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New report: The State of Internet Censorship in Thailand
by Maria Xynou 20 Mar '17

20 Mar '17

Hello, Today, in collaboration with Sinar Project and the Thai Netizen Network, the OONI project published a research report on "*The State of Internet Censorship in Thailand*". You can view our joint report here: https://ooni.torproject.org/post/thailand-internet-censorship/ Over the last 4 months, ooniprobe was run across 16 local vantage points in Thailand, through which we collected and analyzed thousands of network measurements with the aim of examining and uncovering recent censorship events in the country. Our study also includes an examination of Thailand's legal environment and network landscape. The key findings of our study *confirm the blocking of 13 websites* in Thailand across 6 different ISPs, including the following types of sites: - *News outlets* (*nypost.com* and *dailymail.co.uk*) - *wikileaks.org* - *Circumvention tool sites* (such as hotspotshield.com) - Pornography Thai ISPs appear to primarily be implementing censorship through *DNS hijacking* and through the use of *middle boxes* (HTTP transparent proxies) which serve block pages. Since sites were not found to be blocked across all networks, /Thai ISPs appear to be blocking websites at their own discretion. // /On a positive note, the Tor network, WhatsApp, and Facebook Messenger were found to be accessible across all 16 networks in Thailand where tests were run during the testing period (6th November 2016 - 27th February 2017). Given the limited transparency around information controls in Thailand and their potential for abuse, we encourage public debate based on the findings of this study. Finally, we thank the OTF and Access Now for funding this research. We also thank all the anonymous and brave volunteers in Thailand who have run and continue to run ooniprobe, thus making this research possible. Please contact us with any questions you may have! Feedback is always welcome. ~ 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 community meeting
by Maria Xynou 16 Mar '17

16 Mar '17

Hello! The OONI team warmly welcomes all those interested in censorship research to join us for a *community meeting next Tuesday, 21st March 2017 at 12:00 UTC*. We'd love to hear your thoughts and suggestions on how to improve research on internet censorship! Please join us on *https://slack.openobservatory.org* and 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 any other day! We are around everyday and happy to engage in discussions with you. :) 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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Call for testing for ooniprobe 2.2.0rc2
by Arturo Filastò 13 Mar '17

13 Mar '17

Hello Oonitarians! We have just made a release candiate for the upcoming 2.2.0 ooniprobe release. This features the new web UI as well as other improvements to ooniprobe itself. It would be extremely useful to have people test it for bugs and ensure it's stability before we do the final release. You can find this release candidate here: https://github.com/TheTorProject/ooni-probe/releases/tag/v2.2.0-rc.2. At the bottom of the release log you can find instructions on how to install it inside of a testing environment (virtualenv). If you find any bugs or have suggestions for improvements that we can include in the final release you should open an issue on github at the following URL: https://github.com/TheTorProject/ooni-probe/issues/new. Thanks! ~ Arturo

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OONI community meeting tomorrow
by Maria Xynou 27 Feb '17

27 Feb '17

Hello! The OONI team warmly welcomes all those interested in censorship research to join us for a *community meeting tomorrow on Tuesday, 28th February 2017 at 16:00 UTC*. We'd love to hear your thoughts and suggestions on how to improve research on internet censorship! Please join us on *https://slack.openobservatory.org* and 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 tomorrow, please feel encouraged to join us on slack any other day! We are around everyday and happy to engage in discussions with you. :) 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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Congrats on the iPhone and Android app!
by Andri Effendi 10 Feb '17

10 Feb '17

Hello OONI Community, Thanks for your hard work on building the iPhone and Android OONI App. It's great to know that a lot more people who are less technical will be able to gather more measurements. I do have a few questions. Why are some websites appearing in the results as being censored, yet when I try to go to the URL it works? I know there are risks of running OONI, but what level is the risk? Is it just going on sites like thepiratebay.org? Or OONI going to be probing (Internationally) illegal sites like Drugs and Abuse material going to be probed in tests as well? Can you please clarify? Kind Regards, -- Andri Effendi <fusionman133(a)gmx.de> Organiser of The Free Software Movement in Sydney www.freesoftware.org.au/ GPG fingerprint: 8438 138D ECDA 05E0 591F F2B4 4721 0F03 AC24 DF73 Confidentiality cannot be guaranteed on emails sent or received unencrypted.

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BOOM! New OONI Mobile App Released!
by Maria Xynou 09 Feb '17

09 Feb '17

Hellos! Today the Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI) is thrilled to announce the release of *ooniprobe mobile app* on *Google Play* and *iOS* app stores! *Google Play:* https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.openobservatory.ooniprobe *iOS:* https://itunes.apple.com/US/app/id1199566366 OONI's new mobile app is easy to use and allows you to monitor: *- **Blocking of websites;** **- Presence of systems ("middle boxes") that could be responsible for censorship and/or surveillance;** **- Speed and performance of your network.* Since OONI started monitoring global censorship events five years ago, we have seen that many cases of internet censorship around the world are politically motivated, aimed at stifling communications and access to information during protests, elections, and other political events. While we may all be familiar with such events, what we often lacked was *evidence *required to hold those responsible to account. What we also lacked was real-time understanding of how internet censorship was implemented, and therefore how it could be circumvented. Now anyone who owns an Android or iOS smartphone can play an active role in uncovering information controls around the world. OONI's new mobile app not only allows you to see which websites are blocked, how, where, when, and by whom, but it also provides tips on how to circumvent the detected censorship. It also allows you to measure the speed and performance of your network, which can be useful in uncovering more covert forms of censorship, such as throttling (a censorship technique we have increasingly seen in Turkey and elsewhere around the world). All network measurement data collected through OONI's mobile app is *published on OONI Explorer *(https://explorer.ooni.torproject.org/world/) and on *OONI's measurement interface* (https://measurements.ooni.torproject.org/) -- unless you opt out. Open data allows third parties to conduct independent studies, to verify OONI findings, and to answer other research questions. It also allows us all to have a more accurate understanding of information controls around the world. With each test you run via OONI's mobile app, you are playing an active role in increasing transparency of internet censorship. ooniprobe is an investigatory tool and may therefore pose some risks (https://ooni.torproject.org/about/risks/). When you first install the app, we require you to answer a quiz correctly, demonstrating your understanding of potential risks. We believe that access to information is a fundamental human right and therefore everyone should have the right and ability to examine their digital world and the restrictions that may be imposed on it. Moses Karanja, a Kenyan researcher on the politics of information controls at Strathmore University's CIPIT said in a statement: /"What Signal did for end-to-end encryption, OONI did for unmasking censorship. Most Africans rely on mobile phones as their primary means of accessing the internet and OONI's mobile app allows for decentralized efforts in unmasking the nature of censorship and internet performance. The possibilities are exciting for researchers, business and the human rights community around the world. We look forward to interesting days ahead."/ Learn more about OONI's mobile app here: https://ooni.torproject.org/post/ooni-mobile-app/ Please contact the OONI team with any questions you may have at *contact(a)openobservatory.org*. 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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Google is blocked in Egypt
by Leonid Evdokimov 11 Jan '17

11 Jan '17

I'd like to share some information I have regarding Google being blocked by one of Egyptian ISPs for a short period of time in the beginning of January 2017. I've seen some Facebook reports from humans claiming observation of timeout errors and later it converted to connection reset errors. I got some packet captures regarding TCP connection resets from one Egyptian vantage point (AFAIK, it was TE Data ISP). These captures show that connection was reset depending on SNI field in TLS ClientHello. The connection was reset for `google.com.eg`, but it was not reset when the client presented no SNI field (like `openssl s_client` CLI tool does without `-servername` option). SNI-based blocking was reproducible, but the data did not pass sanity checks due to confusing metadata: latency and TCP/IP headers were suggesting that the blocking could possibly happen within user's network as well (compromised PC? compromised router? bogus anti-virus or firewall software?), so I am not confident enough to release any "public" statement based on the data I had at that moment, so I'm just sharing it to ooni-talk@ for historical & archiving reasons. Also, as far as I know, the blocking was gone somewhere between Jan 05 09:00 UTC and 10:40 UTC. It's unclear if the blocking was observable from Google's point of view, it's not obviously existing in aggregated traffic stats[1]. One can suggest that non-smooth lines correspond to blocking being turned on and off, but it's hard to state that for sure as the same spiky pattern may be observed in the month-old data[2] as well. [1] https://www.google.com/transparencyreport/traffic/explorer/?r=EG&l=WEBSEARC… [2] https://www.google.com/transparencyreport/traffic/explorer/?r=EG&l=WEBSEARC… Open Whisper Systems (developers of encrypted messaging app Signal) claim[3], that the block may be caused by an attempt to tune existing[4] equipment to block Signal messenger. IMHO, it's rather bold claim as it implies absence of good testing environment for the fingerprinting and blocking ruleset :-) [3] https://twitter.com/whispersystems/status/817062093094604800 [4] https://ooni.torproject.org/post/egypt-network-interference/ -- WBRBW, Leonid Evdokimov, xmpp:leon@darkk.net.ru http://darkk.net.ru tel:+79816800702 PGP: 6691 DE6B 4CCD C1C1 76A0 0D4A E1F2 A980 7F50 FAB2

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lepidopter - custom url list
by paja 06 Jan '17

06 Jan '17

Hi, I'm running lepidopter (with ooniprobe v2.1.0) and I would like to add some custom url to web_connection test which is running on daily basis. Is there any file for such purpose which is not rewritten after update ? Best Regards, paja

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Australia Censoring popular P2P Sites and More
by Andri Effendi 24 Dec '16

24 Dec '16

Hi All, For the first time at least where it is now publicly visible, Australia is now as of last week censoring many websites that aren't on the Interpol "worst of worst" list. These are popular websites that whilst maybe known for file sharing of so called "copyrighted" works, they got many folks through Highschool and university medical school with all the resources available on there. I think I should highlight this here and I ask that who ever is in a position to can keep the ooni telemetry coming in from Australia as the internet censoring really begins now. **At one point the AU censors tried to block Wikileaks but overturned it in the end. Kind Regards, -- Andri Effendi <fusionman133(a)gmx.de> GPG fingerprint: 8438 138D ECDA 05E0 591F F2B4 4721 0F03 AC24 DF73 Confidentiality cannot be guaranteed on emails sent or received unencrypted.

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OONI & Sinar Project Report: The State of Internet Censorship in Malaysia
by Maria Xynou 20 Dec '16

20 Dec '16

Hi Oonitarians, Today OONI and Sinar Project jointly released a report that examines internet censorship in Malaysia over the last few months. This study involved the collection of network measurements through the use of ooniprobe in an attempt to collect data that can serve as evidence of internet censorship events, as well as the examination of relevant laws and policies. Our report can be found here: https://ooni.torproject.org/post/malaysia-report/ The key findings of our study include: 1. We found *39 different websites* to be blocked through the *DNS injection of block pages*. These sites include: - *News outlets*, *blogs*, and *medium.com* for covering the *1MDB scandal*. - A site that expresses heavy criticism towards Islam (and which, in the Malaysian context, can be viewed as inciting hatred towards Islam). - Popular torrenting sites (such as thepiratebay.org). - A popular online dating site. - Pornographic sites. - Gambling sites. 2. This study provides evidence of *politically motivated censorship* (since news outlets and blogs covering the 1MDB scandal were found to be blocked). This censorship though has vaguely been justified by Malaysian authorities on the grounds of "national security" under the Communications and Multimedia Act (CMA) 1998. 3. The pornographic and gambling sites that were found to be blocked might be part of the thousands of websites that were recently announced to be blocked by Malaysian authorities (reference: http://english.astroawani.com/malaysia-news/mcmc-blocks-over-5-000-websites…). In any case, the blocking of these sites can be justified under Malaysia's laws and regulations (see "Legal environment" section of the report). 4. Some previously blocked sites (Bersih rally websites) were found to be accessible as part of this study. Social media and censorship circumvention tools also appeared to be accessible. 5. Even though Sharia law poses restrictions to LGBTI rights, all LGBTI sites that we tested were found to be accessible. Please contact us with any questions you may have. 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

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