Author's posts

OONI Partner Gathering 2017

Recently we hosted the first OONI Partner Gathering. This two day event was hosted at the University of Toronto on 10th and 11th July 2017. The event brought our international partners together to share skills, knowledge, and research findings on the study of internet censorship. It also provided us the opportunity to reflect on our …

Continue reading

#EgyptCensors: Evidence of recent censorship events in Egypt

Starting on May 24th, the Egyptian government ordered ISPs to block at least 21 news websites on the grounds of “supporting terrorism and spreading lies”. In an attempt to understand which sites were blocked and how, ooniprobe network measurement software – designed to examine internet censorship – was run in three local vantage points in …

Continue reading

OONI – Descubriendo la censura en Internet en todo el mundo

I wrote this post about OONI in English and it was translated to Spanish. Read the post (in Spanish) here. Publisher: Oficina Antivigilancia, Coding Rights Publication date: 5th May 2017

The State of Internet Censorship in Indonesia

  New OONI network measurement data collected from 21 local vantage points confirms the blocking of 161 websites in Indonesia between 22nd June 2016 to 1st March 2017. Indonesian ISPs appear to be implementing block pages primarily through DNS hijacking. Vimeo and Reddit were found to be blocked in some networks in Indonesia, even though …

Continue reading

The State of Internet Censorship in Myanmar

Out of 1,927 sites that were tested for censorship in six local vantage points in Myanmar, only five sites presented signs of TCP/IP and HTTP blocking, including the sites of the U.S. embassy in Myanmar and of the Organization of American States (OAS). The motivation and justification behind the potential blocking of these sites remains …

Continue reading

Examining internet blackouts through public data sources

Pulling the plug on the internet is one of the ways that governments around the world attempt to exert control over the flow of information. While the Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI) project has developed numerous software tests for examining different forms of internet censorship (such as the blocking of websites, instant messaging apps, …

Continue reading

The State of Internet Censorship in Thailand

New OONI data reveals the blocking of 13 websites in Thailand across 6 different ISPs, between 6th November 2016 and 27th February 2017. 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. The blocked sites include: News outlets (nypost.com …

Continue reading

New ooniprobe mobile app: Measure internet censorship & performance!

Today the Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI) project is thrilled to announce the release of a new mobile app (“ooniprobe – Measure Internet Censorship & Performance”) that can now be installed on Android and iOS for testing Internet censorship and network performance. Read the post here. Publisher: Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI) Publication …

Continue reading

Tor at the Heart: Security in-a-Box

More than ten years ago, Tactical Tech and Front Line Defenders started providing digital security trainings for human rights defenders at risk around the world. Soon thereafter, they created Security in-a-Box to supplement those trainings and to support self-learning and peer-education among those defenders. Security in-a-Box offers general advice and practical walkthroughs designed to help …

Continue reading

Tor at the Heart: OONI Highlights from 2016

The Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI) is a free software project under The Tor Project that aims to uncover internet censorship around the world. Recently we published an overview of OONI which can be found here. Today we are providing some OONI highlights from 2016. These include our research findings in collaboration with our …

Continue reading