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[Report] New blocks emerge in Russia amid war in Ukraine: An OONI network measurement analysis
by Maria Xynou 07 Mar '22

07 Mar '22

Hello, I hope you are all safe and well. My deepest solidarity to all those affected by the war in Ukraine. Today OONI published a *research report on new censorship events in Russia* amid the war in Ukraine, based on OONI data analysis. You can read the report here: https://ooni.org/post/2022-russia-blocks-amid-ru-ua-conflict/ *# Key Findings* *## Russia* ** Media censorship.* Russia recently started blocking access to independent Russian news media websites (such as Dozhd and New Times) and foreign news media websites (such as BBC, Deutsche Welle, Russian version of Voice of America, and RFE/RL service websites). ** Blocking of a website about captured and killed Russian soldiers.* Russia blocked access to 200rf.com, which was created by representatives of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine to share information about captured and killed Russian soldiers in Ukraine. ** Centralized throttling of Twitter.* OONI data suggests that access to twitter.com was throttled in Russia between 26th February 2022 to 4th March 2022. As the throttling of twitter.com seems to have stopped across all ISPs in Russia at the same time (~08:00 on 4th March 2022 UTC), it appears to have been centralized. Moreover, interference to twitter.com appears to have changed from throttling to blocking (through the injection of a RST packet) on 4th March 2022. ** Blocking of Facebook and Twitter.* OONI data shows that access to facebook.com and twitter.com was blocked in Russia by 4th March 2022 (primarily through the injection of RST packets). ** Decentralized censorship.* Every Internet Service Provider (ISP) in Russia is responsible for implementing government-mandated blocks independently. As a result, we observe variance in how internet censorship is implemented across Russia, as blocks are not implemented on all networks in the country, and different ISPs adopt different censorship techniques. Some ISPs implement blocks through the use of multiple techniques at the same time, making circumvention harder. ** Different censorship techniques.* To block websites, OONI data shows that Russian ISPs adopt the following censorship techniques (beyond throttling): * DNS manipulation, redirecting in some cases to blockpages * HTTP man-in-the-middle, serving blockpages * TLS man-in-the-middle * Injection of a RST packet after the ClientHello during the TLS handshake (most prevalent) * Timing out the session after the ClientHello during the TLS handshake * Closing the connection after the ClientHello during the TLS handshake *## EU* Following the recent decision of the Council of the European Union to suspend the broadcasting activities of Sputnik and Russia Today (RT) in the EU, some EU countries have started to implement blocks. OONI data shows that EU countries like Greece, France, Romania, Spain, Poland, and Germany have started blocking rt.com. Moreover, we observe the blocking of sputniknews.com in several European countries, such as France, Germany, Spain, and the Czech Republic. Following requests by the European Commission, Google has removed results pertaining to rt.com and sputniknews.com from Google Search for users in the EU. Similarly, Facebook and Twitter are geo-blocking EU users from accessing RTNews. Learn more though our report: https://ooni.org/post/2022-russia-blocks-amid-ru-ua-conflict/ ~ OONI team.

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New release: OONI Probe Android 3.6.0
by Maria Xynou 01 Mar '22

01 Mar '22

Hello friends, I hope all of you are well and safe. My deepest solidarity goes out to all our community members in Ukraine. I'm reaching out to share that we have released *OONI Probe Android 3.6.0*. Please update to the latest version: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.openobservatory.ooniprobe OONI Probe Android 3.6.0 includes: * New *Tor Snowflake test*: https://ooni.org/nettest/tor-snowflake/ * New *DNS Check test*: https://github.com/ooni/spec/blob/master/nettests/ts-028-dnscheck.md * Links to OONI blog posts and research reports * Other app improvements and bug fixes Please note that we have *temporarily disabled the RiseupVPN test.* We aim to re-enable it once it's improved! Apologies for the inconvenience. Apart from measuring Tor Snowflake (which you can do with OONI Probe Android 3.6.0), please consider running a Tor Snowflake proxy to enable activists in Russia, Ukraine, and elsewhere to use Tor (for online privacy and anonymity): https://snowflake.torproject.org/ Thanks, Maria (on behalf of the OONI team).

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PT community meetup February [24/02/2022]
by Vasilis 22 Feb '22

22 Feb '22

Dear all, This month Pluggable Transports meetup will take place on Thursday, February 24. Time: 9:00 AM EST / 2:00 PM UTC Where: IFF Square on IFF Mattermost More info and details on how to join: https://www.pluggabletransports.info/blog/pt-meetup-feb2022/ 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, 22nd February 2022
by Maria Xynou 21 Feb '22

21 Feb '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, *22nd February 2022 at 14:00 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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Help translate OONI Explorer
by Maria Xynou 11 Feb '22

11 Feb '22

Hi friends, I'm super excited to share that it is now possible to *translate OONI Explorer* to any language! This is thanks to the amazing Localization Lab, which has created a new project for OONI Explorer on Transifex: https://www.transifex.com/otf/ooni-explorer/ *# About OONI Explorer* OONI Explorer is one of the *largest open datasets on internet censorship* around the world: https://explorer.ooni.org/ Every time you run OONI Probe, your test results get automatically published on OONI Explorer in real-time as open data. By helping to localize OONI Explorer, you will enable researchers and human rights defenders worldwide to learn about (and respond to) censorship events based on real-time open data. *# How to translate OONI Explorer* If you would like to help translate OONI Explorer to your language, you can do so by signing up with Transifex to join the OONI Explorer project: https://www.transifex.com/otf/ooni-explorer/ You can then review existing translations, and/or contribute a new translation (by requesting that that new language gets added through the Transifex platform). Thanks so much for your time and support! <3 Warmly, Maria.

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Research Fellowship opportunity
by Maria Xynou 01 Feb '22

01 Feb '22

Hello friends, Are you an experienced researcher interested in examining information controls (such as internet censorship)? The *Open Technology Fund (OTF) Information Controls Fellowship Program* is now open for applications: https://www.opentech.fund/funds/icfp/ This is a fully-funded fellowship opportunity for experienced researchers. You can apply for a 3-month, 6-month, 9-month, or 12-month fellowship. The *deadline* to apply is *13th March 2022*. Please help spread the word! Thanks, Maria.

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OONI Community Meeting: Monday, 31st January 2022
by Maria Xynou 27 Jan '22

27 Jan '22

Hello, The OONI team warmly welcomes you to join us next Monday for our monthly community meeting. *=> Where? *OONI Slack channel: https://slack.ooni.org/ (bridged with IRC: ircs://irc.oftc.net:6697/#ooni) *=> When?* Monday, *31st January 2022 at 14:00 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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Measuring HTTP/3 censorship with OONI Probe
by Maria Xynou 19 Jan '22

19 Jan '22

Hello, Last year, the OONI team collaborated with Kathrin Elmenhorst on adding HTTP/3 support to OONI Probe (through our urlgetter research tool) to investigate *HTTP/3 censorship in China, Iran, Kazakhstan, and India*. The results of this research were documented in a research paper that was published by the AMC Internet Measurement Conference: https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3487552.3487836 Today, Kathrin (who's now an OTF Information Controls Fellow with OONI) published a blog post which provides a *summary of these research findings* : https://ooni.org/post/2022-http3-measurements-paper/ We discovered that the deployment of HTTP/3 censorship varies significantly between the observed countries and networks. While some censors do not filter HTTP/3 traffic at all and some collaterally block HTTP/3 hosts, we uncovered HTTP/3-targeting censorship in Iran. Read Kathrin's summary of findings to learn more: https://ooni.org/post/2022-http3-measurements-paper/ Best, OONI team.

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PT community meetup December [20/01/2022]
by Vasilis 19 Jan '22

19 Jan '22

Dear all, This Thursday on 20/01/2022 December's PT community meetup will take place. Time: 9:00 AM EST / 2:00 PM UTC Where: IFF Square on IFF Mattermost More info and details on how to join: https://internetfreedomfestival.org/wiki/index.php/January_20_2022_GM 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 Monthly Report: December 2021
by Maria Xynou 14 Jan '22

14 Jan '22

Hello, OONI's December 2021 status report is shared below. *# OONI Monthly Report: December 2021* Throughout December 2021, the OONI team worked on the following sprints: * Sprint 53 (1st-5th December 2021) * Sprint 54 (6th-19th December 2021) Our work can be tracked through the various OONI GitHub repositories: https://github.com/ooni Highlights are shared in this report below. *## Published report on Tor blocking in Russia* We published a report documenting the blocking of Tor in Russia based on OONI data. Read the report here: https://ooni.org/post/2021-russia-blocks-tor/ Our report shares OONI data and analysis on the blocking of the Tor network and Tor Project website on some AS networks in Russia. Wired also published a story on Tor blocking in Russia, sharing OONI data and findings: https://www.wired.co.uk/article/russia-block-tor-censorship *## Year in Review: OONI in 2021* In December 2021, we published our annual end-of-year post, "Year in Review: OONI in 2021", which shares: * OONI highlights from 2021 * Exciting OONI activities by community members in 2021 * Upcoming OONI projects in 2022 You can read this post here: https://ooni.org/post/ooni-in-2021/ Warm thanks to our amazing community for making our work possible! We thank every OONI Probe user out there, and we're excited for 2022! *## Published blog post about OONI Probe integration into iThena* iThena (https://root.ithena.net/) is a distributed computation and measurement project based on the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC) platform. In December 2021, we published a blog post where we discussed how iThena helped boost OONI censorship measurement coverage worldwide by integrating OONI Probe into their platform. This blog post is available here: https://ooni.org/post/2021-ithena-boosts-ooni-measurement-coverage/ *## Published guest post by The Bachchao Project* In October 2021, we participated in the Bachchao Project’s 2-day event (“India, Let’s Build the List”) where we helped facilitate sessions for communities in India to update the Citizen Lab’s test list for India. In December 2021, we published the Bachchao Project’s guest blog post about the event on the OONI website: https://ooni.org/post/2021-event-india-test-list/ *## OONI Probe Mobile* We released OONI Probe Mobile 3.5.0 for Android ( https://github.com/ooni/probe-android/releases/tag/v3.5.0) and iOS ( https://github.com/ooni/probe-ios/releases/tag/v3.5.0) This release includes the following improvements: * Automated testing for instant messaging app tests (WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Signal, Telegram) * Automated testing for circumvention tool tests (Tor, Psiphon, RiseupVPN) * Automated testing requires at least 20% of battery level * OONI Probe CLI updated to 3.13.0 * Bug fixes Following this release, OONI Probe mobile app users can run all OONI Probe tests (excluding the bandwidth-intensive performance tests) automatically on a regular basis. We expect that this will not only help boost OONI measurement coverage further, but it will also be helpful in ensuring that social media apps and circumvention tools (both of which are frequently blocked around the world) are more regularly tested. We started making improvements to how we do testing of the OONI Probe apps by doing integration testing of all components inside of a mono-repo ( https://github.com/ooni/probe/issues/1926) We also worked towards addressing OONI Probe technical debt ( https://github.com/ooni/probe/issues/1808) *## OONI Probe Web* We now have a working prototype of OONI Probe Web ( https://github.com/ooni/probe-web) that implements the full functionality. Features of OONI Probe Web currently include: * Informed consent onboarding process ( https://github.com/ooni/probe-web/pull/1) * Communication with the check-in API for receiving test-list targets; * Submission of measurements to the testing collector ( https://github.com/ooni/probe/issues/1494) Unlike the OONI Probe apps, OONI Probe Web is limited to website testing. The prototype includes a feature that enables users to determine if they would like to limit their testing to a specific number of URLs. *## Integrating tor into OONI Probe* We completed the integration of tor into OONI Probe Mobile and OONI Probe Desktop (https://github.com/ooni/probe/issues/1867) It is now possible to use go-libtor when it's available. We switch between using go-libtor or searching for the tor binary in the path by using build constraints. The branch that integrates this work is the following: https://github.com/ooni/probe-cli/pull/614 We also integrated tor into OONI Probe Desktop ( https://github.com/ooni/probe-desktop/pull/261) and into OONI Probe CLI ( https://github.com/ooni/probe/issues/1872, https://github.com/ooni/probe/issues/1866) *## Expanding censorship measurement methodologies* We released OONI Probe CLI 3.13 ( https://github.com/ooni/probe-cli/releases/tag/v3.13.0) through which users can now run our new DNScheck experiment ( https://github.com/ooni/spec/blob/master/nettests/ts-028-dnscheck.md) This release (along with our 3.13-beta and 3.14-alpha releases made in December 2021) includes a series of other improvements to our experiments and measurement methodologies (https://github.com/ooni/probe-cli/releases) as well as updated dependencies. *## OONI Measurement Aggregation Toolkit (MAT)* We continued to make improvements to the OONI Measurement Aggregation Toolkit (MAT). In particular, we improved the usability of the one-dimensional charts, we fixed a tooltip rendering issue, we resized the panels for the charts and table, we fixed issues with non-measurement-start-day based charts, we fixed the sorting order of the table, and we worked on other UI improvements (https://github.com/ooni/explorer/issues/624) We also added support for displaying the various blocking types (DNS, TCP/IP, HTTP-failure, HTTP-diff) as an axis value in the MAT charts. Improvements to the MAT can be viewed through commits made in the following pull request: https://github.com/ooni/explorer/pull/622 *## OONI backend* In December 2021, we continued to make progress on migrating our backend infrastructure to Clickhouse (https://github.com/ooni/pipeline/pull/371) To this end, we worked on: * Switching more tables over to Clickhouse and improving test coverage; * Implementing Clickhouse in our fastpath data processing pipeline; * Implementing the Clickhouse feeder; * Updating JSONL table in Clickhouse from feeder; * Updating CI to test Clickhouse; * Splitting the platform in tiers; * Adding a deletion flag on the uploader; * Re-importing the JSONL table and rebuilding the fastpath table with the domain column. We also worked on the following backend activities: * Implemented an integrated API/fastpath multi-host dashboard; * Added backend support for Tor Snowflake experiment feature extraction ( https://github.com/ooni/pipeline/pull/372) * Added backend support for extracting Tor Snowflake runtime metrics and exposing them via a new API endpoint (https://github.com/ooni/api/pull/274) * Handled upcoming VM reboots; * Continued to monitor OONI measurement coverage from unattended runs on OONI Probe Mobile and Desktop. *## Established new partnership with Zaina Foundation* In December 2021, we established a new partnership with Tanzania's Zaina Foundation (https://zainafoundationtz.org/) Over the past year, we had already been collaborating with Zaina Foundation, who facilitated OONI training for women human rights defenders in Tanzania, conducted usability studies for OONI Probe and OONI Explorer, and translated OONI Probe to Swahili. We are therefore thrilled to have now formalized our partnership with Zaina Foundation, and we’re excited for our ongoing collaboration over the next few years. To highlight Zaina Foundation’s important work, we published a new page on the OONI Partners page: https://ooni.org/partners/zaina-foundation/ *## OONI website### New Donate page* In December 2021, we published a new Donate page on the OONI website: https://ooni.org/donate/ Through this page, we aim to encourage donations in support of OONI’s work. *### Edited various OONI webpages* We edited and updated the copy of several web pages on the OONI site. In particular, we edited the About page ( https://github.com/ooni/ooni.org/pull/1041) we updated the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) section (https://github.com/ooni/ooni.org/pull/1042) and we restructured and edited the Nettests section ( https://github.com/ooni/ooni.org/pull/1043) We also *## Hosting an OTF Information Controls Fellow* As of December 2021, we started to serve as the host organization for Open Technology Fund (OTF) Information Controls research fellow, Gurshabad Grover (https://twitter.com/OpenObservatory/status/1471454369866719237) During his 1-year research fellowship with us, Gurshabad aims to uncover how ISPs, through their technical decisions, can exacerbate or minimize the effects of state-ordered censorship. *## Community activities### PiProbe* Our Venezuelan partners, Venezuela Inteligente, created a new OONI Probe distribution for Raspberry Pis, called “PiProbe” ( https://github.com/VEinteligente/PiProbe) On 15th December 2021, they presented PiProbe to collect feedback from the OONI team and broader community. *## Userbase* In December 2021, 39,609,318 OONI Probe measurements were collected from 2,785 AS networks in 165 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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