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[Report] Network performance during the COVID-19 pandemic in Northern Italy
by Maria Xynou 17 Jul '20

17 Jul '20

Hello friends, Today OONI and M-Lab co-published a report examining network performance in Northern Italy during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic. You can read the report on the following sites: * OONI: https://ooni.org/post/2020-network-performance-covid19-italy/ * M-Lab: https://www.measurementlab.net/blog/measurement-observations-on-network-per… We analyzed NDT measurements collected from the provinces in the Milan metropolitan area between 1st January 2020 to 15th June 2020 with the goal of examining whether network performance was affected amid the surge in internet use during the nationwide lockdown. In summary, we observe: * Significant increase in the number of NDT tests run per day around the beginning of Italy’s nationwide lockdown (which started on 10th March 2020); * Reduced NDT download and upload speed results during the nationwide lockdown in Italy (between March 2020 to May 2020); * Improved NDT download and upload speed results from early May 2020 onwards, when the Italian government gradually started to lift the strict lockdown measures. As the available measurements suggest that there may be a correlation between increased internet use and reduced network performance, they highlight the need to invest in internet infrastructure that is more robust and sustainable in the long-term. They also highlight the need for more longitudinal measurements collected from more stable vantage points to improve our understanding of network performance issues. You can run NDT and contribute measurements on network performance through the OONI Probe apps (https://ooni.org/install/) or by deploying the Murakami tool (https://github.com/m-lab/murakami) in a Docker container. Please help share our report: https://twitter.com/OpenObservatory/status/1284162147249987584 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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[Report] Investigating TLS blocking in India
by Maria Xynou 08 Jul '20

08 Jul '20

Hello, Today OONI and India's Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) published a joint report investigating TLS blocking in India. You can read the report here: https://ooni.org/post/2020-tls-blocking-india/ This investigation sought to understand whether there were cases of TLS blocking that were not only caused by the value of the Server Name Indication (SNI) field in the ClientHello TLS message, but also by the destination IP address. This was part of our efforts to expand our SNI blocking methodology (discussed here: https://ooni.org/post/2020-iran-sni-blocking/) To this end, we wrote and ran a series of experiements (that will eventually be integrated into the OONI Probe measurement engine) to measure the blocking of four domains (facebook.com, google.com, collegehumor.com, and pornhub.com) on three popular Indian ISPs: ACT Fibernet (fixed line), Bharti Airtel, and Reliance Jio (mobile). We recorded SNI-based blocking on both Bharti Airtel and Reliance Jio. We also discovered that Reliance Jio blocks TLS traffic not just based on the SNI value, but also on the web server involved with the TLS handshake. We also noticed that ACT Fibernet’s DNS resolver directs users towards servers owned by ACT Fibernet itself. Such servers caused the TLS handshake to fail, but the root cause of censorship was the DNS. We also found that one of the tested endpoints (for collegehumor.com:443) does not allow establishing a TCP connection from several vantage points and control measurements. Yet, in Reliance Jio, we saw cases where the connections to such endpoints completed successfully and a timeout occured during the TLS handshake. This is likely caused by some kind of proxy that terminates the TCP connection and performs the TLS handshake. Please share our research with your networks: https://twitter.com/OpenObservatory/status/1280931688391065600 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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Event - Internet Measurement Village 2020
by Maria Xynou 03 Jul '20

03 Jul '20

Hello friends, We're excited to host the first online Internet Measurement Village. Learn all about it here: https://ooni.org/post/2020-internet-measurement-village This is an online event that starts next Wednesday, 10th June 2020 and ends on Friday, 3rd July 2020. The schedule is available here: https://ooni.org/post/2020-internet-measurement-village#schedule Almost every day, we will live-stream presentations on: * Internet measurement projects (those that measure internet censorship, internet performance, and internet outages) * Local censorship measurement projects (in Venezuela, Ukraine, and Southeast Asia) * Advocacy efforts against internet shutdowns (globally and in West Africa) * Censorship circumvention tool projects All presentations will be live-streamed on the OONI YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/OONIorg We will include a live chat in the stream so that you can ask presenters questions. Please help spread the word: https://twitter.com/OpenObservatory/status/1268951324378488832 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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Register for RightsCon Online
by Maria Xynou 02 Jul '20

02 Jul '20

Hello friends, This year (in light of COVID-19) RightsCon is taking place entirely online! * When? Last week of July => 27th-31st July 2020. * Where? Online (details will be shared for each session) * Why attend? RightsCon is the world's largest digital rights conference, annually bringing together human rights defenders, technologists, policy makers, academics, people from the industry, etc to discuss how to make the Internet a better place for human rights. There will be many tracks and many interesting sessions! As part of RightsCon Online, OONI will participate in/facilitate the following sessions: * Investigating internet shutdowns with open data (co-facilitated with IODA) * Ethics around network measurement * OONI Explorer tech demo Register for FREE before 20th July 2020: https://www.rightscon.org/join-us-at-rightscon-online-registration-now-open/ Hope to 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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Test Tor & Psiphon with OONI Probe Mobile 2.5!
by Maria Xynou 29 Jun '20

29 Jun '20

Hello friends, We're super excited to share that OONI Probe Mobile 2.5 is out! Why is this so exciting? 1) Circumvention tool testing => The latest release includes OONI Probe tests for measuring the blocking of Tor & Psiphon! 2) 5 new languages => Thanks to the Localization Lab community, the OONI Probe mobile app is now also available in Indonesian, Thai, Romanian, Slovak, and Icelandic (in total, the OONI Probe mobile app is now available in 20 languages!) Please update to the latest version: https://ooni.org/install/mobile And help spread the word: https://twitter.com/OpenObservatory/status/1277648271067033601 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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Thursday discussion on internet censorship in Manipur, India
by Maria Xynou 24 Jun '20

24 Jun '20

Hello, This Thursday, we're hosting an online discussion on internet censorship in Manipur, India and its impact on womxn in the region. * When? Thursday, 25th June 2020 at 10am UTC * Where? OONI Slack channel: https://slack.ooni.org/ (bridged with IRC: ircs://irc.oftc.net:6697/#ooni) * Who? We will be joined by Chinmayi S K, OTF Information Controls Fellow (hosted with OONI) This will provide an opportunity to discuss Chinmayi's recently published 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 The discussion will start off with a brief summary of the key findings (by Chinmayi), and then we will open up the floor for your questions. Please join us! :) 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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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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