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ParkNet: OONI's Short Documentary on Internet Censorship in Cuba
by Maria Xynou 23 Apr '18

23 Apr '18

Hello, The OONI team is excited to let you know that we just published our first short film! Our 5-minute documentary is called "ParkNet: Exploring Internet Censorship in Cuba". * About the film: https://ooni.torproject.org/post/parknet-short-documentary-cuba/ * Watch the film on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QslsL84jx4E Last year we traveled to Cuba to explore its internet landscape. You might remember that we published a research report on our findings: https://ooni.torproject.org/post/cuba-internet-censorship-2017/ Today we publish this short film to share some of our key findings and to provide a feel of Cuba's unique internet landscape. We also wanted to experiment with the idea of presenting censorship findings with video. Our OONI YouTube channel will feature new and exciting content over the next months. Subscribe to receive updates: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQhDgj9wBf4_w5bWFvLlq-w?sub_confirmation=1 Thanks for watching! Cheers, 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

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Reminder: OONI Community Meeting tomorrow
by Maria Xynou 23 Apr '18

23 Apr '18

Hello, I'm sending this email as a reminder that OONI's April community meeting will take place tomorrow. Where: https://slack.openobservatory.org (OONI Slack channel) or #ooni on IRC When: Tuesday, 24th April 2018 at 14:00 UTC (for 1 hour) 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 tomorrow! 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

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OONI Community Meeting: Tuesday 24th April 2018
by Maria Xynou 20 Apr '18

20 Apr '18

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, 24th April 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

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OONI's recent participation at events in Africa, India, and Europe
by Maria Xynou 11 Apr '18

11 Apr '18

Hello Oonitarians, Over the last months, the OONI team has had the opportunity to participate at a number of conferences and events in Africa, India and Europe. You can learn more (and find the slides and notes) via our latest blog post: https://ooni.torproject.org/post/ooni-in-africa-india-europe-conferences/ 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

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Report: Sierra Leone network disruptions amid 2018 runoff elections
by Maria Xynou 05 Apr '18

05 Apr '18

Hello, Today OONI and Sierra Leone's Campaign for Human Rights Development International (CHRDI) published a joint research report examining the network disruptions that occurred last weekend amid Sierra Leone's 2018 runoff elections. Our report is available here: https://ooni.torproject.org/post/sierra-leone-network-disruptions-2018-elec… https://twitter.com/OpenObservatory/status/981899863012139008 Throughout the election period, we have been coordinating on the collection and analysis of OONI Probe network measurements. OONI data did not show any signs of internet censorship, but the testing of WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger indicated some form of performance degradation on the network. Last weekend, locals reported that an internet blackout occurred following the runoff elections, so we referred to third party data sources to investigate further. Google traffic and BGP announcement data aggregated and published by RIPE show that two network disruptions occurred in Sierra Leone last weekend: 1. In the early hours of 30th March 2018 (before the runoff elections) 2. Late at night on 31st March 2018 and in the early hours of 1st April 2018 (after the runoff elections) We reached out to Sierra Leone Cable Company (SALCAB), Africell, Orange, and ACE to better understand how and why the two network disruptions occurred. So far, we have only received a reply from the Vice Chair of ACE, who claims that the network disruption was caused by an ACE submarine cable cut and that they did not receive any government orders to switch off the internet. SALCAB has also released a public statement, denying reports regarding government orders to shut down the internet, and arguing that the network disruptions were caused by issues pertaining to the cable cut. It's worth highlighting though that the two network disruptions appear to be different. In the first case, Google traffic and BGP data only show a partial disruption (with only a few ASNs and subnets affected), and neighboring Guinea and Liberia appear to have been affected as well. This could be explained by the ACE cable cut. In the second case however, Google traffic shows a complete drop in traffic from Sierra Leone to Google Search, while BGP data shows that most prefixes were withdrawn. No neighboring countries appear to be affected by the second disruption, even though it was more severe than the first. This suggests that an internet blackout likely occurred. We will update our report when/if we receive further information from the providers we reached out to. Thanks for reading, and please feel encouraged to share any information you may have on this case. Thank you. ~ 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

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New methodology: Investigating internet blackouts
by Maria Xynou 04 Apr '18

04 Apr '18

Hello, It's 404 day and I'd like to announce that the OONI team is creating a new methodology for investigating internet blackouts worldwide! OONI Probe is designed to measure various forms of censorship, but internet blackouts (i.e. when the internet is switched off completely) is not currently one of them. We have therefore relied on third party data sources (such as Google traffic and BGP announcement data published by RIPE) to investigate internet blackouts. While these data sources are extremely useful, the problem is that it's challenging to drill down to internet blackouts that occur on a regional level, and to collect more fine-grained metrics. We therefore thought: Why not engage our existing, global OONI Probe community to investigate internet blackouts on the ground? To this end, we're experimenting with the creation of a new methodology that will be included in future OONI Probe mobile app releases, enabling community members to participate in internet blackout investigations. If you're interested in learning all the technical details (and the reasoning behind our choices), please read our documentation: https://ooni.torproject.org/post/investigating-internet-blackouts/Investiga… Otherwise, please read our announcement blog (https://ooni.torproject.org/post/investigating-internet-blackouts/) and share the word (https://twitter.com/OpenObservatory/status/981554659763638273) This methodology is quite experimental. We'd appreciate any feedback you can provide! Thanks, Maria (on behalf of 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

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Reminder: OONI Community Meeting tomorrow
by Maria Xynou 26 Mar '18

26 Mar '18

Hello, I'm sending this email as a reminder that OONI's March community meeting will take place tomorrow. Where: https://slack.openobservatory.org (OONI Slack channel) or #ooni on IRC When: Tuesday, 27th March 2018 at 14:00 UTC (for 1 hour) 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 tomorrow! 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

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OONI Community Meeting: Tuesday 27th March 2018
by Maria Xynou 23 Mar '18

23 Mar '18

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, 27th March 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

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Iran Protests: DPI blocking of Instagram (Part 2 of research)
by Maria Xynou 15 Feb '18

15 Feb '18

Hello, Earlier this year we published research on the blocking of Telegram and Instagram during the Iran protests: https://ooni.torproject.org/post/2018-iran-protests/ OONI's Leonid has carried out further analysis of network measurements, based on which he found that Instagram was blocked through the use of DPI which targeted the TLS protocol during the Iran protests. His findings are available in OONI's latest blog post: https://ooni.torproject.org/post/2018-iran-protests-pt2/ (https://twitter.com/OpenObservatory/status/964054743143321600) We previously thought that Instagram was blocked by means of DNS tampering, but that turned out to be a false positive (it was in fact blocked by DPI targeting TLS). This is yet another case that shows the challenges in terms of accurately identifying cases of DNS-based censorship, and distinguishing them from false positives. There are many other cases that may look like DNS-based censorship, but aren't. Leonid previously published a post identifying cases of DNS misconfiguration: https://ooni.torproject.org/post/not-quite-network-censorship/ We therefore encourage you to please reach out if you'd like to share knowledge/ideas/heuristics that can help improve our methodologies in relation to identifying cases of DNS-based censorship (and distinguishing them from false positives). Our current methodologies are available here: https://ooni.torproject.org/nettest/web-connectivity/ (and here are some of our ideas for future tests: https://github.com/TheTorProject/ooni-probe/issues/647) Thank you! ~ 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

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New post on mining OONI data
by Maria Xynou 07 Feb '18

07 Feb '18

Hello, OONI's Leonid published a post today which explains how to mine OONI data via Amazon S3 buckets and other sources: https://ooni.torproject.org/post/mining-ooni-data/ As you may already know, OONI data is publicly available via OONI Explorer and the OONI API (https://ooni.torproject.org/data/) but these resources currently present various limitations. If you're interested in downloading the full batch of raw OONI data faster, you can do so via the ooni-data Amazon S3 bucket. The post provides instructions and examples of extracting OONI data from Amazon S3 buckets. Instead of downloading all OONI data, you may find it useful to work with a metadata database to identify the subset of measurements that you want to download for further processing. In this case, you can get a PostgreSQL database dump and run SQL queries on it. Learn more through the post. Happy mining! -- 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

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