Hello,
The OONI team started the year by monitoring censorship events in Iran and by reporting on them through the publication of a report. We established two new partnerships and we released a new version of the OONI Probe mobile apps, including tests that measure the blocking of WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and Telegram. We also made progress in developing the new OONI Probe desktop apps and revamping the OONI Probe mobile apps.
# Report on censorship events in Iran
Thanks to network measurements collected by OONI Probe users in Iran, we were able to examine the censorship events that were reported amidst major anti-government protests.
We published a report based on our analysis: https://ooni.torproject.org/post/2018-iran-protests/
OONI data provides evidence of TCP & DNS blocking of Telegram, Instagram & Facebook Messenger in Iran.
# Established new partnerships
We are excited to have formally established two new partnerships! We now also have the opportunity to collaborate with:
1. Tuwindi Foundation (Mali) (Announcement: https://twitter.com/OpenObservatory/status/956167750874992645) https://twitter.com/OpenObservatory/status/956167750874992645%29
2. Instituto Prensa y Sociedad (IPYS) Venezuela (Announcement: https://twitter.com/OpenObservatory/status/958336497140281345) https://twitter.com/OpenObservatory/status/958336497140281345%29
As part of our new partnerships, we aim to collaborate on the stable collection of network measurements from local vantage points, the creation and maintenance of censorship measurement resources (i.e. test lists), and on reporting on censorship events.
Over the last few months, we have established new partnerships covering 5 countries:
1. Mali (Tuwindi Foundation)
2. Venezuela (IPYS Venezuela)
3. Egypt (AFTE)
4. Sierra Leone (CHRDI)
5. Zimbabwe (Digital Society of Zimbabwe)
# IM tests for OONI Probe Mobile
We released a new version of OONI Probe Mobile (1.3.0, https://github.com/TheTorProject/ooniprobe-android/releases/tag/v1.3.0%2B21%...) https://github.com/TheTorProject/ooniprobe-ios/releases/tag/v1.3.0%2B38%29 that adds support for running Instant Messagging (IM) tests. These tests measure the blocking of WhatsApp, Telegram and Facebook Messenger.
Announcement: https://twitter.com/OpenObservatory/status/953316589494968320
# Revamping of OONI Probe Mobile
We have made a significant amount of progress on revamping the OONI Probe mobile app in terms of iterating on design mockups and implementing some of them inside of a staging branch in ooniprobe-android and ooniprobe-ios.
# OONI Probe Desktop App
A lot of progress has been done on the OONI Probe Desktop app front in terms of trying out different paths of development and figuring out how to get the CLI tool to speak to the desktop app.
We aim to build a Windows prototype of an app for Windows by the end of this month and as part of this try out two alternative approaches for making the desktop GUI communicate to the CLI (a node.js CLI tool vs a golang CLI tool).
# Probe Orchestration Specification Audit
An architectural overview of the unattended probe orchestration system was audited and reviewed by Cure53. Based on their input and suggestions we will be implementing the OONI Probe Orchestration system over the upcoming months.
# Community activities
We held a community meeting on 30th January 2018 on the #ooni channel on IRC and Slack (http://slack.openobservatory.org/) http://slack.openobservatory.org/%29. As part of the meeting, we discussed the following topics:
1. Accessing OONI data and using it on demand: ooni-sync and data visualization.
2. What features would you like us to be sure to include in the upcoming OONI Probe desktop apps?
The log of the community meeting is available here: http://meetbot.debian.net/ooni/2018/ooni.2018-01-30-13.59.html
## Updated test lists
Thanks to URLs provided by community members, we updated the following test lists:
1. Nigeria: https://github.com/citizenlab/test-lists/pull/282
2. Uganda: https://github.com/citizenlab/test-lists/pull/283
3. South Sudan: https://github.com/citizenlab/test-lists/pull/287
4. South Africa: https://github.com/citizenlab/test-lists/pull/288
5. Kenya: https://github.com/citizenlab/test-lists/pull/290
6. Zimbabwe: https://github.com/citizenlab/test-lists/pull/291
7. DRC: https://github.com/citizenlab/test-lists/pull/292
# Userbase
In January 2018 OONI Probe was run 426k times from 5,656 different vantage points across 212 countries around the world.
This information can also be found through our stats here: https://api.ooni.io/stats
~ The OONI team.