "defense in depth" tactics for network filtering by adding extra layers of censorship, making circumvention harder. This is suggested by the blocking of Egypt's Freedom and Justice Party's (FJP) site, which was blocked by two different middleboxes, as well as by the blocking of numerous circumvention tools. Apart from pervasive levels of internet censorship, Egyptian ISPs were found to hijack unencrypted HTTP connections and inject redirects to ads and cryptocurrency mining scripts. We first detected this back in 2016, when we reported that state-owned Telecom Egypt was hijacking unencrypted connections to porn sites and redirecting them to ads. The Citizen Lab significantly expanded upon this research in their latest Sandvine report. Now, following the analysis of thousands of measurements collected from the last year and a half, we have enough evidence to believe that (many) Egyptian ISPs are carrying out an ad campaign. The affected sites are diverse, including the sites of the Palestinian Prisoner Society, the Women's Initiative for Gender Justice, as well as a number of LGBTQI and Israeli sites. Even the sites of the UN were affected by this ad campaign! We will continue to monitor internet censorship in Egypt and around the world. We therefore welcome any feedback you may have. Thanks for reading! 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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