Hello,
I'm sending this email as a reminder that OONI's July community
meeting is taking place tomorrow (31st July) at 13:00 UTC (for 1 hour).
Where: https://slack.openobservatory.org (OONI Slack channel) or #ooni
on IRC
Please add topics that you would like to discuss as part of the meeting
here: https://pad.riseup.net/p/ooni-community-meeting
Looking forward to connecting with you soon!
Cheers,
Maria.
--
Maria Xynou
Research & Partnerships Director
Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI)
https://ooni.torproject.org/
PGP Key Fingerprint: 2DC8 AFB6 CA11 B552 1081 FBDE 2131 B3BE 70CA 417E
Hello,
The OONI team warmly welcomes you to join us next week for our monthly
community meeting.
Where: https://slack.openobservatory.org/ (OONI Slack channel)
When: Tuesday, 31st July 2018 at 13:00 UTC (for 1 hour, until 14:00 UTC)
We'd love to hear your thoughts and suggestions on how we can improve
our tools and research methodologies.
Please add topics that you would like to discuss as part of the meeting
in this pad: https://pad.riseup.net/p/ooni-community-meeting
If you're not able to join us, please feel encouraged to join us on
Slack or IRC any other day!
Looking forward to connecting with you soon!
All the best,
~ The OONI team.
--
Maria Xynou
Research & Partnerships Director
Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI)
https://ooni.torproject.org/
PGP Key Fingerprint: 2DC8 AFB6 CA11 B552 1081 FBDE 2131 B3BE 70CA 417E
Hello,
Do you use OONI Probe? We'd love your feedback!
*# Survey**
*
We're excited to hear more about your experience with OONI Probe so that
we can meet your needs in future releases!
Please take a few minutes to complete our survey:
https://ooniuxteam.typeform.com/to/a1P0cn
Alternatively, you can fill out the survey using Tor's self-hosted
version of it:
https://storm.torproject.org/shared/VpAFK13fdAozTGTolFd2EsT1CkLY8-YlBLbRERy…
*# Interview***
The OONI team is currently working on revamping the OONI Probe mobile
apps to improve their usability, design, and include some new features
based on community requests.
By participating in a *10-15 minute interview*, you can gain a sneak
peak into the new OONI Probe mobile apps and provide feedback on our
mockups.
If you're interested in being interviewed, please notify us via the
above survey or by emailing me.
Learn more through our blog post:
https://ooni.torproject.org/post/ooniprobe-ux-survey-and-interviews/
Thanks for your time. Your feedback will help us improve OONI Probe for
a global community measuring internet censorship!
Cheers,
Maria.
--
Maria Xynou
Research & Partnerships Director
Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI)
https://ooni.torproject.org/
PGP Key Fingerprint: 2DC8 AFB6 CA11 B552 1081 FBDE 2131 B3BE 70CA 417E
Hello,
Today OONI and Egypt's AFTE published a joint research report on the
state of internet censorship in Egypt.
* Full report in English:
https://ooni.io/documents/Egypt-Internet-Censorship-AFTE-OONI-2018-07.pdf
* Full report in Arabic:
https://ooni.io/documents/Egypt-Internet-Censorship-AFTE-OONI-2018-07.AR.pdf
* Summary of the report in English:
https://ooni.io/post/egypt-internet-censorship/ &
https://blog.torproject.org/egypt-internet-censorship
* Summary of the report in Arabic:
https://ooni.io/documents/summary-egypt-internet-censorship-arabic.pdf
You may remember that AFTE previously reported on hundreds of websites
being blocked in Egypt.
OONI and AFTE have now joined forces. We conducted a comprehensive study
based on the analysis of OONI Probe measurements collected from multiple
local vantage points over the last year and a half.
More than 1,000 URLs presented signs of network interference, 178 of
which seem to most likely have been consistently blocked throughout the
testing period. The majority of these URLs include media websites, human
rights sites, circumvention tools and sites expressing political criticism.
More than 100 URLs that belong to media organizations were blocked, even
though Egyptian authorities have only officially ordered the blocking of
21 news websites. AFTE interviewed journalists working with Egyptian
media organizations whose websites got blocked to examine the impact of
censorship. Many Egyptian journalists reported that the censorship has
had a severe impact on their work and that some media organizations have
been forced to suspend their operations entirely as a result of
persisting internet censorship.
Egyptian ISPs primarily block sites through the use of Deep Packet
Inspection (DPI) technology that resets connections. In some cases,
instead of RST injection, ISPs drop packets, suggesting a variance in
filtering rules. In other cases, ISPs interfere with the SSL encrypted
traffic between Cloudflare's Point-of-Presence in Cairo and the backend
servers of sites (pshiphon.ca, purevpn.com and ultrasawt.com) hosted
outside of Egypt.
Egyptian ISPs also appear to apply "defense in depth" tactics for
network filtering by adding extra layers of censorship, making
circumvention harder. This is suggested by the blocking of Egypt's
Freedom and Justice Party's (FJP) site, which was blocked by two
different middleboxes, as well as by the blocking of numerous
circumvention tools.
Apart from pervasive levels of internet censorship, Egyptian ISPs were
found to hijack unencrypted HTTP connections and inject redirects to ads
and cryptocurrency mining scripts. We first detected this back in 2016,
when we reported that state-owned Telecom Egypt was hijacking
unencrypted connections to porn sites and redirecting them to ads. The
Citizen Lab significantly expanded upon this research in their latest
Sandvine report. Now, following the analysis of thousands of
measurements collected from the last year and a half, we have enough
evidence to believe that (many) Egyptian ISPs are carrying out an ad
campaign. The affected sites are diverse, including the sites of the
Palestinian Prisoner Society, the Women's Initiative for Gender Justice,
as well as a number of LGBTQI and Israeli sites. Even the sites of the
UN were affected by this ad campaign!
We will continue to monitor internet censorship in Egypt and around the
world. We therefore welcome any feedback you may have.
Thanks for reading!
All the best,
Maria.
--
Maria Xynou
Research and Partnerships Coordinator
Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI)
https://ooni.torproject.org/
PGP Key Fingerprint: 2DC8 AFB6 CA11 B552 1081 FBDE 2131 B3BE 70CA 417E
Hello,
OONI and Access Now published a joint report today, verifying the
unblocking of websites in Ethiopia based on network measurement data.
You can read our report here: https://ooni.io/post/ethiopia-unblocking/
We quite rarely see governments unblocking hundreds of websites in one
go, and we even more rarely report on the unblocking of sites.
Given that Ethiopia has experienced quite pervasive levels of internet
censorship over the last decade, the unblocking of sites is a major event.
An official list, however, detailing the 264 sites that are reportedly
unblocked has not been published yet (to our knowledge). We therefore
tested the sites that were previously known to be blocked in Ethiopia
(based on our previous research).
OONI data shows that most of the sites previously found to be blocked in
Ethiopia are now indeed unblocked.
Many thanks to volunteers running OONI Probe in Ethiopia, thus making
this research possible!
And thanks for reading!
Cheers,
Maria.
--
Maria Xynou
Research and Partnerships Coordinator
Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI)
https://ooni.torproject.org/
PGP Key Fingerprint: 2DC8 AFB6 CA11 B552 1081 FBDE 2131 B3BE 70CA 417E
Hello,
I'm sending this email as a reminder that OONI's June community
meeting is taking place today (25th June) at 14:00 UTC (for 1 hour).
Where: https://slack.openobservatory.org (OONI Slack channel) or #ooni
on IRC
Please add topics that you would like to discuss as part of the meeting
here: https://pad.riseup.net/p/ooni-community-meeting
Looking forward to connecting with you soon!
Cheers,
Maria.
--
Maria Xynou
Research and Partnerships Coordinator
Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI)
https://ooni.torproject.org/
PGP Key Fingerprint: 2DC8 AFB6 CA11 B552 1081 FBDE 2131 B3BE 70CA 417E
Hello,
The OONI team warmly welcomes you to join us next week for our monthly
community meeting.
Where: https://slack.openobservatory.org/ (OONI Slack channel)
When: Monday, 25th June 2018 at 14:00 UTC (for 1 hour)
We'd love to hear your thoughts and suggestions on how we can improve
our tools and research methodologies.
Please add topics that you would like to discuss as part of the meeting
in this pad: https://pad.riseup.net/p/ooni-community-meeting
If you're not able to join us, please feel encouraged to join us on
Slack or IRC any other day!
Looking forward to connecting with you soon!
All the best,
~ The OONI team.
--
Maria Xynou
Research and Partnerships Coordinator
Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI)
https://ooni.torproject.org/
PGP Key Fingerprint: 2DC8 AFB6 CA11 B552 1081 FBDE 2131 B3BE 70CA 417E
Hello,
Today OONI and Nigeria's Paradigm Initiative published a joint research
report: "Tightening the Noose on Freedom of Expression: 2018 Status of
Internet Freedom in Nigeria".
* Full report: https://ooni.torproject.org/documents/nigeria-report.pdf
* Summary: https://ooni.torproject.org/documents/nigeria-report-summary.pdf
* OONI censorship findings:
https://ooni.torproject.org/post/nigeria-internet-censorship/
This report examines surveillance and internet censorship in Nigeria,
the latter based on OONI Probe network measurements:
https://api.ooni.io/files/by_country/NG
Most of the sites found to be blocked are associated with content on the
secession agitations for Biafra in Eastern Nigeria.
These sites were blocked by (at least) 3 Nigerian ISPs: MTN, Globacom,
and Airtel. MTN appears to be blocking sites by means of DNS tampering,
while Globacom blocks sites by means of TCP/IP blocking, and Airtel by
means of HTTP blocking.
News outlet naij.com was temporarily blocked in November 2017, but has
since become accessible.
Most sites and services appear to have been accessible in Nigeria
throughout the testing period, including popular communications
platforms like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, and circumvention tools
like Tor.
Thanks for reading!
All the best,
Maria.
--
Maria Xynou
Research and Partnerships Coordinator
Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI)
https://ooni.torproject.org/
PGP Key Fingerprint: 2DC8 AFB6 CA11 B552 1081 FBDE 2131 B3BE 70CA 417E
Hello Oonitarians,
Today we publish a community interview featuring... Julie Owono! :)
https://ooni.torproject.org/post/ooni-community-interviews-julie-owono/
Julie Owono is the Executive Director of Internet Sans Frontieres, known
for leading campaigns against internet shutdowns in Cameroon, Togo and Chad.
Over the last years, Julie has spearheaded advocacy efforts and
championed community engagement in West Africa.
Meet Julie & learn more about her work:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t842clfakt0
We'll be publishing more interviews with community members over the next
months. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to stay tuned!
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQhDgj9wBf4_w5bWFvLlq-w?sub_confirmation=1
Cheers,
Maria.
--
Maria Xynou
Research and Partnerships Coordinator
Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI)
https://ooni.torproject.org/
PGP Key Fingerprint: 2DC8 AFB6 CA11 B552 1081 FBDE 2131 B3BE 70CA 417E
Hello!
Next week the OONI team will be attending RightsCon
(https://www.rightscon.org/) in Toronto, between 16th-18th May.
We'll be participating in 4 sessions (as speakers and moderators), which
you can find in our blog post:
https://ooni.torproject.org/post/ooni-rightscon-2018/
If you're going to RightsCon and interested in meeting up, please get in
touch! :)
Cheers,
Maria.
--
Maria Xynou
Research and Partnerships Coordinator
Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI)
https://ooni.torproject.org/
PGP Key Fingerprint: 2DC8 AFB6 CA11 B552 1081 FBDE 2131 B3BE 70CA 417E