ooni-talk July 2022

ooni-talk@lists.torproject.org

2 participants
8 discussions

Launched: New Test Lists Editor
by Maria Xynou 29 Jul '22

29 Jul '22

Hello friends, Today the OONI team is excited to share that we have launched a new platform, the Test Lists Editor, which you can use to *contribute websites for censorship testing*. Access the *Test Lists Editor* here: https://test-lists.ooni.org/ Learn all about the Test Lists Editor through our blog post: https://ooni.org/post/2022-test-lists-editor/ Our post also includes a brief *user guide*: https://ooni.org/post/2022-test-lists-editor/#using-the-test-lists-editor *# What are test lists?* Test lists are lists of websites tested for censorship (by OONI Probe, Censored Planet tools, etc.). Since 2014, the Citizen Lab has publicly hosted these lists on GitHub ( https://github.com/citizenlab/test-lists/), enabling important community review and contributions. *# Why the Test Lists Editor?* Community members with a social science background (such as political scientists, researchers, journalists, and human rights advocates) are often best-positioned to update test lists. However, test lists have been hosted on GitHub, which is a platform mainly used by developers. The Test Lists Editor is a web platform that enables you to review and contribute to the Citizen Lab test lists, *without a GitHub account*! Your contributions will still be reviewed by the Citizen Lab, OONI, and other experts, but you no longer require a GitHub account to contribute. *# Why contribute?* Discovering cases of website blocking really depends on *which* websites you test. Help the internet freedom community discover website blocks: https://test-lists.ooni.org/ Special thanks to Netalitica researchers for their excellent work on improving numerous test lists over the years! Huge thanks to all community members who contributed to test lists, and who shared feedback for the development of the Test Lists Editor. <3 Please help spread the word: https://twitter.com/OpenObservatory/status/1552990167195127809 Thanks, OONI team.

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PT community meetup July [28/07/2022]
by Vasilis 25 Jul '22

25 Jul '22

Dear all, This month Pluggable Transports meetup will take place on Tuesday, July 28. Time: 10:00 AM EDT / 2:00 PM UTC / 16:00 PM CEST Where: Pluggable Transports channel * [Matrix](https://matrix.to/#/#pluggable-transports:matrix.org) * [IRC (no account required)](https://webchat.oftc.net/?channels=pluggable-transports) * [Slack](https://openobservatory.slack.com/messages/pluggable-transports/) * [Mattermost](https://community.internetfreedomfestival.org/community/channel… Please add any topics you would like to discuss during the meeting here: https://pad.riseup.net/p/pt-meetup-keep More info and details on how to join: https://www.pluggabletransports.info/blog/pt-meetup-jul2022/ Hope to see many of you there. Best, ~Vasilis -- PGP Fingerprint: 8FD5 CF5F 39FC 03EB B382 7470 5FBF 70B1 D126 0162 PGP Public Key: https://keys.openpgp.org/vks/v1/by-fingerprint/8FD5CF5F39FC03EBB38274705FBF…

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OONI Community Meeting: Tuesday, 26th July 2022
by Maria Xynou 25 Jul '22

25 Jul '22

Hello, The OONI team warmly welcomes you to join us next Tuesday for our monthly community meeting. *=> Where? *OONI Slack channel: https://slack.ooni.org/ (bridged with IRC: ircs://irc.oftc.net:6697/#ooni) *=> When?* Tuesday, *26th July 2022 at 13:00 UTC* (for 1 hour) Please add topics that you'd like to discuss during the meeting in this pad: https://pad.riseup.net/p/ooni-community-meeting-keep The monthly OONI community meetings aim to: * Collect community feedback on OONI tools & methodologies * Address questions in relation to the use of OONI tools and OONI data * Foster discussions on internet censorship issues * Receive updates from the community We hope you can join us! All the best, ~ OONI team

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New release: OONI Probe Mobile 3.7.0
by Maria Xynou 22 Jul '22

22 Jul '22

Hello friends, The OONI team is excited to share that we just released *OONI Probe Mobile 3.7.0*! The latest release includes: * New Vanilla Tor test * Automated experimental testing (i.e. the tests in the Experimental card of OONI Probe are run automatically if you enable automated testing) * In-app support for changing languages * Support for sharing a link to the OONI Probe app Please *update* to the latest version on: * Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.openobservatory.ooniprobe * iOS: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/ooni-probe/id1199566366 We are also excited to share that we have made *OONI Probe Mobile available on Huawei AppGallery*: https://appgallery.huawei.com/app/C105911849 Thanks, OONI team.

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OONI Monthly Report: June 2022
by Maria Xynou 15 Jul '22

15 Jul '22

Hello, OONI's June 2022 status report is shared below. *# OONI Monthly Report: June 2022* Throughout June 2022, the OONI team worked on the following sprints: * Sprint 66 (1st - 5th June 2022) * Sprint 67 (6th -19th June 2022) * Sprint 68 (20th - 30th June 2022) Our work can be tracked through the various OONI GitHub repositories: https://github.com/ooni Highlights are shared in this report below. *## OONI’s submission for the OHCHR report on internet shutdowns and human rights* In response to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights’s call for submissions in support of the OHCHR report on internet shutdowns and human rights to the 50th session of the Human Rights Council in June 2022, the OONI team provided a submission with relevant information on the occurrence of mandated disruptions of access to social media and messaging platforms over the past 5 years based on empirical OONI network measurement data. Read our submission here: https://ooni.org/documents/2022-ooni-submission-ohchr-report-internet-shutd… We share OONI data on social media blocks during elections and protests over the last 5 years. *## OONI Probe Mobile* We made a private beta release of OONI Probe Android 3.7.0, which we tested extensively and shared with community members for testing. Notably, the private beta of OONI Probe Android 3.7.0 includes: * Support for running the Experimental group card automatically * New Vanilla Tor test * In-app support for changing languages * Support for sharing a link to the OONI Probe app * Measurement engine synced with OONI Probe CLI 3.15.2 Based on testing and community feedback, we worked on various bug fixes and improvements to the OONI Probe mobile app in preparation for the public release (3.7.0). Specifically, we worked on: * Fixing a bug to ensure that the correct ASN is displayed (when a failed test is re-run) when a different network is selected ( https://github.com/ooni/probe/issues/851); * Removing deprecated methods from Android ( https://github.com/ooni/probe/issues/1708); * Fixing a bug affecting the view of data for uploaded measurements ( https://github.com/ooni/probe/issues/2140); * Fixing an Android UX bug affecting the screen lock and back button behavior (https://github.com/ooni/probe/issues/2156); * Investigating a bug that makes the Android app slow when loading and showing measurements (https://github.com/ooni/probe/issues/2150); * Fixing a bug that caused the Android app to crash after a clean install with default settings (https://github.com/ooni/probe/issues/1911); * Ensuring that automated runs on OONI Probe Mobile are appended to the software name (https://github.com/ooni/probe/issues/2167). *## OONI Run* We started drafting a plan for incrementally releasing a new version of OONI Run (https://run.ooni.io/). During the final week of the month, we discussed 3 different design documents for supporting a version of OONI Run that doesn’t require a backend. In parallel, we started drafting a specification for the new version of OONI Run ( https://github.com/ooni/spec/pull/249). *## OONI Probe Web* The OONI Probe Web app (https://ooni.github.io/probe-web/) includes a website measurement experiment called “browser_web”. In June 2022, we wrote a test specification for this experiment ( https://github.com/ooni/spec/pull/244/files). As part of this, we identified some of the limitations to this testing methodology and we documented some of the precautions that should be taken when analyzing the data. We also added support for: * Detecting an incompatible browser in the web application ( https://github.com/ooni/probe-web/commit/f6a75f9940fe3e5961dabd0d21cc8596af… ); * Skipping the testing of a URL on HTTP ( https://github.com/ooni/probe-web/commit/86367a614224cff53713262d366ceca614…) because HTTP targets cannot be measured when the probe web application is deployed on a HTTPS site due to the requests being “mixed content” (see: https://github.com/ooni/spec/blob/master/nettests/ts-036-browser_web.md#cav… ). *## Expanding censorship measurement methodologies* While reflecting on the difficulties of merging Websteps into OONI Probe and, more generally, on the toil of maintaining OONI Probe, we came up with a better plan for organizing new experiments that should significantly reduce the maintenance overhead. This plan, called step-by-step, has been discussed internally, as well as with our ICFP fellows (Ain Ghazal and Gurshabad Grover) and GSoC student (Mehul Gulati). After several rounds of review, we published a design document (https://github.com/ooni/probe-cli/pull/814), which was accompanied by many proof of concepts. *## Measuring DoT/DoH Blocking Using OONI Probe: A Preliminary Study* Last year, we wrote a research paper ("Measuring DoT/DoH Blocking Using OONI Probe: A Preliminary Study") which was presented at the Network and Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS'21) as part of the DNS Privacy Workshop. You can read this paper here: https://www.ndss-symposium.org/wp-content/uploads/dnspriv21-02-paper.pdf This study involves an investigation of encrypted DNS (DoT & DoH) blocking in Kazakhstan, Iran, and China with a new OONI Probe experiment (DNSCheck). In June 2022, we published a blog post with a summary of findings (and video presentation): https://ooni.org/post/2022-doh-dot-paper-dnsprivacy21/ We also shared a summary of findings through a Twitter thread: https://twitter.com/OpenObservatory/status/1537764247442268161 *## A Quick Look at QUIC Censorship* In previous months, OONI had the great pleasure to serve as the host organization for Kathrin Elmenhorst's Open Technology Fund (OTF) Information Controls Fellowship. As part of her fellowship with us, Kathrin investigated QUIC blocking & QUIC's potential for censorship resistance. Her findings reveal QUIC censorship in China, India, Russia and Uganda, and she shares approaches for QUIC censorship evasion. To help share her findings with the community, we cross-posted her blog post (originally published on the OTF website): https://ooni.org/post/2022-quick-look-quic-censorship/ *## OONI Explorer* We implemented new network-centric views inside of OONI Explorer ( https://github.com/ooni/explorer/pull/750). These views enable users to view OONI measurements from a network perspective. We also made some small improvements, such as adding the input field on the OONI Explorer Search tool and Measurement Aggregation Toolkit (MAT) pages ( https://github.com/ooni/explorer/pull/759), as well as other bug fixing ( https://github.com/ooni/explorer/pull/761). *## Building a web platform for updating test lists* We continued to polish our new web platform for updating test lists ( https://test-lists.ooni.org/) in preparation for a public launch. Specifically, we removed the nickname field from the login page ( https://github.com/ooni/test-lists-ui/pull/41) and we made several other bug fixes (https://github.com/ooni/test-lists-ui/pull/42, https://github.com/ooni/test-lists-ui/pull/43). *## OONI backend### Migration to the Clickhouse database* We continued to work on the ongoing migration to the new OLAP database. As part of this work, we migrated the test helper rotation script to the new backend host. We also worked on cleaning up (i.e. removing the legacy code), adding changes (to support the new database), and moving our test list updater to the new database/backend host on Clickhouse ( https://github.com/ooni/pipeline/pull/387). We made a configuration change on the OONI API to migrate traffic to the new test helper ( https://github.com/ooni/api/pull/294). *### URL prioritization* In response to community feedback ( https://github.com/ooni/backend/issues/582), we adjusted the URL prioritization system to prioritize the testing of URLs on an ASN-level (as opposed to a countrywide-level). We tested the new ASN-based URL prioritization system successfully (https://github.com/ooni/api/pull/293). We also added support for filtering the URL prioritization query by week ( https://github.com/ooni/api/pull/296). *## Test list updates* To improve the quality of global website testing, we worked on cleaning the Global test list (https://github.com/citizenlab/test-lists/pull/1006). This involved reviewing URLs and associated category codes, updating URLs, removing non-operational/irrelevant URLs, and updating category codes. We also contributed the following updates to the Citizen Lab test lists: * Updated the test lists for Azerbaijan and Russia ( https://github.com/citizenlab/test-lists/pull/1000, https://github.com/citizenlab/test-lists/pull/1007); * Added social media sites to the Global test list ( https://github.com/citizenlab/test-lists/pull/1008); * Other updates (https://github.com/citizenlab/test-lists/pull/1004, https://github.com/citizenlab/test-lists/pull/1005). We also reviewed and merged many test list pull requests opened by community members ( https://github.com/citizenlab/test-lists/pulls?q=is%3Apr+is%3Aclosed). *## Google Summer of Code (GSoC) 2022* During the summer of 2022, we have the opportunity to host 2 Google Summer of Code (GSoC) students: Germa Vinsmoke and Mehul Gulati. They started working with us in June 2022. In particular, our GSoC 2022 students will work on the following projects: * OONI Probe Network Experiments: https://summerofcode.withgoogle.com/programs/2022/projects/GAEEQk5w * OONI Explorer & Design System Improvements: https://summerofcode.withgoogle.com/programs/2022/projects/EMOQ4Zai *## Interviewed Community Coordinator candidates* Following the publication of a job opening for an OONI Community Coordinator ( https://ooni.org/post/2022-job-opening-ooni-community-coordinator/), we reviewed all applications carefully, created a shortlist of candidates for the first round of interviews, prepared interview questions, and followed up with all applicants. In June 2022, we completed the first round of interviews for the OONI Community Coordinator position. Based on these interviews, we created a shortlist for the second (and final) round of interviews (for early July 2022) and coordinated with candidates. *## Improved OONI’s Code of Conduct* Based on some initial community feedback, we edited OONI’s Code of Conduct to improve upon it (https://github.com/ooni/ooni.org/pull/1194). We further discussed and collected community feedback for the improvement of OONI’s Code of Conduct during our June 2022 OONI Community Meeting ( https://pad.riseup.net/p/improving-ooni-coc-keep). *## Created OONI video recording for the Internet Without Borders event in Yerevan* Between May 2022 to June 2022, eQualitie, Roskomsvoboda, and other Russian civil society organizations organized and hosted a series of conferences (called “Internet without Borders”) for the Russian diaspora in 5 cities (Tbilisi, Yerevan, Vilnius, Berlin, Warsaw), with the goal of fighting internet censorship. Information about these conferences is available here: https://internetborders.net/ We created a 15-minute video recording, which included a brief presentation of OONI’s tools, methods, and dataset. This video recording was shown to participants at the Internet Without Borders event in Yerevan, Armenia, on 3rd June 2022 (https://internetborders.net/project/yerevan/). *## Notable community use of OONI Probe and OONI data### Access Now paper on taxonomy of internet shutdowns* Access Now published a paper providing a taxonomy of internet shutdowns (citing OONI data): https://www.accessnow.org/cms/assets/uploads/2022/06/A-taxonomy-of-internet… *## Community activities* *### OONI training session for civil society groups from Zimbabwe, Zambia, and South Africa* On 1st June 2022, OONI’s Maria facilitated an OONI training session for civil society groups from Zimbabwe, Zambia, and South Africa. This was organized by our partner, Digital Society of Africa ( https://ooni.org/partners/digital-society-of-africa/). *### RightsCon 2022* As part of our participation at RightsCon 2022 (https://www.rightscon.org/), we co-facilitated/spoke at the following sessions: * Workshop on "Building capacity to document and circumvent internet shutdowns" co-hosted with SFLC.in and Top10VPN (6th June 2022) * Community lab on "Monitoring internet censorship in South and Southeast Asia" co-hosted with Sinar Project (7th June 2022) * Panel on "Internet splintering due to server-side blocking and embargo sanction", hosted by Censored Planet (8th June 2022) * Social hour on "A light in the dark: learning about internet shutdowns and the #KeepItOn campaign" co-hosted with organizations from the #KeepItOn campaign (9th June 2022) We also participated in two Private Meetings (where we presented OONI) hosted at RightsCon by community organizations. *### OONI presentation and hackathon at Internet without Borders event in Vilnius* We traveled to Vilnius, Lithuania, where we attended the Internet Without Borders conference (for the Russian diaspora) in person ( https://internetborders.net/project/vilnius/). As part of our participation, we: * Presented OONI (10th June 2022); * Facilitated a workshop on using OONI’s Measurement Aggregation Toolkit (MAT) for investigating internet censorship in Russia (10th June 2022); * Facilitated a day-long OONI hackathon (11th June 2022). As part of the OONI hackathon, participants primarily worked on analyzing OONI data from Russia and investigated the correlation between the spike of failed and anomalous measurements. *### OONI presentation and hackathon at Internet without Borders event in Berlin* We traveled to Berlin, Germany, where we attended the Internet Without Borders conference (for the Russian diaspora) in person ( https://internetborders.net/project/berlin/). As part of our participation, we: * Presented OONI (17th June 2022); * Facilitated a day-long OONI hackathon (18th June 2022). *### DW Global Media Forum 2022* OONI’s Arturo traveled to Bonn, Germany, to attend Deutsche Welle’s (DW) Global Media Forum 2022 (https://gmf-event.com/) in person, where he participated as a speaker on a panel discussion on documenting internet shutdowns. *### OONI Community Meeting* On 28th June 2022, we hosted the monthly OONI Community Meeting on our Slack channel (https://slack.ooni.org/), during which we discussed the following topics: 1) Request for community feedback on improving OONI's Code of Conduct ( https://github.com/ooni/ooni.org/blob/master/CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md#ooni-code-o…, https://github.com/ooni/gatherings/blob/master/partner-gatherings/2017-07-t…) 2) Enabling researchers to dynamically adjust custom test lists used by community networks of volunteers (needed in countries like Iran and Venezuela) *## Userbase* In June 2022, 38,147,681 OONI Probe measurements were collected from 2,833 AS networks in 170 countries around the world. This information can also be found through our measurement stats on OONI Explorer (see chart on “monthly coverage worldwide”): https://explorer.ooni.org/ ~ OONI team.

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OONI Monthly Report: May 2022
by Maria Xynou 15 Jul '22

15 Jul '22

Hello, OONI's May 2022 status report is shared below. *# OONI Monthly Report: May 2022* Throughout May 2022, the OONI team worked on the following sprints: * Sprint 64 (1st - 8th May 2022) * Sprint 65 (9th - 22nd May 2022) * Sprint 66 (23rd - 31st May 2022) Our work can be tracked through the various OONI GitHub repositories: https://github.com/ooni Highlights are shared in this report below. *## Job opening for OONI Community Coordinator* In May 2022, we published a job opening for hiring a Community Coordinator for OONI: https://ooni.org/post/2022-job-opening-ooni-community-coordinator/ In an effort to help ensure that our job opening reached interested candidates around the world, we worked on quite extensive outreach efforts. In particular, we posted the job opening on: * All OONI social media channels (Twitter, Mastodon, Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin); * All OONI mailing lists; * Community mailing lists (such as those of the #KeepItOn campaign, Global Voices Advocacy, and NetRights); * OONI Slack channel (and other relevant Slack channels); * Digital Rights Job Board (https://www.digitalrights.community/job-board); * Hasgeek Job Board (https://hasjob.co/openobservatory.org/12jm2); * FOSS Job Board ( https://www.fossjobs.net/job/10936/ooni-community-coordinator-at-open-obser… ). We also reached out to our partners and many other community members, requesting that they help share this opportunity with their networks. Following the publication of this job opening, we worked on tracking and reviewing incoming applications, and following-up with applicants. *## OONI Probe Mobile* Throughout May 2022, we worked on various improvements to the OONI Probe mobile app in preparation for the next release. Specifically, we worked on: * Including the Vanilla Tor experiment as part of the Experimental card of OONI Probe (https://github.com/ooni/probe/issues/2103); * Ensuring that the Vanilla Tor and Tor Snowflake experiments only run as part of automated testing (https://github.com/ooni/probe/issues/2102); * Providing a working sample for Flutter on OONI Probe apps with probe-cli integration (https://github.com/aanorbel/probe-shared); * Enabling users to see all logs (https://github.com/ooni/probe/issues/1777 , https://github.com/ooni/probe-android/pull/516); * Fixing an iOS bug affecting the icons displayed when all tests are run ( https://github.com/ooni/probe/issues/2055). *## OONI Run* We implemented a fix related to the copy-pasting of URLs into the OONI Run web interface (https://github.com/ooni/run/pull/105). Based on community feedback, we explored how we can add support to OONI Run for saving custom test lists (https://github.com/ooni/probe/issues/867), and we had team meetings to discuss possible implementation approaches. We also wrote an internal design document on implementation approaches for addressing the most pressing OONI Run community needs (as identified through a previous OONI Run usability study and ongoing community interactions). *## OONI Probe Desktop* We made some improvement to the description of the Experimental card in OONI Probe Desktop (https://github.com/ooni/probe-desktop/pull/294) and we worked towards ensuring that the autorun directory is deleted when a hard reset is performed (https://github.com/ooni/probe-desktop/pull/295). *## OONI Probe Web* We added support to OONI Probe Web for using the check-in API to retrieve information about the probe IP address country code and ASN ( https://github.com/ooni/probe-web/commit/bc680323df0c7404b14651acea11a281c7…). We also worked on improving the UI of OONI Probe Web. We circulated an internal testing beta of OONI Probe Web ( https://ooni.github.io/probe-web/) to collect community feedback that can help inform further development and improvements. *## Expanding censorship measurement methodologies### Website measurement* After some initial experimentation in April 2022, we sketched out a plan for integrating some methodologies from the “Understanding the Practices of Global Censorship through Accurate, End-to-End Measurements” ( https://shhaos.github.io/papers/sigmetrics22.pdf) study into OONI Probe ( https://github.com/ooni/probe/issues/2086). We started implementing the plan for merging the Websteps prototype ( https://github.com/bassosimone/websteps-illustrated/) into OONI Probe. To this end, we merged several improvements for netxlite, the ooniprobe package that provides basic networking functionality ( https://github.com/ooni/probe/issues/2096). We also drafted and implemented a plan for observing duplicate DNS replies ( https://github.com/ooni/probe/issues/2099). This plan differs from the Websteps implementation because community feedback (in particular from Jigsaw’s Vinicius Fortuna and Sarah Laplante) convinced us that the implementation of this functionality that we had sketched out in the Websteps prototype could be further simplified and streamlined. *### New experiments* We implemented several new exploratory experiments: * dnsping: https://github.com/ooni/spec/blob/master/nettests/ts-035-dnsping.md * simplequicping: https://github.com/ooni/spec/blob/master/nettests/ts-034-simplequicping.md * tcpping: https://github.com/ooni/spec/blob/master/nettests/ts-032-tcpping.md * tlsping: https://github.com/ooni/spec/blob/master/nettests/ts-033-tlsping.md These are “exploratory” in the sense that we expect users to manually run them from the command line when they are actively researching censorship. We introduced these four new experiments based on community feedback and requests. *### Vanilla Tor experiment* We implemented the Vanilla Tor experiment ( https://github.com/ooni/probe-cli/pull/718), which used to be part of the legacy version of OONI Probe. We reintroduced this experiment following discussions with Tor developers, who mentioned that it would be quite useful to them. *### Data quality improvements* We investigated and fixed a rather surprising and complex data quality issue. It turns out that the Android implementation of `getaddrinfo` behaves differently from any other existing `getaddrinfo` implementation and only returns one of two return codes: 0 in case of success, and `EAI_NODATA` in case any other possible error occurs, including cases where a domain name does not exists, cases where the server is temporarily unavailable, cases where the server is misconfigured, and cases of censorship. In practical terms, this means that the result of `getaddrinfo` on Android is unreliable and we need to improve our heuristics on the backend and our algorithms on the probe to work around this. The pull request where we fixed this bug refers to our investigation, as well as to our follow up plans to further improve DNS measurements on Android ( https://github.com/ooni/probe-cli/pull/764). The reference issue describing this problem (https://github.com/ooni/probe/issues/2029) is still open because we have not included the fix into the 3.15.x release cycle (which was being finalized while we were still investigating the root cause of this surprising bug). *## OONI Explorer* We fixed a couple of OONI Explorer bugs. Specifically, we added support for searching URLs with a longer TLD (https://github.com/ooni/explorer/pull/757) and we updated the copyright year in the footer ( https://github.com/ooni/explorer/pull/756). *## Building a web platform for updating test lists* Based on community feedback on the private beta version of our new test list web platform (https://test-lists.ooni.org/), we added backend support ( https://github.com/ooni/api/pull/286) to enable users to make changes to open pull requests (once a pull request has been opened through a test list web platform submission). In anticipation of a potentially increased volume of test list pull requests following the upcoming public launch of the test list web platform, we (along with the Citizen Lab) invited Censored Planet and Netalitica team members to get added to the Citizen Lab test list repository as reviewers of pull requests. *## OONI backend* *### Migration to the Clickhouse database* We continued to work on the ongoing migration to the new OLAP database. In May 2022, we migrated 12 API entry points to the new backend host. *### Reprocessing legacy measurements* We continued to work on the reprocessing of measurements collected before 2021 to improve data quality and ensure all measurements are reachable from OONI Explorer. *### OONI API* We reviewed and deployed a change to support the detection of the ASN and country code of probes based on their IP address on the API side. This will allow the removal of bulky GeoIP database files from the probes. We also improved the account_metadata API call to display login status on web UIs ( https://github.com/ooni/api/pull/292). *### Other operations* We added blackbox exporter-based testing and support for the alarming of various API entry points. We finished moving the test helper rotation script to the new backend host (https://github.com/ooni/pipeline/pull/386). *## Test list updates* In May 2022, we contributed a few updates to the Citizen Lab test lists. In particular, we updated the US test list ( https://github.com/citizenlab/test-lists/pull/984) and we removed dead URLs from the Global test list (https://github.com/citizenlab/test-lists/pull/995). *## Notable community use of OONI Probe and OONI data### Sinar Project report* Malaysia’s Sinar Project published a report on the blocking of a NFT fundraising campaign website (of graphics designer and political activist, Fahmi Reza): https://sinarproject.org/digital-rights/measuring-and-detecting-network-int… Their report makes use of OONI Probe and OONI data. *## Community activities### OONI workshop for civil society groups in Latin America* On 19th May 2022, OONI’s Maria facilitated a 2-hour OONI workshop for civil society groups in Latin America. This workshop (organized by Derechos Digitales) was facilitated in collaboration with Venezuela Inteligente. *### OONI presentation at Tactical Tech* On 24th May 2022, OONI’s Maria presented OONI at Tactical Tech ( https://tacticaltech.org/) in Berlin. This presentation also involved a live demo of using the Measurement Aggregation Toolkit (MAT) to investigate various forms of internet censorship around the world. *### OONI presentation for journalists* On 25th May 2022, OONI’s Maria presented OONI’s tools, methods, research, and dataset to a group of journalists from Russia and Belarus. *### OONI Community Meeting* On 31st May 2022, we hosted the monthly OONI Community Meeting on our Slack channel (https://slack.ooni.org/), during which we discussed the following topics: 1) Job Opening: OONI Community Coordinator ( https://ooni.org/post/2022-job-opening-ooni-community-coordinator/) 2) Detecting regional censorship, which is increasingly becoming an urgent issue (https://github.com/ooni/probe/issues/1581#issuecomment-1125221383) In particular, we discussed the following questions with the community: * Should there be an option to also include the region or should we include the region by default? * Should we invest some legal research time to figure out if we could use MaxMind? * Should we try to have location permission in the app and use that? Should we have two apps, one with location and the other without? * Should we allow users to manually annotate/correct the geolocation results if they are inaccurate? 3) Copyright law for enforcing internet censorship *## Userbase* In May 2022, 41,882,898 OONI Probe measurements were collected from 2,905 AS networks in 171 countries around the world. This information can also be found through our measurement stats on OONI Explorer (see chart on “monthly coverage worldwide”): https://explorer.ooni.org/ ~ OONI team.

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OONI Monthly Report: April 2022
by Maria Xynou 15 Jul '22

15 Jul '22

Hello, These days we're primarily supported by the DRL, which is why we do quarterly reporting. That said, we'd like to share monthly updates from the OONI team with the community, hence our April 2022 report shared below. I'll also follow-up to share our May and June 2022 reports. *# OONI Monthly Report: April 2022* Throughout April 2022, the OONI team worked on the following sprints: * Sprint 62 (1st - 10 April 2022) * Sprint 63 (11th - 24th April 2022) * Sprint 64 (25th April - 30th April 2022) Our work can be tracked through the various OONI GitHub repositories: https://github.com/ooni Highlights are shared in this report below. *## Launched the OONI Measurement Aggregation Toolkit (MAT)* We publicly launched OONI’s new Measurement Aggregation Toolkit (MAT): https://explorer.ooni.org/chart/mat The MAT is a tool that enables the public to create their own custom charts based on aggregate views of real-time OONI data collected from around the world. This tool was built for researchers, journalists, and human rights defenders interested in examining internet censorship around the world. When examining cases of internet censorship, it's important to look at many measurements at once ("in aggregate") in order to identify censorship trends and patterns. The MAT incorporates our data analysis techniques, enabling the public to answer such questions without any data analysis skills, and with the click of a button! To provide further details about using the MAT and interpreting MAT charts, we wrote and published a blog post: https://ooni.org/post/2022-ooni-mat/ We hope the internet freedom community finds the MAT useful for investigating and responding to internet censorship events around the world. *### Preparing for the MAT launch* In preparation for the public launch of OONI’s Measurement Aggregation Toolkit (MAT), we: * Improved the interaction between the table and the chart in the multi-axis charts (https://github.com/ooni/explorer/pull/724); * Added support for exporting data in CSV format and added links to CSVs under the charts (https://github.com/ooni/explorer/pull/741); * Wrote (and published) “Help” text for the MAT ( https://github.com/ooni/explorer/issues/727); * Worked on several other bug fixes and improvements ( https://github.com/ooni/explorer/pull/731, https://github.com/ooni/explorer/pull/732, https://github.com/ooni/explorer/pull/737, https://github.com/ooni/explorer/pull/740, https://github.com/ooni/explorer/pull/741). *## OONI MAT shows social media blocks in Sri Lanka* OONI’s new Measurement Aggregation Toolkit (MAT) was useful for enabling human rights defenders to corroborate the social media blocks that were reported in Sri Lanka between 2nd to 3rd April 2022. The following OONI MAT charts (which we shared with the #KeepItOn community) present aggregate views of OONI data, displaying the temporary blocking of social media services in Sri Lanka on 2nd and 3rd April 2022: * Twitter: https://explorer.ooni.org/experimental/mat?probe_cc=LK&test_name=web_connec… 2022-03-06&until=2022-04-06&axis_x=measurement_start_day * Facebook: https://explorer.ooni.org/experimental/mat?probe_cc=LK&test_name=web_connec… 2022-03-06&until=2022-04-06&axis_x=measurement_start_day * Instagram: https://explorer.ooni.org/experimental/mat?probe_cc=LK&test_name=web_connec… 2022-03-06&until=2022-04-06&axis_x=measurement_start_day * Facebook Messenger: https://explorer.ooni.org/experimental/mat?probe_cc=LK&test_name=facebook_m… 2022-03-06&until=2022-04-06&axis_x=measurement_start_day * Telegram: https://explorer.ooni.org/experimental/mat?probe_cc=LK&test_name=telegram&s… 2022-03-06&until=2022-04-06&axis_x=measurement_start_day * WhatsApp: https://explorer.ooni.org/experimental/mat?probe_cc=LK&test_name=whatsapp&s… 2022-03-06&until=2022-04-06&axis_x=measurement_start_day By clicking on each of these charts, the public can access the raw OONI measurement data, showing details of how the blocks were implemented and how they vary across ISPs in the country. The links to the above charts are automatically updated with real-time OONI data. *## Circumvention Tool Reachability Dashboard* We made some improvements to our new Circumvention Tool Reachability Dashboard, which presents OONI findings from the testing of censorship circumvention tools around the world ( https://explorer.ooni.org/chart/circumvention). In particular, we added copy that highlights a limitation to the dashboard, while also encouraging users to refer to Tor Metrics and the Psiphon Data Engine ( https://github.com/ooni/explorer/issues/726) to gain a more comprehensive understanding of whether circumvention tools work in a country. *## OONI Explorer network-centric views* In April 2022, we worked on implementing network-centric views for OONI Explorer (https://github.com/ooni/explorer/issues/744). The implementation (and subsequent review, feedback, and improvements) is available through the following pull request: https://github.com/ooni/explorer/pull/750 *## OONI Probe Mobile* We released OONI Probe iOS 3.6.0: https://github.com/ooni/probe-ios/releases/tag/v3.6.0 This release includes the following improvements: * New Tor Snowflake experiment * New DNS Check experiment * RiseupVPN test temporarily disabled * Links to OONI blog posts and research reports * User-initiated tests start off minimized * Improved progress bar and test runtime counter * Measurement engine synced with OONI Probe CLI 3.14 * Bug fixes and improvements We followed-up with an OONI Probe iOS 3.6.1 release ( https://github.com/ooni/probe-ios/releases/tag/v3.6.1) with bug fixes and improvements. Notably, we set up a Huawei AppGallery account, where we released the OONI Probe Android app (https://appgallery.huawei.com/app/C105911849). We also worked on: * Adding support for sharing a link to the OONI Probe app ( https://github.com/ooni/probe/issues/1997); * Making the OONI Probe VPN check compatible with Netguard firewall ( https://github.com/ooni/probe/issues/2039); * Writing an internal design document for improving the architecture of OONI Probe apps for shared codebases; * Adding support for paginating test results ( https://github.com/ooni/probe/issues/1430); * Fixing a bug involving the re-run of failed tests ( https://github.com/ooni/probe/issues/2048); * Fixing a bug affecting a link on the test details page ( https://github.com/ooni/probe/issues/2075); * Other improvements (https://github.com/ooni/probe/issues/1252, https://github.com/ooni/probe/issues/910). *## Expanding censorship measurement methodologies* Our goal is to ensure that our new experiments (particularly Websteps, our new experiment for measuring website blocking) are effective in some of the most censored environments and meet community needs. Following several rounds of community feedback, we developed our latest prototype (“Websteps winter edition”) in March 2022. In April 2022, we started discussing the “Websteps winter edition” ( https://github.com/bassosimone/websteps-illustrated/) prototype with community members, we collected their feedback, and we drafted plans for incorporating changes developed in this prototype inside of ooniprobe. We also read the “Understanding the Practices of Global Censorship through Accurate, End-to-End Measurements” paper ( https://shhaos.github.io/papers/sigmetrics22.pdf) and we started experimenting with its methodologies to understand how to integrate them into ooniprobe (https://github.com/bassosimone/websteps-illustrated/pull/2). *## Building a web platform for updating test lists* We continued to make progress towards launching our new web platform for updating test lists (https://test-lists.ooni.org/). Specifically, we made improvements related to: * Validating the login form (https://github.com/ooni/test-lists-ui/pull/28 ); * Setting the default source field ( https://github.com/ooni/test-lists-ui/pull/21); * Upgrading to the latest versions of next.js ( https://github.com/ooni/test-lists-ui/pull/31). We also discussed some approaches that would allow us to support multiple edits after the changes have been submitted, and we documented how this can be implemented in the backend (https://github.com/ooni/backend/issues/588). *## OONI backend### Migration to the Clickhouse database* We continued to work on various tasks related to the ongoing migration to an OLAP database that delivers much better performance and enables new functionalities like the MAT. We migrated multiple API calls to the host running the new database and we improved monitoring. This is a long-running process. *### Reprocessing legacy measurements* OONI measurements collected before 2021 have been reprocessed to improve data quality and to ensure all measurements are now reachable from OONI Explorer. This is also a long-running process. *### URL prioritization* The "reactive" URL prioritization system is designed to ensure acceptable and fair coverage of URLs over time. But based on community feedback ( https://github.com/ooni/backend/issues/582), we realized that the existing implementation could allow a manually-run probe to over-measure a given URL and prevent other probes from measuring this URL at all on a national level. We therefore investigated how we can change the implementation of our URL prioritization algorithm to ensure that per-ASN testing coverage does not impact countrywide testing coverage of a URL. Based on our research, we wrote an internal design document for improving our URL prioritization system. *### Other operations* We added support for STUN reachability tests in the API search function. We improved NTP dashboards and monitoring, fixed IPv6 and ICMP filtering on backend hosts, and we moved the test-helper rotation tool to use Debian 11 and fixed a bug. We also looked into the price/performance ratio on new hosts. *## OONI data analysis tool* To enable the analysis of raw OONI measurements, we built a tool (“oonidata”) which supports downloading raw OONI data in batch ( https://github.com/ooni/backend/issues/581). In April 2022, we published a version of oonidata on pypi (https://pypi.org/project/oonidata/). *## Preparing a security audit* We aim to receive a security audit for several OONI software components: OONI API accounts, OONI Probe Web, OONI Probe engine. To this end, we coordinated with several security companies to discuss audit requirements and receive quotes. *## Filmed OONI training course for Advocacy Assembly project* In previous months, we completed the creation of all materials for the online OONI training course for Small Media’s Advocacy Assembly project ( https://www.advocacyassembly.org/). In April 2022, OONI’s Maria traveled to London to record 8 direct-to-camera videos at a studio (with Small Media staff) for the online OONI training course. In particular, this involved the filming of the following videos: * Introduction to course * What is internet censorship? * The problem of internet censorship * What is OONI Probe? * Interpreting OONI data * What is OONI Explorer? * Looking at OONI data in aggregate * Conclusion Small Media aims to launch the online OONI training course over the next months. *## ISOC Pulse project on Internet shutdowns* OONI is a data partner for the Internet Society (ISOC) Pulse project on Internet shutdowns (https://pulse.internetsociety.org/partners). We aim to contribute OONI data (along with relevant charts and information) for all the “content blocking” events listed on the ISOC Pulse shutdowns timeline ( https://pulse.internetsociety.org/shutdowns). We created OONI reports (including OONI data, charts, and relevant interpretation of the findings) for the following 4 “content blocking” entries listed in the ISOC Pulse shutdown timeline: * April 2022 - Sri Lanka ( https://pulse.internetsociety.org/shutdowns/social-media-disruption-in -sri-lanka) * February 2022 - Russia ( https://pulse.internetsociety.org/shutdowns/incremental-service-limitation- in-russia) * January 2022 - Burkina Faso ( https://pulse.internetsociety.org/shutdowns/second-shutdown-in-a-month-in -burkina-faso) * August 2021 - Zambia ( https://pulse.internetsociety.org/shutdowns/social-media-limitations-in -zambia) We shared our reports with ISOC to be listed under the “Data and Analysis” section of relevant ISOC Pulse shutdown entries. *## Report for Azerbaijan Internet Watch* In support of our partner, Azerbaijan Internet Watch ( https://ooni.org/partners/azerbaijan-internet-watch/), we analyzed OONI measurements collected from Azerbaijan between January 2022 to March 2022. Based on our analysis, we produced charts and wrote a report interpreting the findings, which we shared with Azerbaijan Internet Watch. *## Test list updates* In April 2022, we contributed a few updates to the Citizen Lab test lists ( https://github.com/citizenlab/test-lists/pull/956, https://github.com/citizenlab/test-lists/pull/962, https://github.com/citizenlab/test-lists/pull/957), and we reviewed and merged several test list pull requests opened by community members ( https://github.com/citizenlab/test-lists/issues?page=3&q=is%3Aclosed). *## Job opening for bookkeeper* In collaboration with the Hermes Center (OONI’s current fiscal sponsor), we published a job opening for hiring a new bookkeeper: https://www.hermescenter.org/it/cerchiamo-un-una-consulente-contabile-e-amm… Throughout April 2022, we worked on managing and reviewing applications, following up with candidates, and interviewing shortlisted candidates for the position. *## OONI featured in Dataplane.org newsletter* OONI was among the measurement platforms (along with Censored Planet, RIPE Atlas, and NLNOG Ring) discussed in Dataplane.org’s April 2022 newsletter: https://dataplane.substack.com/p/sensor-strategy-monitoring-platforms *## Notable community use of OONI Probe and OONI data### Access Now’s 2021 Annual KeepItOn Report* Access Now published their 2021 Annual #KeepItOn campaign Report (“The Return Of Digital Authoritarianism: Internet shutdowns in 2021”): https://www.accessnow.org/cms/assets/uploads/2022 /04/2021-KeepItOn-Report-1.pdf This report makes use of OONI data, citing OONI research reports ( https://ooni.org/reports) and OONI data from OONI Explorer ( https://explorer.ooni.org/). *### VEsinFiltro’s 2021 Annual Report* In April 2022, our Venezuelan partner, VEsinFiltro, published their 2021 Annual Report on digital rights and internet censorship in Venezuela: https://vesinfiltro.com/noticias/2021_annual_report/ In the Methodology section of their report, VEsinFiltro describe that they measured internet blocks in Venezuela through the use of OONI Probe and OONI data. *## Community activities### Mozilla Twitter Space on network outages* On 5th April 2022, OONI’s Maria participated as a speaker on Mozilla’s Twitter Space discussion on network outages: https://twitter.com/mozilla/status/1511091238774190085 As part of her participation, Maria explained OONI’s methods and discussed how OONI had previously analyzed Mozilla telemetry (in collaboration with IODA) to investigate internet shutdowns ( https://ooni.org/post/2021-investigating-internet-shutdowns-mozilla-telemet…). The recording was available here: https://twitter.com/i/spaces/1MnxnkayOXEKO *### OONI data analysis lecture for Georgia Tech students* On 12th April 2022, OONI’s Arturo was invited by IODA ( https://ioda.inetintel.cc.gatech.edu/) to give a lecture to Georgia Tech computer science students on analyzing OONI data to investigate internet censorship. In preparation for this lecture, Arturo prepared a Jupyter notebook with exercises for the students. *### OONI Community Meeting* On 19th April 2022, we hosted the monthly OONI Community Meeting on our Slack channel (https://slack.ooni.org/), during which we discussed the following topics: 1) New launch: OONI Measurement Aggregation Toolkit (MAT) 2) New test list web platform (https://test-lists.ooni.org/): Community feedback and next steps 3) Tweaking OONI’s URL prioritization algorithm to ensure counts per ASN ( https://github.com/ooni/backend/issues/582) 4) Inconsistent measurement counts returned by API endpoints ( https://github.com/ooni/backend/issues/583) *## Userbase* In April 2022, 41,200,730 OONI Probe measurements were collected from 3,372 AS networks in 162 countries around the world. This information can also be found through our measurement stats on OONI Explorer (see chart on “monthly coverage worldwide”): https://explorer.ooni.org/ ~ OONI team.

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[Event] Pop Up PTIM Session: VPN censorship, Probes and Resilience - Building Feedback Loops with Open Data
by Vasilis 09 Jul '22

09 Jul '22

Dear all, Internews announced the next Pop Up PTIM Sessions! These are stand alone sessions, allowing the community to discuss PT related topics and stay up to date on the progress of this community. The third session will be presented by members of the Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI). This presentation will cover the ongoing efforts to incorporate protocol-aware VPN probes into the OONI ecosystem. Read more about it here: https://www.pluggabletransports.info/blog/popup-ptim-ooni-announcement-july… This session will take place on July 13th at 16:00 UTC/12:00 ET/18:00 CEST. Registration: https://cryptpad.fr/form/#/2/form/view/dWaOQCbEqzgIlAmPh8JhprzllYl+bHCt7NZ5… Code of Conduct: https://www.pluggabletransports.info/code-of-conduct/ Announcement post: https://www.pluggabletransports.info/blog/popup-ptim-ooni-announcement-july… Please feel free to share this event announcement. Hope to see you there! --Vasilis -- PGP Fingerprint: 8FD5 CF5F 39FC 03EB B382 7470 5FBF 70B1 D126 0162 PGP Public Key: https://keys.openpgp.org/vks/v1/by-fingerprint/8FD5CF5F39FC03EBB38274705FBF…

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ooni-talk July 2022