Author's posts
Jun 08
OONI at RightsCon 2018
We are excited to participate at RightsCon next week: the world’s leading event on human rights in the digital age. Annually hosted by Access Now, this three-day conference will take place in Toronto between 16th-18th May 2018. Over the last years, RightsCon has provided us the opportunity to participate in critical discussions in the digital rights field, meet …
Jun 08
OONI Community Interviews: Moses Karanja
We first met Moses Karanja several years ago at the Citizen Lab Summer Institute. He’s a Kenyan information controls researcher, having previously worked with Strathmore University Law School research centre, CIPIT. Currently, he’s a PhD student at the University of Toronto. Over the last years, Moses has championed OONI community engagement across Africa. Thanks to his tireless efforts, communities …
May 05
ParkNet: Short Documentary on Internet Censorship in Cuba
Last year we had the opportunity to travel to Cuba to explore its internet landscape. We spent most of our time hopping from one public WiFi hotspot to another, measuring networks in Havana, Santa Clara, and Santiago de Cuba. You might remember that we published a research report on our findings. Today we publish a short documentary (“ParkNet”) on …
Apr 13
The Illusion of User Choice
CEOs like Alphabet’s Larry Page and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg have repeatedly claimed that users have choice. That we choose which information to share, and therefore control our data. This narrative is misleading, and here’s why. Privacy settings Privacy settings only cover a small portion of our data. They allow us to explicitly choose “yes” or …
Apr 12
OONI’s recent participation at events in Africa, India, and Europe
Over the last months, the OONI team had the opportunity to host workshops, give presentations, and participate in discussions at the following conferences and events: Seminar at the University of Cape Town (South Africa) Internet Policy in Africa: Research Methods for Advocacy workshop (Uganda) Nullcon 2018 (India) Internet Freedom Festival (IFF) 2018 (Spain) Tor Meeting (Italy) These events provided us …
Apr 12
Sierra Leone: Network disruptions amid 2018 runoff elections
Last weekend, two network disruptions occurred in Sierra Leone right before and after the country’s runoff elections. This post examines these disruptions and shares data that corroborates local reports. It seems that the network disruptions were caused by an ACE submarine cable cut. Google traffic and BGP data suggest that the second disruption, following the runoff elections, could be an …
Apr 12
Investigating Internet Blackouts from the Edge of the Network: OONI’s new upcoming methodology
Imagine a day where the internet is shut down completely. You have to work, check the news, and communicate with your friends and family. All of a sudden, you can’t do any of that, because there simply is no internet. It feels like a strange form of time travel has taken place: you’re thrown several …
Jan 14
Iran Protests: OONI data confirms censorship events
At this point, you have probably read all about the major anti-government protests that erupted across Iran over the last week. You may have even read about how services like Telegram and Instagram were blocked, reportedly as part of a government attempt to stifle the unrest. We publish this post to share OONI network measurement data collected from Iran between …
Jan 14
Year in Review: OONI in 2017
As the end of 2017 approaches, we publish this blog to share some OONI highlights from the last year. We also share some of the things we’ll be working on in 2018! Read the post here. Publication date: 30th December 2017 Publisher: Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI)
Jan 14
OONI at the 34th Chaos Communication Congress (34C3)
The OONI team attended the 34th Chaos Communication Congress (34C3): Europe’s largest hacker conference on technology, society, and utopia. We hosted an assembly (called the OONI-verse), and our project lead (Arturo Filasto) presented OONI. Learn more here. Publication date: 23rd December 2017 Publisher: Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI)