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New report: DNS over TLS blocked in Iran
by Maria Xynou 24 Jun '20

24 Jun '20

Hello friends, Today OONI published a new research report, titled: "DNS over TLS blocked in Iran". You can access this report here: https://ooni.org/post/2020-iran-dot/ DNS over TLS (DoT) is a network protocol that secures DNS queries (https://ooni.org/support/glossary/#dns-query). DoT improves the privacy and security of DNS queries, and makes DNS-based blocking harder. We investigated whether DoT works in Iran by gathering a list of 31 well-known DoT endpoints and running experiments from four distinct Iranian mobile and fixed-line Internet Service Providers (ISPs): MCI, TCI, Irancell, and Shatel. We discovered that: * 57% of the endpoints are blocked on a least one ISP; * the blocking is not implemented uniformly across ISPs; * most blocking happens by interfering with the TLS handshake; * in some cases TLS handshake blocking seems to depend on the SNI, while in other cases it seems to depend strictly on the TCP endpoint being used; * forcing TLSv1.3 does not change the rate of successful TLS handshakes compared to letting the server choose a TLS version between v1.0 and v1.3. In our report, we share details from our experiments and findings. Please share our research: https://twitter.com/OpenObservatory/status/1275842846520741888 Thanks, ~ OONI team. -- Maria Xynou Research & Partnerships Director Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI) https://ooni.org/ PGP Key Fingerprint: 2DC8 AFB6 CA11 B552 1081 FBDE 2131 B3BE 70CA 417E

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OONI statement in support of the OTF
by Maria Xynou 19 Jun '20

19 Jun '20

Hello, The Trump administration recently appointed a new CEO to USAGM, who fired the leadership of the Open Technology Fund (OTF). Meanwhile, lobbyists are suggesting that funds that would normally go to the OTF should go to some commercial VPNs instead. This is extremely concerning, given that the OTF is one of the main funders of free censorship circumvention and privacy-enhancing technologies that human rights defenders and vulnerable communities around the world rely on. Today, OONI published a statement on why the OTF is essential for internet freedom: https://ooni.org/post/2020-06-19-save-internet-freedom-support-the-open-tec… Please help share it: https://twitter.com/OpenObservatory/status/1274030123608616960 And please join us in signing this letter to congress: https://saveinternetfreedom.tech/ (you don't need to be American, we aren't either!) Thanks, Maria. -- Maria Xynou Research & Partnerships Director Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI) https://ooni.org/ PGP Key Fingerprint: 2DC8 AFB6 CA11 B552 1081 FBDE 2131 B3BE 70CA 417E

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Urgent Request: We Need your Immediate Help to Save Internet Freedom
by Maria Xynou 19 Jun '20

19 Jun '20

Hello friends, Long story short, the Trump administration just appointed a new CEO to USAGM, which is the US government’s global media agency which oversees news broadcasters like Voice of America, Radio Free Asia, as well as a key funder in the Internet Freedom field, Open Technology Fund (OTF). FYI, this CEO, Michael Pack, is very close to Steve Bannon. The USAGM news agencies, combined, reach millions if not billions of people throughout the world. There are folks lobbying hard to take away congressional-approved funding going to Internet Freedom, of which a large chunk goes to OTF, potentially impacting the 2020 budget. The strategy is to shift funding to only a handful of commercial VPN services. This will be catastrophically detrimental for Internet Freedom worldwide - It will put human rights defenders, activists, and journalists in danger, especially activists campaigning against highly sophisticated technical adversaries like China, Russia, Iran and more. What Can You Do: 1- We’re calling on your organization to sign a letter that is being sent to Congress You can read and sign for support here: https://saveinternetfreedom.tech/ Please share the website with your contacts. 2- Organizational statement It would be incredibly helpful to have your organization put out a statement in support of Internet Freedom and OTF. Here are some talking points. https://frama.link/tp-saveinternetfreedom 3- Join the mailing list Join the mailing list, where folks are coordinating efforts against this: https://groups.io/g/sift-talk/ 4- Press statements If you work with groups that have benefited from OTF funding, and can attest to how crucial it is in the fight for internet freedom, human rights and against censorship, please let us know. We might use some of these quotes for press statements. 5- Help us with Outreach & Public Support: a) You can tweet about it using #saveinternetfreedom, and use any means in your disposal to draw media attention to this. Thank you! -- Maria Xynou Research & Partnerships Director Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI) https://ooni.org/ PGP Key Fingerprint: 2DC8 AFB6 CA11 B552 1081 FBDE 2131 B3BE 70CA 417E

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Report by OTF Fellow -- Study of Censorship & Media Freedom in Manipur, India
by Maria Xynou 18 Jun '20

18 Jun '20

Hello, Over the last year, OONI has had the opportunity to serve as the host organization of OTF Information Controls Fellow, Chinmayi S K (https://www.opentech.fund/about/people/chinmayi-sk/). Today, we are excited to share the publication of Chinmayi's research report, titled "Those Unspoken Thoughts: A study of censorship and media freedom in Manipur, India". Summary of report: https://ooni.org/post/2020-those-unspoken-thoughts-otf-fellow-report/ Full length report: https://ooni.org/documents/those-unspoken-thoughts-otf-fellow.pdf As part of her fellowship, Chinmayi researched internet censorship in Manipur, India, and its effect on the womxn in the region. To this end, she adopted both quantitative and qualitative research methods. To investigate internet censorship, Chinmayi ran OONI Probe in various regions of India and analyzed relevant OONI measurements. To explore the impact of internet censorship on womxn in the region and to investigate restrictions to media freedom, she circulated a survey and carried out interviews. Key findings from her research include: * Censorship variance on a network-level. Internet censorship (i.e., blocking of websites) in India mainly varies from ISP to ISP, rather than from region to region. * Block pages were detected for 167 URLs in India across 5 ISPs (including 2 networks in Manipur), 84 URLs of which remain operational and are discussed as part of this study. * Most blocked URLs include blogs, file-sharing sites, and media websites. * Many of the blocked blogs and media articles were included in a 2013 blocklist issued by the government of India, in response to the IIPM controversy. * Block pages were mainly served for specific articles, rather than blocking access to entire websites. * Many of these blocked articles covered the 2012 murder of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar and violence against Muslims in Assam. * Many of these sites now support HTTPS, which means that the blocking of articles on HTTP webpages can easily be circumvented. * Websites related to Manipur -- including local media websites, human rights websites, and women’s rights websites -- were found accessible throughout the testing period of this study. * Manipur has faced around five shutdowns from 2012 to the time of writing this report. Internet shutdowns create inconvenience for the womxn of Manipur. Womxn reported loss of professional standing and opportunities as a result of them. They also reported facing anxiety and restlessness thus affecting their mental health because of these shutdowns. The concerns about the need of shutdowns were raised.It remains unclear whether and how internet shutdowns have helped resolve conflict in the state. * The delicate socio-political situation in Manipur means there are multiple threat vectors for expression. The number and complexity of the threats has created a chilling effect on freedom of expression. Womxn practice self censorship to avoid conflict. . * Certain internet activities have led to offline consequences for some womxn in Manipur, often in the nature of threat to life and security. * Press freedom continues to be under threat with legal actions such as defamation cases, pressure from the political class adding to the existing restriction that they face in terms of pressures from UGs (Underground Groups) and the government. If you have any questions or comments regarding this study, please reach out to Chinmayi directly: chinmayi(a)thebachchaoproject.org Please help share the report: https://twitter.com/skchinmayi/status/1273575300736020480 Thanks, Maria. -- Maria Xynou Research & Partnerships Director Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI) https://ooni.org/ PGP Key Fingerprint: 2DC8 AFB6 CA11 B552 1081 FBDE 2131 B3BE 70CA 417E

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Save the dates -- RightsCon Online
by Maria Xynou 16 Jun '20

16 Jun '20

Hi folks, RightsCon (the leading human rights conference in the digital age) is taking place online this year between 27th-31st July 2020. More information is available here: https://www.rightscon.org/save-the-date-for-rightscon-online/ Save the dates & see you there! Cheers, Maria. -- Maria Xynou Research & Partnerships Director Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI) https://ooni.org/ PGP Key Fingerprint: 2DC8 AFB6 CA11 B552 1081 FBDE 2131 B3BE 70CA 417E

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Report: OONI Run Usability Study Findings
by Maria Xynou 09 Jun '20

09 Jun '20

Hello, We published a report sharing the findings of the OONI Run usability study: https://ooni.org/post/2020-06-09-ooni-run-usability-study-findings/ In order to improve OONI Run (http://run.ooni.io/), we circulated a survey & interviewed community members to collect feedback. This report shares the findings based on our analysis of the survey and interview responses, documenting the challenges that community members have encountered with using OONI Run, as well as their suggestions for improving the platform and feature requests. We will be addressing all feedback on GitHub (through relevant tickets), and we plan to release an improved version of OONI Run by the end of 2020. Warm thanks to community members for participating in the OONI Run usability study and for sharing extremely helpful feedback! All the best, Maria. -- Maria Xynou Research & Partnerships Director Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI) https://ooni.org/ PGP Key Fingerprint: 2DC8 AFB6 CA11 B552 1081 FBDE 2131 B3BE 70CA 417E

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Wrong country detected - how to correct?
by Matt Bruce 31 May '20

31 May '20

Hi all, I'm running ooniprobe on a Raspberry Pi with Pi-Hole and CloudFlare as the upstream DNS, and it seems to be working fine with the exception that it appears to be detecting the wrong country. It's showing "Country: BE". I initially thought it was showing the wrong ASN, too, but lookups using multiple tools confirm it's the correct one. I assume "BE" means Belgium, but those 2 letters are also the first two of the county in which I live in the UK. Is it possible that ooniprobe is pulling in the state/province/county data as Country rather than the actual country by mistake? (Just guessing). It's uploading the measurements with this same BE Country information, and I'm concerned that it's polluting OONI data. I've read the documentation, searched online, etc, but I can't find how to stop the bad detection or to override those values in the ooniprobe.conf file. Assuming I shouldn't just ignore this, can anyone steer me in the right direction, please? Thanks, Matt

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Report: Evaluating OONI’s New Measurement Engine
by Maria Xynou 27 May '20

27 May '20

Hello, Today, we published a report which evaluates OONI's new measurement engine within the context of the blocking of Women on Web (www.womenonweb.org) in Spain. This report is available here: https://ooni.org/post/2020-engine-evaluation-spain/ The OONI team has been working on expanding our measurement methodologies to detect more forms of website censorship. To this end, we have been working on experimental code that combines OONI's Web Connectivity test with SNI blocking detection methodology (and other techniques). Our aim is to eventually ship a new and improved Web Connectivity test -- as part of the OONI Probe apps -- that also measures SNI based filtering, as part of the broader set of website censorship checks. To evaluate how these experiments work in practice (and if they work as expected), we collaborated with Vasilis Ververis (Magma project) and Spanish hacktivists to measure the blocking of www.womenonweb.org in Spain through the use of these new experimental methodologies. This report describes our experimental implementation for the www.womenonweb.org case, explains how you can help us improve it, shares relevant findings, and discusses some next steps. Thanks for reading! ~ OONI team. -- Maria Xynou Research & Partnerships Director Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI) https://ooni.org/ PGP Key Fingerprint: 2DC8 AFB6 CA11 B552 1081 FBDE 2131 B3BE 70CA 417E

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OONI Community Meeting: Tuesday, 26th May 2020
by Maria Xynou 25 May '20

25 May '20

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 May 2020 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'd love to meet you and hear from you, and we hope you can join us! All the best, ~ OONI team -- Maria Xynou Research & Partnerships Director Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI) https://ooni.org/ PGP Key Fingerprint: 2DC8 AFB6 CA11 B552 1081 FBDE 2131 B3BE 70CA 417E

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OONI Probe Mobile 2.4.0 is out!
by Maria Xynou 22 May '20

22 May '20

Hello, OONI Probe Mobile 2.4.0 is out! Highlights from the latest OONI Probe mobile app release include: * New Dashboard design * New button to run all tests * Improved NDT speed test (i.e. NDT test re-written to increase reliability and measurement accuracy) * Middlebox tests are now grouped with the performance tests * Telegram, NDT, and DASH tests re-written in golang Please update your OONI Probe mobile app (https://ooni.org/install/mobile) to the latest version. :) Thanks, and happy testing! ~ OONI team. -- Maria Xynou Research & Partnerships Director Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI) https://ooni.org/ PGP Key Fingerprint: 2DC8 AFB6 CA11 B552 1081 FBDE 2131 B3BE 70CA 417E

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