- ooni-talk - lists.torproject.org

Report: Women on Web website censored in Spain
by Vasilis 07 May '20

07 May '20

Hello, In collaboration with multiple people, we published a report on Women on Web website blocking in Spain. The technical report is available here: https://blog.magma.lavafeld.org/post/women-on-web-blocking/ In this article we describe how the major ISPs in Spain are blocking womenonweb.org’s website. Spanish ISPs have been blocking this website by means of DNS manipulation, TCP reset, HTTP blocking with the use of a Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) infrastructure. Our data analysis is based on network measurements from OONI data. This is the first time that we observe Women on Web being blocked in Spain. Stay safe. 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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Report: Myanmar blocks "fake news" sites amid COVID-19 pandemic
by Maria Xynou 06 May '20

06 May '20

Hello, In collaboration with OTF Fellow Phyu Kyaw, we published a report on the recent blocking of 174 domains in Myanmar. This report is available here: https://ooni.org/post/2020-myanmar-blocks-websites-amid-covid19/ In March 2020, ISPs in Myanmar received a directive from authorities to block access to 230 websites, but this list of sites hasn't been publicly disclosed. Telenor Myanmar revealed that this list includes websites that are considered to spread "fake news" around COVID-19. We analyzed OONI measurements collected from Myanmar and confirmed the DNS based blocking of 174 domains on Telenor Myanmar (many of these sites are blocked on other local networks too). The blocking appears to be implemented at the DNS level because OONI measurements show that Telenor Myanmar returned the IP addresses of a Digital Ocean machine hosting a block page, instead of the real IP of the host. Many of the blocked domains include news outlets, some of which are based in Rakhine. Several ethnic media websites are among those confirmed blocked. Under the "blocked news outlets" section of our report, we compare the confirmed blocked news websites with the Myanmar Press Council's "fake news" list, to see how many of the blocked sites were included in that list. As most of the blocked news websites are not included in the official "fake news" list, transparency around which URLs are specifically blocked (especially when they involve the sites of vulnerable communities) and why/how they are viewed as “fake news” is essential, particularly amid a global pandemic when access to information is crucial. In our report, we list the full list of blocked sites in the appendix, we share relevant OONI measurements for the blocked news outlets, and we link to a CSV file that contains all of the raw OONI measurements pertaining to all of the blocked sites (which can otherwise be found through OONI Explorer: https://explorer.ooni.org/search?until=2020-05-07&probe_cc=MM&test_name=web…) Please help share this research: https://twitter.com/OpenObservatory/status/1258042964040876032 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 Survey: Share feedback to help improve OONI Run
by Maria Xynou 06 May '20

06 May '20

Hello friends, Hope you're all staying safe and healthy. I'm reaching out because we'd like to improve OONI Run (https://run.ooni.io/) and we need your feedback! Please take a few minutes to complete our survey: https://ooni.typeform.com/to/r9c5ee Completing the survey should take no longer than 15 minutes. We kindly request that you complete the survey by Sunday, 10th May 2020. If you're interested in discussing your feedback further over a call, please consider participating in a 15 minute interview as well: https://ooni.org/post/2020-ooni-run-survey-and-interviews/ OONI Run is a tool used by researchers and human rights defenders to coordinate censorship measurement testing, particularly during political events (such as elections and protests) and in response to emergent censorship events. Your feedback will go a long way in helping us better understand the challenges in using OONI Run and how we can make it more useful for you. Please help spread the word: https://twitter.com/OpenObservatory/status/1253376570904936451 Thanks so much for your time and feedback! Hugely appreciated! ~ 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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New OONI SNI blocking experiment
by Maria Xynou 28 Apr '20

28 Apr '20

Hello folks, SNI based filtering is increasingly being observed around the world, so the OONI team worked on writing a new SNI blocking experiment. This experiment was run in Iran, where SNI based blocking is carried out and where we were able to check if our experiment works as expected. In this blog post, we document the measurement of SNI based blocking in Iran based on our new SNI blocking experiment: https://ooni.org/post/2020-iran-sni-blocking/ 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 Community Meeting: Tuesday, 28th April 2020
by Maria Xynou 27 Apr '20

27 Apr '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, 28th April 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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Launched: New OONI Probe Desktop App for Windows & macOS
by Maria Xynou 21 Apr '20

21 Apr '20

Hello, The OONI team is thrilled to announce the public launch of the new OONI Probe desktop app for Windows and macOS! You can download & install the new app here: https://ooni.org/install/desktop Learn all about the new OONI Probe desktop app here: https://ooni.org/post/2020-ooni-probe-desktop-app/ We are super excited because this is the first time that we're officially supporting Windows, and it's the first time that we're releasing a native OONI Probe desktop app. Along with the new OONI Probe desktop app, we're excited to release 2 new tests: 1. Tor test (https://ooni.org/nettest/tor/) => For measuring the blocking of Tor (https://www.torproject.org/) 2. Psiphon test (https://ooni.org/nettest/psiphon/) => For measuring the blocking of the Psiphon app (https://psiphon.ca/) With these new tests, measuring the blocking of circumvention tools becomes easier than ever before! The new OONI Probe desktop app also allows for more comprehensive website testing (in comparison to the OONI Probe mobile app), as you can test more than 1,000 websites in one run! Thanks to the amazing Localization Lab community, the new OONI Probe desktop app is translated into 12 languages: Chinese, Russian, Spanish, French, Thai, Turkish, Portuguese, Italian, Greek, Slovak, Catalan, and German. The Arabic and Farsi translations will also be released soon! Warm thanks to the OTF for supporting the development of the OONI Probe desktop app. Special thanks to community members for testing and translating the new OONI Probe desktop app, and for sharing extremely helpful feedback! We hope you all find the new OONI Probe desktop app useful! For any further feedback or bug reports, please consider filing tickets (https://github.com/ooni/probe/issues) or writing to us (contact(a)openobservatory.org) Please help spread the word: https://twitter.com/OpenObservatory/status/1252594768330309632 Thank you for helping us measure the Internet! Stay safe! ~ 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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Subject: FYI: Measurement Kit is deprecated and will be discontinued on 2021-03-14
by Simone Basso 20 Apr '20

20 Apr '20

Dear all, The OONI team has been using the Measurement Kit <https://github.com/measurement-kit/measurement-kit> (MK) library since 2017 as its network measurement engine. Because every measurement run using MK by default also submits measurements to the OONI collector, we know that there are several people who have also integrated MK into their network measurement tools and apps. If you are one of those folks using MK, we’d like to thank you for using it and inform you that it is now deprecated. At OONI, we are now switching to a new engine <https://github.com/ooni/probe-engine> written in Go which will be easier for us to maintain in the long-term. We encourage you to consider adoption of the new Go probe-engine for your tools. We will keep maintaining MK for roughly one year and we will stop producing builds and applying fixes after March 14, 2021. We articulated an upgrade path in the new README of the Measurement Kit repo <https://github.com/measurement-kit/measurement-kit/blob/master/README.md> for all the MK use cases that we know of. If you have questions, comments, suggestions, or use cases that we didn’t consider, please let us know, either here or on GitHub <https://github.com/measurement-kit/measurement-kit/issues>. Thank you, best, Simone & the OONI team

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Updated OONI Data Policy
by Maria Xynou 17 Apr '20

17 Apr '20

Hello friends, Hope you're all staying safe and healthy. I'm reaching out to let you know that we have updated the OONI Data Policy. The latest version of the OONI Data Policy is available here: https://ooni.org/about/data-policy/ In the updated policy, we share the principles that govern our data practices, and we explain what data we collect, process, store, and publish when you use OONI Probe. We also share which analytics we use for the OONI website, OONI Explorer, and the OONI desktop app, and we explain how you can opt out from analytics all-together. Throughout the Data Policy, we also explain how you can opt out of the various forms of data collection and publication. If you have any questions or suggestions, please don't hesitate to reach out. Warm regards, 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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Building a smart URL list system: Policy for URL prioritization
by Maria Xynou 15 Apr '20

15 Apr '20

Hello friends, To improve the monitoring of website censorship around the world, OONI aims to create a "smart URL list system", which would prioritize the testing of certain URLs over others. In every case, the smart URL list system would only prioritize URLs that are already included in the Citizen Lab test lists and which have therefore been reviewed by the community and vetted in terms of safety. We have published a document that describes the smart URL list system, the goals and criteria for URL prioritization, and how you can contribute (by reviewing the Citizen Lab test lists): https://ooni.org/post/ooni-smart-url-list-system/ A summarized version of our Policy for URL prioritization is available here: https://ooni.org/post/policy-url-prioritization/ooni-policy-url-prioritizat… As we're in the initial stages of design and development, any feedback you may have would be greatly appreciated! We also welcome any questions you may have. Kind regards, 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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Funding for research related to COVID-19
by Maria Xynou 08 Apr '20

08 Apr '20

Hello friends, Hope you're all staying safe and healthy. I'm reaching out to share a funding opportunity for doing research and other work related to COVID-19: https://www.opentech.fund/news/increasing-rapid-response-support-covid-19/ More specifically, the Open Technology Fund (OTF) is seeking to provide "rapid response" support for the following types of projects: * Circumvention solutions to access blocked health and safety information and to respond to increased COVID-19-related censorship * Secure hosting for health and safety websites * Guidance / assistance on digital security best practices while working from home, including updating existing resources * Research and documentation on censorship of COVID-19 health and safety information and/or the increasing use of surveillance technology Please share this opportunity with anyone else who you think may be interested in applying for this. Warm regards, 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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